Category Archives: political news

International news, national news, political news

What? Flynn is turning on Trump? Who knew?

While many of us were eating turkey and getting prepped for today’s shopping mayhem, a bit of news came to light back east.

It seems that former national security adviser Michael Flynn might be turning “state’s witness” in the ongoing probe into whether Donald John Trump’s campaign colluded with Russian hackers who sought to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

Flynn held his national security job for 24 whole days at the start of the Trump administration. Then he got canned because he didn’t tell the truth about what he said to whom about meeting with Russian government officials during the campaign.

The New York Times is reporting that Flynn — a retired U.S. Army three-star general — is no longer talking with the Trump legal team and well might be starting to cooperate with the legal eagles working with special counsel Robert Mueller.

Read the Times story here.

The Flynn story sickens me at a couple of levels. First of all, I didn’t like that he had been appointed national security adviser in the first place. He assumed a highly political role during the Trump campaign. In my mind, he sullied and soiled a brilliant military career by standing in front the GOP convention two summers ago leading the “Lock her up!” chants against Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The man clearly knows plenty about what the Trump campaign did in regard to the Russian hackers. Mueller is pursuing the truth methodically and meticulously. Will the former national security boss provide him with the silver bullet that pierces the armor surrounding the president and his inner circle?

I don’t expect this investigation to accelerate in speed. Mueller’s reputation as a patient prosecutor likely will preclude any rush to judgment.

However, it’s hard — for me — to disbelieve the notion that if Gen. Flynn is working with Mueller’s team that a major development in this probe is likely to explode.

national news, political news

Hey, Kellyanne, stop the campaigning!

Kellyanne Conway is acting just like her boss, the president of the United States. She cannot stop campaigning on behalf of politicians.

However, unlike Donald John Trump — whose position allows him to do such things — Conway has this restriction she seems to ignore. She is an executive branch employee. She draws a publicly funded salary to offer advice and counsel to the president. Therefore, she is not allowed to engage in partisan political activity.

Doing so puts her in violation of the Hatch Act.

Conway now is facing an ethics complaint because she spoke out on “Fox & Friends” on behalf of Alabama Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore. No can do, the complaint says. The Hatch Act applies to senior White House advisers as much as it does to mid-level bureaucrats.

What did Conway say? “Doug Jones in Alabama, folks, don’t be fooled. He will be a vote against tax cuts. He is weak on crime, weak on borders. He is strong on raising your taxes. He is terrible for property owners.” 

Jones is the Democrat who’s running against Moore for the Senate seat. That sounds for all the world like an endorsement of Moore. Does it to you?

Sure it does! Except the White House is pushing back, saying that Conway didn’t “advocate” for a candidate. Huh? Of course she did!

Conway would do well to stick only to policy matters when speaking in public. Leave the politicking to the politicians.

national news, political news

Are we more divided than ever?

I am old enough to have lived through some deep national divisions.

* We have the Vietnam War that tore us into two camps: Hawks vs. Doves. The Hawks wanted to fight the war to a battlefield victory; the Doves wanted out of that conflict. Riots erupted in our streets. Blood flowed.

* Then came Watergate. A team of goofballs sought to break into the Democratic National Committee offices. They were arrested and charged with burglary. Then it went downhill from there. President Nixon’s re-election committee became involved. The president sought to cover it up. Republicans stood behind the president; Democrats wanted his political head to roll. The president resigned.

* After that, President Clinton faced impeachment. Why? Ostensibly it was because he lied to a grand jury about his relationship with That Woman. Republicans were looking for a reason to impeach him. The president gave it to them. Republicans detested Clinton from the beginning of his presidency. Democrats stood firmly with him. The Senate acquitted Clinton.

* And then we had the 2000 election. President Bush was elected despite getting fewer popular votes than Vice President Al Gore. It came down to Florida’s results. They started recounting the ballots. The Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 to stop the recount. Bush was elected with 537 votes to spare in Florida. He won the state’s electoral votes. Republicans hailed the victory; many Democrats never quite got over it.

All of those prior divisions seem to pale in comparison to what we’re witnessing now. Donald J. Trump won on a platform that preached nativism, nationalism, populism. It’s us against them. He vowed to “put America first” and to “make America great again.”

He also vowed to “unify” the nation.

The president has done nothing of the sort. Indeed, it strikes me that he’s deliberately sought to do precisely the opposite. He keeps re-litigating the election, which he won! He keeps picking needless fights with pro football players who protest police practices, with media representatives, with Gold Star families.

This is how you unify the country?

Just today, the president lined up with a GOP Senate candidate who’s been accused of sexual assault on children. Why is that? Because he’s not a Democrat! The president’s base adores this kind of rhetoric. It doesn’t matter how divisive it is and how it contradicts what the president himself vowed to do after winning a bitter, contentious, hateful campaign.

I can speak only for the eras I have witnessed. This era’s division seems deeper than anything I have watched in the past 50 years.

The worst element of this division is that its catalyst occupies the White House.

national news, political news

Trump shrinks a big office

I wish I had thought of this, but since I didn’t I’ll deliver appropriate credit to the source of this piece of wisdom.

It comes from U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who fired off this tweet today about Donald J. Trump Sr.:

“The President would have left American students in a foreign jail because their families didn’t lavish sufficient praise on him. How can someone in such a big office be so small?”

What a great question, even though it’s more or less a rhetorical inquiry. Here’s another twist on it: How can Trump shrink the high office he won a year ago in one of those most stunning political upsets in U.S. history? I think it shrunk the very moment he took the oath of office.

POTUS shrinks his office

The object of Schiff’s retort concerns the Twitter tussle that Trump entered with LaVar Ball, the father of one of three UCLA student/athletes who were charged with shoplifting at a high-end store in the People’s Republic of China.

Trump talked to Chinese leaders while visiting that country and reportedly persuaded them to release the young men instead of convicting them and sentencing them to potentially years-long prison sentences. LaVar Ball then tweeted that Trump didn’t do anything to obtain the release of his son and the other athletes.

Then the president decided to fire back at Ball — a man known for his big mouth and outsized public presence in the lives of his athletically gifted sons.

He said he “should have left them in jail” because LaVar Ball didn’t lavish enough praise on the president for his efforts.

That is one way a small man can occupy such a big office. Indeed, Trump is managing to shrink the office itself with his persistently petulant behavior.

Trump has turned this remarkable “skill” into an art form.

International news, national news, political news, Sports news

Trump does the impossible yet again

Donald John “Smart Person” Trump Sr. has done the seemingly impossible one more time.

He has made LaVar Ball, the loudmouth “Little League father” of an NBA player and one of three UCLA students caught shoplifting in China, a (semi) sympathetic character.

LiAngelo Ball was one of the Bruin basketball players caught pilfering some goods at a high-end department store. The Chinese government tossed the boys into jail.

Then the president of the United States entered the picture and reportedly/allegedly finagled a deal to get the young men released and sent home; under Chinese law they faced a potentially lengthy prison sentence.

So, what does LaVar Ball do? He tweets something about Trump really not doing anything to help LiAngelo and his teammates.

Trump’s response? He tweeted back something about how ungrateful Daddy Ball is for what the president did to obtain the release of his son and his pals. The president tweeted this: Now that the three basketball players are out of China and saved from years in jail, LaVar Ball, the father of LiAngelo, is unaccepting of what I did for his son and that shoplifting is no big deal. I should have left them in jail!

There you go. Presidential dignity has taken a hike from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Try to imagine any of Trump’s predecessors engaging in this kind of petulant pettiness.

Do not misunderstand me: Daddy Ball is far from a sympathetic character. He’s brash, brazen and bellicose. He earned his 15 minutes of fame through some kind of “reality TV” gig — that I have never seen. He has produced some sons with decent athletic skill and he’s trading on their prowess to advance his own agenda … whatever the hell it is!

As for the president, I have quit wondering whether Trump will outgrow his Twitter fetish and whether he’ll ever learn to stick to matters of statecraft and high-level diplomacy.

I know the answer to that. He won’t. He can’t.

Bizarre.

political news

Beware of polls in Alabama

A word of caution may be in order.

Public opinion polling indicates that Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore is falling farther behind his Democratic opponent, former federal prosecutor Doug Jones, in the race to join the World Greatest Deliberative Body.

A special election will occur in ‘Bama on Dec. 12. Moore has been swallowed up by a controversy involving whether he made improper sexual advances on young girls in the 1970s when he was a state prosecutor.

It’s been in all the papers, you know?

Be careful — very careful — about interpreting too much in these polls. You see, they at times can produce what political scientists call “phantom support” that manifests itself in voters being untruthful to pollsters.

Voters might be unwilling to say out loud to a pollster that they’re going to still vote for a guy who’s accused of pedophilia. Then they vote for the guy anyway. Indeed, this is why we call it a “secret ballot.” The fear is profoundly ridiculous, given that reputable polling firms do not reveal the identities of those they question about their voting preferences.

It’s all water over the proverbial dam anyway. Even if Moore manages to win the special election, I find if impossible for him to serve in the Senate. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — against whom Moore has declared political war — likely will not allow him to take the oath and then tar the Republican Party with his very presence on Capitol Hill.

I’m just saying that as the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States has shown us, the new normal in American politics has proven to be anything but normal.

national news, political news

This is meant as a defense of POTUS?

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders no doubt intended to mount a stout defense of the president of the United States.

It somehow seemed to fall a bit flat, sounded a bit hollow.

Sanders was asked about the accusation that Democratic U.S. Sen. Al Franken groped and kissed a TV news anchor when the two of them were on a USO tour in 2006. Franken — who hadn’t yet joined the Senate — has acknowledged doing it and has apologized for his actions.

What about the myriad accusations that have been leveled against Donald J. Trump? Sanders said they differ from what Franken has confronted.

According to the Huffington Post:

“I think that this was covered pretty extensively during the campaign,” Sanders said. “We addressed that then. The American people, I think, spoke very loud and clear when they elected this president.”

“How is this different?” the reporter asked.

“I think in one case specifically, Sen. Franken has admitted wrongdoing, and the president hasn’t,” Sanders replied. “I think that’s a very clear distinction.” 

Yep. There you have it. The president hasn’t admitted to anything … as if he ever admits to doing a single wrong thing.

To be fair, none of the allegations against Trump has been proved — although he was recorded on a 2005 audio recording all but acknowledging that he could grab women by their “p****” if he felt like it.

political news

Congress revealing its vulnerability

William Kristol isn’t my favorite pundit, given his sometimes-acerbic conservatism.

However, the Weekly Standard editor is a prolific tweeter and of late he has been on a tear regarding the explosive accusations involving Republican senatorial candidate Roy Moore.

Kristol tweeted this today: Against a backdrop of Trump, of Moore, Franken & Menendez, of abysmal ratings of Congress, of hyper-partisanship & gridlock, shouldn’t every young person of good character committed to public service consider running for Congress in 2018? Could incumbents ever be more vulnerable?

Kristol is no fan of Donald J. Trump, nor of Moore. Sens. Al Franken and Robert Menendez, both Democrats, surely aren’t on Kristol’s gift list. Franken is fending off a groping allegation and Menendez is facing a new trial on corruption charges.

But the conservative pundit does pose a fascinating question about the potential for any fresh-faced young person who could challenge an incumbent. “Could incumbents ever be more vulnerable?” Kristol asks.

It does seem that the atmosphere is well-suited for a challenger with sound moral footing and character to run against an incumbent. Thus, Kristol has delved into an issue worth exploring.

The filing season for running in the Texas primary election has commenced. We haven’t heard of any sexual misbehavior charges leveled against a member of the Texas congressional delegation. Then again, it’s still early in the election season and there well could be something erupting somewhere, involving someone who happens to represent Texas on Capitol Hill.

The landscape across the land, beyond the Texas border, is rife with opportunities for young men and women to seek to hold public service jobs.

Will they step up? Should they step up?

I don’t know the answer to the first question. The obvious answer to the second is a resounding “yes!” 

political news

Why do evangelicals keep supporting Roy Moore?

Roy Moore is losing support among Republican members of Congress by the hour.

The Alabama GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate is falling in public opinion polls. The former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice has been tossed out of that office twice for failing to do the job he swore he would do.

Now he’s in real trouble. Several women have accused him of engaging in improper sexual behavior with them when they were underage girls.

Moore stands accused of pedophilia.

Here is the utterly astonishing aspect of this story: Moore’s base of voters comprising evangelical Christians is standing with him. Politicians on both sides of the aisle are saying the women’s accusations are more credible than Moore’s denials; one of the woman has said she’ll testify “under oath” and has urged Moore to do the same. Yet the candidate’s voting base stands by its man.

These are the same Americans who oppose gay marriage; they oppose a woman’s right to make her own reproductive decisions; they want to allow public educators to promote Christianity in public schools. These also are Americans who bellowed “Lock he up!” as unproven allegations dogged Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016.

Yet they’re standing foursquare in support of someone who might have committed a felony by sexually abusing girls?

Go figure, man.

local news, political news

Judicial turnover: part of the political process

Republicans in Congress aren’t the only politicians fleeing the unflinching glare of public service.

About a half-dozen Texas Republicans have announced they won’t seek re-election. I think the total of GOP lawmakers who won’t seek re-election numbers more than 20. There’s a smattering of national Democrats, too, who are bailing out of Congress.

Much closer to home, we’re seeing a similar exodus from the judicial bench. It’s producing the likelihood of a lively election season right here in Amarillo, Texas — in both Randall and Potter counties.

The outbound lane extends as well to Amarillo’s municipal court, where Judge Sonya Letson — a former Potter County attorney — has announced her intention to enter “quasi-retirement.” There will be no election there, since the City Council appoints the municipal judge.

But look at what’s occurring.

* Randall County Court at Law No.2 Judge Ronnie Walker is bowing out. He attracted three GOP challengers before he announced he wouldn’t seek another term, which makes me wonder: What did the judge do — or not do — to attract such a crowded field of challengers?

* Potter County Court at Law No. 1 Judge Corky Roberts is retiring, too. A Republican primary field of replacement candidates is lining up to succeed him.

* Potter County Court at Law No. 2 Judge Pam Sirmon is bailing out as well. Her office is likely to attract plenty of ballot action when the GOP primary occurs next spring.

Even though I am not a big fan of electing judges — especially on partisan ballots — I am going to be fascinated to see how this field of contenders will seek to say they are the best choices for voters.

The rule of thumb in Texas has been — as I’ve witnessed it for more than 30 years covering these offices — that incumbents rarely draw opposition. When a vacancy occurs, then all bets are off.

Many lawyers I’ve known over the years have aspired to be judges. One of the more interesting answers I ever got from a judicial candidate came from lawyer Ana Estevez, who was running for a district court judgeship in Amarillo. Estevez was born in South America. I mention that because I asked her about her political aspirations. “I can’t become the president of the United States,” she said, ” so I want to be named as a justice on the Supreme Court.”

She is not bashful.

Let the 2018 campaigning begin. I do love Election Season … even when it includes judge races.