Monthly Archives: March 2022

legal news

Now, for the inquisition

Ketanji Brown Jackson promised to “uphold and defend the Constitution” if she is confirmed to a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Of course, that’s what they all say.

In her case, I believe her. I believe that President Biden’s nominee to replace the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer is a woman of her word. She oozes integrity and decorum.

However, none of this is likely to curb the criticism of her record that is sure to come from Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans who will look for any reason — even made-up reasons — to oppose her confirmation to the nation’s highest court.

Judge Jackson, who has appeared before the Senate panel already while being confirmed to lower court posts, is a history-making jurist. She is the first African American woman ever nominated to the high court; Biden pledged to find a highly qualified Black woman to sit on the court. He delivered big time!

I believe she will be confirmed. It will be a bloodbath, more than likely. Then again, that’s become the norm for virtually every Supreme Court nominee since the early 2000s.

Yes, Judge Jackson will uphold and defend the Constitution. She knows the lines she cannot cross.

The judge will make a stellar SCOTUS justice.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

media news

Lamenting newspapers’ demise

This is the Gospel truth, so help me: I detest writing critical items on this blog about newspapers that provided me with great joy and satisfaction as I pursued a craft I loved so very much.

Still, it pains me terribly to watch the demise of what used to be a mainstay in people’s homes. Daily newspapers everywhere in this great land are withering up and dying before our eyes.

It’s a slow and painful death to be sure.

I have commented on the end of Saturday publication of the Amarillo Globe-News, the last stop on my daily journalism career. The newspaper ceased the Saturday edition this weekend. Amarillo, Texas, is far from the only community watching this happen to their newspapers.

Cities far larger than Amarillo (population, 200,000) are seeing the same thing happen. The city of my birth, Portland, once was where The Oregonian published 400,000 copies every Sunday; daily circulation was around 250,000. Today? It’s a fraction of those amounts. The newspaper doesn’t even deliver to every subscriber seven days a week, although it does publish papers every day, but sells most of them from news racks.

Newspapers used to be what we called “cash cows” for their owners. They operated with enormous profit margins, exceeding 30 or 40%. They did so while paying huge amounts of overhead to salaries employees. Publishing a newspaper was labor-intensive to be sure, but the owners made tons of dough while publishing them.

Those days are long gone.

I am proud of the craft I pursued. I did so in good faith as a reporter and then as an editorial writer, and then as an editorial page editor. No one ever called me the “enemy of the American people.” Indeed, those with whom I toiled to publish newspapers all felt as I did, that we sought to tell our communities’ stories with honesty and fairness.

I believe we succeeded.

I remained saddened by the demise of daily print journalism as I remember it when I took up this craft.

I came of age in journalism about the time that Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward were telling the world about the 1972-74 Watergate scandal. Their reporting for the Washington Post sought to hold those in power accountable for their actions. They exposed some monumental corruption.

Sitting on my bookshelf at home is a first-edition copy of “All the President’s Men,” the story that the two journalists told of the scandal that brought down a U.S. president and sent many of his top aides to prison.

A publisher gave me this book as a Christmas gift and wrote on the first page of what he called his “favorite book.” He continued: “This is really where it all began for great journalism!” I aspired to make a difference in the world the way these men did. I didn’t get there, but I managed to carve out a modestly successful career that made me proud of the path I took.

I just am saddened to see newspapers dying before my eyes.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

media news

Retrenchment continues

A newspaper that employed me for nearly 18 years and which served as the dominant source of information for the Texas Panhandle and three nearby states has taken quite possibly a step closer to oblivion.

It saddens me greatly.

The Amarillo Globe-News has suspended one day of publication; it no longer publishes a Saturday edition. The end of the Saturday newspaper was effective yesterday. The paper announced it was “combining” Friday and Saturday editions into a Friday newspaper, which is a kinder/gentler way of telling readers that they no longer will receive a Saturday edition of a once-solid newspaper.

Oh … sigh.

I practiced my craft at the Globe-News for nearly 18 years. Then I walked away in August 2012. I haven’t looked back too often. When I have, though, I see things that distress me. The newspaper has changed corporate ownership twice since I departed. Morris Communications sold its entire newspaper holdings to GateHouse Media, which then merged with Gannett Corp.

The retrenchment has commenced in the Panhandle just as it is in communities across the country.

I don’t like what I fear is going to happen eventually to a newspaper that in 1961 earned a Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service but which is now devolving into a shadow not just of what it was during those great days but also of what it has become just in the past few years.

The newspaper that once covered communities throughout every county in the Panhandle, into eastern New Mexico, the Oklahoma Panhandle and even a sliver of southwestern Kansas now barely covers events inside the city of Amarillo. It now employs a tiny fraction of the staff it once boasted. Advertising revenue has plummeted, along with paid newspaper circulation.

Hey, it’s not unique to that region. It’s just that it hurts me, your friendly blogger, to watch it happen in a place that brought me great joy during the final stage of my print journalism career.

I am not looking forward to what I believe lies ahead for the Amarillo Globe-News.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Where’s the ‘self defense’?

Another shooting broke out in south Dallas overnight. Someone was killed in an apparent drive-by incident; an individual fired a weapon at an individual and the cops are trying to investigate the cause of it.

OK. Now, let’s back up a bit. The Texas Legislature in 2021 enacted a law that Gov. Greg Abbott signed to make it legal for any yahoo in Texas to pack a firearm. No training required. Anyone can pack heat. Sure, they have to pass a background check and not have a felony conviction on their record.

The idea — if I recall it correctly — was to allow more guns on the streets to enable individuals to defend themselves against morons who open fire with these weapons.

What is disturbing and dangerous in the extreme is that damn few media reports we see and hear and read mention anyone firing back in “self-defense.” The shootings involve dipsh**s firing weapons while arguing with someone. We hear about the road rage incidents when someone pulls a gun and starts firing after being cut off in traffic.

If this open carry legislation is designed make us “safer” by enabling Texans to use these weapons to defend themselves and others, then why aren’t we hearing more reporting about it? I think I know why. It’s because it isn’t happening!

With that I want to offer a word of “thanks” to Gov. Abbott and the Legislature for putting us in even more danger … you morons!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, media news

Time still flies by

1 Comment

Time does have this way of getting away from most — if not all — of us. Why that observation? Well, it dawned on me earlier today that this is the 10th year since I walked off the last full-time job I ever would have.

It has been a marvelous ride ever since that amazing moment in an equally amazing day.

It was Aug. 31, 2012. My employer informed me the previous day that the job I had performed at the Amarillo Globe-News would go to someone else. I worked as editorial page editor at the Texas newspaper for nearly 18 years. I thought I did a good job. My employer, I was left to presume, thought differently.

So, he informed me that my task would fall to someone else. I went home that day and returned early the next day to clean out my office. The very first item I tossed into the trash can was a stash of business cards with my name on it. Gone! Forever!

I walked away. On the way out I had one final meeting with now former employer. The conversation was an unhappy one. I left the building. I called one of my colleagues on my cell phone. I said “so long” to him and hung up.

Then, while sitting in my car, I cried.

That all occurred nearly a decade ago. You know what? I have gotten over that anger, and the pain of that moment. I have moved on. I am no longer angry. I no longer hurt. I no longer miss the daily grind of meeting deadlines and writing commentary.

I have had a number of part-time jobs in the years since. I write this blog each day. I am getting more proficient at using social media to spread the musings I post. I have written for public television, for commercial TV, for a community newspaper in New Mexico, for a major metropolitan daily newspaper in Dallas, for a public radio station in Commerce, and for a weekly newspaper near the city where my wife and I moved. I also worked for an auto dealer in Amarillo and for six months I worked as a juvenile supervision officer for the Youth Center of the High Plains, a detention center run by Randall County.

I have declared myself to be a highly adaptable human being. My life has provided proof of that declaration. I am damn proud of the career I pursued for nearly 37 years, and I am equally proud of the adjustments I have made, with enormous help and support from my wife of 50 years, sons, daughter-in-law, sisters and their families, in the life I have led for the past decade.

Time is still just flying by. It does that when you’re having so much fun.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

‘Well-qualified,’ says ABA

The American Bar Association has given its official blessing to Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s appointment to take her seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.

The ABA calls the judge “well-qualified” to sit on the nation’s highest court and interpret the U.S. Constitution’s role in pending cases.

Now, is that it? Does that end the debate that is sure to erupt when Judge Jackson starts answering questions from the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, which begins confirmation hearings on Monday?

Hah! Not even close!

To be fair, I should point out that all three of Donald Trump’s nominees to the court received well-qualified ratings from the ABA. That didn’t stop the fierce debate that accompanied their eventual confirmations.

American Bar Assoc Says Judge Jackson ‘Well Qualified’ to Serve on SCOTUS (msn.com)

President Biden’s selection of Ketanji Brown Jackson brings a historic significance that the three previous picks lacked. Judge Jackson is the first African American woman to be nominated. Joe Biden pledged during the 2020 presidential campaign to find a highly qualified Black woman to serve … and he delivered on that pledge in a big way by nominating Judge Jackson.

Her sparkling credentials and the ABA’s highest blessing won’t stop Republican senators from looking for reasons to oppose her. Josh Hawley of Missouri, for instance, castigated her for going soft on child molesters. Hawley, though, needs to re-read the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution, which declares that all criminal defendants are entitled to legal counsel; Jackson served as a public defender for a time before becoming a judge, thus, she was doing what the Constitution requires.

I look forward to the Senate confirmation hearing and am hopeful — although I know it’s a stretch — that a significant number of Senate Republicans will realize that she deserves to join the rest of the Supreme Court.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

Worried about Taiwan

While the world recoils in horror at what is transpiring in Ukraine and wondering whether China is taking notes on what lies ahead for another potential conflict, I want to offer a brief word of worry about a possible target of Chinese aggression.

It sits off the China coast. Taiwan has been a thriving nation of its own since 1949, when Chiang kai-Shek’s government set up shop in Taipei after losing a bloody civil war with the communists.

China wants Taiwan back. It has been threatening to take the island nation back ever since the end of the conflict on the mainland. Whether Russia succeeds in its effort to subdue Ukraine could spell a heap of trouble for China and for Taiwan.

My interest in Taiwan is personal. I have been there five times, starting in 1989. I returned in 1994, in 1999, 2007 and 2010. My first visit came at the end of a grueling three-week tour of Southeast Asia. Taiwan was still under martial law. It lifted the martial law between my first and second visits.

The country is as independent from China these days as it possibly could be … except that it hasn’t declared its independence. It dare not make the declaration, as it would enrage the communists on the mainland to the point of launching an invasion of their own to retake the island.

Taiwan’s population now consists almost entirely of people who were born there. Few Taiwanese have any direct tie to China. The country is a thriving democracy. Taiwan is an economic powerhouse. It also possesses a stout military apparatus that benefits from a defense agreement with the United States.

To be clear, Taiwan has few diplomatic allies, in that the world recognizes only “one China.” That happens to be the one that governs in Beijing. However, the reality is that even though Taiwan once was part of China, it now considers itself to be a separate nation. Yes, it is a curious and complicated matter that cannot be solved easily and cleanly.

I cannot pretend to know how this will play out. President Biden has been talking extensively with Chinese leaders since war broke out in Ukraine. I keep hearing that Biden has persuaded the Chinese to stay out of the Russia-Ukraine fight; that it shouldn’t send arms to Russia. That suits me just fine.

If the Ukrainians somehow can broker an end to the fighting without Russia marching into Kyiv, then there could be some hope that China would have to rethink whatever aspirations it has about taking Taiwan back in a fight to the finish.

Believe this, too: Taiwan will fight like hell for their country just as Ukrainians are fighting for theirs.

It all still brings cause for worry.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

8 GOP lawmakers vote against Russia sanction

Eight Republicans stood in the way of legislation passing through the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously and, thus, sending another clear message of strength against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

A bill that would have revoked U.S.-Russia normal trade relations sailed through the House on a clear and decisive bipartisan vote. Except for the eight GOP nimrods who opposed it.

I don’t know who all of them are, but I surely do recognize several of the dipsh**s over their past behavior and idiotic blathering.

GOP Reps. Chip Roy of Texas, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Thomas Massie of Kentucky all are familiar (more or less) to me. The others are Andy Biggs of Arizona, Dan Bishop of North Carolina and Glen Grothman of Wisconsin.

The first five of are your standard, run-of-the-mill GOP nut jobs. Greene, Boebert and Gaetz perhaps are the most well-known. Gaetz, let’s recall, might be indicted soon on a sex-trafficking charge. Boebert and Greene are the twin QAnon queens of the House. Roy is just, well, a Texas Republican … so that’s all I need to say about him. Massie is another fruitcake.

What is so bizarre is that these eight GOP outliers stand in stark contrast to what I consider to be traditional Republican antagonism to anything dealing with Russia or its immediate predecessor, the Soviet Union.

They all seem to parrot the thinly veiled praise of Russian thug Vladimir Putin that comes from The Donald, who remains their hero despite his insistence on pushing The Big Lie forward about the 2020 presidential election and the non-existent “widespread vote fraud.”

Oh, well. I’ll just go on now and take care of the rest of the day’s activities that await me. I just had to get this little annoyance off my chest.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Inquisition begins

Here it comes. U.S. Senate Republicans bent on derailing Judge Ketanji Jackson Brown’s nomination to join the U.S. Supreme Court have begun digging up issues they hope will send President Biden’s historic selection into the ditch.

It won’t happen. Still, beginning next week we’ll get to listen to GOP critics of the judge look for all they’re worth on something, anything that will gum up the works.

Sen. Josh Hawley, the Missouri lawmaker who infamously gave the closed-fist salute to the traitors gathering to storm the Capitol Building on 1/6, has tossed out the first rhetorical grenade. He accuses Judge Jackson of giving child molesters a free pass during her time as a federal public defender.

Interesting, yes? I believe it is. So, I pulled out my pocket version of the U.S. Constitution that sits on my man-cave desk at home and turned to the Sixth Amendment. It says, in part: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial … and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.” There are some other things in the middle of that amendment, but I wanted to share the relevant portion of it with you here.

My point is that Judge Jackson was, um, following the law and was obedient to the U.S. Constitution by providing “the Assistance of Counsel” for defendants who couldn’t afford to hire a high-priced lawyer.

This is how the opposition is going to attack Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. Foes of hers and of the president will look for segments of her stellar legal background and will twist it beyond anything recognizable under the law.

Joe Biden promised he would find a qualified jurist to succeed Justice Stephen Breyer, who is retiring at the end of the court’s term. The president pledged to nominate the first African American woman to the bench. He succeeded on both counts. Judge Jackson is eminently qualified and, oh yes, she happens to be Black.

Neither truth about this nominee is going to deter the critics from digging up nonsense in their opposition to her nomination. Josh Hawley has paved a fool’s trail for the rest of the GOP critics to follow.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Heartlessness = GOP

Heartless attitudes about people’s emotional distress seems to have become part of the formula for success in today’s Republican Party.

Consider the policies enacted by Texas Republicans regarding the young people struggling with what we call “gender identity.” Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken “Under Felony Indictment” Paxton believe parents who seek treatment for their children’s gender ID issues are committing “child abuse.”

It baffles me that grown men and women, who do not have such issues with which to contend, can make judgments on others who do have them, or who have children they are seeking to help guide along on their life’s journey.

Abbott and Paxton — the latter of whom is awaiting trial on an allegation of securities fraud — believe that parents who seek “gender-affirming care” are guilty of abusing their children. My goodness! How in the name of humane treatment can these people pursue their constituents in this manner?

I am one American who cannot possibly relate intimately with the struggles of others who have these issues. Thus, I cannot in good conscience pretend to understand this complicated emotional behavior. How, then, do politicians who are supposed to represent me justify imposing their will on others?

It is a heartlessness I find terribly unbecoming.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com