legal news

Consider this possible bombshell

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I don’t want to predict the moment that Earth will spin off is axis, but there’s a potentially explosive scandal out there that might erupt, forcing the worst constitutional crisis in American history.

Donald Trump is about to nominate someone to the Supreme Court. That someone could be confirmed in a U.S. Senate vote before the Nov. 3 election.

We’ll go to the polls and the result might not be to Trump’s liking. He might decide to challenge the results that could show Joe Biden winning narrowly … God forbid!

Then the case could go to the Supreme Court.

Just suppose Trump’s selection on the court finds herself in the position of casting the deciding vote that might return Trump to office for a second term. Suppose as well that the appointee doesn’t recuse herself from any deliberation and that her vote renders a Biden victory moot on some legal technicality that no one can predict at this moment.

Whoever Trump nominates and is confirmed in my view needs to declare herself out of the game. She must not participate in any decision that could deliver a second term to the individual who selected her for a lifetime appointment on the nation’s highest court.

Oh, man, I do not want any of this to play out. My version of political perfection would be for Joe Biden to win in a rout, to bury Trump under an electoral landslide that produces zero doubt over the outcome … not that a landslide loss would dissuade Trump from trying to pull of some mumbo jumbo to steal an election result.

We need to prepare ourselves for the possibility of a hideous, horrendous, hell-raising crisis in the event we get a shiny new Supreme Court justice sitting on the bench awaiting an electoral outcome.

Recusal is the only option.

local news

Looking forward to early Election Day

(AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I truly cannot believe I am about to make the following statement.

Which is that I am looking forward to voting early for president of the United States of America.

Texas opens the door to early voting on Oct. 13. We keep hearing about the need to vote as early as possible, to vote in person if we can and if we can protect ourselves against the coronavirus.

We’re going to vote on the first day of early voting. 

You know of my longstanding desire to wait until Election Day to cast my ballot. I am tossing that preference aside with increasing glee.

I am growing more concerned about Donald Trump’s potential for electoral chicanery. He says the only way Joe Biden will win is if the election is “rigged.” Trump is threatening to refuse to accept the result if Biden gets more votes than he does. Trump is suggesting “rampant voter fraud” where no fraud exists.

So with that in mind, we are going to the polls on the first day of early voting. We’ll stand in a socially distanced line for as long as it takes on that day. We will then cast our ballots.

We will vote proudly for Joe Biden. Our votes will be logged into our state’s electronic balloting system.

Then we will await the results of the election.

If Biden wins and then restores dignity to the office of the presidency, my hope is that he ends the suspicion being hurled at our electoral system.

The most frightening aspect of this suspicion is that it is coming from the guy who is masquerading as our current president. We are witnessing an astonishing display of desperation from Donald J. Trump.

I will answer Donald Trump’s horrifying effort to undermine our electoral system by voting early on the very first day that the option becomes available.

national news

Leave SCOTUS alone

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The battle that is fixin’ to explode over the nomination fight regarding the U.S. Supreme Court may include a skirmish I hope does not occur.

Shall the court expand from nine justices to some greater number, say 11 or 13? I believe that is unwise.

Senate Democrats are threatening to seek a court expansion if they gain control of the Senate after the Nov. 3 election. They want to add more progressive jurists to the high court in the event another conservative joins the court after Donald Trump nominates her and the Senate confirms his selection.

Don’t mistake my motives here. I do not want Trump to win a second term. I want voters to elect Joe Biden as president. I do not want this election decided by the Supreme Court. I want it decided cleanly, clearly and without equivocation by voters across the land.

What’s more, if this matter heads to the Supreme Court in a court challenge, I clearly do not want a court with a newly installed Trump nominee having a say on whether Donald Trump should remain in office. If I could define “conflict of interest,” such an occurrence would be Exhibit A in that definition.

I say all this while cautioning against taking drastic action to change one of our nation’s governmental bedrocks, the judicial branch of government. Granted, the U.S. Constitution does not specify that the Supreme Court must comprise nine justices. The number of justices has fluctuated between five and 10 but since 1869 the number has been set at nine.

President Roosevelt tried to enact a court-packing scheme when he took office, but that effort failed.

What’s more, none other than the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — whose death has prompted this monumental political fight — argued against adding to the justices serving on the court. She was a traditionalist.

So … am I. 

