International news, State news

They stop everyone coming north from border on I-35

LAREDO, Texas — About nine miles or so north of Laredo you see a line of motor vehicles pulling off the northbound lanes of Interstate 35.

Big ones, little ones. Long-haul trucks, economy cars, mini-vans full of kids and assorted family members. They all stop as they leave this city of nearly 300,000 residents for points north.

What gives? The “porous border” at this one stop at least isn’t quite so porous.

What are the authorities looking for? As my dear mom used to say: I’ll give you three guesses, and the first two don’t count.

They’re looking for illegal immigrants. They’re looking for human cargo. They are on the hunt for drugs, weapons, you name it.

Now, this particular stop-and-search station doesn’t mean the border is air tight. I get that there remain many other points of entry for illegal immigrants to sneak into the United States of America.

There has been this sort of screening for some time. It’s just that when you see it, you look at the long and growing line of vehicles backing up, you appreciate the difficult job that our Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers — as well as our state andlocal police agencies — must perform.

Donald “Smart Person” Trump perhaps has done one thing as he has continued to rail against illegal immigration and keeps yammering about building a wall that he suggests Mexico will pay for; it is that he has elevated our border officers’ alertness.

I am hoping they remain alert.

legal news

Founders got it right, as Trump is demonstrating

Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison … wherever they are, must be enjoying what they are witnessing in the country they helped create.

They are possibly witnessing a supreme test of checks and balances as they intended for them to be used.

Donald J. Trump, the nation’s 45th president, is setting up a yuuuge fight with the federal judiciary. That would pit two of the three co-equal branches of government against each other.

Trump issued an executive order that bans refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries. He cited national security as his reason. He seemingly wants to ban Muslims from entering the country and is using “extreme vetting” procedures to find the bad guys among the refugees who are fleeing their native lands for the Land of Opportunity and Freedom.

A federal judge has ruled that the executive order is discriminatory on its face. A federal appeals court is considering whether to uphold the ban or side with the judge.

Trump, meanwhile, is embarking on a social media campaign to blast the judge who issued the order staying the president’s order, thus possibly enraging other federal judges — namely the eight individuals who sit on the U.S. Supreme Court who might be asked to issue the final ruling on the president’s order.

Thus, a showdown may be born.

The founders established an “independent judiciary” for the best reason possible: to protect federal judges from political coercion. They serve as judges for life. They are supposed to interpret the U.S. Constitution without pressure or coercion from politicians.

But wait! Trump is seeking to apply that very pressure by badgering the judges. He called the federal jurist who struck down the ban a “so-called judge”; he said the nation should “blame” him and the federal court system if a bad guy sneaks into the nation.

Trump is using Twitter to make his specious case against the federal judiciary.

All the while, the founders are looking down while patting each other on the back. “Yep,” they might say to each other, “this is precisely what we had in mind.”

media news, national news, political news

Feuding in Trump White House? Go figure

No Drama Obama has given way to All Tumult Trump.

CNN is reporting that the president of the United States is unhappy with the performance of White House press secretary Sean Spicer. What’s more, there appears to be a turf war building within Donald J. Trump’s inner circle: The Reince Priebus wing vs. the Steve Bannon wing.

Who knew?

Does anyone really doubt any of this?

Trump himself has demonstrated an amazing capacity for stirring up controversy. He seems unable to control his own mouth, let alone anyone else’s.

This all occurs, of course, after Trump pledged to surround himself with the “smartest people” on Planet Earth.

The Priebus wing of the Trump team seems to be the more reasonable folks. Priebus is the former Republican National Committee chairman whom Trump hired as his chief of staff. Priebus is a party guy, well-connected to the GOP’s “establishment wing.” He’s always seemed reasonable to me … even if I have thought he was wrong.

Bannon? He’s of another stripe altogether. He was a flame-throwing editor of Breitbart.com, and a purveyor of white-nationalist rhetoric. Bannon strikes me as a dangerous individual who’s now on the “principals committee” of the National Security Council.

Ye, gads, man!

Trump administration officials dispute the CNN report about Trump’s supposed unhappiness with Spicer. Sure thing. Of course they would.

The rumors and innuendo persist. Ironic, yes? Trump won his party’s nomination largely on the basis of the innuendo he tossed around against his foes — and then he did the same thing to defeat Hillary Rodham Clinton in the general election.

