Category Archives: national security

crime news, national news, national security, political news

House panel faces deadline

The select committee that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi chose to investigate the 1/6 assault on the U.S. Capitol is facing a deadline.

It needs to finish its work and present its findings prior to the start of the next Congress. Or else … the Republican leaders who might assume control of the chamber could pull the plug on the whole enterprise.

I say “might assume control” because a GOP takeover of the House isn’t as much of a lead-pipe cinch as it was, oh, six months ago.

However, Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson cannot even begin to presume that Democrats are going to maintain control of the House of Representatives. If I were the chairman, I would be making damn sure the panel’s work gets done a whole lot sooner than later.

Thompson has indicated that the committee is going to resume taking public testimony on Sept. 28. There is a damn near certainty to be more fireworks ignited in the hearing room after the chairman gavels the proceedings to order.

But looking forward it will be imperative for the committee to present its complete findings prior to the new Congress taking its seat. It then can submit those findings to the Justice Department — which already is conducting its independent probe.

What causes me great alarm is the revenge rhetoric coming from the likes of House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, who has made no secret of his desire to protect Donald Trump’s ample rear end if given the chance.

Make no mistake that McCarthy has been a profile in cowardice as it relates to the insurrection that Trump incited that day on The Ellipse. McCarthy once said the right thing in blaming Trump for causing the attack, only to take it all back and resume his role as legislative suck-up to the 45th POTUS.

I hope Chairman Thompson is on the same page cited in this blog post. He needs to get the work done and then hope Democrats can hold on to reins of power in the House.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news, military news, national security, political news

Equipment, training pay off for Ukraine

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A little known or discussed aspect of our nation’s relationship with Ukraine is that we essentially have been training the Ukrainian army for eight years, which is about the time big, bad Russia sought to reannex the Crimean Peninsula.

Russian henchman Vladimir Putin wanted Crimea back, so he invaded it to take it from Ukraine.

It then fell to administrations led by Barack Obama, Donald Trump and then Joe Biden to continue to train the Ukrainians in using the sophisticated equipment it had shipped to them to fight the Russian aggressors.

All that training — plus President Biden’s insistence on additional equipment — is paying significant dividends as the Ukraine army is showing signs of beating back the aggressors who launched another invasion more than seven months ago.

The Russians are retreating from territory they seized.

I cannot stress this point enough, which is the amazing unity that President Biden was able to build among the nations comprising the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an alliance formed to protect Europe against potential aggression from what once was known as the Soviet Union.

Putin, therefore, helped Biden keep NATO intact by threatening the alliance if it interferes in what the Russians call an “internal dispute.” It is nothing of the sort. Ukraine is as sovereign a nation as Russia.

That unity has buoyed the Ukraine armed forces as they have fought back hard against the Russian aggressors.

With that I intend now to give Joe Biden considerable credit as he has responded with resolve and determination in assessing what is plainly obvious … that Vladimir Putin’s criminal invasion cannot be allowed to stand.

It stands to reason, too, that Ukraine is drawing strength from the immense aid that is pouring into that country as it battles a once-fearsome military power.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news, military news, national news, national security, political news

Deception destroyed our unity

Communities across the land took time over the weekend to honor the heroes who answered the call on 9/11 and some folks spoke about the unity we felt in responding to the terrorists who inflicted so much pain on this great country.

The unity didn’t last, which naturally drew sighs of frustration among many Americans.

I want to remind us of what destroyed our national unity. It was deception from the highest office in the land.

President Bush stood on the rubble at Ground Zero and told the terrorists that they would “hear from all of us soon.” We went to war against the Taliban, drove them out of power in Afghanistan. It was a noble cause, as we had to fight the bad guys directly.

Then we took our eyes off the ball. The president talked about the “axis of evil” that included the government in Baghdad. Then the vice president, Dick Cheney, and the secretary of state, Colin Powell, told us how Saddam Hussein had a hand in the 9/11 attack, how he possessed terrible “weapons of mass destruction” and would use them against us and our allies.

In March 2003, barely 18 months after 9/11, we went to war against Iraq. With that action, we kissed our national unity goodbye.

Our eternal gratitude for the police officers, firefighters and medical teams remains strong. Their raw courage in fighting the evils of a terrorist act will remain with us for as long as those of us who remember that time will walk this good Earth.

Let us not conflate the poor decisions born of deception with that admiration.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump, legal news, national news, national security, political news

What’s with Barr?

More than a few Americans are wondering: What in the world has gotten into William Barr, the last man to serve as attorney general during the Donald Trump administration?

Barr succeeded Jeff Sessions as AG after Trump fired Sessions because Sessions refused to investigate the “Russia collusion” matter, citing potential conflict of interest; Sessions acted out of conscience and a standard of ethical behavior. Trump looked for an AG who he thought would be loyal to the president; he found one in Barr.

Barr did Trump’s bidding. His disgraceful whitewashing and deceptive misinterpretation of Robert Mueller’s probe into the Russian “collusion” matter will stand for all time as an attempt at pandering to the boss. Then he quit just near the end of Trump’s term. Barr had grown weary of defending Trump’s Big Lie about alleged widespread voter fraud during the 2020 election.

Now comes the “new” William Barr. He says Trump should never have taken those top-secret documents out of the White House and kept them in his Florida home. Barr’s critics say his “coming out” as Mr. Legal Straight Arrow is too little, too late. I am not going to pound Barr for his late-blooming fit of reason and sanity.

He’s speaking the proverbial truth to power. When is that ever a bad thing? He has been a frequent guest on Fox News talk shows to do precisely that. Indeed, he has walked into the belly of the beast to tell us all the truth about what is right and wrong in Trump’s pitiful attempts at defending the indefensible.

Why Barr is breaking from Trump — and the GOP — over Mar-a-Lago search | The Hill

I am going to give William Barr credit for telling the world what many of us knew already, that the ex-POTUS deludes himself with grandeur and visions of lifelong power. Do I wish Barr had spoken out while he served in the Trump administration? Certainly!

He’s doing so now. That’s all right with me.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news, national security

No worries, I will ‘never forget’

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I went to a ceremony this morning at Princeton City Hall where firefighters, police officers, local veterans and others gathered to recall the event that shaped our nation’s future.

It happened 21 years ago when hijacked jetliners flew into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington and into that rural field in Shanksville, Pa.

No. We’ll never forget what we were doing that morning when we got the news about the terror attack on the country. It launched the global war against terrorism, a war we likely will fight for as long as Planet Earth exists.

I am sure the planet will be around long after you and I are gone.

We call it 9/11 these days. Just say “9/11” and everyone knows what you mean.

The good news is that our special forces have managed to take out the masterminds behind that attack. The bad news is that others have skulked out of the slime to replace them.

We must remain vigilant against threats that have existed all along.

And by all means we must “never forget” the unfathomable cost of what happens when we look the other way.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, legal news, national news, national security

Is she a ‘Trump judge’?

Donald J. Trump’s past blathering about “Obama judges” and “Clinton judges” ruling against him in various legal battles gives me pause as I try to weigh the legal significance of a federal judge who has ruled in the ex-president’s favor in his fight with the FBI over those classified documents he squirreled away at his Florida estate.

Legal and constitutional scholars have been quick to condemn Trump’s assertion that those decisions with which he disagrees are the result of the political leanings of the judges who delivered them. They have said that judges take solemn oaths to be faithful to the Constitution and that’s what they have done in issuing their rulings.

Now we have a Trump-appointed federal judge — Aileen Cannon — deciding that it’s OK to appoint a special master to pore through the documents seized by the FBI in its search for possible criminal evidence.

The Justice Department argued against the appointment of such a special master. It well could appeal the decision by Judge Cannon.

But I am left to ponder something. If the ex-POTUS is going to rant and rail against judges who happen to occupy their seat on the bench because they are appointed by political rivals of his, is it OK for others to do the same thing when a Trump-appointed judge issues a key ruling in the former president’s favor?

Just askin’, man.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Joe Biden, national news, national security, political news

Why the hysterical response?

Am I imagining it or is the right-wing cabal of alleged political thinkers acting as if the president of the United States might have hit ’em where they hurt?

President Biden took some national TV time the other evening to blame the “MAGA Republicans” who comprise a shrinking but still significant portion of a once-grand old party for stealing the “soul of the nation.” He also called them a threat to democracy because of their constant threats of violence and their insistence that the 2020 presidential election was the result of “widespread voter fraud.”

The right-wingers have fired back with both barrels. They accuse Biden of inciting division himself. They call him the worst president in history. They excoriate him for offending “half the country” that still supports Donald Trump; actually, it ain’t half, but instead is a significant — but dwindling — minority of Americans who still swallow the swill that Trump is serving.

The hysterical response suggests to me that President Biden has told ’em the truth. Or, as President “Give “em Hell Harry” Truman might say, “He told them the truth and they just think it’s hell.”

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, national news, national security, political news

MAGAites churn my stomach

Reaction to President Biden’s speech in defense of the “soul of America” from the MAGA cabal of kooks has been, to say the least, more than a bit unsettling.

The treasonous cultists who adhere to the phony philosophy that seeks to Make America Great Again now are ascribing to President Biden the very characteristics we all have seen exhibited in real time by Donald J. Trump.

