Category Archives: legal news

crime news, legal news, local news, national news

Impeachment coming? Sure, bring it!

Let’s assume for a moment that the political smart money is telling us the truth, that the next Congress is going to flip to Democratic control and that the House of Reps is going to launch an impeachment against Donald Trump.

We all have heard that Democrats might gain 30 seats on the Republicans who now control Congress. I can’t say whether the pundits think the 30-seat gain is at the top of their projection, at the bottom … or somewhere in the middle. If Trump continues on his slap-dash course it well could exceed the 30-seat turnover by a significant margin.

Is an impeachment necessary? I will allow my bias to peek through the haze and declare: Damn right it’s necessary! I will offer this caveat: I want Democrats to assure us that they can more than one thing at a time, that they can proceed with impeaching Trump and resume their constitutional role of making laws.

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York is likely to be elected speaker and he ought to take a page from the book followed in Texas by then-Speaker Pete Laney. The West Texas cotton farmer said he always simply allowed “the will of the House” to have its way. And so it went during the years that Laney served as the Man of the House.

The will of the U.S. House should be allowed to play the hand it is dealt. If most members believe — as I do — that Trump has committed an impeachable offense or three, then it should act. It also should not allow the legislative process to get caught in a political vise that will clamp down around the White House.

We’ve all heard them say that lawmakers can “do more than one thing at a time.” Impeaching a president is serious business. So is legislating.

legal news

Constitution is showing its mettle

All right, boys and girls, this might be wishful thinking on my part, but I damn sure hope it’s for real because it feels like the real thing to me.

I am beginning to believe that our Constitution is beginning to flex its considerable muscle just in time to put the brakes on Donald Trump’s headlong dash toward establishing an autorcracy where the nation’s founders set forth a democratic republic.

The federal judiciary is leading the way, just as the founders sought when they created a three-branch government in which the courts serve as co-equally along side the legislative and executive branches of government.

Trump surely has left us gasping for breath from the moment he took office on Jan. 20. It was his second time around the presidential pea patch. The good news? There will be no third go-round. The Constitution’s 22nd Amendment limits presidents to two elected terms. Period. Full stop.

The courts keep issuing rulings that are giving Trump fits. To which I say, good on ’em! We see even judges nominated for the federal bench by Trump himself issuing decisions that are stripping away legal options bit by bit.

If the president were ever to read the Constitution, he would understand that the founders sought an independent judiciary that is relatively free of political pressure. Yes, Trump has three justices on the Supreme Court who have joined a six-justice conservative super majority. However, they are not following Trump in lockstep over the proverbial cliff.

Thus, the Constitution works … just as President Ford said in the moments after he took office at the end of our “long national nightmare.”

legal news

Vengeance effort picks up steam

Donald Trump’s campaign of retribution appears to be gathering a head of steam and for those of us worried about the future of this great country, serious worry is settling in … rapidly.

Today brought news that former Trump national security advisor John Bolton has been indicted on 18 counts by a federal grand jury on charges stemming from allegations that Bolton mishandled classified material. More bullshit from the Justice Department.

Former FBI director Jim Comey is indicted in the slimmest indictment in human history. New York Attorney General Letitia James is indicted for alleged real estate fraud crimes. What do Bolton, Comey and James have in common? They all are Trump critics!

Good grief, man! Who’s next? Sen. Adam Schiff of California is reportedly a target. Same, perhaps, for Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona?

Trump is out of his mind. He’s fu**ing insane!

He’s now presiding over a government that has shut down because Republicans don’t want to fund Affordable Care Act subsidies. The shutting down of the government is depriving Americans of services they paid for. It is endangering travelers at airports because traffic controllers aren’t getting paid. Trump is sending troops into the streets of great American cities to crack down on crimes that don’t exist.

Donald Trump 2.0 is far worse than Trump 1.0. He told us he would do precisely what he is now doing. And yet he got elected president in 2024.

Come to think of it, maybe it’s the small plurality of Americans who voted for this numbskull who need their heads examined.

crime news, legal news

Irony runs thick

You want irony? I’ve got a huge dose of it for you to ponder. It comes via testimony from a sitting U.S. senator from Rhode Island.

Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat, reminded his Senate Judiciary Committee colleagues the other day of the irony committed by AG Pam Bondi in testimony before the panel.

She had just secured an indictment of former FBI Director Jim Comey on a specious charge that he lied before the committee, committing an act of perjury. The indictment is so flimsy it likely won’t be tried. It was handed over on a total of two pages. That’s it! Comey allegedly lied about who told him what about a pending hearing. It’s pure crap.

