Monthly Archives: October 2020

legal news, national news

Merrick Garland haunts this hearing

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Merrick Garland is very much alive and well but his “ghost” floated throughout the hearing room today as a congressional hearing commenced on an appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee welcomed another federal judge, Amy Coney Barrett, as she began her confirmation hearing to the U.S. Supreme Court. She would take the seat occupied by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in September.

Garland’s role in this drama? Well, he once got nominated to the high court by President Barack Obama. Another justice, Antonin Scalia, died in February 2016 while on vacation in Texas. President Obama wanted to nominate a successor. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wasted no time in declaring his intention to block that effort. Why? Because the voters had a right to be heard before a SCOTUS nomination would be considered by the Senate.

We had a presidential election in 2016. Obama couldn’t run again. It turned out that Donald Trump would win the election. So, Trump got to select someone to succeed Scalia; he chose Neil Gorsuch.

The hypocrisy between then and now is stunning in its scope.

We were 10 months away from the previous election when a vacancy occurred. Now, we’re just 22 days before the next election. Don’t Americans have a right to have their voices heard before the Senate considers a nominee to succeed Ginsburg? Of course we do.

Except that Republicans who at the moment hold the majority of Senate seats are pushing full speed with the Barrett hearing.

Most astonishing of all is the comment that Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham made in 2018. He said then that if an opening occurs during Donald Trump’s term as president and the “primary season has begun,” the Senate should hold off until after the election before considering a possible replacement.

Graham said we could hold his words against him. Fine. Many of us are doing that, Mr. Chairman.

Amy Coney Barrett wouldn’t be my choice to join the court. I much prefer a jurist in the Merrick Garland mold: moderate, center-left in philosophical judicial outlook. Garland, though, never got the courtesy of a hearing, let alone a Senate vote, that appears to be in store for Judge Barrett.

It’s all because the Senate GOP majority played politics with the judicial nomination process in 2016 … and is doing so once again right now.

Shameful.

national news

Anxious to vote!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I cannot even begin to believe how my attitude about early voting has changed, given the context of the time.

That said, I am waiting anxiously to cast my vote on Tuesday. My wife and I will trek to a local church to cast our ballots. We want to get them recorded into the electronic system. We will insist that our votes count … as if we don’t always insist on it.

Donald Trump has sought to cast doubt on the integrity of our electoral system. I don’t believe a word he says about “rampant voter fraud” as a result of mail-in balloting. Still, I want to ensure my vote gets logged into the massive system in Collin County, then counted among the millions of Texas ballots that will be cast.

Yes, Joe Biden has our support. We want to ensure he gets it. We need him to win this election. We need former Vice President Biden to restore the presidency to a level of respect, dignity and decorum that Donald Trump has plowed asunder.

We also need him to exhibit actual leadership in this fight against the pandemic that has killed more than 215,000 Americans.

I once would have held out until Election Day to cast my ballot. The tenor of our times prompts me to rethink that dedication to Election Day voting.

We’ll be standing in line if there is a line forming at the church where we intend to vote. We’ll be masked up, standing a “social distance” from our fellow Americans and we’ll observe all the instructions the poll workers will provide to keep us safe and healthy.

Bring it!

local news, media news

Blogging expands one’s audience

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Every now and then someone asks me this question about High Plains Blogger: How can you put these views out there living as you do in the middle of Trump Country?

OK, the question is paraphrased, but the message I get is the same. Someone such as me who tilts to the left must be nuts writing while sitting in a home built in the middle of a neighborhood full of Donald Trump fans.

Well, that leads me to tell the questioner that my blog goes far beyond the folks who live on our Collin County, Texas, street.

I am able to check the worldwide reach of this blog. At last count, I has been read by folks in more than 100 nations around the world. I recently had a first-time reader look at the blog in Moldova. So, I hope the Moldovan reader shares the blog with his or her neighbors.

This is one of the cooler aspects of writing this blog. The vast majority of page views and visitors to the blog reside in the United States. Ireland provides the second-most number; it’s a distant second, to be sure, but those Irish are reading the blog.

The scope of cyberspace gives folks like me to express my views openly, candidly and freely. There once was a time when I worked full-time for newspapers when I had to dial back my own bias and write editorials that spoke for the newspaper. I worked for conservative publications in Oregon and in Texas. So, while I was able to express my own views somewhat freely in my signed columns, the editorials I wrote were another matter altogether.

Those days are behind me now. I am writing this blog totally unencumbered by corporate considerations. It’s all mine. It also enables me to speak far beyond my neighborhood or even far beyond the borders of the state where my family and I have lived for the past 36 years.

Our planet is big — and small — all at once.

national news

Trump ‘cured’? Uh, huh

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald J. Trump says he is “cured” of the coronavirus that felled him and the first lady.