They are pissed off because they allege Biden has declared war on “half the country.” How do I say this clearly? No, he is not! Biden has sought to wage rhetorical warfare against a shrinking element of the MAGA base that continues to buy into The Big Lie about alleged widespread voter fraud … that does not exist.

Think for a moment about the cultists who buy into one thing their “esteemed leader” said this week: Trump said that if hell freezes over and he is returned as president that he will give “serious thought” to issuing blanket pardons for those who took part in the 1/6 attack on our government. (Actually, the “hell freezes over” reference is mine, not Trump’s … as if you didn’t know.)

My point is that nothing makes my blood boil more at this moment than the notion of the traitorous mob being pardoned for their assault on our democratic process, when they smashed through windows, threatened to “Hang Mike Pence!” and crapped on the floor of our Capitol Building.

Biden made several points with crystal clarity. The one that stands out for me was when he declared that you “cannot support our democracy only when you win.” 

The Big Lie believers cannot accept that the Big Liar in Chief lost the 2020 election. Nor can they accept the righteous and deserved scolding they received from the man who defeated their cult hero.

Yes, they pose a threat to our democracy. The rest of us must — and I use this term metaphorically — put them down.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, national news, national security, political news

‘Trump is done’

Brian Karem, a writer for Salon, is preaching to the proverbial choir when he declares the storm that’s a brewin’ might be the one that takes out Donald Trump, sends him home to … wherever.

And then he’ll be gone from our consciousness. Presumably for the rest of his time walking this good Earth.

That’s my hope. That’s the hope, apparently, of a growing number of Americans who have grown sick, tired and bored out of their skulls at Trump’s one-note samba that kicks out the lyrics to The Big Lie.

Read Karem’s latest essay here:  A storm is coming: It might sweep Trump and the GOP into history’s dustbin (msn.com)

I have been struck by the stone-cold silence from the Trumpkin cabal of cultists over the documents the FBI seized at Trump’s posh estate. Not even the likes of Jim Jordan, or Rand Paul, or Lindsey Graham, or any other of the Trump cult followers can come up with an explanation on how top-secret documents found their way from the White House to Trump’s South Florida pad.

Then we hear from Trump himself, saying in a totally insane social media rant that the FBI grabbed the documents from his desk and scattered them on the floor for the world to see.

What the hell? That is a defense of what Trump did? Good grief, he just admitted to breaking federal law!

As Karem said in his essay:

So, yes — there is a storm coming. It’s not a civil war. It’s a reckoning — and I reckon the GOP would rather not face it. All the Democrats have to do is show up and vote, and the Republicans’ beloved Supreme Court gave them an excellent reason to do so.

The FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home was merely an affirmation that those eager to flee the GOP needed, to let them know their instincts were right. When the facts are understood, Donald, it turns out that nobody likes a traitor.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, national news, national security, political news

All eyes on DOJ, but wait …

Millions of Americans — such as me — are fixated at the moment on the U.S. Department of Justice seizure of those “highly classified” documents from Donald J. Trump’s glitzy home in Florida.

I keep hearing an endless string of legal analyses that suggest an indictment of someone — perhaps the ex-president — is inevitable.

Let’s be clear, though, about something that is getting buried under all the rhetoric about the DOJ probe: It is just one of several investigations underway concerning the criminal behavior many of us believe occurred during the entirety of Trump’s single term as POTUS.

What’s brewing? Let’s see:

  • A Fulton County (Ga.) grand jury is looking into whether Trump tampered with election results by demanding that the Georgia secretary of state “find” enough votes to turn the election result there from pro-Joe Biden to pro-Trump.
  • The New York attorney general is examining whether the Trump Organization falsified its assets to (a) obtain favorable loans or (b) avoid paying debts it owes.
  • The House 1/6 select committee is probing whether Trump committed an act of sedition against the U.S. government by inciting the attack on the Capitol and then was derelict in his duty as POTUS by refusing to call off the attack once it commenced, resulting in injury and death to police officers and at least one attacker.

That’s several full plates, don’t you think?

Of all those probes, the one that needs to be finished soon is the congressional investigation. The midterm election well could result in Republicans taking control of the House and we all know what’ll happen then: the GOP leadership will shut it all down and will pretend there is nothing to see.

There happens to be plenty to see and do, which makes the House panel’s work all the more urgent.

It’s almost enough to make me wonder how in the name of sanity does the former president or those closest to him avoid being charged with some criminal act. I cannot assess which of the potential charges are forthcoming, or which of them will emerge as the most serious.

I do have this nagging gut grumble that’s telling me that when the legal eagles finish their work, we’re about to see history made in a way that will make the 45th POTUS a mighty unhappy man.

Shall we all just stay tuned?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com