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FBI scorned by GOP? Wow!

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I keep holding Ronny Jackson up for ridicule. Hey, I have good reason to do so. He represents a region of Texas and in just less than two years in office has managed to become a golden boy among right-wing media outlets.

Here is what Rep. Jackson, a Republican, said today via Twitter about the FBI.

I don’t trust anything that the FBI tries to pin on Trump. They are a rotten secret police force at the service of Biden’s hyper-political agenda. All lies and deception!

Hmm. The FBI no longer is dedicated to protecting our national security or rooting out corruption or solving federal crimes … or so says Ronny Jackson. It’s a tool of a Democratic president, he says.

This clown is unhinged.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

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How can GOP tolerate this?

I guess I’ll just have to resign myself to never knowing the truth while I am alive and breathing.

The “truth” to which I refer happens to involve how a once-great political party can be at one time a champion for “family values” and proclaimed that “character matters” can align itself with a cult figure who embodies the exact opposite of both principles.

Republicans today are wedded to the rubbish uttered, muttered and sputtered by Donald John Trump.

The thrice-married former POTUS has admitted to cheating on his first two wives and then paid a porn star $130,000 to remain quiet about a tryst she said she and the future POTUS had back in the old days. Trump denies the event occurred … but he paid her the money to keep quiet about it. Go figure.

I guess I should mention that the alleged tumble with the porn queen occurred just weeks after Trump wife No. 3 gave birth to his youngest son.

We are being flooded with information about the FBI search for top-secret documents taken illegally from the White House and socked away in the basement of Trump’s home in Florida. Republican response to it? Crickets, man.

In a way, though, the silence is a bit of a change in what had been the typical GOP response to allegations leveled against the former Cult Leader in Chief. Members of Congress had been quick to blame Democrats for “weaponizing” the process that resulted in two impeachments of Trump. I am hearing little justification for a POTUS taking those documents that belong to the public and do not belong to him.

Meanwhile, GOP congressional leaders remain shamefully silent as evidence piles up along several legal fronts. In Georgia, we hear about a grand jury taking testimony about Trump coercing state election officials to “find” enough votes to swing that state’s 2020 presidential election results to Trump’s favor. Does anyone in the GOP care about that?

Trump’s business is being probed for allegedly falsifying its assets in order to obtain loans. Are those the ingredients of a character-driven business empire?

The House select 1/6 committee is trying to finish its probe into Trump’s role in inciting the insurrection that sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Republicans don’t give a crap about that, either … except for the two GOP committee members, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.

I do not understand what has happened to the Republican Party. I thought I might learn the answer before they threw me into the ground.

Silly me.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, legal news, local news, national news, State news

Nothing to brag about here, Texas

Well now, it turns out Texas is No. 1 in a category of states that should bring plenty of shame.

Texas has more Oath Keepers members than any other state in the Union. Who are the Oath Keepers? This is one of the groups involved in inciting the 1/6 insurrection against the government, the attack that sought to block the certification of the 2020 presidential election … the one that Donald Trump lost fair and square to Joe Biden.

Oh, but there’s more.

Among the more than 3,300 Texans listed as members of Oath Keepers, some of ’em are law enforcement officers. They include two constables and four chiefs of police.

The findings come from the Anti-Defamation League, an organization dedicated to rooting out evil among us. They have hit the mother lode when it comes to Texas’ involvement in the Oath Keepers, many of whom were photographed prancing through the Capitol on 1/6 carrying Confederate flags and shouting “Hang Mike Pence!”

Hey, you want more? Try this: One of the constables serves a precinct in Collin County, where I live with other members of my family. When I saw the Collin County connection to this far-right-wing group of fruitcakes, my thought turned immediately to a gentleman I have gotten to know — who happens to be a constable in Collin County.

My friend ain’t that guy. What’s more, you know of course that constables in Texas also happen to be elected politicians who run for the office either as Democrats or Republicans.

For the record, the Collin County constable associated with the Oath Keepers is Joe Wright, who serves Precinct 4. Constable Wright has some explaining to do to his constituents who might be concerned about this fellow’s link to an organization involved in one of the darkest days in U.S. history.

More than 3,300 Texans were members of the Oath Keepers, report says | The Texas Tribune

This is a strange turn that makes me decidedly not proud of the state where my wife and I chose to relocate more than 38 years ago.

I consider the Oath Keepers to be replete with traitors.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, military news, national news, political news

Equal justice? Hah!

Donald J. Trump is supposed to be subject to the same standards as every U.S. citizen now that he no longer is president of the United States.

Isn’t that the rule? Isn’t that what Attorney General Merrick Garland has implied all along while stipulating that “no one is above the law”?

Former Defense Secretary William Cohen, though, has a different take on it. Cohen, who served as defense boss during the Clinton administration, said today that had he taken the documents now believed to have been found among the cache of papers in Trump’s home that he would have been arrested on the spot and taken into custody.

Which begs the question: If Donald Trump now is just an ordinary citizen of this country and has been found to have taken highly classified documents home with him as he left the White House for keeps, why hasn’t he been arrested and charged with, oh, violating the Presidential Records Act or the Espionage Act?

Former Secretary of Defense walks through what would happen to him if he took the documents Trump did (msn.com)

I am acutely aware that all of that would take us down a path on which we have never walked. However, it does appear to be more than just scuttlebutt that Trump had in his possession documents containing — gulp! — nuclear secrets.

What in the name of MADness was Trump going to do with this stuff?

This brings me to another question: Is Donald Trump ever going to be treated like any schmuck who takes official documents illegally?

Allow me to borrow this phrase: Lock him up!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, local news, State news

‘Uvalde’ takes on added weight

Forgive me if I am overstating what appears to be occurring, but it seems to me that the very name “Uvalde” is taking on a significance given to few communities struck by the kind of tragedy that befell that small South Texas town.

It’s as if the very name of the town is becoming a rallying cry, kind of like “Remember the Alamo!” has become part of Texas lore. The Uvalde reference, though, reaches far beyond the state borders. It touches the entire nation, if not the world.

Uvalde no longer is just Oscar-winning actor Matthew McConaughey’s hometown, which very well could have been enough to sustain it during another era.

It was the place where a madman opened fire in an elementary school and slaughtered 19 precious children and two teachers who fought to protect them. It was the place where combined law enforcement, in the words of Texas Department of Public Safety director Stephen McCraw, delivered an “abject failure” to protect those innocent victims.

Uvalde has become the symbol of the call for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to call a special legislative session to enact laws that make it just a little bit tougher for individuals to purchase the kind of weapon the shooter used at Robb Elementary School.

And Uvalde has become the catalyst for school systems throughout the state and the nation to rethink their security protocols and to do whatever it takes to protect the lives of the children and those who are assigned to care for and to teach them.

I fear for the community’s sake that whenever any of its 15,000 residents travel and someone asks them, “Where are you from?” that they’ll receive a sad, but perhaps heartwarming response from those who pose the question.

The love that might come back to Uvalde is worth retaining. The sadness? At some level I hope it dissipates … but that it doesn’t disappear completely.

Society needs reminders, I regret to say, of the tragedy that can erupt in any community within this great country.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, legal news, national news, political news

Hillary is right about Trump

Say whatever you want about Hillary Rodham Clinton, who grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory in the 2016 presidential election … but she is correct in asserting that the man who defeated her then is a criminal.

Donald Trump, said 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Clinton, has committed an act of “seditious conspiracy” against the federal government. She is convinced of the evidence that has been gathered and she wants him prosecuted.

So do I and so do millions of other Americans.

Clinton told CBS News what many of us already know, that she was unhappy that she collected 3 million more votes than Trump but lost the Electoral College vote, which is the count that matters in electing presidents.

“Did I consider for a nanosecond” an effort to overturn the results of that election? Clinton asked. “No!” she answered with stunning emphasis.

Clinton lost the 2016 election in one of the most bizarre political flukes in U.S. history. Trump pilfered states that by all rights should have ended up in Clinton’s column. She lost them and I, for one, am not going to dispute that Trump was elected president in 2016. Thus, he benefited from a peaceful power transition that he denied the man to whom he lost four years later.

And in denying that peaceful transition to an opponent, Joe Biden, who defeated him decisively, Trump committed a criminal act of “seditious conspiracy.”

The record is now chock full of evidence presented to a select House committee. Just think: this is just one of at least three probes into criminal activity involving the twice-impeached former president of the United States of America.

The beat, as they say, just goes on.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, legal news, national news, State news

Lame-duck courage: overrated

One would think that a politician who declares his or her intention to walk away from a public office would be infused with all manner of courage to say things about which he or she would normally remain quiet.

It is not so.

How do I know that? Because I know many politicians in this era of hyper-division who have announced their intention to bow out of the public arena but who don’t go public with how they really feel about other pols and public policy issues.

Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley over the weekend, for instance, said out loud that he would vote for Democratic lieutenant governor candidate Mike Collier over incumbent Republican Dan Patrick. Big deal? Yeah, it is. Whitley is a stellar, stalwart mainstream Republican politician who told WFAA-TV that he won’t back arguably the state’s most power GOP politician.

Why does Whitley stand out? Why aren’t there many more politicians willing to say what Whitley said. It doesn’t take a whole lot of courage for a lame-duck pol to speak from his or her gut when they no longer face a political campaign.

Yet, for reasons that escape me too few of them step up and speak their minds.

Might it be that they don’t want to face their next-door neighbor who would challenge their intelligence? Or the guy in the grocery story who would recognize them? Or perhaps the husband and wife who sit next to them in the house of worship on Sunday?

What does take courage is for a politician who continues to run for re-election to challenge the party’s leadership. I give you Rep. Liz Cheney, the Wyoming Republican who has condemned Donald Trump in the strongest terms possible … only to lose huge in the recent GOP primary in her state.

We’re seeing a large number of Congress members retiring this year. However, we are seeing a surprisingly limited number of them speaking from their gut about the future of their party … or the nation.

That frustrates me.

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

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FBI acted properly

I am going to seek to put to rest a lie that Donald J. Trump keeps repeating as it involves the FBI search for classified/top secret documents that the ex-president squirreled away illegally in his Florida home.

All set? Here goes.

Trump keeps saying that the FBI “raided” his home. It was no “raid.” The FBI worked with a federal judge to obtain a search warrant based on what it believes is “probable cause” that a crime took place. The feds sought the documents that Trump spirited out of the White House in violation of the Presidential Records Act that stipulates that official documents need to go to the National Archives.

When the FBI found the documents, the agents — in full view of Trump’s lawyers — spread them on the floor for picture-taking purposes. The ex-POTUS’s newest lie is that the feds spread the documents out to illustrate that Trump was so damn careless he would just toss ’em on the floor for the whole world to see.

No! The FBI was following standard operating evidence-gathering procedure. Trump never says the FBI picked the documents up and put them where agents found them: in the boxes that Trump’s team took from the White House to Florida.

As is always the case with this clown, the crowd that hears these lies cheers on the liar who spreads them, filling him with even more hubris to repeat them.

Disgraceful.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, FBI, legal news, national news

Do they really mean ‘civil war’?

What in the name of certifiable insanity is happening along the rightward fringe of political discourse, with individuals and groups yammering about the prospects of “civil war” if certain events don’t go the way they want them to go?

There well could be multiple indictments coming from at least two states, and the U.S. Department of Justice over the conduct of the most recent former president of the United States. Donald Trump’s cult followers are vowing to take to the streets. They will exact revenge if their leader faces criminal prosecution.

Some of ’em have said they expect a civil war to erupt. What the … ?

Hey, we all know what happened when we had a Civil War in this country. Six hundred thousand Americans died on battlefields throughout much of the eastern United States. The war ended. President Lincoln vowed to bind the wounds that tore us apart … only to be assassinated.

Now some among us are predicting a return to that horrifying chapter in our national history. And why? Because the Justice Department is doing its job in accordance with federal law and the U.S. Constitution.

Oh, and then we have two states — Georgia and New York — looking as well into possible criminal behavior. They, too, are operating legally and ethically in the search for the truth.

Oh, my. These threats frighten the daylights out of me.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com