national news, political news

Uh, Mr. POTUS? Photo ops are meant to convey something

Dear Mr. President,

That was some stunt you pulled today.

You called the media into the White House to watch you sign a couple of executive orders concerning international trade enforcement.

Then one of the reporters fired off a question about Michael Flynn. Your response? You turned tail and ran from the room. Why didn’t you stay long enough to sign the damn EOs?

This was supposed to be a positive photo op for you and your struggling administration. Then someone poses a tricky question — and you provide yet another kind of photo op, one that won’t play nearly as positively as the one you intended.

It was fascinating to watch the vice president acknowledge immediately what was going on and how it would look.

You probably don’t care what I think — given that I live out here in Trump Country, but I have a decidedly different view of the job you’re doing from the neighbors on my street. I’ll tell you anyway.

Every time you perform stunts like the one you performed today, you send chilling messages that there really and truly might be a flame under all the smoke being generated by that Russian hacking story.

We know that you gave Gen. Flynn the boot as your national security adviser because of questions swirling about his Russia relationships. I actually think you made the right call there, despite my belief that Gen. Flynn shouldn’t have held the post in the first place.

You have photo ops and then there are photo ops.

Mr. President, you need to answer the questions. Definitively, with clarity and precision — if you are able to dispel the chillingĀ notion among many of us that there might be something to this Russian “collusion” story.

Sports news

Pulling for a comeback from Tiger

Call me strange.

But I do enjoy watching pro golf on TV more than pro football. Pro basketball, too, except when the Portland Trail Blazers are on the tube.

Accordingly, I keep hoping for a comeback from a young man named Eldrick “Tiger” Woods, who announced this week he is going to skip next week’s Masters Tournament, an event he has won four times.

Tiger’s back is acting up. He can’t rehab it sufficiently to allow him to play at a competitive level. So, he’s sitting out an event that the great Jack Nicklaus once said he’d win more Masters green jackets than he and the late Arnold Palmer did combined; Jack won six of ’em, Arnie won four.

I’m not entirely sure why I remain drawn to Tiger Woods, the golfer. Tiger the husband turned out to be pretty much of a dirt bag, as he cheated wildly on his gorgeous then-wife, Elin.

It pretty much went to hell after that for Tiger.

Tiger remains on the injured list

He hurt his back. His major championship total stands at 14; he says he wants to surpass the 18 majors owned by Nicklaus.

I don’t know what pro golf’s TV ratings have done since Tiger hit the skids. I’m guessing many TV watchers are like me: They’d prefer to watch Tiger on the course than nearly anyone else.

I want the young man to make a full comeback. Do I care if he breaks the all-time major championship record? Not really. Jack Nicklaus, by all rights, should stand as the greatest of all time.

Tiger Woods belongs on the golf course — and on my TV screen.

national news, political news

Immunity request: Does it signal guilt … or what?

Donald J. Trump once thought requests for immunity from key witnesses implied they were guilty of something.

Now the president of the United States is saying something quite different. Imagine that, if you can.

Former national security adviser Michael Flynn wants congressional committees to grant him immunity from prosecution in exchange for testimony on what he knows about Trump’s possible connection with Russian government hackers.

Guilty of something? Or is he trying to avoid what he calls “unfair prosecution”?

Flynn has a story to tell.

Something tells me it might be the former. That means the president’s one-time belief seems to hold up today.

Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general — and an acknowledged brilliant battlefield commander — served as national security honcho for 24 days. Then he was pushed out by the president over questions about meetings he allegedly had with Russian government officials.

Oh, yes. The Russian government has been named by U.S. intelligence agencies as trying to hack into our computer network with the intention of influencing the 2016 presidential election.

Trump’s response? He has disparaged U.S. spooks, comparing them to Nazis. He has said nary a discouraging word about Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Flynn’s role is key here. Does he know something that he cannot tell because he might face criminal charges himself? And, oh by the way, does any of this include the possibility of treason?

I’ve tried to weigh this matter: immunity to protect someone who might have betrayed his nation?

I believe the president — and Flynn, for that matter — were right initially. Immunity requests would seem to imply criminal guilt.

Make Gen. Flynn talk, even at the risk of facing criminal prosecution.

legal news, national news, political news

Judiciary becomes another political arm

I guess it was naĆÆve of many of us to believe the federal judiciary would be above the partisan politics that stymies the executive and legislative branches of government.

