Category Archives: national news

national news, political news

McConnell pledges more judicial gridlock

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell laid it out there.

Talking to conservative radio talk-show host Hugh Hewitt, McConnell said the Senate “likely” won’t approve any more high-level circuit court or Supreme Court judges during the Obama administration.

So … if I understand it correctly, if a Supreme Court vacancy occurs, say, in the next 24 hours — and it can happen, given the ages of some of the court’s senior justices — the Senate won’t confirm anyone appointed by President Obama, even though Obama has another 18 months to go before he leaves office.

That’s what the Kentucky Republican senator said, right?

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/244107-mcconnell-highly-likely-senate-wont-appoint-new-judges-for

I surely understand the politics of these appointments. The highest court in America comprises a slim conservative majority. Should one of the court’s conservative justices suddenly no longer be on the court, that would send the Republican majority in the Senate into sheer apoplexy. GOP senators would go ballistic at the knowledge that the “socialist/Marxist/terrorist-appeaser” president would be empowered to appoint a justice who would swing the balance of power on the court.

And oh yes, the reverse would be true if we had a conservative president appointing a justice who then might have to face confirmation by a Democratic-majority Senate.

But that’s what we have.

McConnell seemed to offer himself some cover in his radio interview by noting the “bipartisan” votes the Senate has had and the bills it has approved with bipartisan majorities. So, it’s OK then to stall these appointments because, as McConnell said, the Senate is up and running like a well-oiled machine.

What a crock!

It’s fair to remind everyone — the Senate majority leader included — that Barack Obama has been elected twice by clear majorities of American voters. Part of the president’s authority rests with his ability to appoint federal judges with whom he feels comfortable. It’s in the Constitution. He can do that!

Yes, the Constitution also gives the Senate the power to “advise and consent” to the appointments. But is it truly within the Senate’s purview to obstruct qualified jurists to these posts purely on political grounds, because senators can’t stomach the notion of the high court comprising judges with whom they are uncomfortable?

Before you accuse me of being a partisan hack, I’ve noted this very thing when we’ve had GOP presidents’ high court appointments stymied by Democrats employing the same logic in seeking to block qualified judicial appointees.

I happen to be a strong believer in “presidential prerogative,” and that belief swings in both directions.

Welcome back, gridlock.

military news, national news, political news

‘Don’t vote for me if you’re worn out by war’

Wow!

Lindsey Graham today offered the most compelling campaign argument against his own candidacy I’ve ever heard.

The South Carolina Republican, who’s running for his party’s 2016 presidential nomination, said it flat out. “Don’t vote for me if you’re worn out by war.”

http://thehill.com/policy/defense/244022-graham-dont-vote-for-me-if-youre-anti-war

Well, senator, no worries there.

What he told “Morning Joe” on MSNBC is that he’s going to be the “war candidate.” He plans, if elected to the presidency, to send more troops into Iraq; he also plans to send troops into Syria; he plans to enlist Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey and whichever other regional ally will join, to help American troops defeat the Islamic State and then keep the peace.

Oh, how long will they be there? “A long time,” he said.

There’s no exit strategy. No timetable. No end to the bloodshed.

Get ready for battle, he warned.

Oh, if you’re tired of fighting a war, don’t vote for me, he said.

No-o-o-o-o problem. You’ve got a deal, Sen. Graham.

 

national news, political news, State news

Perry faces big hurdles

Ross Ramsey is about as smart a Texas political analyst as there is, and he’s laid out three things Rick Perry must do to wage an effective campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

Ramsey, writing for the Texas Tribune, listed them in this order: (1) stay the course while the field thins out; (2) get rid of the prosecutor who’s trying to convict him of abuse of power; (3) do well in the debates.

If Ramsey was listing them in order of importance, I’d flip the first and second points.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/06/04/analysis-three-steps-perrys-comeback-trail/

Those “pesky prosecutors” represent every possible stumbling block for the former Texas governor.

Perry, who today went to Addison to announce his candidacy, appears to the be the first major candidate ever to run for president while facing felony indictment. A Travis County grand jury indicted him for abuse of power and coercion of a public official in 2014.

The history is out there. Ramsey goes through it in the link attached here.

If Perry cannot shake those prosecutors, then it’s game over.

And by “shaking” them, he must get the indictments tossed out.

As Ramsey notes: “Perry and his legal team have argued that the case is a political one brought by liberal prosecutors in a liberal county to a liberal grand jury, that his veto was legal, and that the whole thing was designed to spoil his political future.”

The veto might have been legal, but it also was done with considerable public-relations fanfare, which is why — in my view — the coercion charge might be the one that sticks more stubbornly than the abuse of power allegation.

All the then-governor had to do was veto the money appropriated to the Public Integrity Unit without making such a public case about the district attorney’s arrest for drunken driving and his public threat to veto the money if she didn’t quit her job as Travis County DA.

