Monthly Archives: August 2020

religious news

‘No religious test … ‘

How many times do I have to remind religious zealots about what Article VI of the U.S. Constitution says about how “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States”?

Don’t answer that. I’ll keep saying it for as long as it takes.

While skimming through the TV channels this evening I ventured onto a news channel and listened to a former football coach say that Joe Biden is a “Catholic in name only.” Lou Holtz, the former Notre Dame coach, was speaking on behalf of Donald Trump but then decided he knows what is in the heart of Joe Biden.

Yep, Coach Holtz went far beyond the Xs and Os of drawing a football play and straight into territory where he doesn’t belong.

Donald Trump has declared that Biden is “anti-God” and “anti-Bible.” The practicing Catholic would destroy our faith, according to a president who has no relationship with any religious faith.

I am going to circle back to what the Constitution instructs us. It is a secular document written by men who took great pains to keep religion far away from the government they were creating. Article VI is as crystal clear as it gets. No candidate for public office should be required to adhere to any religious faith.

Biden doesn’t run away from his Catholicism. He flaunts it. He carries Rosary beads. He smears ash on his forehead to commemorate Ash Wednesday every spring. He is free to do that. He would be free to not do it as well.

The Constitution doesn’t require us to attend any house of worship. If it did, well, Donald Trump wouldn’t qualify as a presidential candidate. You know what I mean?

So, for Lou Holtz to step into a religious thicket by hurling an epithet at a man of faith is reprehensible. Stick to talking football, coach. Take a look, too, at what the Constitution’s Article VI instructs us.

national news

Bipartisan chops serve Biden well

Jeff Flake once served in the U.S. Senate. He is a Republican and reportedly a self-proclaimed proud “conservative” Republican at that.

He is going to support Democrat Joe Biden’s bid to become president of the United States.

Former Sen. Flake is not alone among Republicans who are backing the former vice president in his bid to unseat Donald Trump from the White House.

Former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a former House member, spoke at the Democratic National Convention. So did former GOP Rep. Susan Molinari and former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman and former Secretary of State Colin Powell. They all are principled Republicans who believe that the president is unfit for office. They want him defeated.

It’s a bit of overstatement to declare that Joe Biden is uniquely qualified by virtue of his many friends on the Republican side of the chasm that splits the parties. Other politicians have been able to reach across the aisle when the need arose. Presidents Bush 41 and 43 did so, as did President Clinton, President Johnson and President Reagan. President Obama had limited success in that regard, but he did have Vice President Biden at his side to pave the way on occasion.

I mention this because it appears to me that Biden well might be able to harvest a good bit of GOP support as he continues his campaign against Donald Trump. We all have noticed occasional cracks in the GOP armor, with Sen. Mitt Romney being openly critical of Trump, as have Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. Of course we cannot know how they will vote when the time comes. The Constitution allows Americans to vote in secret. Indeed, I often find it intrusive even to ask a politician how they intend to vote. These decisions ought to be intensely personal.

I remain committed to the notion that good government requires bipartisan compromise and the constant search for common ground. Joe Biden’s lengthy public service career is full of examples of how he has sought commonality with politicians with whom he disagrees. Such a record would serve him — and the nation — well if he becomes president of the United States.

Joe Biden’s bipartisan street cred is beyond dispute, which makes him — among many reasons too numerous to count — preferable to the incumbent in this presidential election.

local news

Be safe, friends … and others

We have some dear friends on the Texas Gulf Coast who are made of mighty stern stuff, as are all the residents living from Orange all the way down the coast to Corpus Christi … and beyond.

They have been fighting, along with the rest of the nation, the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now they are facing another sort of wrath delivered by Mother Nature.

Hurricane Laura is bearing down on the Golden Triangle, which comprises the territory around and including the cities of Beaumont, Port Arthur and Orange. Our friends live throughout the region. The National Weather Service has just elevated Laura to a Category 4 storm, which it defines as “very dangerous.”

I am hearing from a number of my friends. They’re vowing to power through it. One family that lives in Orange County is high-tailing it to the Hill Country to stay with their son while the storm comes calling. They remain confident their house will survive.

Another friend in Beaumont tells me not to worry, that they’ve been through this before, they’ll go through it again and that he is fully stocked with cold beer and ice for his other adult beverages. OK, dude. Be safe as well.

I am proud of their toughness and their fortitude. My pride in them does not forestall our concern for their safety.

Many of them will read these words. So this message is directed to them as they prepare to face the storm that will bring high wind, plenty of rain and that dreaded storm surge off the Gulf that might sweep as far as 30 miles from the shoreline.

We went through a few of those storms ourselves during our nearly 11 years of living in Beaumont. I have plenty of empathy for them.

My heart is pounding and hoping everyone in the path of the storm stays safe.

national news

From dark to light

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Joe Biden vows to lead us from the darkness into the light. He says Donald Trump has steered the nation into the proverbial darkness through his incompetence, incoherence and lack of empathy.

Donald Trump says Joe Biden’s policies will result in a loss of guns, God, freedom … and maybe even our very lives.

Who’s version do you prefer? Well, I am all in with Joe Biden. I did manage to watch a lot of this past week’s Democratic National Convention. I could take only one night of the RNC, so my comments about the GOP convention will be based on that first night.

I heard a dark and foreboding tale coming from the likes of Don Jr., his girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle and assorted other fans/toadies/lackeys of the president, all of whom told bald-faced lies about the character of the individual they are facing in the upcoming presidential election.

They are trying to paint Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris with the far-left progressive/socialist paint brush.

What about them? Let’s see: Biden was elected to the Senate in 1972; he made friends with Republicans and Democrats; he served as chair or ranking member on the Judiciary and Foreign Relations committees; he crafted legislation that protected women and sought to toughen federal laws against certain crimes. He also endorsed the Defense of Marriage Act, which chaps progressives’ hides. He was in a position to lead efforts to take away our guns, but didn’t do it. Nor did he do anything that diminished the role of religion in people’s lives.

As vice president, he helped craft the Affordable Care Act, he led the fight against the Ebola pandemic and sought greater accountability from government agencies.

Man, that’s scary stuff.

What about Sen. Harris? She was a career prosecutor. She served as California attorney general before being elected to the Senate in 2016. A prosecutor and an AG? Does that speak to a career aimed at disarming Americans or taking God out of our homes?

The RNC no doubt is going to paint Biden and Harris as monstrous cretins. They’re both well-educated, seasoned in the mechanics of government and are battle-tested.

I’ll get to this God matter in a blog post in the near future. For now I want merely to challenge the assertion that Joe Biden is beholden to far-left ideologues. Indeed, for Donald Trump to suggest any sort of fealty to ideology — given his own penchant for tilting toward right-wing TV talking heads — is laughable on its face.

Except that I ain’t laughing. Neither should anyone else.

national news

RNC: one and done

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OK, ladies and gentlemen.

I’ve seen all of the Republican National Convention I can stomach. I won’t be watching any more of it. I saw a good bit of it Monday night.

It’s one and done for yours truly.

Now, none of this is a surprise to anyone who reads this blog. My mind is made up. I do not need to see Donald Trump make his special appearances each night of the four-night convention. I won’t listen to his allies proclaim that life is good on his watch. I know better. So do you … I hope.

We’re in the middle of a pandemic. Donald Trump didn’t cause it. However, the deaths of 177,000 Americans should be on his hands. Why? His pitiful initial response to the pandemic has produced far greater rates of infection, illness and death than imaginable in the world’s most technically advanced nation.

We’re all but isolated these days. At least my wife and I are living almost like recluses out of fear of getting infected by a virus that, um, can kill us!

So, you see, life ain’t so good on Donald Trump’s watch.

Of course, there’s also all the rest of it. The lying. The innuendo. The trashing of our international alliances. The name-calling. The incessant Twitter tirades. The bizarre revolving door in the administration.

Nope. I’m done with this RNC.

I now intend to do whatever I can to ensure this guy loses the election and that we can elect Joe Biden as the next president. And spare me the dark, dismal predictions of dark days ahead. No way it can get any worse than what we’re experiencing at this very moment.

International news, national news, political news

What about the ‘water’s edge,’ Mr. Secretary?

The late great Republican U.S. Sen. Arthur Vandenberg coined the maxim that “politics stops at the water’s edge.”

That was his way of saying that in the pursuit of foreign policy, we shouldn’t quibble over partisan matters, that we’re all Americans regardless of political affiliation.

I want to extend that notion a bit farther. Secretaries of state shouldn’t engage in partisan politicking while they are representing U.S. interests abroad, either.

Listen up, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, I’m talking about you!

Pompeo is going to speak to the Republican National Convention tonight while he is in Jerusalem, ostensibly talking to Israeli leaders about this and that … such as crafting a comprehensive Middle East peace.

What the hell is he doing talking to the RNC about a partisan political matter, such as re-electing Donald J. Trump?

I know there’s nothing illegal about what Pompeo will do. Legality, though, doesn’t make it right. Thus, the secretary of state speaking to a partisan convention about a political matter just doesn’t pass the proverbial smell test.

This, I submit, is just one more time-honored tradition that Donald Trump has managed to destroy.

national news, religious news

Falwell is out, then he’s in, now he’s out … again

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

See ya around, Jerry Falwell Jr. Whatever this guy does, I hope he doesn’t hurry back.

Falwell got kicked out of his job as president of Liberty University, one of the nation’s leading faith-based institutions of higher learning. Why? Because he posed in a tacky picture with his pants unzipped in the presence of a woman who reportedly is an associate of Jerry Falwell’s wife. It was conduct unbecoming of a religious leader, said the Liberty governing board.

Then we hear that Falwell got entangled in a weird sexual threesome with, get this, his wife and a pool guy who is a whole lot younger than Mrs. Falwell. It seems that Jerry Falwell liked to watch his wife and the pool guy engage in sex acts … allegedly.

Falwell then resigned from Liberty; then he said he did no such thing; now he says he is out.

First of all, I believe the allegation of the three-way with the Falwells and the pool guy. If there was nothing to it, do you think Jerry Jr. would quit without a fight, that he wouldn’t want to clear what’s left of his name and that of his formerly adoring wife?

Second, given that I believe the reports about this sickening story, I am not the least bit surprised that Jerry Jr. would be such an adamant supporter of the moral reprobate who now serves as president of the United States, Donald Trump. It’s like these two individuals are made for each other: one guy who gets his kicks watching his wife take a tumble with another man, the other guy — a serial philanderer — who once bragged about how he could grab women by their genitals.

Third, this story only goes to show how the fruit really doesn’t fall far from the tree. I mean, Junior’s dad, the late Jerry Falwell Sr. — the founder of Liberty University — sought to defame the character of two notable politicians by alleging that Bill and Hillary Clinton were complicit in the deaths of close aides, friends and associates. The elder Falwell, indeed, gave evangelical Christianity a bad name.

And so … this disgusting story has taken yet another weird turn.

Is there more to learn about the conduct of this so-called “religious leader”? I am all ears.

religious news

Falwell Jr. needs to find another line of work

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Jerry Falwell Jr. reportedly quit as president of Liberty University.

Then he said he has done nothing of the sort. He’s still there, although he’s been removed from his job as president/chancellor.

So, the son of the Christian college’s founder — Jerry Falwell Sr. — has a “job,” but he’s not doing it. He remains on the payroll.

Oh, I guess I need to mention why all the tempest.

The LU board relieved Falwell of his duties because of a hideous picture of him with his pants unzipped, his gut hanging out of an unbuttoned shirt and in the company of a woman Falwell said is a close family friend.

Then came a hideous allegation that Falwell would watch his wife engage in sexual acts with a man with whom she was having an affair. Oh, brother!

Is that how the leader of a prestigious faith-based university should behave? Of course not! However, it is kind of in keeping with the behavior of one of Falwell’s major political allies … Donald John Trump. Falwell has been an ardent supporter of Trump, who quite naturally has been silent on the trouble that has befallen this evangelical Christian leader.

Well, if someone appointed me King of the World, I would order Falwell to pack up his office at Liberty, vacate the campus and look for something else to do.

My trick knee is telling me this story ain’t nearly over.

national news

Biden a ‘far lefty’? Huh?

Stop it, Mr. President. You’re killin’ me!

You’re now trying to paint Joe Biden as some sort of squishy far-left, socialist-leaning, open-borders guy who will take our guns from us and appoint wacky loons to the federal judiciary.

Forgive the candor, Mr. President … but I think you’re off your rocker.

The first signs of the kind of campaign you are going to wage against the former vice president are coming into sharper focus now that the Republican National Convention has commenced.

I don’t listen to you when you speak on my TV. If I don’t turn the TV off I’ll mute the volume, given that you have nothing — not a single damn thing — to say that I want to hear.

However, the media report what you say and I do read media reports. They say you’re accusing Biden — an establishment Democrat if there ever was one — of adhering to some far-left idiocy.

I think of all the things you have accused Biden of supporting, I laugh the hardest at the open-borders assertion. Jumpin’ jiminy, Mr. POTUS, no reasonable American wants to throw open our borders. Indeed, the term “open borders” implies no enforcement of immigration laws, no intercepting of undocumented immigrants. Has the former VP ever said anything that suggests such nonsense? Umm. Let me think. No. He hasn’t.

Yet you keep yapping that he wants open borders. That he’s now a tool of the far left.

You seek to denigrate Biden the way you did to Hillary Clinton. The former vice president is trading on his decency, on his compassion, on the very virtues that you lack. That will be his staunchest defense against the scurrilous attacks you are going to launch against him.

So, I cannot wish you “luck” in your effort to defame a decent — and knowledgeable — political foe. I will turn away from you whenever you spout that nonsense and I intend fully to call attention to the lies you spew whenever they fly out of your mouth.

See you in the funny papers, Mr. President.