I always thought the founders created a judicial system that would be immune from politics. Those silly men.

Gorsuch gets key endorsements

Neil Gorsuch stands before the U.S. Senate awaiting confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court. Two Democratic senators — Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp said today they would vote to confirm the judge nominated by Donald J. Trump to the nation’s highest court.

Senate Republicans need eight Democrats to join them to get to the magic number of 60 votes to confirm Gorsuch.

I have admitted this already, but Gorsuch is not my choice to become a high court justice. He is, though, the pick of the president, who has the constitutional authority to make these selections.

My hope would be that Democrats wouldn’t filibuster this nomination. They should save their ammo for when it really counts, such as when a liberal justice leaves the court. Gorsuch is a conservative who would replace the late Antonin Scalia, the iconic justice who died more than a year ago.

I also believe that this is a “stolen” seat that in reality belongs to Merrick Garland, who was selected by former President Barack Obama to succeed Scalia. Senate Republicans played pure politics by refusing to give Garland a hearing and a vote. That is to their everlasting shame.

That, I’m afraid to acknowledge,Ā is how the game is played these days.

Judges have become political animals, just like the men and women who get to appoint and decide whether to confirm them to judicial posts. That’s too bad for the system.

legal news, State news

Texas AG handed surprising setback

Ken Paxton wanted to be tried by a jury of his peers in his home county in Texas.

State lawyers who are prosecuting him on charges of securities fraud said the Texas attorney general’s legal team had poisoned the jury pool and asked the judge for a change of venue.

Today, the judge agreed and moved the case out of Collin County; he also ordered a delay in the trial, I presume to give the principals a chance to find a suitable venue to try the attorney general.

This is a bit of a surprise to me.

It’s because a Collin County grandĀ jury indicted Paxton on securities charges stemming from an allegation that he misled investors involved in a company with which Paxton was involved before he was elected attorney general in 2014.

The way I figured at the time, if a grand jury comprising peers of the attorney general would indict him, then surely a trial judge could find a suitable pool of trial jurors to hear the case and then decide on his guilt or innocence.

Paxton, you see, represented Collin County in the Texas Legislature before running for AG three years ago.

Paxton has suffered a stinging defeat to be sure. He now is going to stand before jurors who are ostensibly neutral in this case, who don’t know the AG personally or who’ve never had the chance to vote for him while he served in the Legislature.

Then again, he is a statewide elected official. Which makes me wonder: Where can one find a jury pool that is totally neutral?

national news, political news

Trump at war … with conservatives in GOP!

Conservative Republicans should have known what they were getting when they stood firmly behind their party’s presidential nominee in 2016.

They were backing a guy who didn’t understand them, didn’t understand how to legislate, didn’t grasp the degree to which they would run through brick walls to get their way.

So, when Donald Trump hooked up with congressional GOP leaders — comprising a few moderates here and there along with some notable conservatives — on a cobbled-together health care overhaul, the Freedom Caucus bolted.

The caucus opposed the American Health Care Act. It spoke as one. The president couldn’t deliver.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think the Affordable Care Act should be repealed. It does kind of make me chuckle, too, to see the president get his head handed to him by a group of zealots who want the ACA tossed into the crapper.

But now the president has all but declared war against the Freedom Caucus. I believe this open warfare might doom whatever passes for Trump’s legislative agenda for, oh, the foreseeable future.

Trump is a RINO to many conservatives anyway. RINO, of course, means Republican In Name Only and it’s not altogether clear what precisely informs any public policy that pops into the president’s noggin.

The biggest surprise to me was that conservatives would stand with this candidate to begin with, given his bizarre personal marital history, his acknowledged groping of women, the manner in which he spoke to — and about — his more conservative GOP primary opponents. Whenever I hear Trump talk openly about matters important to social conservatives, one word keeps popping into my head: panderer.

Thus, I shouldn’t be surprised that the president would stake his agenda on cooperation with anyone other than the Freedom Caucus.

He’s not one of them. They certainly do not follow his lead.

The battle, therefore, is joined.

military news, national news, political news

Whether to grant immunity to Gen. Flynn

The word is out: Former national security adviser Michael Flynn is trying to obtain immunity from criminal prosecution in exchange for what he knows about the Donald Trump presidential campaign and its possible relationship with Russian government officials.

The retired Army lieutenant general and his lawyers are dickering with congressional intelligence committees — in the House and the Senate — over an immunity deal.

