Category Archives: political news

national news, political news

Here comes the dreaded ‘I-word’

The “I-word” has entered the discussion of Donald J. Trump’s troubles involving the Russians, his use of Twitter and a scathing accusation he has made against his predecessor as president of the United States.

One of the nation’s foremost constitutional scholars, law professor Laurence Tribe, believes the president’s reckless use of Twitter to accuse Barack Obama of tapping his phones might be grounds for impeachment.

There you have it, correct? Not exactly.

Tribe, I shall stipulate, is a liberal-leaning fellow who more than likely didn’t vote for Trump during the 2016 presidential election.

But he’s no dummy as it regards the U.S. Constitution and what it allows or disallows.

Tribe’s thesis simply is that the president’s use of a social medium constitutes a reckless disregard for due process and that it implies a certain unfitness for the office he occupies.

Readers of this blog no doubt know what Trump did. This past weekend, he awoke at his Mar-a-Lago estate early one morning and blasted out a tweet that accused former President Obama of “ordering” spooks to tap Trump’s offices at Trump Tower while looking for proof that Trump was colluding with the Russians to swing the 2016 presidential election in Trump’s favor.

Nasty stuff, right? You bet it is.

It’s also unproven. You see, Trump didn’t offer a shred of proof to back up that ridiculous contention. He has accused President Obama of committing a felony, given that the president cannot “order” a wiretap, which must come from a federal judge, who must have “probable cause” to issue such an order.

The rule of law doesn’t enter into Trump’s tendency to engage in these Twitter tantrums. He just fires this crap into cyberspace. Consequences? Who cares about ’em?

Meanwhile, Republicans as well as Democrats in Congress are demanding Trump provide some basis for this ridiculous assertion. None has been forthcoming.

Spoiler alert: I don’t think we’ll ever see any such basis.

In the meantime, the I-word is out there.

I agree that the bar for impeachment must be kept high. President Clinton’s impeachment in 1998 was based on a sex scandal and his failure to adhere to his oath to be truthful to a federal grand jury that questioned him about it. I don’t believe those events met the standard for impeaching a president of the United States … but that’s just me.

This Trump story is far from being resolved. The president had better come up with something provable to back up his contention that President Obama broke the law.

Or else …

national news, political news

Uh, Mr. President? Listen to Sen. McCain — for once!

John McCain has laid it on the line to the president of the United States.

If you’re going to make an explosive allegation against your predecessor, Mr. President, it is imperative that you tell Americans the “basis on which” you are making that allegation.

That’s what McCain has told Donald J. Trump to do.

Trump ignited a firestorm over the weekend when he rolled out of the sack at 6 in the morning and fired off a tweet that said President Barack Obama “ordered” a wiretap of Trump’s offices in New York.

No proof. No evidence. No attribution. Nothing accompanied the tweet. But the flames began burning out of control.

McCain says a simple tweet isn’t good enough.

To my ears, it sounds as though the Arizona Republican — and 2008 GOP presidential nominee — doesn’t exactly believe what Trump has asserted.

At issue, of course, is the reported relationship between Trump’s campaign and Russian government officials. Trump asserts that Obama had the phones bugged so he could eavesdrop on Trump’s campaign officials to learn whether there was a relationship with a foreign government during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Trump has accused Obama of breaking the law. He has essentially called his predecessor a felon. Presidents cannot order phones to be bugged. These things occur through a warrant issued by a federal judge at the behest of the Justice Department.

Sen. McCain is insisting that Donald Trump tell us the basis of his wild-ass allegation.

Well, Mr. President? What is it? Talk to us. You are the president of the United States of America. You owe us — your bosses — a complete and thorough explanation.

national news, political news

Sanders is right: Trump is a liar

Bernie Sanders is correct: The president of the United States is a liar. He might even be a pathological liar.

He has lied continually. He does it on purpose, which defines someone who lies.

Donald J. Trump needs to produce evidence to back up his latest lie, which is that “it is a fact” that Barack Obama ordered the wiretap of the president’s offices in Trump Tower.

He hasn’t done so. He didn’t produce any evidence of his previous lies. Not the Muslims cheering the Twin Towers collapsing on 9/11; or that Ted Cruz’s father might have been complicit in President Kennedy’s assassination; or the millions of illegal immigrants voting for Hillary Clinton.

He has lied every time he has said those things.

To “lie” is to willingly, knowingly tell a falsehood.

That’s what Sen. Sanders, I-Vt., has said. He stands by his statement. He is right. Trump is a liar.

And this is the guy who got elected president of the United States of America?

Spare me, please, the rejoinder that “all politicians lie.” Trump’s troops kept telling us that their guy “tells it like it is.” That’s different, presumably, from pure lies.

And also you may spare me the red herring that Bill Clinton “lied” about his affair with the intern, which got him impeached by the House of Representatives. I know that he lied under oath to the grand jury; I also know that was the ostensible reason for his impeachment. He paid his dues for lying.

Trump, though, hasn’t paid anything for these lies he has told. He got elected even as he lied his way all along the campaign trail.

He is lying now by suggesting that Barack Obama ordered the wiretaps.

And for that reason, Bernie Sanders should stand his ground.

national news, political news

Trump is going where no one can survive … politically

Donald J. Trump is now waging open warfare against the media, the FBI, his immediate predecessor, congressional Democrats and now quite possibly a growing number of congressional Republicans.

I wonder who and/or what is next for this president.

He has accused former President Obama of breaking the law by ordering a wiretap of Trump Tower. FBI Director James Comey reportedly has stated he is “incredulous” at what Trump has alleged. Congressional Democrats are livid and they want heads to roll. Congressional Republicans are more tepid in their response, but are suggesting they have “seen no evidence” of an illegal wiretap.

The media? They merely are reporting all of this.

Trump ignores analysis by his national security and intelligence team and is relying on “news” coming from right-wing outlets such as Breitbart. com and a bevy of radio talk-show hosts whose self-proclaimed mission is to discredit a president — Barack Obama — who they detest.

The danger of Trump’s mindless blathering is beginning to frighten a lot of observers in this country and perhaps beyond our borders.

This all takes me back to the campaign we’ve just endured.

Weren’t there warnings issued by folks who questioned the temperament and fitness of the man who would be elected president? Didn’t these critics tell us that Trump was not capable of managing his own narrative, let alone crafting an agenda that would govern the greatest nation on Earth?

We are witnessing a remarkable coming apart of a still-young presidency. The president himself is dismantling his administration with this ridiculous assertion that Barack Obama has broken the law, which stipulates that the president cannot “order” a wiretap.

No proof has come forward. No evidence has been presented. This allegation is as specious as the many other lies he has told ever since he declared his presidential candidacy.

The birther baloney, the Muslims cheering the fall of the Twin Towers on 9/11, the illegal immigrants voting for Hillary Clinton … all of them and more! They are lies.

As for Obama — who’s now officially a “private citizen” — the thought occurs to me: Does he have grounds to sue his successor for slander, for defamation? Would he take this clown to court?

national news, political news

Trump no more believable now than before

Donald J. Trump has leveled a patently preposterous notion that Barack Obama “ordered” a wiretap at Trump Tower in New York City.

The president wants us to believe him. He’s a truth-teller. He’s the man now. He says it’s a “fact” that the former president broke the law, committed a felony. Does this individual — Trump — have a record of believability?

How about a quick review. Donald Trump has said:

* Thousands of Muslims cheered the collapse of the Twin Towers during the 9/11 terrorist attack. They didn’t.

* President Obama was born in Kenya and was not qualified to serve in the office to which he was elected twice. Another falsehood.

* U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s father might have been complicit in the murder of President Kennedy. False.

* “Millions of illegal immigrants” voted for Hillary Clinton, providing her with her significant popular vote plurality over Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Didn’t happen.

Must I add that at no time did the candidate-turned-president offer a shred of proof for any of the things he had uttered out loud? Yet many voters believed him. Trump “tells it like it is,” they insisted. No, he made it up. He fabricated it. He lied through his teeth.

I also should remind you that when he said during his press conference three weeks ago that he scored the biggest Electoral College victory “since Ronald Reagan,” he said that it was something “I was told.” That was the defense he mounted after being challenged directly by “enemy of the people” media reps that his assertion about his electoral vote victory was patently false.

With that string of prevarications and lies, we now are being told to believe this latest whopper, that Barack Obama “ordered” wiretaps.

I cannot believe to this very moment that Donald John Trump was actually elected president of the United States.

But he was.

And no … I won’t “get over it.”

national news, political news

Um, Dr. Secretary, slaves were not ‘immigrants’

U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson got off to a rollicking start as head of a major federal agency by comparing slaves to your run-of-the-mill immigrants.

They came here, Dr. Carson told HUD employees, with “dreams for their sons, daughters … ” and others who would come along.

Really, he said that.

I don’t know how to react fully to what Dr. Carson said at his HUD meeting.

I have read over many years, however, about how human beings were “sold” as cargo by slave owners in Africa; they were put on ships and transported across the Atlantic Ocean, where they would be used like, oh, farm animals. They were denied every human right imaginable; indeed, they weren’t even considered to be fully “human.”

They had dreams about a better future? Is that what the new HUD secretary said?

“That’s what America is about. A land of dreams and opportunity,” Carson said. “There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less.”

I wish my grandparents were alive at this moment to hear these remarks. They, too, had “dreams” about forging a better life in this land of opportunity.

However, all four of them — the parents of my mother and father — came here willingly, of their own volition. They sought a new life and a safe place to rear their children.

I cannot believe that Dr. Carson would suggest — even in the remotest of terms — any kind of equivalence between those who came here as slaves and those who arrived as immigrants.

national news, political news

By all means, let’s investigate this wiretap malarkey

I just answered “yes” to one of those “online polls” posted on MSN.com’s home page.

The question was this: Should there be an investigation of Trump’s allegation of wiretapping by the Obama administration?

Why “yes”? Why endorse the idea of a probe?

It’s simple. I don’t believe for an instant, a nanosecond, that President Obama was in any way responsible for any kind of wiretap of Trump Tower. I believe that Donald J. Trump made it up. He fabricated an allegation to divert attention from other matters plaguing his administration.

This is the president’s modus operandi, as he’s demonstrated time and again since announcing his candidacy in the summer of 2015. The heat gets too warm under his backside, he fires off a tweet making an outrageous declaration.

He did so again this past weekend with that ridiculous tweet accusing President Obama — with zero evidence — of “ordering” a wiretap, which of course he cannot do legally. Someone, according to Trump, tapped his Trump Tower offices looking for evidence that his campaign had inappropriate or illegal contact with the Russian government, which intelligence authorities have concluded sought to influence the 2016 election, to help Trump get elected.

I realize a congressional investigation — which Trump is seeking — would be costly. I also realize it would divert members of Congress from the myriad other tasks that await them, and for which the public already is paying them good money to address.

You know, things like the budget, national defense, public education — not to mention the many individual concerns that can be found that are unique to each of 435 congressional districts and in each of the 50 states.

If such a probe is done in a bipartisan manner, then I truly believe it would expose Trump to be the fraudulent, petulant liar many millions of us believe him to be.

Not that it would dampen Trumpkins’ enthusiasm for their guy.

Just get it on the record.

media news, national news, political news

Hoping for a cure for Trump Fatigue

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I am going to steel myself for a lengthy, winding and probably tiresome period as the media continue to report on the myriad troubles bedeviling the Donald John Trump administration.

Is there a cure out there for what looks like a case of acute Trump Fatigue?

If someone can find it, let me know … please!

Trump’s time in office is all of six weeks old now. Every single day seems to produce something of consequence. It might be relatively minor. It might be, oh, yuuuge.

The biggest event so far has been the president’s baseless, evidence-free assertion that his predecessor, Barack H. Obama, ordered a wiretap of the Trump Tower offices in New York City.

The former president has denied it. The FBI director, James Comey, has asked the Justice Department to ignore it. Now the president has called on Congress to investigate it.

It all centers on those damn Russians and whether they sought to influence the 2016 election — and whether they colluded with candidate Trump and his team as they were seeking to undermine Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Folks, this battle is just beginning and for those of us out here who have an interest in good government, public service and the once-noble craft of politics, we are heading for an ugly, raucous, tumultuous, possibly critical time in our nation’s history.

As the essay attached to this blog notes, we are entering uncharted waters as it regards the presidency of the United States.

