Category Archives: national news

legal news, national news

A new fight in store for SCOTUS seat?

Here we go again, maybe, perhaps … but I surely hope not.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer announced today his intention to retire from the court at the end of the court’s term. He is paving the way for President Biden to nominate a successor.

Is this a big deal? You bet it is! Presidents have a chance to make a lasting impact on our judicial system that will remain far longer than their terms in office. However, let’s consider some key elements.

Breyer is one of three “liberal” justices serving on the court. A Biden appointment isn’t going to change the nine-member court’s ideological balance. Donald Trump nominated three justices during his term on the court, the last one of whom delivered the strong conservative majority that now sits on the nation’s highest court.

Progressives have been hollering for Breyer to step down for a long time. They want a woman to join the court, along with Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Amy Coney Barrett. President Biden already has pledged to nominate a woman, and she likely will be a Black woman. As NBC News reports: Biden has pledged to make just such an appointment. Among likely contenders are federal Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, former Breyer law clerk, and Leondra Kruger, a justice on California’s Supreme Court.

Is all of this a done deal? Well, consider that recent judicial appointments have been subjected to harsh partisan disagreements between Republicans and Democrats in the Senate, which has confirmation authority.

President Biden is going to move rapidly to nominate someone. Indeed, time is not his friend. The midterm election is coming up this fall, the court’s new term begins in early October and the president will need to get someone seated with whom he feels comfortable.

It’ll be a fight but let us hope is not the kind of bloodbath to which we have grown accustomed.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

GOP = insanity

The Republican Party has gone insane. It should be declared incompetent to stand up to public scrutiny. It needs to be stripped down, dismantled, reassembled and reintroduced to the American political mainstream.

I say this as a good-government progressive who tilts toward the Democratic Party. I want the Republican Party to become the Grand Old Party, the Party of Lincoln and the party of inclusion and the so-called “big tent.”

Goodness, the party’s big tent now has become a haven for fruitcakes, insurrectionists, dangerous demagogues and, yes, those with treasonous instincts.

To think that the Republican Party would continue to align itself with a twice-impeached POTUS who continues to foment The Big Lie about alleged voter fraud is to consign the once-great political party to the scrap heap of history. I hope that is where the former POTUS is headed as well. Time will determine his Earthly fate.

The reason for my wanting a strong Republican Party is simple. I want the party to exist as a legitimate, viable political institution to challenge Democrats intelligently and with sane reason. What we have now is a party wedded to the fallacy that an insurrection that occurred in January 2021 was nothing more than a protest that got out of control. Oh, no. It was much worse than that. Republican congressional leaders keep denying what the entire world witnessed on 1/6.

This is the stuff of insanity. It must be excised from the Republican Party. If it takes a total dismembering of the party, then so be it.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Biden down, far from out

Listen up, Joe Biden haters. The president is down, to be sure. Do not, though, start ringing the death knell over the presidency of the man who fought for more than 30 years to attain the highest office in the land.

I acknowledge fully that President Biden has endured a rough first year. Let me remind everyone of a couple of recent historical events.

Ronald Reagan took office in 1981 and also had a bad first year. Yes, he was shot and nearly killed three months into the presidency. Then the Republican Party got drubbed in the 1982 midterm election. President Reagan, though, got re-elected in 1984 in a smashing 49-state landslide. That’s one.

Bill Clinton became president in 1993. He, too, suffered a rough first year. Republicans seized control of Congress in 1994. Ah, but then President Clinton cruised to re-election in 1996. That’s two.

Barack Obama assumed office in 2009. He set out to pass the Affordable Care Act; Congress obliged. Then Democrats got what Obama described as a “shellacking” in the 2010 midterm election. President Obama then went on to win re-election in 2012.

I know we have had plenty of one-term presidents who never got it together. George H.W. Bush fell from a 90% approval rating to losing his re-election effort in 1992; Jimmy Carter endured inflation and a general feeling of disgust and lost in a landslide to Ronald Reagan in 1980; Donald Trump … well, you know what happened there.

President Biden is only in the “first quarter” of a long game, writes Paul Brandus in USA Today. There’s a way out of the morass, Brandus writes: The president’s biggest mistake has surprised me. He hasn’t spent enough time talking up last year’s economic achievements. “America’s economy improved more in Joe Biden’s first 12 months than any president during the past 50 years,” Bloomberg reported last month, “notwithstanding the contrary media narrative contributing to dour public opinion.”

Joe Biden has had a rocky year in office. But, folks, this is only the first quarter. (yahoo.com)

And so it might go moving ahead into the next year and the year after that. We still have that pandemic. It still is making people sick. We keep hearing that the end is in sight. Maybe. We hope.

I am going to stand with the president as he keeps fighting for the country.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

DA gets new grand jury … yes!

Fani Willis is emerging as potentially my newest political hero. She is the Fulton County (Ga.) district attorney who sought — and then received — permission to seat a special grand jury that is going to examine whether Donald J. Trump interfered with the 2020 presidential election.

Hmm. Let’s see. What do we have here?

We have a recorded conversation featuring Trump telling Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger to “find” 11,780 votes that can be credited to the ex-POTUS and possibly keep him in power. Oh, Joe Biden won Georgia’s electoral votes, but Trump harangued the chief elections officer in Georgia to find enough votes to swing it to Trump’s list of winning states.

Where I come from, that sounds for all the world like intimidation. You see, Trump told Raffensberger — a Republican who voted for Trump — to break the law. To his great credit, Raffensberger said no can do, Mr. President. Trump then threatened Raffensberger with prosecution if he didn’t comply with the Insurrectionist in Chief’s demand.

It’s all recorded, man. Raffensberger had the good sense to memorialize it for posterity. Is it legal for Trump to badger a state elections official in that manner? Is it moral? Does it make sense for Trump to, in effect, hand a prosecuting attorney — in this case, DA Willis — the proverbial smoking gun in a criminal investigation?

Willis sought the special grand jury that is going to look exclusively at the allegation of election interference. It didn’t take the state court system long to decide that a special panel is necessary to get to the truth behind Donald Trump’s effort to rig an election he said is … um, rigged.

I believe the prosecutor is onto something huge.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

In defense of 1/6 panel

I feel this overwhelming need to defend the work being pursued by U.S. House Select Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson and his band of truth-seekers.

The Mississippi Democrat is at the forefront of a probe into the 1/6 insurrection that sought to block the certification of the 2020 presidential election. None other than former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican, has said the panel has “run amok” and faces prosecution on criminal charges if Republicans take control of Congress after the midterm election.

Gingrich is spouting nothing less than pure horsesh**.

The panel wants to know several key things about the terrible events that occurred a little more than a year ago.

What did Donald Trump know in advance of what the insurrectionist rioters would do? Why didn’t he stop them from ransacking the Capitol Building? Why didn’t he summon troops to protect Vice President Pence, who was being targeted by chants to hang him?  What are the details of the fake elector plot that has been revealed, with electors pledged to the defeated POTUS casting their votes to support him and throw the election in his favor?

This is complicated and tricky stuff, folks! To suggest, as Newtie has done, that the 1/6 committee could be “jailed” if the GOP takes over Congress is beyond despicable. The committee is doing precisely what the duly designated speaker of the House asked it to do.

Let us remember, too, that Donald Trump brought several members of his family into his inner circle while he was pretending to be POTUS. Ivanka, Don Jr. and Eric Trump all were key players in this drama as it unfolded before our eyes on 1/6. If the committee wants them to testify to what they know, then they should be compelled to tell us all the truth behind that horrible event.

Chairman Thompson doesn’t need little ol’ me to defend him. Still, I cannot sit by while the enemies of the truth are maligning the work he and his committee are doing to protect our very government.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

DC riot, national news

‘They’ll go after children’

Donald J. Trump has every right to defend his grown kids. However, he ought to rethink — which he won’t do — his stated belief that the 1/6 House committee will “go after children.”

Here is part of what Trump said about a request from the committee to hear from Ivanka Trump: “It’s a disgrace, what’s going on. They’re using these things to try and get people’s minds off how incompetently our country is being run. And they don’t care. They’ll go after children.”

Oh, good grief.

Ivanka Trump is a grown woman who served during Daddy Trump’s term in office as a senior adviser. She was on the federal payroll, dammit, drawn a salary to advise her father on matters relating to public policy.

She is not a child. It’s as if the House select committee asked to speak with Trump’s son Barron, a teenager who his parents have kept out of the glaring public eye. Oh, no. Ivanka is part of the Trump presidential team and well might have information that the committee needs to collect to help it assess what Daddy Donald on 1/6 when the riotous insurrectionist mob stormed Capitol Hill in an effort to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election results.

Ivanka Trump crossed the line that separates family from public figure. As such, the House committee has every right and reason to ask her to tell lawmakers what she knows and when she knew it.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, national news

Will we actually ‘lock him up’?

A gentleman I have known for more than two decades — a retired journalist who lives in South Australia — has mentioned a particular scenario he would like to see play out regarding the 45th president of the United States.

My friend wants to see Donald Trump arrested, dressed in an orange jump suit and tried for treason against the United States of America. Indeed, my far-away friend believes it’s still possible even as Trump wiggles and writhes in the face of growing pressure from federal and state authorities looking into his myriad business dealings.

Oh, and then we have the 1/6 riot, the insurrection that Trump incited that horrendous day in the final two weeks of the presidency he was about to vacate.