If the aim is to seek some sort of judicial balance on the court, then my own preference is to elect presidents who will ensure it. That is far better in my own mind that tinkering with the number of justices. What, for example, would prevent a more conservative Senate from adding even more justices if the Supreme Court tilts too far to the left? It never ends.

I doubt, moreover, that the founders would want one branch of government meddling so intrusively in the affairs of another branch of government.

Leave the Supreme Court alone.

national news

Trump should alarm us all

2 Comments

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It is no stretch at all to suggest that Donald Trump is setting up multiple alarm bells over his statements related to a “peaceful transition” from one administration to the next one if he loses the presidential election.

The election is 40 days out. Joe Biden continues to show considerable strength in most public opinion polling. He is strong in the states he needs to win the Electoral College and, thus, be elected president.

That isn’t derailing Trump’s dangerous talk about refusing to commit to a peaceful transition, or his efforts to suppress voter turnout, or his call to “throw out ballots” that he says would guarantee he would stay in office.

Indeed, this dangerous rhetoric has prompted the U.S. Senate to pass a resolution proclaiming its strong intention to ensure that a transition, were it to occur, would be done in a manner befitting our great republic: peacefully and without tumult.

Trump’s danger to the republic is on full display as the campaign heads toward the stretch run. He intends to cheat his way to a second term.

Look at what he’s done already: He has sought help from Ukraine in digging up dirt on Biden; he has continued to dismiss assertions from the FBI and other intelligence experts that Russia is interfering in our election as it did in 2016; he asserts without proof that mail-in voting is fraught with corruption that it breeds “rampant voter fraud”; he has said publicly that a Biden victory would mean the election is “rigged.”

When have we ever heard a president say these things? Hmm. How about, oh, never!

Donald Trump is a menace to the Constitution he took an oath to defend and protect. He is a danger to the very electoral system of which he took advantage to win the presidency four years ago. Trump is a danger to our system of government.

This man needs to lose this election, He needs to lose big. Trump needs to pack his bags and exit the White House.

national news

Founders are spinning

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Wherever they are, the men who formed the government that runs our beloved country surely must be so mad they could just spit.

Why? Well, they intended to create a federal judicial system that would be free of political pressure. They revealed that intent by creating judgeships that would last a lifetime. The idea was to free federal judges from political pressure by setting, say, limits on the amount of time they could serve.

It hasn’t worked out quite the way the founders intended.

We have another vacancy on our nation’s highest court and the political pressure is about the blow the roof off the Supreme Court building. Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death wasn’t entirely a surprise, although it did sadden many of us … me included.

We now are going to watch a spectacle unfold in which a president with no discernable ideological base is going to nominate an arch conservative jurist to replace the progressive-leaning, trailblazing Ginsburg. The balance of power on the Supreme Court will be set for as long as the rest of the conservative majority remains seated.

Politics, anyone?

The pressure is going to go way beyond merely intense. It will become unbearable. Donald Trump promised to appoint archconservative jurists to the bench. He delivered with the appointments of Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, although they haven’t voted entirely the way the Trump administration would have wanted.

Now comes the next choice. It’s going to be a woman, Trump says. I won’t speculate here on who it might be. I’ll wait for the announcement that Trump said is coming Saturday.

Just know that the political hackles are going to be flying.

Dang. I just wish the founders were around to remind us all — in person — what they intended when they wrote that Constitution.

national news

Trump = extreme danger

3 Comments

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

What in the name of political insanity is Donald J. Trump trying to do?

He has been asked many times about whether he would commit to a “peaceful transition” of power in the event he loses the election in November.

Trump won’t commit. He won’t say he’ll hand the reins of power to Joseph Biden. He won’t follow the example set by every single one of his presidential predecessors.

Oh, no! This president is saying we need to “get rid of the ballots” he insists are being sent out illegally to millions of Americans. He doesn’t offer a shred of proof for anything he alleges.

Folks, we have a dangerous man on our hands. We have a man who is fomenting fear of our cherished electoral system. He is seeking to undermine the process we have used since the beginning of the republic to elect our presidents.

“We’ll have to see what happens.”

That is Donald Trump’s statement regarding the election. See what happens?

What quite possibly will “happen” will be that Joe Biden gets more votes than Trump. He will acquire more than enough Electoral College votes than Trump. Biden will be duly elected as the 46th president of the United States.

Trump, though, is going to cast doubt on the outcome. Indeed, he is setting that table already. He is ignoring what the FBI says is occurring, that Russia is working to interfere in the election just as it did in 2016.

He won’t commit to a peaceful transition in the event of a Joe Biden victory?