Hmmm. Whether to grant it or not. My gut tells me that will depend on what he has to tell senators and House members and their investigators.

Flynn was forced to resign as national security adviser after he admitted to lying to Vice President Mike Pence and others about whether he talked to Russian officials during the 2016 presidential campaign.

At issue is whether Russian officials hacked into our electoral process seeking to influence the outcome in Trump’s favor — and whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians in any way, shape or form.

The story doesn’t end there. It is now threatening to swallow up the president himself.

Flynn’s request for immunity might suggest — at least it does to me — that he might be able to tell congressional investigators some highly valuable information about what the president knew, when he knew and how he reacted to whatever he might have learned.

Flynn could turn out to be a tiny minnow in a net full of much bigger fish if he gets the immunity he is requesting.

I find it fascinating to the max that he has been so quiet for so long after leaving the Trump administration just 24 days on the job as the president’s main man on national security.

He’s gone. Then again, he might return in a major way if House and Senate committee chairmen decide to grant him immunity.

Talk to us, Gen. Flynn. Many millions of us areĀ waiting to know the truth about your former boss — given that he won’t tell us himself.

national news

What would you do about a bear cub?

I am on Corey Hancock’s side.

Hancock lives in Salem, Ore., and he likely is in trouble for “rescuing” a tiny bear cub. Wildlife experts are all over Hancock for violating one of the rule of nature, which is that you shouldn’t interfere with Mother Nature’s way of ensuring the “survival of the fittest.”

State and federal wildlife officials are pondering whether to fine Hancock for doing what came, uh, natural to him.

Hancock was hiking along the Santiam River when he spotted the cub. He picked it up, took it home and is nursing it back to good health … or so he hopes.

I understand intellectually the hazards of doing what Hancock did. I cannot get past the question: What would I do if I were in that position? For that matter, what would most folks do?

I get angry just watching wildlife shows on TV where camera crews witness nature’s cruelty. Again, I understand that they’re on hand to record nature, not to change it.

Still, I think the armchair critics ought to give Corey Hancock at least a smidgen of a benefit of the doubt.

He acted like a human being.

legal news

Didn’t they enact an anti-nepotism law?

President-elect John F. Kennedy called the media together shortly after his election in 1960 to announce his choice for attorney general.

It would be his brother, Robert, who never had practiced law privately. He had served as general counsel to a Senate committee chaired by the infamous Joseph McCarthy and later worked with his brother in the Senate.

JFK joked that RFK needed a bit of experience before he would become a successful lawyer, so he named him AG.

The appointment caused some consternation at the time, even though RFK would go on to become a highly effective attorney general.

In 1967, Congress enacted a law that banned such nepotism at the highest levels of government.

Then came Donald J. Trump, the 45th president of the United States. What does he do? He places his daughter Ivanka into a West Wing office, where she now has an actual White House job. Oh, and her husband, Jared Kushner, also now works as a senior policy adviser.

Neither of them has government experience. Neither has any political seasoning.

Trumps take over the White House

But hey, what’s the problem? Ivanka won’t take a salary, which I guess serves as Dad’s dodge in giving her a government job.

However, didn’t Congress have enough fear about nepotism 50 years ago to approve a law to prohibit it?

I don’t believe that concern has lessened.

local news

Happy Trails, Part Six

The thought occurred to me on this first full day of full-time retirement.

My wife and I were tooling down the highway this morning and I kept making a reference to not having to go to work, that neither of us is tied to an actual paying job.

The thought took me back more than 45 years when we were newlyweds, and I’m sure other newlyweds have said — and are still saying — the same thing to each other.

We kept referring to each other as “husband” and “wife.”

“Hey, you’re my wife,” I would say. She’d respond with the “husband” thing.

Those of you who are married know of what I am speaking.

We’ve gone a long way down the road together since then. But now we’re tooling down an new highway of life.

She’s been retired since 2012. I kept working a number of part-time jobs since I left the Amarillo Globe-News in the summer of 2012. I had some media jobs; I toiled for a time as a juvenile supervision officer at the Youth Center of the High Plains, aka the “juvenile detention center”; I just retired from another part-time gig at Street Toyota.

Rest assured I won’t bore you with continual blog posts about retirement. It’s so damn new at the moment, you know?

Now we’re both retired. It’s a new feeling and a new experience … kind of like getting married.

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience