Monthly Archives: November 2014

State news

Whether to carry openly or not

Texas Gov.-elect Greg Abbott says he would sign an “open-carry” bill if it arrives on his desk.

You might ask, “Open-carry what?” Umm, that would be guns.

Six-shooters. Semi-auto Glocks. Perhaps even a pea-shooter Derringer.

The folks who brought us concealed handgun carry laws now want us to be able to walk around with ’em strapped to our hips. Wow! This is amazing.

OK, I’ll stipulate right up front that I initially opposed concealed-carry legislation. I feared — wrongly, it has turned out — that fender-benders would turn into shootouts when drivers packing heat under their jackets would pull them out and start blazing away on street corners.

It hasn’t happened and my opposition to concealed-carry has softened. Considerably.

The notion, though, of allowing folks to walk into public places — such as government buildings — with the guns on their hips really does make me nervous. Businesses that prohibit firearms would be allowed to do so under most of the proposed legislation I’ve heard about. That’s fine with me.

It’s most interesting to me, though, that no one has mentioned this item from our past in the debate about whether to allow open-carry in Texas: Back in the day, when the Wild West was being settled, was it really safer when justice was being carried out by men toting guns — in the open?

I’m just asking what I think is a fair question.

Well? I’m all ears.

 

 

national news

Ferguson, Mo., waits … amid tension

Allow me to pose what I believe is a fair question: Are the media contributing to the tension that has gripped a small Missouri suburban community by the throat?

Much of the nation is awaiting a grand jury decision on whether to indict a white police officer who shot a black teenager to death in the St. Louis suburb.

At issue is whether the grand jury will indict Officer Darren Wilson for his role in the shooting of Michael Brown.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/22/us/ferguson-grand-jury-five-things/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Honest to goodness, I have no clue as to whether Wilson committed a crime, or whether the grand jury is going to indict him. The case has drawn considerable — and intense — attention from many Americans who live far from the town.

The case spawned disturbances in its aftermath. Now, the grand jury’s pending decision has folks on edge.

All the cable and broadcast news networks have staked out the place. They’re providing non-stop, 24/7 coverage of it. Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has declared a state of emergency and has deployed the National Guard in case all hell breaks loose once the panel makes its decision public.

My concern here is that the media attention only feeds the unease and well could prompt a violent response if the grand jury, for example, returns a no-bill — meaning that Wilson would not be prosecuted for any crime.

Of course a violent demonstration would be a shameful response. Michael Brown’s father has called for calm and for that he is to be saluted. I would hope the community would heed the wise words of a grieving father.

I also wish the media would find a way to report these stories without such apparent breathlessness. I hope for the best, but fear the worst.

 

 

International news, national news

Off your duff, Congress, and move on immigration

If nothing else at all, President Obama’s decision to proceed with an executive order delaying the deportation of 5 million illegal immigrants has shamed Congress into doing something — anything! — constructive to engage in this debate.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/republicans-no-immigration-response-113091.html?hp=c2_3

There’s been a lot of accusatory talk from Republicans about the president defying “the will the people,” or “circumventing the Constitution,” or even acting “lawlessly.”

They have no plan.

The Senate did pass an immigration reform bill a year or so ago, but the House of Representatives sat on it. They dithered and dilly-dallied, stalled and stymied any move to enact some improvements in federal law that bottles up efforts by undocumented immigrants to attain legal status and work toward eventual citizenship.

So now Obama has taken action.

I keep looking at the order he signed and wonder: What is in it that angers the GOP so much?

It prioritizes the arrest and deportation of criminals; it seeks to put more federal security on our southern border; it enables children of illegal immigrants who were born in the United States to stay with their parents; it allows illegal immigrants to, as Obama said, “come out the shadow” and work openly and, yes, pay federal personal income taxes.

My main objection to the order was in its timing. I believe the president should have waited for the new Congress to take its seat. Oh well, he ignored the advice from a middle-of-the-country blogger. My feelings aren’t hurt, Mr. President.

Now it falls on Congress to get off its collective duff and approve a comprehensive immigration reform bill that helps restore the nation’s role as being the Land of Opportunity for all.

 

 

 

national news, political news

Thanks, Sen. Sessions, for taking impeachment away

U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., says the Senate won’t impeach President Obama over his use of executive authority.

That’s awfully big of the senator.

Except for one thing: Impeachment doesn’t originate in the Senate.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/gop-senator-doesnt-plan-to-impeach-obama/ar-BBf7jQk

Impeachment begins in the House of Representatives. If the loons in the House have their way, the Senate gets to put the president on trial for whatever charges the House decides to bring against the president.

The Huffington Post reported Sessions’s remarks this way: “No, we’re not going to impeach President Obama. Or have a move to impeach,’ Sessions said at a Heritage Foundation event and then added, ‘The president has certain powers and we truly believe — and I think it’s accurate to say that he abused those powers.'”

Clear as mud, yes?

Actually, the president didn’t “abuse” his power as chief executive of the federal government. He acted within his constitutional authority. He merely riled his Republican “friends” to the point of apoplexy — which isn’t all that surprising, given the political climate that hovers over the nation’s capital.

I hope the idiotic fringe element of the House of Reps — along with their allies in the conservative mainstream media — takes Sessions’s declaration seriously and ends this nonsensical talk about impeachment. The new majority in both houses of Congress needs to demonstrate an ability to govern.

Remember?

 

State news

Gov.-elect Abbott saying (far) right things

Texas Gov.-elect Greg Abbott, once upon a time, was considered a mainstream Republican. Reasoned, cautious, yet dedicated to basic conservative principles of smaller government and low taxes.

Then he got bit by the tea party bug.

The state’s next governor now declares he plans to sue President Obama over that executive order issued this week that delays deportation of 5 million illegal immigrants, more than 1 million of whom live in Texas.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/11/21/abbott-obamas-order-violates-constitutional-provis/

The Texas Tribune reports: “In a statement, Abbott said Obama’s order ‘circumvented Congress and deliberately bypassed the will of the American people. I am prepared to immediately challenge President Obama in court, securing our state’s sovereignty and guaranteeing the rule of law as it was intended under the Constitution,’ Abbott added.”

Well, consider this for just a moment. President George H.W. Bush in 1990 issued an executive order that did the very same thing for 1.5 million illegal immigrants. Bush, a Republican, did it for compassionate reasons. Didn’t the current president cite compassion for families in issuing his own order?

Where, dare I ask, were the calls of indignation when President Bush issued the executive order? It was done quietly, with little fanfare.

That was then. Today’s climate seems to require fanfare, blustering, posturing, finger-pointing, threats and challenges.

Therein perhaps lies the crux of what’s going on here.

Greg Abbott, the once reflective and deliberative man of the bench, has become just as shrill as the rest of what has become the “mainstream” Texas Republican Party.

 

national news, political news

How dare Obama quote Scripture!

You know, if I had given it a moment’s worth of thought, I might have been able to predict that one conservative mainstream media outlet would criticize the president of the United States for quoting Scripture.

The thought didn’t cross my mind. Then I saw this item from Media Matters, an acknowledged liberal watchdog organization.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/11/21/now-fox-amp-friends-is-upset-that-obama-is-quot/201665

(Check out the link where Elizabeth Hasselbeck says she “got goosebumps” when President Reagan cited Scripture back in 1981.)

They chided “Fox and Friends” for criticizing President Obama for having the utter gall to quote the Bible when talking about his executive order regarding immigration reform. Why, those “Fox and Friends” talking heads just couldn’t understand how the president — whom they have criticized in the past for his alleged failure to acknowledge his Christian faith — could do such a thing in this context.

I need to stop hyperventilating.

There.

Let’s understand something about the 44th president. He’s declared time and again that he believes Jesus Christ is his savior. He reads the Bible and has been a Church of Christ member for, oh, a long time. Barack Obama also uses Scripture passages frequently when making some point, just as all of his predecessors — from both political parties — have done since the beginning of the Republic.

May we stop applying these ridiculous double standards when analyzing the president’s statements on public policy?

OK. I’ve made the request for fairness in covering these things. I’m quite sure no one at Fox News will give it any consideration.

 

 

Uncategorized

Emotion has taken over … for now

Emotion is such an undefinable trait, or perhaps it has too many definitions to be pigeonholed.

It’s persistent, treacherous, tender, strong, fragile, tricky, elusive, simple, complicated.

How do you define it? I cannot. All of the above? I’ll settle for that.

Know this. My emotions in the past week have gripped me tightly because we lost a furry pet. Our 12-year-old cat died suddenly and apparently without trauma in my study. Socks was his name. He had several favorite sleeping places and one of them was atop a table next to my desk. That’s where he died.

I told my wife just this morning that I still have difficulty — one week later — talking about him. I cannot do so without choking up. But I can write about losing him.

Pets have this way of taking over your heart. Cats and dogs are inherently different, but they share a common ability to capture your heart. Socks and his sister, Mittens did that when we brought them home in the summer of 2002. Little Toby, our pooch, did it more recently when he came into our lives just a few months ago.

I know that losing a pet isn’t quite like losing a member of one’s human family. That’s happened, too, of course.

At many levels, though, pets do become part of the family. Socks was a big part of ours. He had a dominant personality, which he exhibited with extreme affection whenever and wherever possible — which means all … the … time. He was lovable and sweet. He loved to be kissed and he absolutely relished human contact. Aren’t cats supposed to be aloof and snooty? Not this one. Not by a long shot.

To be honest, he was unlike any other pet I’ve ever “owned.” I qualify the term because in that strange sense that no one can quite define, Socks and Mittens in fact have owned my wife and me. In the past couple of months, ever since Toby’s arrival, Mittens has begun to assert herself. She’s coming out of her scaredy-cat shell. Good for her.

Well, we shall go on. My wife and are full-fledged adults equipped with all the requisite adult emotions. We’ll get through this loss.

It’s just going to take a little while.

 

 

national news, political news

When in doubt, House, sue

Congress is going to court with the president of the United States.

The House of Representatives filed its long-awaited lawsuit against Barack Obama, contending the president misused his executive authority to “rewrite the law” regarding the Affordable Care Act.

I’ll stipulate that I’m no constitutional lawyer, but I’ll bet the farm that Obama didn’t break the law.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/house-files-obamacare-lawsuit-113089.html?hp=b1_l1

He did what the Constitution empowers him to do.

It’s curious, too, that Congress filed the suit the day after Obama delivered that long awaited executive order on immigration, although the lawsuit deals with the ACA exclusively. I guess Speaker John Boehner just couldn’t take it any longer.

The lawsuit, along with the talk of impeachment, is utter nonsense.

Boehner is grandstanding in the worst possible way. It’s not even clear the court will hear the lawsuit, let alone allow to go to trial and be decided by a jury.

The most hilarious aspect of this lawsuit are the claims by Republicans that the president is “overusing” the executive authority granted to him. It’s funny because Obama has signed fewer executive orders than almost any of his immediate predecessors. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, the most recent two-term Republican presidents, signed more. Where was the outcry then?

We’ll now get to see how this circus plays out.

Meanwhile, some serious legislating needs to get done. How about seeing the GOP craft a bill on, say, immigration and health care? They say they can do better. Let’s have it.

 

International news

House intel panel dismisses Benghazi myths

Well, shut my mouth and dip me in sesame seeds. A key congressional committee has determined that the CIA officials who responded to the terror attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya were “heroes,” and not goats.

Perhaps you’ve heard the term “Benghazi.” It’s become a mantra for those interested in condemning the State Department over its action relating to the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the diplomatic compound in the Libyan city. Four men were killed, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/benghazi-house-intelligence-committee-myths-113107.html?hp=l2_4

Congressional Republicans have wanted to tar then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton over what happened at the compound.

Now we have the House Select Committee on Intelligence dispelling some of the myths associated with the attack and the criticism of the U.S. response to it.

The committee, chaired by Republican Mike Rogers of Michigan, said this, according to Politico: “The committee … found the U.S. government didn’t fail to send assistance to the Americans under siege by Islamic militants and there was no ‘stand down order’ from the State Department. The committee also dismissed the notion that there was an ‘intelligence failure’ the allowed the attacks to occur.

Imagine that. The panel charged with investigating intelligence operations within the government says the attack was what the administration said it was: a chaotic event brought on by a group of terrorists looking to kill Americans.

Will that dissuade the persistent critics who are hell bent on damaging the presidential prospects of the former secretary of state? Don’t hold your breath.

Chairman Rogers, though, has done a service for those around the country — such as yours truly — who have grown weary of congressional witch hunters looking for a scenario that matches the outcome they’ve already determined.

 

 

national news

Long live conspiracy theories?

Conspiracy theories cannot die. They live forever. No matter how much evidence one provides to debunk them, someone else comes along with another notion that breathes new life into these theories.

Assassinations seem to be the most common target — please pardon the poor pun — of conspiracy theorists.

Who killed Lincoln? Or JFK? Or Martin Luther King Jr.? Or RFK?

Let’s throw in whether FDR actually encouraged the attack on Pearl Harbor or whether the feds blew up the World Trade Center on 9/11. Hey, I’ll even mention whether LBJ closed the Amarillo air base simply because he hated the Texas Panhandle.

Well, tomorrow marks the 51st anniversary of President Kennedy’s murder. Guess what? A former Mafia hit man says he — not Lee Harvey Oswald — shot the president to death in Dallas.

http://www.newsmax.com/newswidget/john-kennedy-assassination-confession-mafia/2014/11/20/id/608736/?

The goon’s name is James Files. He told Newsmax TV that he worked with other Mafia guys and actually fired the fatal shot. Newsmax.com’s link attached to this blog post supports the Files-did-it notion.

That’s a new one. He’s been quiet for more than five decades. Now he tells us.

I’ve never been a conspiracy theory addict. Maybe it’s a now-naïve belief that when you assign someone with a serious task, such as determining who killed the Leader of the Free World, that the person or people tasked with that duty will perform all their due diligence and get to the truth.

I believe the commission headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren did the job it was asked to do. It pored over all the evidence it had and determined Oswald was the lone gunman.

I’m betting there is no mention of James Files anywhere to be found.