Category Archives: political news

political news

Flag burning … it’s protected speech

I am going to try to explain one more time for the thick-skulled among us a fundamental truth about the democratic republic we all call home … and are proud to do so.

It is that burning Old Glory, the Stars and Stripes, Betsy Ross’s most famous piece of stitchery is protected political speech. The protection lies in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, in the clause that declares that citizens have the right to “petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Donald Trump, the guy masquerading as POTUS, has issued an executive order that would sentence a flag-burner to a year in jail.

How can I say this diplomatically? No … can … do!

The nation’s highest court has ruled that the First Amendment’s protection makes flag-burning a legitimate way to speak out politically. It’s done so repeatedly. One ruling involved a flag-burning case out of Dallas when someone burned Old Glory in a public square. Someone filed suit. It found its way to the high court. Justices ruled the moron who burned the flag didn’t break any law.

I also want to stipulate one other point. No one ever should burn Old Glory in my presence if they intend to make a political point. I hate the notion of burning a flag I have served and honored for my entire life. I wore an Army uniform for a couple of years in the late 1960s and went to war in service to the Red, White and Blue. No one who has a noble political cause can persuade me of the validity of that cause by burning a flag. I am likely to turn against the cause simply by witnessing that act.

However, I know that the flag itself is not the issue. The flag is a symbol of what we value as a nation, as Americans. One of the valued aspects of being an American is the ability to protest government policy.

Even if that protest involves lighting a match to the cherished symbol of our freedom!

I cannot possibly pretend to know what kind of rationale Trump is using to sign that executive order. The man has rocks in his noggin.

political news

Trump turns politics upside down

Give the man credit for one nearly impossible feat: Donald Trump has managed to turn conventional political wisdom upside down.

You want examples? Here are a few …

Trump calls himself a conservative. He isn’t. He seeks to gather as much power for the executive branch of government, as long as he is in charge. My traditional view of political conservatism meant that power not spelled out in the Constitution fell to the states, per the 10th Amendment. Not in Trump’s view.

Conservatives favor fiscal responsibility. No longer. Trump is piling up deficits that would make Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan do back flips in their resting places. He works to grant tax cuts to the uber-wealthy. He vows to slash trillions of dollars from the federal government but has managed so far to cut only a tiny fraction of what he promised.

Conservatives hate dictators and value democracies. Not Trump. He lavishes praise on demons such as Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un and assorted hamfisted tyrants.

Trump has managed somehow to persuade Americans that he is a populist, that he cares about the little guy. He doesn’t give a rat’s ruby-red backside about anyone other than himself and the toadies who hang onto his every lying word.

It’s been said that even when Trump exits the political stage that this thing called Trumpism will remain far into the future. I hope it vanishes soon after Trump does. Conservatives used to rail against what they called bankrupt fiscal policies. Now they are writing them. We cannot sustain this march toward fiscal ruin.

political news, State news

Get a grip, Texas Democrats

Texas Democrats need to get hold of themselves and stop all this wishful thinking about whether they’re on the verge of breaking the Republican visegrip on electoral public office.

I keep getting text messages from this and/or that candidate — real and potential — for any statewide office. They keep demanding money from me. I don’t have it to give. When the beseech me, they tell me their polling shows them leading their Republican foes. Uh huh, sure thing.

Colin Allred said the same thing in 2024,  but then lost to the Cruz Missile — aka Sen. Ted Cruz — by double digits. Allred, a former Dallas congressman, got stars in his eyes because Beto O’Rourke damn near beat Cruz six years earlier, losing to Cancun Ted by 2 or 3 percentage points.

Now we have another MAGA darling, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, rearing his ugly puss from the crowd, He leads Sen. John Cornyn in GOP primary polling by about 5 points. What does that mean for Democrats? It means, as near as I can tell, that they’re going to have find a new strategy to deploy if they have any hope of prying the GOP jaws off this statewide office. Democrats last won a Senate election in 1988, when Lloyd Bentsen was re-elected while losing as the VP candidate on the national Democratic ticket led by Massachusetts Gov. Mike Dukakis.

I want the Democrats to break through. I want Texas to become a competitive place where candidates from both major parties can argue their differences clearly, cleanly, passionately and without fear.

At the moment, it appears to this blogger and longtime observer of Texas politics that the GOP is being choked by the MAGA morons who continue to swallow the swill served by the nation’s chief Republican In Name Only, Donald J. Trump.

I’ll just add one more observation. Trump once said before he became an actual politician that were he to run he would do so as a Republican, because Republicans were the more gullible Americans he would need to persuade to follow him down some path to oblivion.

Trump was right!

national news, political news, State news

Who’s rigging elections now?

Donald J. Trump spent a great deal of emotional capital — as well as other people’s valuable time — ranting and railing against what he alleged was a “rigged” election for president of the United States.

He even provoked an armed assault on our government the day Congress was to ratify the 2020 Electoral College result that elected Joe Biden president in 2020. Trump never provided a shred of proof of any rigging or corruption, but he damn sure had the MAGA crowd believing the mule dookey he was peddling.