It’s coming full circle.

legal news, national news, political news

Trump vs. The Judges: Pulling for the folks in the robes

Donald J. Trump’s fight with the federal judiciary could be shaping up to be a donnybrook.

The president instituted a temporary restriction on travelers seeking to enter the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries; then U.S. District Judge James Robart in Washington state struck it down, prompting Trump to call Robart a “so-called judge” and said the nation should blame him if a terrorist sneaks into the country and does harm.

There’s more. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is hearing the Trump administration’s appeal and the three-judge panel that heard the case is sounding skeptical of the president’s order.

The plot thickens. If the 9th Court rejects the appeal, then it goes to the U.S. Supreme Court, which at the moment stands at eight members. Suppose, then, that the high court deadlocks — with the four conservative justices voting in favor of the ban and the five liberals oppose it. The lower-court ruling stands.

There’s some chatter now about whether the Supreme Court will be affected in some manner by the untoward things the president has said about the federal judiciary.

Has Trump crossed a serious line? Some scholars believe the president’s Twitter tirades against Robart in particular and the federal bench in general crosses the separation of powers line between the judicial and executive branches of government.

Get a load of this from The Hill:

“The criticism extends beyond judicial scholars.

“Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) warned that Trump’s attacks, if they continue, threaten not only to undermine the separation of powers but also the president’s own policy agenda.

“’We’re a nation of laws and not men, and this idea of ‘follow me because I say so’ is completely at odds with the Founding Fathers’ intent,’ said Sanford, a Trump supporter who has also criticized the president on certain issues.

“’I learned a long time ago in politics [that] attacking the person or the group that will decide your fate on a given issue generally doesn’t work out that well,’ he added.”

This is yet another matter of governance that the brand new president just doesn’t seem to understand.

education news

DeVos gets a job for which she is unqualified

Betsy DeVos is going to assume her new job in the federal government with one of two outlooks.

The first one suggests that with a 50-50 vote in the U.S. Senate to confirm her — and with the vice president of the United States casting the tie-breaking vote — DeVos is assuming the education secretary job with virtually no mandate to do anything.

Half the Senate opposes her. The president who nominated her got nearly 3 million fewer votes than his 2016 election opponent — while winning enough electoral votes to become president. The vice president cast the first in history tie-breaking vote to confirm a Cabinet nominee.

Mandate, shmandate!

Or, she’ll thumb her nose at those of us who opposed her confirmation and say, “Hey, winning by an inch is as good as winning by a country mile.  So … get over it!”

I suspect she’ll adopt the latter point of view.

Senate Democrats gave it their best shot, trying to talk for 24 hours straight on the Senate floor seeking to persuade one more Republican to follow the lead of GOP Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, who voted against DeVos’s nomination.

Betsy DeVos has zero qualifications to lead the nation’s public education system.

She gave a lot of money to Republican politicians, which I guess is qualification enough.

Sad, man. Sad.

State news

State parks are the way to go

This is the latest in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on upcoming retirement.

GARNER STATE PARK, Texas — The picture attached to this blog post tells the story: this place is as tranquil and quiet as it appears.

This park is nestled in the gorgeous Hill Country of Texas, just north of Uvalde, which is the hometown of the person after whom the park is named.

I refer to the late John Nance “Cactus Jack” Garner, the former vice president of the United States during the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. It was Garner who once famously declared that “the vice presidency ain’t worth a bucket of warm piss.”

They didn’t call him Cactus Jack for nothin’, you know.

My wife and I have decided that state parks are the way to travel through this vast state of ours.

We have purchased a state park pass, which for a year allows us access to any state park in the state without paying an entrance fee. The nightly fee for camping there in an RV varies: $15 to $20.

I’ve complained for decades now about Texas state government. It spends too little on this, too much on that. It devalues public education and seeks on occasion to legislate morality.

Blah, blah, blah.

I am a big fan of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, the agency that runs our state park system.

Our state parks are second to none. Well, perhaps that’s just my opinion, given that I haven’t been to state parks in every state in the Union. I’ll just settle on declaring that Texas’s state parks are inviting.

They’re well-appointed, clean, well-groomed. Park staffers are full of that legendary Texas hospitality.

There’s a decent chance my wife and I — along with Toby the Puppy — will visit most if not all of them as we continue to enjoy this new lifestyle called “retirement.”

military news

Mullen is right about Bannon: He doesn’t belong on NSC

Michael Mullen knows a thing or three about national security.

He’s a retired Navy admiral who served as Joint Chiefs chairman under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Mullen also believes that Donald Trump’s chief political adviser — Steve Bannon — should not be on the principals committee of the National Security Council.

My reaction? No-o-o-o-o!

Mullen has written his feelings in an op-ed published by the New York Times.

Mullen made his point clear. Bannon is a political hand. He is not a national security expert. Indeed, Trump demoted the current Joint Chiefs chair and the director of national intelligence to make room for the former Brietbart.com editor, and a guy believed to harbor dangerous views about white supremacy.

“Every president has the right and the responsibility to shape the security council as he sees fit,” Mullen added. “But partisan politics has no place at that table. And neither does Mr. Bannon.”

The NSC is a place where experts share their knowledge about imminent national security threats and make recommendations to the president on how to deal with them.

What in the world does Bannon bring to that discussion? Nothing, as far as I can tell.

education news

Betsy DeVos for ed secretary? No way!

I know it’s still a long shot, but I am going to implore the U.S. Senate to “just say ‘no'” to “Billionaire Betsy” DeVos as the next secretary of education.

Just as I believe Donald J. Trump is still unfit for the presidency, he has chosen an equally unfit individual to lead the nation’s public education program.

I emphasize the word “public” for what I believe is a valid reason.

DeVos has zero direct exposure to public education.

She was educated in private schools. Her children have attended private schools. DeVos has talked openly about creating a voucher program for parents, allowing public tax money to subsidize the private education of their children.

Her Senate committee confirmation hearing revealed DeVos’s utter ignorance of public education policy. She believes we should arm teachers with firearms to supposedly deter gun violence in schools.

The president can do far better than to nominate someone other than DeVos, whose only “qualification” has been the large amounts of money she has raised for Republican politicians — including the president himself.

Two Senate Republicans — Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine — have said they won’t vote for DeVos. That puts the count at 50-50, assuming all Democrats and the two independents who caucus with them, vote against DeVos.

Will there be another Republican senator with a conscience who’ll realize that the president has made a mistake in nominating this know-nothing to run the Education Department.

I am hoping one can emerge.

Then the president can look for someone who knows something about the agency he or she would lead.

International news

How about that? Trump unifies Congress!

Donald Trump has done something his immediate predecessor as president, Barack Obama, couldn’t do: He has brought Republicans and Democrats together for a bipartisan resolution.

Members of Congress have introduced a resolution reaffirming this nation’s support of Australia. The bipartisan resolution comes in the wake of that ridiculous phone call between Trump and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull that reportedly ended when Trump hung up on the PM.

We have few stronger allies than the Australians.

Why the president chose to scold Turnbull is beyond most of us who pay any semblance of attention to such things. The Hill reported that Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., stated, “but I do know this, the people of the United States do not have better friends than the people of Australia. We’re more than friends.”

Trump reportedly lashed out at Turnbull during a phone call between Washington and Canberra.

Indeed, Australian military personnel have fallen on battlefields alongside Americans in every war going back to World War I. As Sen. Alexander noted, “We’re more than friends.”

And so the president continues to give Russian butcher/strongman/president Vladimir Putin a pass on his conduct while enraging our nation’s strongest allies and, in the case of Mexico, an important neighboring nation.

Hey, the president said he would “unify” the nation. He seems to have achieved a unity of sorts on Capitol Hill.

Go figure.

Sports news

Admitting a big mistake regarding The Big Game

I am in the mood for admitting a mistake.

Last night I made a big one.

I watched much of the first half of the Super Bowl. I watched the Atlanta Falcons run up that big halftime lead over the New England Patriots. I watched Lady Gaga’s knockout halftime show. She wowed me, man!

Then I figured: Well, that’s the ballgame. The Falcons look too good, too fast, too strong, too everything.

I turned in. Went to sleep.

Then I awoke this morning, looked at my I-phone and saw the headline: “Patriots win in epic comeback!”

I am so ashamed. I figure if I say so out loud in this forum that I’ll attract some forgiveness.

Are there others out there?

Now, is New England quarterback Tom Brady “the greatest QB in the history of Planet Earth?” That remains to be debated for as long as people can still remember the likes of, oh, Joe Montana, Roger Staubach, John Elway … to name just three pretty good flingers.

Yes, Brady is a great one. The greatest ever?

Maybe. Then again …

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