Monthly Archives: June 2022

legal news

Why omit this one, Mr. Justice?

It wasn’t lost on many folks that U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas omitted a legal precedent when he signaled which others might become vulnerable in future SCOTUS rulings.

The court knocked Roe v. Wade — the landmark ruling that legalized abortion — down and out. Thomas then noted that in the future, the court could take on same-sex marriage and contraception, two other provisions protected by constitutional “rights of privacy” provisions.

But … wait! What about interracial marriage?

Oh, yeah. Thomas, one of two blacks to serve on the court, is married to a white woman … and a controversial white woman at that! Ginni Thomas has been rabble-rousing like the dickens over Joe Biden’s 2020 election as president.

The court’s famous Loving ruling in 1967 legalized interracial marriage. It’s difficult for many of us to understand why it was ever illegal for people of different races to marry one another, but it was.

Is that going to be part of the court’s future?

Bwahahahaha!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Texas GOP: certifiably loony!

Here is a statement from the Texas Republican Party, the dominant political organization in a state that comprises 29 million residents and drives a world-class economic engine.

“We reject the certified results of the 2020 presidential election, and we hold that acting President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was not legitimately elected by the people of the United States.”

OK! I’ve already declared that the Texas GOP has gone bonkers. Its leadership is certifiably crazy.

I just want to reiterate that The Big Lie as regurgitated by the Texas Republican Party is a poisonous dose of rhetoric that does absolutely nothing but harm our cherished democratic process.

For the Texas Republican Party to swallow that snake oil — to my mind — is too damn close to sedition for comfort.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Uvalde’s loved ones need answers

Uvalde’s community of teachers, students and their loved ones and friends are demanding answers from the police who so far are acting as if they have many things to hide.

This is a travesty that needs instant repair.

The gunman who walked into Robb Elementary School and killed 21 children and teachers did so with apparent ease. Why in the name of truth and justice aren’t the cops telling us the whole truth about what wend down a month ago in that tightly knit South Texas community?

The Uvalde school district chief of police Pete Arredondo is on administrative leave. From where I sit, he needs to be fired. Department of Public Safety director Stephen McCraw is only a little more forthcoming, but he, too, is holding back. The Uvalde Police Department also has a dog in this fight, but where are UPD’s statements of clarification?

This outrage has gone on long enough!

The community is grieving. So is the rest of the state and the nation. We are getting some legislative help in the form of congressional action aimed at stemming the violence. It’s not enough, but it’s a start.

I want to offer a snippet from the Dallas Morning News editorial that states: The families of the victims and every Texan deserve better from law enforcement agencies and politicians whose prime responsibility is to serve the public interest, not their own. The common public interest must be to determine how and why so many died when faster action in line with nationally accepted active shooter protocols would have saved lives.

Uvalde was an ‘abject failure,’ but there’s more to the story (dallasnews.com)

The cops sign on to “protect and serve.” They offered little protection for those 19 children and the two teachers who died in that massacre. They are derelict in their service to the state that is demanding answers to what created what has been called “an abject failure.”

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Abortion: always toxic

A long time ago, a young Texas congressman served the Houston area. He was famously friendly to organizations that favored women’s reproductive rights.

George H.W. Bush served in Congress for two terms, from 1967 to 1969. He voted routinely in favor of spending bills to pay for those programs now demonized by the right wing of his Republican Party.

Rep. Bush developed — as I understand it — a nickname in the House. His colleagues referred to him as “Rubbers.”

He left Congress and served as CIA director, head of the Republican National Committee, special envoy to China and as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Then along came Ronald Reagan in 1980. “Rubbers” Bush ran against Reagan for the GOP presidential party. Reagan won the nomination and looked for a VP running mate.

He chose George Bush … who then underwent a remarkable political transformation. The instant he accepted Reagan’s invitation to join him on the GOP ticket, “Rubbers” became a fervently pro-life candidate.