Oh, but wait. Bondi then told the same Senate panel that Whitehouse accepted a favor from a donor, a charge that Whitehouse says is “demonstrably false.” He said a first-year law student could have looked up the facts and determined that the favor didn’t occur.

Therefore, Whitehouse said, Bondi committed the very same crime for which Comey has been indicted.

Do we indict the attorney general? If she isn’t above the law … then why not?

legal news

It’s not written, but still …

Critics of federal court rulings mandating that burning Old Glory is a form of protected political speech occasionally lapse into a tired argument to make their case.

It is that the Constitution doesn’t spell out that burning the Stars and Stripes falls into that category of protected civil liberty. They’re right. The Constitution doesn’t say any particular form of protest is protected by the First Amendment.

The argument reminds me of a constant argument I had with a colleague in Amarillo, who argued that the Constitution doesn’t say a word about the “separation of church and state,” so therefore, there is no separation. I told my colleague that the separation clearly is implied in the first clause of the First Amendment when it declares that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion … “

The Constitution doesn’t single out flag burning. Or draft-card burning. Or marching in the streets carrying signs that refer to police officers as ugly farm animals.

The founders, all those wise men, knew enough to grant interpretive power in our court system. They decided the courts should be the final arbiter on what’s constitutional and what isn’t.

The Supreme Court has ruled already that flag burning is protected speech. It has issued rulings repeatedly since the founding of our republic. Donald Trump says flag burning should result in a year in jail for the numbskull who does it. No, Donald. You can’t go there.

The nation’s founders had this one right. The current president of the United States has it wrong.

legal news

Flaws run deep in Trump doctrine

Donald Trump and his gullible gang of MAGA goofballs are operating on a faulty assumption that the nation’s Constitution protects them against protests over the extreme overreach in which they are engaged.

They purport to be true-blue conservatives who are led by a president who is claiming that the office he occupies grants him authority essentially to break the law … as long as he is performing an official act.

Let’s see about that.

The reality, as I interpret it, is that the nation’s founders created a relatively weak executive branch of government. They invested equal amounts of power in Congress and the courts and charged them with the responsibility of exercising appropriate “checks and balances” against executive overreach. One of those branches, the legislative branch comprising Congress, essentially has rolled over for Trump. The Republicans who control both congressional chambers act as if it’s OK for the president to usurp their constitutional authority. Their acquiesence has emboldened Trump to keep reaching beyond his governmental grasp. So far so good, or so it seems.

That leaves the courts as the last man standing in Trump’s way. And we are beginning to see some signs of backbone among federal judges. Trump’s legal challenges are being swatted away by judges … some of whom appointed by Trump himself. That kind of independence is precisely what the founders intended when they created a system that grants judges lifetime appointments to the federal bench.

Yeah, that kind of judicial independence just pisses Trump and his MAGA minions off. Too damn bad!

The founders did not intend to build a government that invested limitless power in one individual. If Trump had any understanding at all of our democratic process, he would know that.

But he doesn’t. Nor do the 30% to 35% of the nation’s voters who adhere to the idiocy that flows from their leader’s mouth.

legal news

Loathing is alive and well in DC

Oh, boy … I just hate watching spectacles like the one I watched unfold today in a US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

However, given the loathsome attitude that permeates the nation’s capital, it’s not surprising and it isn’t likely to be nearly the last such demonstration.

Committee Democrats stormed out of the hearing today because the Republican leadership on the panel wouldn’t allow further debate on a truly horrible appointment to the 3rd U.S. District Court of Appeals. Donald Trump has selected his former personal counsel, Emil Bove, to a lifetime post on the federal bench. Committee Democrats wanted to debate Bove’s appointment further. GOP Chairman Charles Grassley of Iowa said “no.” He ordered that the appointment proceed to a committee vote.

Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey pleaded with Grassley, who he praised as a man of decency and character, to grant the extra time for debate. Grassley was having none of it. Booker wanted to know what kind of control Trump had used to coerce Grassley into denying the debate.

Bove is a patently preposterous choice to become a federal judge. This is the guy who once said it was OK to tell a court to “fu** you” while disobeying a court order. He represented Trump in his case against the woman who won a court judgment that held Trump liable for sexual abuse. He also has said it might be possible for Trump to seek a third term as president, even though the Constitution limits presidents to two elected terms. Roll that around a while … eh?

Never in my entire life have I seen relationships between the legislative and executive branches of government degenerate to the level where it sits today. I have implored all the parties concerned to seek common ground. They need to return to an era where political rivals can disagree on policy but retain a certain level of personal decorum.

It’s all shattered. I fear it is gone forever.

crime news, legal news

He still did the crime … why let up?

Once in a blue moon some aspects of criminal law make me scratch my noggin till it bleeds.

