Monthly Archives: June 2019

national news

39th POTUS lowers the boom on No. 45

James Earl Carter made a little news today.

I don’t know if it’s ever happened before, but the 39th president of the United States likely is the first former president to question the legitimacy of the current president.

And to think it came from someone — President Carter — who has said publicly that he prays for Donald Trump to succeed while he is serving as president of the United States. Indeed, Carter recently spoke of a phone call he took from Trump in which the president, according to his predecessor, could not have been more gracious, kind and respectful.

Has the former president turned on the current guy in the White House? President Carter said the Russian attack on our election in 2016 was intended to elect Donald Trump. It succeeded. Without the Russian interference, according to Carter, Trump would have lost the election to Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Most remarkable of all, perhaps, is that Vladimir Putin has actually said on the record that he interfered for the expressed purpose of electing Donald Trump.

Therefore, in the former president’s mind, Donald Trump is an “illegitimate” president.

To my way of thinking, the idea that such a condemnation would come from a man of impeccable integrity gives this accusation added gravitas. Of course, one must take into account the undeniable fact that Jimmy Carter likely isn’t privy to the details of what might have occurred while the Russians were attacking our electoral process.

Still, the former president has sounded a stern word of condemnation about one of his presidential successors. We should not dismiss it out of hand.

International news

Electoral attack is no laughing matter, Mr. POTUS

Mr. President, you need to understand something that I am utterly certain is beyond your level of understanding … but I’ll offer it anyway.

You must understand that an attack on our electoral system is an attack on the very framework of our representative democracy. Therefore, for you to seemingly joke and kid with the perpetrator of the 2016 attack on our presidential election — your tyrant/pal Vlad Putin — is so far beyond the pale that it defies logic at any level.

You sat there next to Putin and when asked by a reporter whether you have warned him against meddling in our election, you seemed to take it less than seriously. I understand you said you told him to stop meddling and when Putin heard the translation, the killer grinned, as you did.

Funny stuff, Mr. President? Actually, it’s about as serious as it gets.

I am one American who is horrified at your cavalier attitude toward this Russian meddling. Special counsel Robert Mueller said the attack was so pervasive, so systematic, so thorough that it should concern “every American.” Hey, that means you, too, Mr. President.

I watched that interview you had with Bill O’Reilly in which the Fox News anchor said that “Putin’s a killer.” Your response was hideous and horrifying in the extreme. You then sought to suggest that the country you were seeking to govern also had committed atrocities on a par with what Putin has done.

This demonstration you put on in Osaka at the G20 meeting this week, joking and grinning with Vlad about Russian interference in our sacrosanct electoral system only goes to illustrate what many of us believe about you.

It is that you don’t give a damn about the country you were elected to govern.

Forgive me for repeating myself, but I want you out of the Oval Office at the earliest possible moment. You are presenting and clear and present danger to the United States of America.

national news

Biden stumbles, but he didn’t knock himself out

Well, there you go. Former Vice President Joe Biden had to know one of his presidential campaign foes would come after him for his vote on busing and his tepid acknowledgement of working with segregationist senators back in the day.

Still, he seemed flummoxed when Sen. Kamala Harris challenged him directly during last night’s Democratic presidential debate on the busing matter. Biden’s response was that he voted against the busing measure in the Senate only because it was being dictated by the Department of Education.

Still, Harris came off as the winner of that exchange. Biden, the clear frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, came up short.

Is this the end of Biden’s bid? Hardly.

Leave it to former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican no less, to put it in perspective, which he did this morning.

Christie noted that in 1984, President Reagan suffered through a terrible debate performance against former VP Walter Mondale while campaigning for re-election; Reagan stumbled, bumbled and mumbled his way through forgetful efforts to answer questions. He also noted that President Obama had a horrible debate showing against Mitt Romney in 2012 when he was running for re-election.

They both came back, Christie said, with Reagan winning re-election in a 49-state landslide and Obama winning a second term with a surprisingly comfortable margin.

The message? One stumble does not doom a presidential candidacy. It’s still early and Joe Biden will have plenty of opportunity to regain his footing.

national news

Don’t count Beto out just yet

I guess the preliminary verdict is in regarding the first of two Democratic Party presidential primary debates. Texan Beto O’Rourke might have suffered the most serious wounds from the encounter.

I agree that O’Rourke, the former congressman from El Paso, didn’t sound sharp. He got caught flat-footed when former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro went after him over immigration reform; then we had that strange Spanish riff that seemed a bit gimmicky to many listeners’ ears.

However, I am not going to sound the death knell over O’Rourke’s candidacy. That might come, just not quite yet.

O’Rourke appears to be learning how to campaign nationally as he goes along. He ran for the U.S. Senate in Texas without employing any pollsters, or much of a professional campaign staff — and he still came within a whisker of knocking Ted Cruz out of office in 2018.

That first debate did produce some highlights for several candidates: Castro, Hawaii U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Massachusetts U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, New York Mayor Bill DiBlasio, New Jersey U.S. Sen. Cory Booker all scored well.

Beto? He took some body punches. Some of his wounds were self-inflicted.

Remember this: The campaign is just getting started. The candidates have a long way to go. It’s no time for Beto to bail.

State news

Welcome back to the arena, Mr. Speaker

I am so glad to see this bit of news about a former speaker of the Texas House of Representatives.

Joe Straus has kicked in $2.5 million from his campaign treasure chest to form a political action committee that is going to fight for the “soul” of the Texas Republican Party.

What does that mean? It means that Straus is going to use his influence to persuade Texas GOP politicians to concentrate more on actual policy matters and less on divisive social issues. He wants the money he has pledged to promote GOP candidates who will be more focused on reasonable issues.

He cites health care and public education as the issues he wants the Republican Party to focus on going forward.

This is good news. Why? Well, I am one Texan who will be forever grateful for the kill shot that Straus — from San Antonio — fired during the 2017 Legislature that took down a ridiculous piece of legislation that cleared the Texas Senate but died a quick death in the House.

I refer to the Bathroom Bill, an item pushed by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. The Bathroom Bill would have required people to use public restrooms according to their gender at birth; the aim, quite obviously, was to disallow transgendered individuals from using restrooms that comport with their current gender.

Gov. Greg Abbott placed the Bathroom Bill on the 2017 Legislature’s special session agenda after the regular session adjourned. Straus was having none of it, to which I stood and applauded the then-speaker.

He wants to restore some additional sanity to the political discourse in Texas. He is taking aim at his own political party, which I am presuming he believes has been hijacked by social conservatives who want to enact discriminatory legislation … such as the Bathroom Bill.

As the Texas Standard has reported: Brandon Rottinghaus, professor of political science at the University of Houston, says Straus’ new PAC is likely part of a larger Republican movement toward the center.

“That’s been a result of some campaigns and the election that just passed where a lot of soul searching has been done in the Republican Party,” Rottinghaus says. “I think that’s the subtext for this.”

I hope he is correct. I also hope that Speaker Straus can talk some sense into his Republican colleagues, persuading them to steer away from the lunacy that too often drives them to produce legislation such as the Bathroom Bill.

local news

City grapples with charting its own destiny

My education into the community my wife and I call home has taken a major step forward, courtesy of an assignment I completed for KETR-FM radio’s website.

I wrote a story about Princeton, Texas’s struggles to enact a home rule charter, and how four ballot box failures have kept the city functioning under laws established by the state of Texas.

Read the KETR-FM story here.

It is, to say the very least, one of the more peculiar municipal conflicts I have ever seen.

The city, dating back to 2007, has had four municipal elections that sought a city charter. It has fallen short every time. The opposition to home rule comes from a group of residents with specific bones to pick with City Hall. They express concern over tax policy and over annexation.

One of the leaders of the opposition, Michael Biggs, doesn’t even live within the city limits. He resides just south of the city, which means he cannot vote in these elections. Still, he is able to persuade enough of the city’s voters to go along with his opposition to enacting a city charter.

The city assesses a municipal tax rate of 68 cents per $100 assessed property valuation. A charter would enable the city to levy a tax of as much as $2.50 per $100. City Manager Derek Borg told me that possibility is a complete non-starter; it won’t happen, not ever!

Annexation is the bigger bogeyman for the anti-charter folks. They don’t want the city to envelop their property. What fascinates me, though, is that the city cannot do it without property owners’ permission, which apparently doesn’t assuage the concern of those who oppose the charter idea.

I am perplexed, indeed, that the city cannot seem to muster enough electoral support within its corporate limits to overcome the opposition that stifles City Hall’s effort to establish a home rule charter. The election returns I’ve seen reveal abysmal voter turnout in a city of several thousand residents.

The most recent measure, which failed in May 2014, went down to defeat by a vote of 260 to 151 ballots. The 2010 census put the population of Princeton at roughly 6,800 residents, which means that half of those residents were eligible to vote in the municipal election. Most of them weren’t interested enough to cast their ballots.

State law places plenty of restrictions on how cities can govern themselves. They surrender a good bit of “local control” to legislative fiat.

In my view that is no way to run a city. Maybe one day — and I hope it is soon — Princeton will be able to write its own rules for how it charts its own future.

national news

Beto breaks the ice … but why?

Beto O’Rourke managed to stand out from the crowd of 10 Democrats running for president of the United States.

The former congressman from El Paso, though, did so in one of the stranger manners I’ve seen.

O’Rourke took part in that NBC/MSNBC debate with half of a large slate of Democrats running for president. He took a question about whether he would support taxing rich Americans as much as 70 percent. He started to provide an answer in English — and then spoke Spanish for several moments.

I sat there in front of my TV here in Princeton, Texas, wondering: What in the world did he just say? 

To this very moment I don’t know whether O’Rourke favors increasing the tax rate or whether he opposes it. His answer in Spanish, I am going to presume, was meant to endear him to the Latino population throughout the nation that likely will play an important role in nominating the next Democratic candidate for president and then deciding on whether than nominee deserves to be elected in November 2020 to the presidency.

But what about the rest of us, Beto? What did you say?

As some commentators have noted already, Beto’s Spanish-language riff seemed a bit contrived and a tad too gimmicky.

I am inclined to give the young man another chance. It wasn’t a deal breaker for me. I just want to be kept in the loop on the messages that our presidential candidates are trying to deliver.

Beto had me … and then he lost me.

national news

Yep, the biggest threat to the nation is its president

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee drew the biggest round of cheers tonight with what might have come off as a quip, but which — the more I think about it — now sounds like the brutal truth.

He and the nine other Democratic presidential candidates gathered on the debate stage in Miami were asked to name the greatest geopolitical threat to the United States: Inslee said it is Donald John Trump.

Not Russia. Nor the People’s Republic of China. Or Iran. Or terrorist organizations. Or even climate change, which happens to be Inslee’s signature campaign issue.

He said the biggest threat is the president of the United States of America. I agree with him.

Donald Trump is systematically destroying our alliances with Europe, with Asia, with Latin America. He’s gone after Australia and Canada, for crying out loud!

Donald Trump has isolated the nation from the rest of a shrinking world. He cozies up to tyrants — Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin being the most notable. He challenges the nation’s intelligence network’s findings. He makes foreign and domestic policy pronouncements via Twitter, without advising his senior policy  advisers.

Trump has burned through two national security advisers. He is talking openly about possible war with Iran without a defense secretary on board. He is reportedly losing patience with his third White House chief of staff.

Yes, Gov. Inslee was right. Donald Trump has become the greatest existential threat to the very nation he was elected to govern.

Wow!

legal news

A loud ‘no!’ on private prisons

Ten of the 25 Democrats running for president have touched tonight on an issue that hits one of my hot buttons: private prisons.

I oppose the concept, the principle, the very idea of farming out the incarceration of prisoners to for-profit companies. My reasons aren’t commonly expressed by politicians who share my views on private prisons.

My take is this:

If we’re going to spend public money to pay police officers to arrest criminal suspects, then spend public money to pay prosecuting attorneys to win convictions in publicly funded courtrooms, then we ought to finish that loop by spending public money to incarcerate these individuals.

Whether they commit white-collar crimes, or any sort of violent crime — and that includes capital crimes — a society that insists on spending enough money to arrest and prosecute criminals should also insist on providing sufficient funds to hold them behind bars for as long as their sentence allows.

Some politicians — and that includes the president of the United States — keep espousing in public the idea that private prisons are somehow OK.

They are not OK, in my humble view. We need to ensure full public accountability for the manner in which they are housed. Private prisons certainly are subject to public review. I just believe it is imperative that we keep that duty in the hands of public institutions, whether it’s at the county, state or federal level.

I’ve never had a problem with building prisons when the lockups get too crowded. Nor do I have a problem with ensuring that the public fulfills its responsibility to the individuals who have paid for their arrest and prosecution.

national news

If I could ask Mueller one question …

I want to look for a moment past the Democratic primary presidential debate that’s coming up. My attention at the moment is riveted on an upcoming appearance by Robert Mueller before the U.S. House Judiciary and Select Intelligence committees.

He is going to make public statements before both panels and then will take questions in private. He is going to talk to the nation about the conclusions he reached regarding Donald Trump’s involvement with Russians who attacked  our electoral system during the 2016 presidential campaign.

He concluded that the president’s campaign did not conspire to collude with the Russians who dug up dirt on Hillary Clinton. He also said that despite evidence of obstruction of justice, he declined to issue a formal complaint against the president; he left that resolution up to Congress. He said in that nine-minute statement he read a few weeks ago that rules and policy prohibited him from indicting a “sitting president.”

I heard this notion come from a former federal prosecutor, but I’ll appropriate it here in this blog. I want the former special counsel to answer this question:

If you were not constrained by Office of Legal Counsel rules and prohibitions against indicting a president, would you have indicted Donald Trump on charges that he obstructed justice?

Mueller can answer such an inquiry any number of ways. If he says “no,” that he wouldn’t have indicted the president, well, that statement would stand on its own.

However, were he to provide an answer that stops short of a flat “no,” he well might say something like this, “I will not respond to a hypothetical circumstance. I deal only with what I know.”

Then again, the former FBI director could answer “yes, I would have issued an indictment.” Suppose, though, he demurs with the “hypothetical” non-answer, that opens the door to supposition that he doesn’t want to reveal his desire — under that circumstance — to file a formal complaint against the president of the United States.

You want high political drama in a congressional hearing room? Robert Mueller’s decision to appear before two key House committees in response to a subpoena is about to deliver it.

I am waiting with bated breath.