Here are now, in 2025, and we have an actual tangible, provable case of election manipulation — or rigging if you will — of a 2026 congressional election. It is being orchestrated by Trump. He bullied the Texas Legislature into redrawing five congressional districts that were tilting toward the Democrats to places that now reportedly lean Republican. Trump wants to strengthen the GOP’s slim congressional majority and he talked Texas Republicans to sign on as election-fixing co-conspirators.

Where I come from, I believe they call that “rigging an election.” Texas GOP lawmakers bought the crap Trump offered and engineered the redrawing of the lines over the stiff opposition of Texas Democratic legislators who bolted the state for two weeks to avoid a quorum required for the Legislature to do any business.

The reaction in California was swift. Gov. Gavin Newsom persuaded that state’s legislative assembly to put a measure on the November ballot that would legalize an effort to flip several GOP-leaning congressional districts to Democratic-leaning ones. As much as I endorse the principle behind the effort, and the reason for it, I fear that we might be losing “free and fair elections” to the whims of politicians who are, in Newsom’s words, “fighting fire with fire.”

They do it differently in California than we do it here. In Texas, we entrust our Legislature to redraw the lines. In California, they appoint an independent commission to do it. Still, the Golden State remedy has the scent of revenge … and I don’t like the way it smells.

Back to my original point. Donald Trump’s allegation of a “rigged election” in 2020 rings hollower than ever when we witness the real thing taking place in Texas and elsewhere.

political news, State news

Democrats are working for their bosses

You want to know what is playing out in Austin in this congressional redistricting standoff provoked by Donald Trump’s insistence that Republicans redraw the lines to seek the election of at least five more Texas Republicans to Congress?

Democrats have bolted from the Legislature, leaving the body without a quorum to do business. GOP leaders accuse them of being derelict in their duty. They are wrong! Democrats are working for the voters who sent them to office in the first place by seeking to protect their voices in the legislative chamber.

Texas Democrats are demonstrating that they work for the people who elect them, not for the leadership of the other party that happens to control the flow of legislation.

This kiind of rebellion shows itself on occasion. I remember when it did in the 1990s. Republicans had taken over control of the U.S. House in the 1994 Contract with America election. House Speaker Newt Gingrich pushed forward legislation called Freedom to Farm. One of the key opponents of that bill was a congressman from West Texas, Republican Larry Combest. He said the bill ran counter to the interests of the farmers and ranchers he represented. Combest told Gingrich that he worked for them, not for the GOP leadership.

I praised Combest for his guts from my post as editorial page editor of the Amarillo Globe-News.

Combest’s courageous stubbornness cost him a key House ag committee chairmanship for a while. He stuck to his principles.

That is not dissimilar to what is occurring now with Democrats scattered hither and yon away from Austin. The special session will expire in a few days. GOP Gov. Greg Abbott says he’ll call another one — and wll keep calling them until the Legislature does Donald Trump’s bidding.

That kind of fealty to a charlatan sickens me to my core. Yet for Abbott and GOP Attoney General Ken Paxton to accuse Democrats of dereliction of duty makes me just as sick. Abbott and Paxton and the GOP majority don’t work for Donald Trump. They work for Texans who deserve a Legislature that knows how to govern.

political news

Democrats are doing their job

Texas’s legislative Democrats are holed up in locations outside of Texas and of Austin, where they had been called to take part in a special legislative session.

Republicans such as Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton are livid because they cannot fulfill the dictates of Donald Trump, who instructed the Legislature to redraw five congressional districts to make them more GOP friendly in advance of the 2026 midterm election.

Democrats are now denying a quorum in the Legislature, stopping the body from doing any business. Abbott and Paxton are saying that Democrats are derelict in their duty.

What a pile of horse dookey! Democrats are acting legally and they are doing their duty as stewards of the policies they were elected to uphold.

Trump has targeted mostly minority districts in Texas. He wants them flipped to protect against a possible midterm surge against the Republican majority in Congress. Yes, Donald Trump is seeking to rig the 2026 election … and Democrats are having none of it.

Trump has been yammering about siccing the FBI on the wayward Democrats. Wait a minute! They aren’t breaking any law, let alone breaking any federal law. Abbott said he is pondering whether to issue “civil arrest” warrants against Democrats who have left for Illinois and locations in New England.

This clearly is a purely political maneuver being orchestrated by Texas Democrats. However, I and others in this state believe theirs is a noble cause. They want to protect the seats to which they were elected against an incursion by out-of-state Republicans who want to dictate how our legislators should do their job.

Stand tall and firm, Texas Democrats.

national news, political news

Yes, block GOP effort to redraw boundaries

This will surprise no one who reads this blog regularly … but I am going to back Texas legislative Democrats’ efforts to stop the Legislature’s Republican majority from redrawing the state’s congressional districts to ensure the election of even more GOP members to Congress.

Democrats who comprise the Legislature’s minority have fled the state. At least 51 Texas Democrats are holed up somewhere to prevent a House vote on a plan urged by Donald Trump and endorsed by his GOP pals Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to re-jigger boundaries to bolster the Republican majority in the U.S. House.

This reapportionment matter takes place every decade when the Census is taken. It falls on the Legislature to redraw these lines. I remember the late state Sen. Teel Bivins, an Amarillo Republican, bemoaning the task. He said it gave legislative Republicans a “chance to eat their young.” I still am not sure what he meant by that, but I took it to mean partly that he didn’t like having to redraw the lines.

It’s not clear to me or to many others how long this strategy will hold up. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton calls Democrats “cowards” for shirking their duty. He vows to arrest them, although leaving the state in this fashion is a civil offense, so arresting legislators remains an iffy proposition.

Legislators have tried this before. Previous walkouts have ended when Democrats who vowed to hang tough forever gave in, enabling Republicans to get their way.

I am just aghast that Donald Trump would encourage this form of political bullying and I am delighted that Texas Democrats — so far! — are standing firm in opposition to this interference in Texas politics.  

crime news, national news, political news

No apology for being right about this clown

A critic of this blog just cannot seem to grasp the notion that my mind was settled long before Donald and Melania Trump glided down the escalator in the summer of 2015 to begin Donald’s career in politics.

I concede the obvious. Yep. My mind was made up a long time ago. And the 45th and 47th POTUS has done nothing at all to change it. I believe then what I believe now, which is that Trump is categorically unfit for public office.

But you know that already. Correct?

What none of us knows at this moment is what can be done to improve matters in D.C.

I’ll start with a couple of possibilities. One is to turn the House of Reps into an organization led by Democrats. Voters need to wrest control of that chamber from Republicans. If that occurs in the 2026 midterm election, then the fun can begin anew. There might be a third impeachment of this fundamentally corrupt individual. This impeachment could center on his involvement with the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Epstein hanged himself in a federal prison cell. Trump is now believed to have had something more than a passing acquaintance with this sexual predator. The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump sent Epstein a birthday greeting card years ago. Trump denies it. He has sued the Journal, which stands by its reporting. I’m inclined to stand with the WSJ.

We have seen some fracturing among the MAGA fanatics who have supported Trump since he rode the escalator with Melania. Many of them want Trump to release the documents that could reveal a whole lot about Trump and whether he and Epstein were besties.

The other option is to elect someone to the presidency in 2028 who is clean, scandal-free and who knows how in the hell to govern. It won’t be Trump … no matter what some of his ardent supporters would like to see happen. The Constitution has labeled Trump a lame duck until Jan. 20, 2029.

Then it will be good bye and good riddance to the singularly most stupid individual ever elected to the presidency. Then we’ll have to ensure we cannot make that mistake ever again.

national news, political news

Voters are a confusing bunch

The run-of-the-mill American voter appears to suffer from some form of political schizophrenia.

Think about this for a moment, because that might be all the time you care to ponder what I am about to put forth.

Americans twice elected a young man who blazed trails everywhere he went, as the first Black editor of the Harvard Journalism Review, the first Black president of the United States, who was faithful to his wife and who avoided any semblance of scandal during his two terms in the White House.

Then voters in 2016 and in 2024 elected arguably the dumbest man ever to hold the office, who has acknowledged cheating on all three of his wives, who paid a porn actress to keep quiet about a sexual encounter he said never happened, who has never acknowledged a single failure in his professional life, who denigrates war heroes and Gold Star families, who evaded the draft during the Vietnam War, who selects certifiable morons to serve in the Cabinet, who lies at a breathtaking pace, who provoked an armed attack on the federal government to stop the certification of a free, fair and legal presidential election in 2020, the one that the president has never admitted he lost.

This is the kind of strange behavior that defies description. It challenges anyone to explain how an electorate can transform itself from a body of Americans dedicated to real-life change for the better to one that falls victim to a cretin’s call to follow him backward into the era of Jim Crow.

My hope is a simple one. That we can reverse what we have done to our nation in 2026 and again in 2028. We are far better than what we have delivered to ourselves in the form of a national government.

local news, national news, political news

Now we get to test our system

Donald Trump’s big ugly bill is now law, which means that the next big test of the strength of our democracy awaits in the form of congressional elections, which are approaching rapidly.

Can you believe it?

Americans who are concerned about the slashing of social programs, the effect it all will have on our national debt, the tax cuts for the mega-richest of us, the pardoning of criminals who attacked our Capitol on 1/6 will get a chance to elect a new Congress in November 2026.

It’s up to us, kids. You and me. All of us.

Talking about it, attending rallies, spending money to political causes won’t do the job. To finish the task, Americans who say they oppose the big ugly bill need to get out and vote. President Obama was fond of telling us to avoid the boos and jeers. “Vote!” he would say. Just vote your conscience. If your conscience moves you to cast your ballot for someone other than those who support the big ugly bill, you are afforded the right to do so in secret.

No one needs to know. Just vote!

I won’t keep my preferences a secret. I will continue to speak out on this blog about the direction I hope the country takes in a little more than a year from now. We have a congressman in North Texas, a gentleman I happen to like personally, who is on the wrong side of this big ugly bill issue. I intend to let Keith Self know my feelings frequently. I just hope he gets a worthy opponent who can speak intelligently and pledges to act accordingly to fix what I believe is wrong with the direction we’re taking.

No hard feelings, OK congressman?