Here it is.

So, the Trump administration begins where — as some have noted — the Nixon administration ended in August 1974. Think about this for just a moment.

The Watergate break-in occurred in June 1972. The media barely covered it at first. Then one tip led to another and two years later, the House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment, a key Republican senator — Barry Goldwater — told President Nixon he didn’t have any Senate support to acquit him if the case went to trial, and then the president quit.

Trump has been in office for just a few weeks and the questions are swirling around him with increasing volume and velocity.

The president seemingly always has been keyed toward finding ways to bring attention to himself. Well, now he has the whole world watching and waiting for the next chapter to unfold in this amazing drama.

If only we can stand it.

In the meantime, I will await the miracle cure for Trump Fatigue.

legal news, national news, political news

Sessions needs to talk once more to Senate Judiciary panel

That’s it? The U.S. attorney general won’t have to testify any more to the Senate Judiciary Committee?

That’s the decision of Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who said he has no plans to call AG Jeff Sessions back to Capitol Hill to explain himself.

It seems to me that the attorney general has some serious ‘splainin to do.

He told Judiciary Committee members during his confirmation hearing that he didn’t have any meetings with Russian government officials. Then, later, he thought differently about it said, yep, he did talk to the Russian ambassador to the United States.

This ought to be fleshed out a little bit.

What did he discuss? Did he talk to him about big things, such as, oh, whether the Russians were trying to influence the presidential election? Or how about whether the incoming Donald J. Trump administration would take back the sanctions that the Obama administration had leveled against the Russians for — that’s right — trying to influence the election.

Or … maybe it was just a casual conversation. “How’s the weather in Moscow in these days, Mr. Ambassador?”

Sen. Al Franken, a Minnesota Democrat and one of the Judiciary panel members, wants Sessions to come back to The Hill to testify.

I think he should, too. Chairman Grassley surely cannot believe he’s heard all there is to hear from the attorney general.

legal news, national news, political news

Are the wheels flying off Trump’s ‘fine-tuned machine’?

“A fine-tuned machine” does not experience the kind of malfunctions we are witnessing within Donald J. Trump’s administration.

For instance, it doesn’t produce an FBI director asking the Justice Department to dismiss an explosive allegation coming from the president of the United States against his immediate predecessor.

FBI Director James Comey wants the Justice Department to toss out Trump’s allegation — delivered this weekend in a tweet — that Barack Obama ordered spooks to wiretap Trump’s offices in Trump Tower.

Why would they do such a thing, which they have denied doing? It would be to look for evidence that Trump’s campaign was colluding with Russian officials to interfere with the U.S. presidential election.

Trump calls it a “fact” that such a thing occurred. Comey, in an apparent act of open rebellion against the president, says, um, no it isn’t. It didn’t happen. At this moment, DOJ officials haven’t done as Comey has asked.

Ladies and gents, we are witnessing perhaps the first shots of open warfare within the Trump administration. It might be Trump v. Comey in this fight.

Ex-DNI denies wiretap allegation.

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said on “Meet the Press” this morning that any such order to wiretap Trump’s office would have had to come from a federal judge, who would have determined probable cause to issue such an order. The DNI, said Clapper, would be made aware of it.

Clapper said it never occurred during his time as DNI.

Comey has taken up Clapper’s side in this fight.

The “fine-tuned machine” — which is how the president described his administration during that infamous press conference a couple of weeks ago — appears set to explode in flames.

What happens now? The president might fire Comey. What do you suppose would be the public reaction to such an event?

The president, moreover, is reportedly furious at Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from an investigation into Russia’s alleged effort to influence the presidential election.

Does that sound to you like a “fine-tuned machine” that is humming along on all cylinders? Me neither.

My … goodness.

***

Comey’s request of the DOJ to drop this wiretap nonsense is fascinating at another level as well. The FBI director heaved that political grenade into Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign 11 days before Election Day informing her of a letter he had sent to Congress asking for a re-examination of that e-mail controversy that dogged her all along the way.

Clinton blames that letter for stopping her momentum and for giving Trump the ammo he needed to blast her presidential campaign to smithereens.

Now he turns on the individual he supposedly helped get elected?

Lock ‘n load!