Was it legal? Sure. Was it a matter of coercion? Yes to that, too … allegedly.

Ramsey is correct on this other point: “The better (Perry) does, the bigger the indictment obstacle becomes. It’s a bother now. It’s a potential deal-breaker if he becomes a real contender.”

 

national news, political news

Feeling badly about scolding Obama

Let’s assume for a moment that my prediction that Donald Trump won’t run for president next year turns out to be wrong.

If he does declare his candidacy, I might be forced to eat some crow regarding my recent scolding of President Obama for using the first-person singular pronoun too liberally while accepting credit for the good things he’s done as president.

Barack Obama is a piker compared to The Donald.

Trump told the Des Moines Register that he’s the “most successful candidate ever to run” for president. He declared “the American dream is dead,” and then said he’d bring it back all my himself. He said he’d wipe out the Islamic State quickly and its elimination would be a “beautiful thing.”

Sheesh!

Can this guy really and truly be serious? Is he really, honestly going to run for president and use his immense personal wealth as a reason to elect him?

Mr. President, I don’t want to take back what I said, but I will if Donald Trump declares his intention to succeed you in the White House.

My head is about to explode.

 

national news, political news

A more relevant question regarding Hastert

A blog that I follow, Bell Book Candle, has offered an interesting question regarding the growing scandal involving former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert.

Hastert has been indicted on felony accusations involving sexual abuse of a student back when Hastert was a wrestling coach at an Illinois high school.

The media need to focus not on the sex, but on the money. According to the blog:

“The media will focus on Dennis Hastert’s past indiscretions if they are of a sexual nature. However, the real question that they should be asking is how a relatively obscure public servant can afford to pay $3,500,000 to buy the silence of one person. Our politics and our politicians are being corrupted by the huge amounts of cash available to them. We must rid our democracy of the ability of some to buy favoritism for themselves, be they corporations or be they the 1%.”

The media won’t trouble themselves quite so much with the money part of this matter.

As the saying goes: Sex sells.

However, money does have a corrupting influence at many levels involving those who make public policy.

This is one of the stranger stories I’ve heard in many years.

A big part of me hopes that it doesn’t pan out. A bigger part, though, fears that it will.

 

national news

Speaking in the first person … singular

President Obama can take credit for a lot of good things that have happened while he’s been living and working in the White House.

But as the short video attached to this blog post indicates, he seems all too willing to take all the credit.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/06/01/obama_under_my_leadership_the_united_states_is_the_most_respected_country_on_earth.html

Readers of this blog know that I’ve been a strong supporter of Barack Obama’s work to fix what was ailing the country when he took office. I hope those who’ve read it over the years also will understand that I bristle when he keeps using the first person singular pronoun when he speaks of the good things that have occurred.

The president took some questions at the White House and, by gosh, he did it again. He kept using the words “I” and “me” and “my” when referencing the positive accomplishments of the presidency.

“On my watch” the United States is the most respected nation on Earth, he said. “I” fixed the auto industry, he said. “I” got the country working again, he added.

Mr. President, you are part of a team that, yes, you assembled. But you all have worked together to do these things. Isn’t that correct?

President Nixon had an equally annoying habit of referring to himself in the third person. “The president” has the power to do certain things that others don’t have, he would say. Nixon’s use of the third person became prevalent during the Watergate scandal and it chapped my hide royally every time I heard him say it.

I recall something President Reagan once said. I am paraphrasing it here, but he said something about not caring “who took the credit” for positive outcomes. On the flip side, I recall him saying that “mistakes were made” during the Iran-Contra scandal that embarrassed him and his team — as he lapsed into that maddening passive-voice verbiage so common among politicians who refuse to take full responsibility for the policies that go wrong.

It’s fine for the current president to take credit as well for the plus side of his time in office. I just wish he’d be willing to acknowledge publicly, out loud, so everyone can hear it, that it’s a team effort.

How about a little more “we,” “us,” and “our,” Mr. President?

 

national news, political news

‘Protecting the homeland’?

Forgive me, please, for expressing this, but Jeb Bush might be suffering from brotherly-love blindness.

He was questioned by Bob Schieffer on CBS’s “Face the Nation” news talk show.

Schieffer asked the former Florida governor and likely 2016 Republican presidential candidate what he learned from his brother, former President George W. Bush.

“Well, the successes clearly are protecting the homeland,” the former Florida governor opined. “We were under attack, and he unified the country, and he showed dogged determination, and he kept us safe.”

And he kept us safe. He said that.

OK, let’s reel this back a bit. The 9/11 attacks occurred on President Bush’s watch, which Jeb has acknowledged. It’s been reported from various sources that the president likely ignored warnings from his national security team that a major attack was imminent. He was briefed by his predecessor, Bill Clinton, about the threat that al-Qaeda posed.

And yet …

The attack occurred on that bright Tuesday morning in New York and Washington.

President Bush “kept us safe”?

Yes, but only after all hell broke loose.

International news, military news, national news, political news

Sen. Graham ‘ready’ … to take U.S. back into war

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham says he’s “ready” to run for president, and to be president.

He’s also ready, it sounds to me, as if he’s ready to send Americans back to the Middle East, to fight radical Islamic terrorists face to face.

Haven’t we been there, already? Haven’t we lost sufficient numbers of American lives in the fight against Islamic terrorists?

Apparently not, says Graham.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/im-ready-lindsey-graham-officially-enters-2016-race/ar-BBktaAk

The South Carolina Republican jumped into the GOP nomination fight today, vowing to ratchet up our military posture abroad. Interesting, yes? We did that during the Bush administration after the 9/11 attacks. We went after al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, as we should have done. Then we decided — wrongly, it turned out — to take the fight into Iraq. We flexed our military might quite nicely in that country, then kept fighting and fighting and fighting as resistance rose up and the Islamic State became a serious force with which we’re still trying to reckon.

Graham’s campaign speech makes it sound as if we’ve rolled over. We have done nothing of the sort.

Someone needs to slip him a note with these words: “We killed bin Laden.”

Other terrorist leaders have been killed. ISIL remains a serious threat, but the United States is striking hard at that outfit as well.

Do we really want to re-enter the ground war in Iraq, or in Yemen, or in Syria? Do we really want to re-engage an enemy face to face? Graham seems to think it’s all right. I disagree with him. The Associated Press reported: “Graham is a prominent Senate voice in seeking a more muscular foreign policy and one who casts the threats facing the United States in particularly dark terms.”

Our foreign policy is muscular enough.

national news, political news

Get elected to Congress, and enrich yourself?

Median income of Americans has fallen since 2003.

How about the incomes of their elected congressional representatives? It’s gone the other direction.

http://members-of-congress.insidegov.com/stories/4235/list-congress-members-getting-richer?utm_medium=social.paid&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=ao.sp.fb.dt.4235&utm_term=insidegov

And to think that some members of Congress want a pay raise, that 174 grand a year isn’t enough, that only “rich people” can serve.

That’s the line being pushed out there by U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., along with other members of the House and Senate who gripe that they’re underpaid.

Check out the link attached to this blog and you might get a different idea of just how “impoverished” some of our elected reps and senators have become — which is to say they aren’t impoverished in the least.

Many of them have seen their portfolios increase while serving on Capitol Hill.

How does this happen? In some instances, senators and House members parlay their public standing into positions on corporate boards. All they do, then, is belong to boards of companies that reap tremendous profits and then distribute some of that wealth among board members.

Hey, it’s great “work” if you can get it.

This is the kind of stuff that makes the plea such as what’s been coming from Alcee Hastings sound ridiculous on its face.

Let’s can the give-us-a-raise talk.

national news, political news

HRC doesn’t deserve a free ride

1 Comment

Omalley runs for pres

One of the recurring themes of my column, back when I worked as a daily print journalist, used to drive incumbent officeholders nuts.

I liked to write during election season that no incumbent — regardless of his or her record — deserved to run unopposed for public office.

Every so often, I’d write such an essay and I’d hear from an incumbent who’d gripe half-heartedly about my insistence that they draw an opponent.

“Too bad,” I’d say. “You shouldn’t get a free pass. You need to work for it.”

So it is with some joy that I welcome the entrance of another challenger to Hillary Rodham Clinton in the 2016 Democratic Party primary race for president of the United States.

Wait. Hillary’s not an incumbent? Oh, I almost forgot. But she’s such a prohibitive favorite to win her party’s nomination next that she might as well be one.

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley has joined the field. I’m not sure precisely how he’s going to separate himself from Clinton. He wants wage equality; so does she. He wants to improve everyone economic future; same for Clinton. He calls himself a “liberal”; I’m betting Clinton will tack to the left as well.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/05/30/omalley_joins_2016_presidential_race_126796.html

He referred to Clinton as a “dinosaur,” and promises to bring fresh ideas. The “crowd” that greeted his campaign kickoff was, to say the least, modest in size — about 300 or so supporters; Clinton draws that many while she’s eating at a diner.

O’Malley’s in, along with Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a card-carrying socialist; it looks as though former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee — a one-time Republican — is going to run as a Democrat, too.

Good. The more the merrier.

Clinton remains the heavy favorite for the party’s nomination and is a favorite still to win the White House in November 2016.

But she’s going to get a test in her primary. The individuals who will challenge her will — and should — ask her about her coziness with big banks, overseas contributors, her work with the Clinton Foundation and whether she actually built a record as secretary of state and as a U.S. senator before that.

Competition is good for the process, not to mention for the candidates’ souls.