Do you believe him? Do you take anything that comes from Trump’s mouth at face value? Nope. Neither do I.

The doctors, though, do say he is no longer contagious, which I suppose Trump has interpreted as meaning he is “cured.”

Donald Trump has called his positive test for the virus that has killed more than 215,000 Americans as  “blessing.” Yet he continues to downplay it. He declares the disease will disappear. I have this flash for The Donald: More than 50,000 Americans are still getting sick daily from the virus, which is a trend that has spanned several days in a row. From my perch out here in Flyover Country, it doesn’t look like the disease is anywhere near disappearing.

This brings me to another key point. If Trump was “blessed” to have been stricken by the virus, one might hope he would have learned to keep his mouth shut and let the scientists, the medical doctors and the assortment of experts who comprise his White House COVID response team explain to us in detail what is going on with the disease.

I only can surmise that Trump’s blessing doesn’t extend to acquiring any wisdom about speaking out of turn and spewing lies that put Americans at risk.

He went so far as to declare himself “immune” from future positivity because he has caught the disease once. Not so fast, say the experts. COVID doesn’t respect previous afflictions, they tell us.

So now we’re back to where we were when Donald Trump tested positive for a serious disease. I am glad he appears to be on the mend. I only wish he would have learned something from it. He didn’t learn a damn thing.

national news

Leave the country?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

This item showed up on my Facebook feed today. It makes me chuckle.

It reminded me of previous zealots who “threatened to leave” the country if a certain candidate was elected to high political office. Alec Baldwin said as much in advance of Donald Trump’s election in 2016; I believe Whoopi Goldberg did, too. Other celebrities pop off prior to election, threatening to do things they have no intention of doing.

To be honest, I have not heard any Trumpkins make such a pledge. It doesn’t bother me in the least were they to stay. I welcome them, actually.

In fact, I consider these statements about bailing on the country to be just so much nonsense from those who like to make idle threats.

Understand this: There likely was no one in America who was more adamantly anti-Donald Trump than I was during the 2016 presidential campaign. It never occurred to me — at least in any serious way — to pack up everything I own and move to some faraway land were he to actually be elected president.

I say that while acknowledging that my wife and I have friends in Germany who have offered to help us find a place to live there. If only the European Union would lift the travel ban on Americans because we have done such a sh**ty job handling the coronavirus pandemic. But that’s another story.

Yeah, these threats to leave the country make me laugh, and I do mean laugh. They aren’t to be taken seriously, even when high-profile celebrities make them.

So, let’s just chill out. Let us also allow the political system to run its course. If it turns out the right way, we can all rejoice in the return to sanity in our federal government. If it turns out badly, well, we can keep raising all the hell we want. Our beloved Constitution grants us that right.

legal news

Answer the question, Joe

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the Democratic ticket seeking to defeat Donald Trump and Mike Pence, are performing a clumsy dodge when it comes to a simple, straightforward question.

It is this: Do you endorse a plan to add members to the U.S. Supreme Court in the event Judge Amy Coney Barrett gets confirmed to the seat vacated by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg?

Many progressives are alarmed at the addition of another conservative to the high court and they want to add at least two seats to the nine-member bench presumably with progressives/liberals to, um, provide some ideological balance.

The move might pick up steam if Democrats gain control of the U.S. Senate, which is looking more plausible each day we draw closer to the election.

Biden and Harris have danced all around the question about whether they back such an idea. For the record, I happen to oppose it. The court has been a nine-member body for more than 150 years and it should remain that way. Even the late Justice Ginsburg opposed the idea of “packing” the court.

Donald Trump and Mike Pence are raising a ruckus over Biden and Harris’s refusal to answer the question. To be candid, they do have a point. Biden said he will make that decision public “after the election.” Harris, when asked during her VP debate with Pence this past week, turned the discussion instead to the “packing” being done by Republicans who are filling lower-court bench seats.

Biden and Harris need not provide the Trumpkins with ammunition to fire at them down the stretch of this campaign.

Just answer the question. No matter what they decide, rest assured that the Democratic Party presidential ticket will continue to have my support. Honest. Really and truly.

local news

Speaking of eras’ ending …

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I must be in the mood to commemorate the end of eras.

A profoundly unhappy era might end Nov. 3 with the defeat of Donald Trump in the presidential election. Up yonder in the Texas Panhandle, another sort of era is sure to end with the retirement of 25-year U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry, a Clarendon Republican.

Thornberry, I reckon, had all the fun he could stand in Washington, D.C. He called it quits early this year, declaring he won’t seek re-election to Congress.

Up stepped a peculiar Republican, Ronny Jackson, to succeed Thornberry. Jackson is a former Navy admiral and is former physician to three presidents: George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

I used to live in the 13th Congressional District. I now live in the 3rd District. My congressman, GOP member Van Taylor, already has earned my scorn because of his silence over the bounty paid to Taliban terrorists by Russian government goons; what enrages me so is that Taylor is a former Marine who saw combat in Afghanistan, fighting the very Taliban fighters who might have gotten paid by Russia if they managed to kill Taylor on the battlefield.

Now we have Admiral Jackson moving into a congressional district about which he knows not a damn thing. He is likely to defeat Democratic opponent Gus Trujillo. Why? Because Republicans are just too damn strong in the 13th Congressional District!

Ronny Jackson is a Trumpkin. He adheres to what passes as ideology coming from Donald Trump. I guess you could say the same thing about Thornberry. It’s just that Thornberry isn’t the loudmouth that Jackson has become.

I admit to have conflicted feelings about Thornberry. I like him personally. I dislike his policy positions. I’ve never told him so to his face, although I think he understands that I do have a degree of personal regard for him. Given that, I wish him well in his retirement from public policy and politics.

I don’t know Admiral Jackson from Cap’n Crunch. I only know what I’ve read about him and some of the utterances that have flown out of his yapper.

I hope the fellow studies up on the region he is going to represent in Congress. I also hope Jackson exercises some discretion when someone sticks a microphone in his face. I don’t have much hope he will do that.

national news

Is the end of an era at hand?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

My ticker continues to flutter at the prospect of Joe Biden possibly bringing our latest “long national nightmare” to its merciful end.

That would be the presidency of Donald J. Trump.

Now, though, comes a sort of an admission.

I have been lapsing into speaking out loud the word “president” directly in front of Trump’s name. I do not intend to memorialize those words by typing them on this blog. Not for as long as this man remains in office.

I have been referencing Trump’s political title as I gripe and moan to my wife and anyone else who will listen to me. Do I dare type it on this blog? Not on your life. Or on Trump’s life.

I look forward to referring to the next president in a way that restores respect to the man who occupies the office. Yes, the words “President Biden” do have a nice ring to them as I type those terms consecutively.

The man who holds the office now? No … way.

Let us hope we awaken from this nightmare in about, oh, 25 days.

national news

Trump endangers his followers

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Certainly long after this election has gone by — perhaps even forever and ever — I will remain baffled by how Donald Trump continues to hold onto his support when he puts his ardent followers at extreme risk of catching a virus that could have killed him.

Trump once again today called a rally at the White House. Supporters were arrayed in front of the balcony from which he spoke. Trump himself might still be contaminated with the COVID-19 virus that hospitalized him for a few days this week; at least he had sense enough to stay away from the fans.

There they were, though. Clustered together. Many of them wore masks. Some of them didn’t. They cheered the Old Man’s lies and invective just like they always do.

And there he was, in all his campaign-rally glory, exhorting the troops to march on as if nothing has happened to change everyone’s life for well past the foreseeable future.

Joe Biden continues to enjoy a comfortable poll lead. Do I believe the former vice president will win this election going away? Hah! No. I don’t! My hope remains strong that he will be able to win by a comfortable enough margin to dispel any doubt that Trump vows to concoct that the election is somehow “rigged.”

How in the world does Trump manage to hold tightly to that 40 to 42 percent bloc of voters, some of whom get to stand in front of him in crowds that defy medical experts’ recommendations — and admonitions?

It’s a mystery. Perhaps I should just let that mystery stand and cease trying to attach a semblance of reason to the irrational.

national news

Terrorism comes home

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Thirteen men have been charged with assorted crimes associated with a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and possibly do some serious harm to her.

These individuals are terrorists. They fit the description. They aren’t religious zealots. They do not march under some foreign flag.

They are home-grown, corn-fed terrorists and for the life of me I do not understand why Donald Trump won’t condemn them for what they are accused of doing.

The FBI busted them this week as Whitmer sought to manage the coronavirus pandemic that continues to ravage the state she governs. You’ll remember that other armed “militia” members stormed the Michigan capitol in Lansing, taking over the public’s grounds in a hideous display of armed defiance of the government.

These lunatics are members of something called the Boogaloo Boys.

The FBI has uncovered a plot described as an attempt to kidnap Whitmer, put her on “trial,” and punish her for whatever conviction they concoct.

Donald Trump’s response to all of this has been to criticize Whitmer’s handling of the pandemic. Whitmer told an interviewer on Friday that a “decent man” would have asked how she’s doing and inquired about the health and well-being of her family. Donald Trump is, shall we say, not a decent man.

Here we are. The FBI is now pursuing an investigation into a serious terrorist threat that resides in the nation’s heartland. Of course, this isn’t a new phenomenon. Recall what Timothy McVeigh did in April 1995 when he detonated a bomb in front of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 Americans … including several children. Back then, though, we had a president — Bill Clinton — who had the heart to call it then what we knew it to be: an act of terror.

These terrorists well could portend a wave that should frighten us all we move past this most consequential election.