This is a dangerous man.

national news

Mr. POTUS, you have failed this test

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The juxtaposition of two events is startling to behold.

Donald Trump told Fox News that he gives himself an A+ grade in his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

He said that on the day the U.S. death count from the virus surpassed 200,000 people. Their lives have ended and the lives of their loved ones have been changed forever.

Outside the White House, a reporter asked Trump how he responds to the death count. His answer? He turned to another reporter and asked, “Next question?”

The commander in chief cannot speak to the death count, he won’t answer for it, he won’t hold himself accountable at any level for the misery that has occurred on his watch.

Yet he grades himself with an A+?

Is this guy serious? Of course he thinks of himself in the most glowing, glorious and gleeful terms.

The rest of us know better.

legal news, national news

‘Not written in the stars’

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I kinda think U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah has missed a key point in the fight over whether Donald Trump should proceed quickly with nominating someone to the U.S. Supreme Court in the wake of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death.

Romney said he would support moving forward quickly, endorsing the idea of a rapid-fire confirmation process, despite assurances from many key GOP senators in 2016 that they would oppose such a thing, even with a Republican president awaiting the chance to nominate someone in a presidential election year.

Sen. Romney declared Tuesday that there nothing “in the stars” that requires the SCOTUS to be a “liberal” court. That was his public declaration in stating his support for moving ahead. I am scratching my head over that one, Mitt.

We all get that elections have consequences. Trump promised to select conservative judges. He is delivering on the pledge. It’s the timing of it, the idea that an election now no longer stands as an impediment to the president being able to select someone. The GOP sang an entirely different tune in 2016 when Justice Antonin Scalia died and President Obama sought to name Merrick Garland to the high court. GOP Senate leaders — namely Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — slammed the brakes on that, declaring that the “people deserve a voice” in determining who sits on the Supreme Court.

Well, they deserve as much of a voice today as they did then.

That’s the beef. It has little to do with whether a president can select who he wants.

I was hoping Mitt Romney would put principle above party — just as he did when he was the lone GOP senator to vote to convict Trump of abuse of power in his Senate impeachment trial.

Silly me. Mitt let us all down.

State news

Candidate touts military heroics?

(AP Photo/Eric Gay)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I’ve been stewing about this ever since I saw the ad the first time a couple of weeks ago, so now I will vent just a bit.

M.J. Hegar is running for the U.S. Senate in Texas occupied by John Cornyn. She defeated state Sen. Royce West of Dallas in a Democratic Party primary runoff for the right to challenge the Republican incumbent.

But I think she’s treading into an off-putting campaign strategy, one in which she seems to boast about her own military service in Afghanistan. She talks about her time as an Air Force helicopter pilot, about being shot down and then kind of crows about being awarded a Silver Star and Purple Heart for her actions on the battlefield.

I don’t begrudge Hegar’s service. I honor it and I respect it greatly. I do, though, believe it is unbecoming for her to seemingly boast about her service in a paid political ad. That is the kind of commentary that should be left for others to say on her behalf. Those who perform heroically in combat customarily are reluctant to talk about such deeds.

Yes, other political candidates have run for office after serving with valor and heroism on the battlefield. I don’t recall hearing them — speaking in their own voice — seemingly boast about it.

I don’t believe I am alone in feeling this way.

Bad call, Ms. Hegar.

national news

McCain endorses Biden

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I guess you could say that politics at times can travel full circle.

Consider this: The wife of the man against whom Joe Biden ran in 2008 has endorsed the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nominee’s bid for the presidency of the United States.

Cindy McCain, wife of the late senator and Vietnam War hero John McCain, says Biden is the “only man” who speaks for the nation’s values.

At one level this endorsement isn’t surprising. Biden and McCain were the best of friends. They came from different parties; they differed politically and philosophically. They also shared a love of country and a commitment to serving the public. Biden’s path took him to the Senate by the time he turned 30 while McCain’s journey took him to the Navy and then to the Vietnam War, where he was shot down and imprisoned (and tortured repeatedly) for more than five years; he came home in 1973 and became a successful politician.

Biden ran as vice president on a ticket led by Barack Obama in 2008. They defeated the GOP ticket led by U.S. Sen. McCain, who ran with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Biden and McCain never let their political differences interfere with the deep affection and respect they had for each other.

So it was today that Cindy McCain endorsed Joe Biden’s bid to become president. Sen. McCain would be quite pleased.

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience