Monthly Archives: January 2020

national news

Just wondering: How did ‘Judge’ Cornyn handle witness questions?

I feel the need to focus for a moment on one of the U.S. Senate’s 100 “jurors” presiding over the impeachment trial of Donald John Trump, the current president of the United States.

He is Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican, and the senior senator from Texas. He is aligned with the president. Cornyn remains one of Donald Trump’s allies in the Senate. He has resisted calls for witnesses to be heard in the Senate trial. I wonder why.

My curiosity is based on Cornyn’s professional history.

He once served as Texas attorney general, as a member of the Texas Supreme Court and, oh yes, as a trial court judge in the 37th Judicial District in Bexar County.

I know Sen. Cornyn. He and I have spoken several times over the years. I always have found him to be an engaging, occasionally affable fellow. However, I cannot grasp why a man with trial court experience would allow himself to be snookered into the goofy notion that a presidential impeachment trial need not include new witnesses.

Did he prohibit witnesses while presiding over a trial in San Antonio? I have never asked him directly, but I know the answer. It is hell no!

The impeachment trial isn’t quite the same as a judicial trial, but it ought to operate on many of the same tenets adopted for any judicial proceeding. One of them should include the calling of witnesses and additional evidentiary documents.

Why, then, is Sen. Cornyn turning his back on his own experience, knowledge and understanding of a trial?

national news

Worst fears of POTUS have come true

I sought repeatedly during the 2016 presidential campaign and thereafter to drive home a fundamental point about Donald John Trump.

It is that the current president of the United States had contributed not a single moment of his adult life to public service, that his entire mission in life was focused solely on self-enrichment, self-aggrandizement, self-promotion.

I am saddened to declare that I believe many millions of Americans’ worst fears about this president have come true.

A new book, “Very Stable Genius,” appears to confirm what this blog has sought to put forth. Donald Trump’s presidency is built on one premise: to do whatever is necessary to boost the fortunes of the president of the United States.

I’ve read a few excerpts of the book, written by Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker. I plan to purchase it when it goes on sale this week.

The book reportedly bristles with reporting about examples of the president dismissing the advice and counsel of his key advisers. He ignores and disparages the military commanders who surround him. He handles his own communications operation. He listens to no one. Trump relies only on his own instincts.

The president’s attention span is reportedly comparable to that of a gnat. He doesn’t read. He doesn’t study. He doesn’t learn. Donald Trump doesn’t ask probing questions.

As I have sought to lay out there from this platform, the man elected three years ago to the only public office he has ever sought has not grown into the office. Trump hasn’t learned anything about governance.

Leonnig and Rucker reportedly have revealed what many of us have believed all along. I am not going to say “I told you so,” but by golly, the temptation to do so surely exists.

Oh well. I guess I just did.

national news

Impeachment is quite ‘constitutional,’ Mr. President

So, here we go.

Donald John Trump’s legal team has declared that the impeachment articles that will be serve as the basis for a U.S. Senate trial to determine whether Trump keeps his job as the current president of the United States are “unconstitutional.”

What? They can’t be serious!

The impeachment articles alleging abuse of power and obstruction of Congress are as “constitutional” as they can possibly be. How do I know that? Because I have read the Constitution and the process that unfolded in the House of Representatives to produce the impeachment articles followed the Constitution to the letter.

The nation’s governing framework lays out in black and white that the House shall have “sole power” to impeach a president. That’s what it did. The House didn’t break any rules, didn’t violate any law, it didn’t skip any pre-ordained process laid out. The House followed the process to the letter.

Donald Trump solicited the president of Ukraine for a political favor. He wanted Ukraine to launch an investigation into a possible political foe. He then sought to withhold military aid to Ukraine, which is fighting rebels backed by Russia. Right there is your abuse of power, Mr. President.

The second article of impeachment? It involves obstruction of Congress. Trump blocked congressional subpoenas, ordering aides to refuse to answer them. Congress cannot do its oversight duties without being able to summon witnesses to answer questions from House members. So, there is your obstruction of Congress.

It was all done according to the process laid out in the Constitution.

For the Trump legal defense team to offer up a lame “unconstitutional” rationale is ridiculous on its face.

media news

NY Times double endorsement: a head-scratcher

The fuddy-duddy in me is making me scratch my noggin over the New York Times’s decision to split its endorsement in the Democratic Party presidential primary, offering its nod to two of the challengers remaining in the still-large field.

The Times, admitting it was “breaking with convention,” went with U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar for the party’s nomination. Warren is a champion of the party’s liberal/progressive wing, while Klobuchar bears the standard for the party’s more moderate wing. Therefore, the Times figured, why choose just one of ’em? They went with both.

Here’s where this endorsement strategy breaks down for me. Only one of them can emerge as the party nominee this summer. One candidate will get the nomination and will face Donald John Trump, the current president who is seeking re-election.

I am going to presume — and this is no giant leap into the unknown — that the Times likely will endorse whoever is running against Trump. Why won’t the Times take the leap that Democratic voters all across the land in primary states are going to take? They can’t choose two candidates. Voters’ choice is limited to just one.

A few years before resigning from my final job as a daily print journalist I enacted a policy that did away with endorsing in party primaries when there was a contest in the other party. The Amarillo Globe-News decided to make endorsements only in those primary races where there was no candidate waiting for the nominee in the fall. In the Texas Panhandle, that almost always meant that Republicans would have contested primaries while Democratic primaries had no candidates on the ballot.

My thought then was that primary contests generally are the work of political parties. A one-party primary, though, was tantamount to election. Thus, we would weigh in on a primary.

In all the years I interviewed political candidates and wrote editorials offering a newspaper recommendation on who voters ought to choose, I never wrote a two-fer.  My thought always has been that if we’re going to ask voters to make a choice, then the newspaper ought to show the same level of courage … and make a single choice.

Here is the Times editorial: You make the call.

I won’t argue the merits of the candidates’ points of view. I merely question a great newspaper’s decision to hedge on a critically important decision.

military news

USS Doris Miller: What a marvelous honor for a Pearl Harbor hero

Doris Miller was in the right place at the wrong time, I suppose one could say.

On Dec. 7, 1941, Miller was working in the laundry room on the USS West Virginia, a battleship that was moored at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Then all hell broke loose.

Japanese warplanes swooped in over the harbor and hit the West Virginia, along with many other ships and planes. Miller jumped into action. He tended to his mortally wounded ship captain, helped other wounded sailors. Then he strapped himself into a deck gun — a weapon on which he was not qualified — and began firing at enemy aircraft.

He survived that terrifying event. He received a medal from Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz. Miller would die in action in 1943.

But here we are today. The U.S. Navy has announced that it will name a future Gerald R. Ford class nuclear aircraft carrier in honor of Doris Miller.

Yes, the USS Doris Miller will carry the name of the first African-American so honored. It will carry honor a young man who was thrust into a hero’s role in a time of immense national peril and tragedy.

Doris Miller was a native of Waco. I am pleased to see the picture above of Miller receiving a medal from another native Texan: Nimitz hailed from Fredericksburg. Miller was awarded the Navy Cross, the Purple Heart and received a commendation from the Navy secretary at the time for the actions he took on that “date which will live in infamy.” 

The Navy Department chose to make the announcement today to coincide with the nation’s celebration of Martin Luther King Day, a holiday set aside to honor the memory and the work of our great nation’s greatest civil rights champion.

“Doris Miller stood for everything that is good about our nation, and his story deserves to be remembered and repeated wherever our people continue the watch today,” acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly said in a statement.

May they “continue the watch” with the pride and courage exhibited by the young man under whose name they will set sail.

political news

Impeachment about overturning election? No-o-o-o-o! Really?

Can we dispense with the tired — and patently ridiculous — notion that Donald John Trump’s impeachment is meant to “overturn” the results of the last election?

That goofy argument is part of the White House response to the articles of impeachment that the House of Representatives delivered to the Senate, which on Tuesday will commence the trial that will determine whether the current president of the United States keep his job.

I believe I shall remind everyone of a couple of historical facts.

The House Judiciary Committee voted for articles of impeachment against President Nixon in 1974. Nixon quit the presidency on Aug. 9 of that year. He had won re-election in 1972 in a smashing landslide: 49 states, 520 electoral votes, 60 percent of the ballots cast. That impeachment effort would have reversed the outcome of that election, too.

The House impeached President Clinton in 1998. He stood trial in 1999 and was acquitted. Clinton won re-election in 1996 with a handsome margin: 379 electoral votes and a healthy plurality of actual votes. And, yes, that impeachment was intended to overturn an election result, too.

Presidential impeachment by definition are intended to do the very thing that the White House is now accusing the House of doing. I know that House members who voted to impeach the president stand behind high-minded rhetoric about “defending the Constitution.” I believe that is the case here.

However, this act also carries with it a necessary political component, which is that it seeks to correct a ballot-box mistake. Let’s not be coy about this point as well: Trump did not win in anything approaching a landslide. He pulled in nearly 3 million fewer votes than his opponent in 2016 and won because of an adroit end-of-campaign tactic that saw him win three key Rust Belt states that put him over the top in the Electoral College count.

Impeachment is meant to overturn an election? Well, as we used to say in high school: No sh**, Sherlock!

State news

Sanctuary cities for unborn? Oh, my … get ready for the fight

Three Texas communities — Big Spring, Colorado City and Rusk — have thumbed their collective noses at a legal activity that I acknowledge fully has its sworn enemies.

The cities all have created what they are calling “Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn.” They have declared that abortion is illegal in their cities and I will presume women who obtain them are subject to criminal prosecution.

Abortion-rights activists are furious, as they should be. Why? Well, it’s a simple notion, truth be told. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy was legally protected under federal law. Subsequent high court rulings have upheld the landmark Roe v. Wade decision.

Thus, the activity remains legal. Does it produce a desirable outcome? Of course not. However, I am in no position — nor is anyone else, for that matter — to dictate to a woman how she must make such a gut-wrenching decision. That is her call in consultation with her partner, her physician … and her conscience.

The Texas Tribune reports: The American Civil Liberties Union has said it is seeking to strike them down. Three towns — Mineral Wells, Omaha and Jacksboro — have voted down similar ordinances or walked them back under advice from city attorneys.

Big Spring, Colorado City and Rusk haven’t yet made their decisions final.

I am all for local control. I dislike states telling cities and towns that they cannot, for example, install electronic devices to help police enforce traffic laws. However, the U.S. Constitution remains the law of the land and in the case of abortion, the Supreme Court already has stood behind the Constitution as the final arbiter on the inflammatory issue of whether a woman can choose to terminate a pregnancy.

Texas already has told cities they cannot create sanctuaries to shield undocumented immigrants from deportation. Yes, I am aware of the intense political differences between illegal immigration and abortion.

But the Texas cities that are seeking to create “sanctuaries for the unborn” need to prepare for a fight that they should not win.

Sports news

Milking the D/FW connection for all it’s worth

I cannot help but chuckle at the Dallas-Fort Worth media’s concentration on a certain aspect of the American Football Conference champion Kansas City Chiefs, who are heading to the next Super Bowl next month in Miami.

It’s the Dallas connection that gives me a giggle or two.

The Chiefs came into being in 1960 as the Dallas Texans. Then the owner of the franchise moved the team to Kansas City, where they became the Chiefs. The owner was Lamar Hunt, a young Dallas business mogul. He went on to build the Chiefs into an American Football League powerhouse.

The Hunt family has retained its Dallas roots. Lamar Hunt is now deceased. His son, Clark, runs the Chiefs. Clark Hunt still lives in Dallas.

The media are all over the Dallas connection and keep reminding viewers and readers that the Chiefs are actually direct descendants of the team that was born in Dallas but gravitated a bit north nearly 60 years ago.

It’s OK. You have to look for ways to retain interest among viewers and readers. The media here are doing their level best in that regard.

Sports news

So cool to see the KC Chiefs return to the Big Game … 50 years later!

Allow me this moment of pro football joy, given that I don’t really follow the professional game as I used to do when I was a kid.

The Kansas City Chiefs are heading back to the Super Bowl, a game they have played twice. The lost the first one. They won their second game.

Here’s the deal: The first game occurred in 1967 against the Green Bay Packers, who won that contest 35-10 in the very first championship game that didn’t even have the name “Super Bowl” yet attached to it; the Chiefs’ second appearance was in 1970 against the Minnesota Vikings, which the Chiefs won 23-7.

Let’s see. That’s 50 years between that second appearance the game they are going to play soon in Miami against either the Packers or the San Francisco 49ers.

You might know already that I am a diehard American Football Conference fan, particularly of those teams that merged in 1970 with the National Football League. The Chiefs were among those former AFL franchises to join the rival NFL.

So … here we go. Now that you know about my AFC preference, I supposed you can presume — correctly, I should add — that I don’t have a favorite for whom the Chiefs should play in the next Super Bowl. I say that with reluctance, given that I have a very close family member who lives just south of SF Bay and is an avid 49ers fan. Too bad, sis. We all have our bias.

I believe 50 years is more than enough time to lapse between winning the Super Bowl trophy, which now carries the name of the late Vince Lombardi, the legendary Packers coach who, I hasten to add, led the Pack to that initial AFL-NFL championship victory over those long-ago Kansas City Chiefs.

The here and now is upon us. I am delighted to see the Chiefs set to play for the championship of the NFL.

national news

Modern-day hero comes to Biden’s defense

A real-life, modern hero has come to the defense of a politician who in recent times has endured some amazingly cruel taunting over a condition that once plagued him as a child.

Joe Biden once suffered from a debilitating stutter. His political foes are taking aim at him over if, mocking a condition he fought hard to overcome. The latest is Lara Trump, wife of Eric Trump, the son of the current president of the United States.

Lara Trump thought it was clever to implore the former vice president to “get it out,” to finish whatever thought he sought to make. Her crass quip drew scattered laughter from the crowd.

Now comes Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the pilot who landed that jetliner full of passengers on the Hudson River, to Biden’s defense. Sully wrote in a New York Times op-ed essay that he, too, suffered from stuttering while growing up in Denison, Texas. What’s more, he endured bullying, taunting as a child. He wrote that those memories rushed back when he heard about Lara Trump’s taunt.

Sully wrote: This culture of cruelty is what drives decent people from public service, and what makes millions of Americans recoil from politics, and even from participating in our democracy.

Read his essay here.

I have written already about how I feel Joe Biden’s pain. I, too, stuttered as a child and had to endure taunts from junior high school and high school “friends” who found it funny that I couldn’t get certain words out of my mouth. I worked through it all by myself. I got no help.

But my point is that Joe Biden doesn’t deserve to be mocked. He deserves to be honored for the courage he showed in whipping the problem … and in talking openly about it as a prominent American politician. Those who mock him should salute him.