Category Archives: political news

national news, political news

How can this guy possibly serve?

Texas’ two U.S. senators, both Republicans, have turned their backs on a GOP candidate who wants to join their august body.

John Cornyn has joined Ted Cruz in saying that Roy Moore of Alabama is not fit to serve in the Senate. They say the accusations against him by women who accuse him of improper sexual advances when they were girls are deal breakers.

Senate support vanishes

Get out of the race, Roy Moore! they are saying. Moore is having none of it. He continues to stand his ground. He says the women are liars. He blames Democrats and the liberal “fake media” for making these stories up. He says he “generally” didn’t date teenage girls when he was a 30-something lawyer; that is some denial, eh?

Senate leaders are bailing left and right from Moore. They don’t want him in the Senate. One Republican senator, Jeff Flake of Arizona, now supports Moore’s Democratic opponent, Alabama lawyer and former federal prosecutor Doug Jones.

This arcs back to my fundamental question: How in the world can this clown possibly serve in the Senate?

Moore is in it for the duration, or so he says. Time will tell. The Alabama special election is still about a month away.

Maybe this individual might realize what the rest of us already know: There is no way he can serve the people back home if he manages to get elected to the U.S. Senate.

legal news, national news, political news

‘Fine-tuned machine’ needs a serious lube job

The president of the United States has described his administration as functioning like a “fine-tuned machine.”

Such a description implies a thorough vetting of those seeking high-level government appointments, yes? Sure it does.

Why, then, did a Donald Trump nominee for the federal bench fail to report something that poses a potential conflict of interest? You know, that he is married to a senior White House lawyer.

Brett Talley failed to disclose that he is married to Ann Donaldson. Talley wants to be a federal judge; Donaldson works for an organization — the White House — that could face a challenge and appear in the very court where Talley presides.

Mr. President, we have a problem

Doggone it, man. Isn’t that a problem? What’s more, why didn’t Donaldson step forward and inform the White House judge-search team that there might be a problem with her hubby being seated on the federal bench?

And there’s an interesting back story, too. Talley wants an appointment to a judgeship that serves a district in Alabama, which is being tossed and roiled at this very moment by a scandal involving Roy Moore, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate who’s being accused of making improper sexual advances on underage girls.

Aw, what the heck. I digress … you know?

Talley also has never tried a case. His legal experience is quite limited and one can question whether he actually is qualified to preside as a federal judge.

Is this how the president finds the “best people” to serve the federal government? Is this how a “fine-tuned machine” operates?

Umm. No.

political news

Say it ain’t so, Joe

It pains me to say this, but I must reiterate what I believe remains the case to this day.

Democrats need not look to old warhorses to salvage their political fortunes, which means to me that former Vice President Joe Biden shouldn’t be a candidate for his party’s presidential nomination in 2020.

I say this despite my affection and respect for the former vice president. I’ve long admired his tenacity, his passionate patriotism and his sense of collegiality and comity. He served in the U.S. Senate for 36 years before joining the Democratic Party ticket led in 2008 by his Senate colleague, Barack H. Obama.

I believe still that Democrats need to find a newcomer to the national scene. I believe also that the nation has become afflicted with Clinton Fatigue, which means Hillary Clinton also is out of the presidential political game.

It appears to me that Democrats would do well to look for someone who is as unknown to the public as Jimmy Carter was in 1976. The nation was starved back then for a fresh face and they got one when the former Georgia governor climbed to the top of the party’s primary fight.

Vice President Biden has said publicly that he hasn’t ruled out a 2020 run. He was thought to be a possible candidate in 2016, but at the end had to stand down, given his intense grief over the death of his son Beau and his inability to commit fully to a presidential campaign.

Biden has been openly critical of Donald John Trump. Hmmm. Imagine that. So have many others. The ex-VP has spoken out strongly, much like another former veep — Dick Cheney — did during much of President Obama’s time in office.

But I don’t believe a Biden presidential campaign is going to serve the party well. Democrats would do well to find a fresh face, with fresh ideas to challenge a Republican Party that has been hijacked by a president who came into power knowing not a damn thing about how to govern the greatest nation on Earth.

national news, political news

Roy Moore’s non-denial adds to suspicion

Roy Moore is getting buried under a pile of political doo-doo.

The Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Alabama is trying to fend off accusations that he made an improper and illegal sexual advance on a 14-year-old girl in 1979; Moore was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney at the time of the alleged incident.

Republicans in the U.S. Senate are calling for Moore to quit the campaign. Democrats, too, but that’s no surprise.

Now comes this strange non-denial from Moore, a champion of the morally strict wing of the GOP. Questions have arisen in the past two days or so that Moore was fond of dating high school students when he was a grown man, a 30-something lawyer. How did Moore respond to that accusation?

By saying that he didn’t date those young girls “as a general rule.”

Huh? What the hey? As a general rule? What in the world does that mean? Did he date the girls on occasion?

I believe therein might lie the problem with Moore’s response to these allegations. Congressional Republicans are placing greater value in the accusations that have come from several women who’ve backed the initial allegation leveled by Leigh Corfman, who’s now 53 years of age. Those accusations are more credible, they say, than Moore’s strange denial.

For the life of me I don’t know how this guy can serve in the Senate if he manages to win the election on Dec. 12 against Democratic opponent Doug Jones.

Republican leaders in the Senate don’t want anything to do with this guy.

But he’s hanging on. He’s planning to finish this campaign. He calls the allegations a hit job by Democrats and the “fake news” media that are reporting it.

I believe he should quit the campaign.

Then he should disappear from public life.

national news, political news

Political presumption differs from the judicial

They’re bailing rapidly from Roy Moore’s political campaign.

I refer to the Republicans in the U.S. Senate where Moore wants to serve. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana is the latest GOP senator to withdraw his political support for the embattled Alabama Republican nominee seeking to join the Senate.

Moore has this problem. A woman has accused him of making an improper sexual advance toward her when she was just 14 years old. That was in 1979 and Moore at the time was a 32-year-old district attorney.

There have been no criminal charges filed against the former state Supreme Court chief justice. Indeed, the statute of limitations prohibits a criminal complaint against Moore.

However, there’s this political element that has no statutory limit. That is where Moore is facing some seriously deep doo-doo.

No self-respecting Republican wants to serve with someone who must fend off these allegations. Never mind the Senate Democrats; they don’t want him in the Senate just because he is a Republican.

Sen. Cassidy’s decision to bail on Moore illustrates the huge — and still growing — problem the Alabama politician is facing.

Reason would dictate that Moore is going to lose the December special election contest against Democratic Alabama Attorney General Doug Jones. These are not reasonable times, though. I mean, after all, we elected a carnival barker as president of the United States a year ago.

Is it fair for a politician to be presumed guilty of doing something terribly stupid and likely illegal? Not if you balance it against how we treat criminal defendants.

However, we aren’t dealing with a criminal justice issue. In the rough-and-tumble world of hardball politics, Roy Moore is being forced to deal with a harsh reality.

national news, political news

Moore vs. Jones taking a weird turn

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Roy Moore is unfit to serve in the U.S. Senate for a lot of reasons.

He doesn’t respect the Constitution’s provision that declares there is no “religious test” for serving in elective office; he wants to bar Muslims from serving in Congress.

Moore, a former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice, doesn’t respect the oath he took to obey the law of the land and to “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Moore told county clerks they didn’t have to obey a U.S. Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage across the land.

He continues to defame Barack Obama by suggesting he wasn’t constitutionally qualified to serve as president.

And I haven’t even mentioned — until right now — the allegations of sexual assault against a 14-year-old girl in 1979.

Former Republican Party presidential nominee Mitt Romney tweeted today that Moore doesn’t deserve the same presumption of innocence that goes to criminal suspects. I disagree with Mitt — to a point.

I intend to give Moore some presumption of innocence if charges ever are brought against him. Politically, though, I have to wonder just how Alabama voters can possibly support someone who would take office under such a sinister cloud of suspicion.

Moore is running for the U.S. Senate seat from Alabama against Democratic nominee Doug Jones. Polls show the race now a dead heat. Republican congressional leaders say Moore should pull out of the race if the allegations are true.

I can speak only for myself, but I wouldn’t vote for Moore for anything, notwithstanding the new allegations from a woman who’s now 53 years of age. Moore — not surprisingly — denies all the allegations; he calls them “completely false.”

I dare not predict what Alabama voters will do next month when they vote for their next U.S. senator. My hope is that they turn away from a suspected sexual assailant.

political news

Sex enters a key political contest

A Hollywood film mogul has had his career wiped out over allegations of rape. Same for an Academy Award-winning actor. Women are streaming forward to say “Me, too.” The public seems to more or less have accepted the women’s view of what happened with these men.

Many other men in the entertainment industry are facing similar accusations.

OK, then. What about a candidate for the U.S. Senate? A Republican former state supreme court chief justice is facing charges of sexual contact with an underage girl.

Who do we believe here? Roy Moore, the accused candidate, or the woman who was 14 years of age at the time the incident allegedly occurred?

This “Me too” environment has elevated the issue of sexual abuse, sexual assault and sexual harassment to a whole new level of visibility.

I am in no position to assess the value of what the accuser has said Moore supposedly did. Republican leaders are saying that “if it’s true,” Moore has to pull out of his Senate contest against Democratic opponent Doug Jones.

Here is where the matter gets sticky. The election will take place slightly more than a month from now. How does someone prove an allegation of a crime that occurred nearly 40 years ago in such a short span of time? Absent that proof, how do voters respond?

Moore is entitled to the presumption of innocence. Then again, so are the many other men in public life who’ve been accused of sex crimes ranging from making inappropriate remarks to flat-out rape. The public, though, is quick to presume the worst about those others.

Will the voters in Alabama do the same to Roy Moore?

This situation is going to get real sticky … real fast.

political news

Suddenly, the ‘Bama Senate race has gotten quite intense

Well now. I didn’t see this one coming.

A woman has accused Republican U.S. Senate nominee Roy Moore of making a sexual advance toward her when she was just 14 years of age. Moore was 32 years of age at the time … allegedly.

Oh, brother.

Moore is set to face off against Democratic nominee Doug Jones in the December special election to the Senate seat vacated when Jeff Sessions became U.S. attorney general.

As if Moore didn’t have enough baggage already, given his troubled tenure as Alabama Supreme Court chief justice, now he’s got this matter with which to deal.

Republican leaders are asking Moore to quit the race — if the allegations are true. Moore isn’t owning up to anything, of course. The woman, Leigh Corfman, who’s now in her early 50s, is standing by her story.

Who’s telling the truth?

It’s not unheard of for these kinds of sexual encounters to come to light long after they occurred. When I heard of this, my mind turned immediately to the scandal that brought down former Oregon Gov. Neil Goldschmidt, a Democrat who also once served as Portland mayor and was transportation secretary in the Carter administration.

Goldschmidt was accused of messing around with a girl who was babysitting his children back in the 1970s. He eventually acknowledged doing it and then resigned in disgrace from every board on which he was serving when the accusations came forth about a dozen years ago. He has vanished from public view. His picture was removed from the ring of governors at the Oregon Capitol Building in Salem.

If Moore stays in the race, the issue then becomes this: How is his opponent going to handle this one? Does he make it a campaign issue or does he let Moore’s political fortunes simmer in the heat that is sure to build as questions continue to mount?

The late Texas U.S. Sen. Lloyd Bentsen once called politics a “contact sport.” I sense a serious collision might be about to occur down yonder in Alabama.

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Is a political wave developing out there?

What do we make of the Democrats’ big wins for governor in New Jersey in Virginia?

OK, I’ll now lay out for you my extreme bias on the matter … as if you’re going to be surprised.

Phil Murphy’s win in New Jersey and Ralph Northam’s victory in Virginia sang to me. I was happy to see what I believe might be a wholesale rejection of Donald J. Trump’s effort to remake the Republican Party in his own seedy, isolationist, nativist image.

The president has hijacked the Republican Party. A man with zero political activity in his professional background ascended to the world’s most exalted office in 2016.

Republicans are reeling

Republicans now have to deal with the president’s lack of accomplishment as his first year in office approaches. GOP prospects for enacting “tax reform” now appear to be in serious jeopardy.

What’s more, Republicans now are beginning to lament out loud that the 2018 midterm election for both houses of Congress bodes grimly for their chances of retaining control of the legislative branch of government.

To which I say … cry me a river.

I am not the least bit concerned about Republicans’ political prospects. Given that we all have our bias, I’ll lay out my own.

I want Democrats to do well next year to rein in the Republican-led stampede to undo what Donald Trump’s immediate predecessor as president, Barack Obama, sought to implement.

The Affordable Care Act needs refinement and improvement, not repeal; the nation needs to do more, not less, to protect our environment; America must remain engaged in world affairs, working closely with our allies.

Trump’s agenda seeks to divide Americans and seeks to separate the world’s greatest nation from the rest of the planet. He has vowed to “put America first,” and pledged to “make America great again.”

Democrats have been handed a tailor-made theme on which to campaign against those who are running under the banner of the party that is led by the most unqualified, untruthful and unfit man elected to the presidency in the nation’s history.

Don’t hate me just because I have declared my bias. Those on the other side of the divide have their own bias, too.

Let’s have this debate … beginning right this minute.

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Trump won’t own this failure, either

Donald Trump is mistaken.

Imagine that. I’m saying the president is wrong in assessing a political outcome.

Democratic Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam is going to become Virginia’s next governor; he defeated Republican nominee Ed Gillespie in one of the hottest, most bitter races in that state’s recent memory.

Northam shackled Gillespie to Trump, joined them at the hip. He ran hard. He fought hard. Northam won.

How did the president take the news way over yonder in South Korea, where he is visiting as part of his five-nation Asia trip? He said Gillespie “worked hard” but failed to endorse the Trump agenda. He said Gillespie didn’t run — and this really kills me — as a “Trump Republican.”

I am not yet persuaded that Trump even is a Republican as I understand the philosophy of a once-great political party. He has hijacked it, turned into something most long-standing Republicans no longer recognize.

The president’s cult of personality has overpowered the Republican Party and, thus, in my view has turned off many voters.

Ed Gillespie paid the price for belonging to the same party as president of the United States.

Trump did seek to put some sort of positive spin on the political lay of the land. He tweeted: “Don’t forget, Republicans won 4 out of 4 House seats, and with the economy doing record numbers, we will continue to win, even bigger than before!”

Time will tell on that one, Mr. President.

Oh … and don’t forget: the Republican candidate today also lost the governor’s race in New Jersey, which now flips to Democratic control. Another “win,” Mr. President?