Take the case of Bryan Kohlberger, a young man charged with the brutal murder of four college students in Moscow, Idaho. Kohlberger was set to stand trial for the brutal stabbing deaths. He had said initially he didn’t do it.

Now he has changed his tune. He pleaded guilty today to doing the crime that caused a nationwide manhunt in 2022. The cops found Kohlberger holed up in Pennsylvania. They brought him back to Idaho to stand trial. If convicted he faced the death penalty; I don’t know they do it in Idaho … but that’s beside the point now.

You see, by entering the guilty plea in a deal worked out with prosecutors, Kohlberger is going to avoid the ultimate punishment for the ultimate crime.

Here’s where the head-scratching commences. How do defendants accused of such horrifying crimes skate clear of the executioner simply by admitting they did the deed for which they would have stood trial?

I’ll have to stipulate that I am not a death penalty proponent. I am glad Kohlberger now will spend what’s left of his life in prison. My philosophical opposition to state-sponsored killing of defendants, though, is beside the point I am seeking to make with this post.

If someone admits to committing a crime as horrifying as what Kohlberger has admitted to committing, then why lessen the penalty the law requires him to pay?

I’ve heard official reasons. A guilty plea saves a state a lot of money. He won’t have any avenues for appeal. It costs the state a lot of money to put defendants to death.

However, I am still puzzled by the notion that admitting to a crime as horrifying as what Kohlberger did saves him from paying the ultimate price.

legal news

Why issue pardons?

Let us examine the issue of presidential pardons, which have risen in the public’s consciousness lately.

Donald J. Trump is issuing pardons to convicted felons, some of whom have committed violent crimes against law enforcement officers. He also is acting totally within his powers as president, as prescribed in the U.S. Constitution.

The founders granted the president virtually unlimited power to pardon anyone of a crime. Trump has been signing pardon documents left and right lately. The most recent pardon of some controversy involves a reality TV couple convicted of tax evasion and fraud against the U.S. government. The husband was sentenced to 12 years in the slammer; the wife got seven years. Trump set them free today.

What I want to examine briefly is the ramification of pardons such as this one, which undermines a jury verdict reached in a fair trial. Trump said the couple — convicted felons, mind you — are “fine people” and they deserve the chance to restart their lives.

No they don’t. They were convicted in a court of law.

I don’t want to expend a lot of emotional capital on this pardon. I do want to make what I think is a critical point. A pardon expunges the record. It removes conviction from a criminal’s past … officially. It does not wipe out the memories of those who were damaged by whatever crime is committed. Nor does it expunge from the memories of those of us who watch these matters with a degree of interest.

I became aware of presidential pardons in September 1974 when President Ford issued a full and complee pardon to his predecessor, Richard Nixon. Nixon had resigned the presidency but had not been convicted of any crime. He was about to be impeached by the House and would be assuredly convicted in a Senate trial for crimes related to the Watergate scandal. Ford’s decision, though, looked at the larger issue of the impact a continued pursuit of Nixon would have on the nation.

President Ford paid a political price for the pardon, losing his bid for election in 1976, largely it is believed because voters thought at the time he acted prematurely. The pardon, though, did not remove the stigma of Nixon’s resignation. Nor did it wipe away the public perception of the disgraced former president as someone who sought to cover up the wrongdoing done in his name.

If only the current president could understand what he’s doing to this enormous power he has at his disposal. He is making himself, his office and our government a laughingstock.

legal news

Would he dare seek a third term?

A member of my family, a fellow I consider to be a smart fellow, says he is concerned that Donald J. Trump will be able to finagle his way into a third term as POTUS.

He knows the Constitution’s 22nd Amendment limits the president to two elected terms. He knows that Trump has been elected twice.

I reminded my relative that Trump cannot do anything single-handedly. He needs Congress to amend the 22nd Amendment. Then he would need three-quarters of the 50 states to ratify it.

“It won’t happen,” I beseeched him. “Ohhhh, I don’t know,” came his reply.

The nation’s founders didn’t write a perfect governing document. It has been amended 27 times since its ratificationn in 1789. The founders, though, did set the bar quite high for those who want to change the framework of our democratic republic. They set strict legislative requirements and set a high standard for the number of state legislators needed to ratify an amendment.

Donald Trump, it seems to many of us, would like to be able to seek a third term as POTUS. But, he’ll be 83 years of age when his current term ends. The founders made it clear that to change the Constitutiion, pro-amendment fanatics need to jump through a lot of hoops to make it happen.

Trump and his moronic MAGA minions might think they hold all the cards to change the Constitution. They don’t. The founders made damn sure of the document’s strength by building in “checks and balances” to keep presidents in check.

It has worked so far. It will continue to do its job.