My friend and I exchange messages from time to time and he regales me with his view that Trump presents an existential threat to this great nation. He and I are on the same page as it regards the former Insurrectionist in Chief.

I am still clinging to the notion that an indictment might be coming — perhaps soon — from the Department of Justice. It might involve a charge of sedition against the individual who once swore to protect the Constitution. Sedition, of course, is the act of undermining the government, which Trump — to my mind, at least — did on 1/6 when he exhorted the rioters to “take back” the government.

I am going to wish the best for the investigation into Trump’s knowledge of the 1/6 riot. The “best,” in this instance, would be for congressional and DOJ investigators to cross enough t’s and dot enough i’s to bring a criminal indictment against a man I consider to be a rotten criminal.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Still hoping for results

(AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

You can count me as one ardent supporter of President Biden who is still waiting for him to deliver on his multi-pronged pledge to repair the national soul, unify the United States of America and enact legislation that will deal with the existential threats to our great country.

We’re almost a year into Joe Biden’s term as president. I want him to succeed.

Do I blame him singularly for the problems that seem woven into our national fabric? No. I want to lay most of the blame on the obstructionists in Congress who won’t work with the president, who continue to block every initiative that comes from the White House simply because they can.

Too many Republicans appear wedded to the notion that the 2020 election was stolen from their guy. It wasn’t. Yet they won’t let it go. They refuse to accept the truth of the result: 81 million Americans voted for Joe Biden, granting him 306 Electoral College votes. It wasn’t a smashing triumph, but it was decisive enough for there to be no doubt as to the outcome.

The pandemic has flared yet again. It has hampered Biden’s agenda. It has cast a pall over damn near everything. I cannot possibly blame the president for that, either.

The next year is as unpredictable as the first year has been. I don’t know what the future holds. We have a midterm election coming up. Republicans say they are poised to take control of Congress. What happens if that occurs? Will there be more revenge in store? I sincerely hope not.

Then again, we’re dealing with a party controlled by an individual who cannot concede defeat.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Another big date looms

We have just marked the first year since the 1/6 assault on our democratic system of government and now we’re about to take a look back at another landmark date that — to my mind — is actually worth celebrating as an “anniversary.”

This coming Thursday will be one year since Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. became the 46th president of the United States. His predecessor wasn’t there for the ceremony. He had jetted off to south Florida to stir up the brew known as The Big Lie about President Biden’s election in November 2020.

The very idea that we’re still talking about POTUS 45 is remarkable in the extreme. I don’t know if that’s by the ex-Liar in Chief’s design or if it is the result of the media’s lust for sensational headlines.

But … here we are, talking about the seditious moron who masqueraded for four years as our head of state and our commander in chief.

Good grief. So help me I want him to disappear. As long as he continues to make news — and I am afraid it’s legitimate news, given the stakes involved — I will feel the need to comment on what he’s doing, saying and plotting against the government he once swore an oath to protect.

My fondest hope is that the feds come up with enough evidence to warrant his arrest. I am actually fantasizing over the sight of him being hauled off in cuffs and leg irons.

Hey, do you remember how he ridiculed police for protecting bad guys’ heads when they loaded them into police cruisers? Another fantasy would be to see the cops rough him up the way he wanted them to treat street thugs.

Well, I want to wish the current president well as he embarks on his second year in office. Yeah, the first year has had its ups and downs. I remain strongly in his corner as he moves us farther away from the dark era of his immediate predecessor.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Profiles in cowardice

(Photo by Michael Kovac/WireImage)

Watching the congressional Republican leadership tie itself into knots over how to handle its relationship with the immediate past POTUS makes me wonder how on this good Earth these individuals can live with themselves.

I want to single out two of them: one from the Senate and one from the House.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina once declared that he was done with Donald Trump. “Enough is enough,” he said immediately after the 1/6 riot. “Count me out,” he added. He couldn’t stand the thought — allegedly — of associating himself with a president who had incited the riot that stormed onto Capitol Hill.

House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy of California once stood on the House floor and declared that Trump was singularly responsible for the attack on our democracy and demanded he be held accountable. He pleaded with Donald Trump during the riot to get the mob to stop inflicting damage on the Capitol, receiving the hideous response from the POTUS that “I guess, Kevin, they care more about the election than you do.”

Both men have turned tail from those remarks.

Graham has all but threatened other GOP senators with retribution if they don’t climb aboard the Trump clown car and back the former Liar in Chief. McCarthy has declared that he won’t submit to questions from the 1/6 House committee seeking answers to the riot and has said he intends to boot Democrats off key committees if he becomes speaker after this year’s midterm election.

Gutlessness, anyone? There it is in full view.

They aren’t the only exhibits of profiles in cowardice. They’re just two of the more notable examples of how members of Congress who swear to protect the Constitution now are pledging craven fealty to a twice-impeached individual.

Cowards. Every damn one of them!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com