The Reagan-Bush ticket won that year. The rest is history.  I hasten to add that as a presidential candidate in 1988, Bush did not wave the pro-life banner with undue vigor; nor did he do so when he ran for re-election in 1992.

I point all this out to remind us all that abortion and women’s reproductive rights long has been among the most toxic issues imaginable. The Supreme Court ruling that strikes down a woman’s right to obtain a legal abortion only fans those embers into a full-blown fire.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Dead Man Walking comes back to life … for now

T.C. Broadnax seemed to be a sort of Dead Man Walking at Dallas City Hall.

The mayor wanted the city manager ousted. Eric Johnson made no secret of his unhappiness with the job the city manager has been doing as the city’s chief administrator.

There was supposed to be a City Council meeting in which Broadnax would get booted out. The meeting didn’t happen. Then suddenly, without warning, Broadnax and Johnson kinda made peace.

At least for now.

Dallas mayor and manager truce isn’t the progress city needed (dallasnews.com)

I live just up the highway from Big D. I worked briefly for the Dallas Morning News at the end of 2021, so I developed a bit of understanding — but only a bit — of what was transpiring at City Hall. It looked pretty ugly from my standpoint.

Mayor Johnson seemed to make a hash out of the situation. The way I saw it play out, Broadnax had every reason to be embarrassed over the way he was treated.

Yeah, I know that running a major American city such as Dallas puts every senior administrator under the hottest of lights. The city has been through a lot of turmoil just in the three years we have lived in the city’s significant shadow.

The police chief resigned amid a violent crime wave. Crime continues to plague the city. Dallas reportedly has a permit problem that Broadnax cannot seem to repair, which also irked Johnson.

I don’t know how this is going to play out.

If I were T.C. Broadnax, I believe I would polish up my resume and get it ready to present to other potential employers. He ought to do it secretly. Why? Because Mayor Johnson seems to be unable or unwilling to avoid making a show out of sensitive personnel matters.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Eternal optimism gets test

Yes, it is time to acknowledge the obvious about today’s political climate: These times test even the most optimistic among us … and you count me as one of those folks.

My eternal optimism over the strength of democracy is suffering from serious stress.

The U.S. Supreme Court has punched the hot buttons that create my anxiety. The ruling on concealed carry permits for handguns in New York got me started. Then came the decision that tossed aside Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that legalized abortion.

Political figures are being hectored, harangued and harassed because they insist on following the rule of law. They and their families are being threatened with bodily injury … and worse!

A president who lost re-election in Novembe 2020 threatens to overturn the results of that election in an unprecedented attack on our governmental process. His cult followers insist he is right, and the rest of the country is wrong.

I am not alone in wanting our U.S. Constitution to hold together. I believe it will. I also believe it will hold the nation together.

My family and friends are likely to tell you — if you ask them directly — that I tend to see the good in people. The recent former POTUS, though, makes me think only the worst in him. Thus, my eternal optimism is being put to a test I did not foresee occurring … even when the former POTUS was elected to the presidency in 2016.

It’s a struggle. The news I watch for much of most days depresses me, pushing my emotions to a level with which I am mostly unfamiliar. Look, I dislike feeling this way. It’s against my nature. I am not an ebullient fellow normally, but I long have maintained an innate faith that our system of government — cobbled together by our nation’s founders — is built to absorb punishment.

My inherent faith in our system of government — as imperfect and occasionally rickety as it is — will keep me going even as I fight off the depression that threatens to put me asunder.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

SCOTUS has changed, not Roe

Leave it to a lame-duck U.S. Supreme Court justice to put a monumental ruling in fascinating perspective.

Stephen Breyer is about to retire from the nation’s top court. He cast a dissenting vote in the decision to toss aside 50 years of “settled law” by overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that made abortion legal.

Previous Supreme Court decisions had upheld Roe v. Wade in earlier challenges. The court would rule that the law was established and that, by golly, the Constitution did guarantee a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy.

Not this court. Not this time.

It was Justice Breyer who noted in his dissent that Roe had withstood challenges because it remained the same. The only thing that changed, he wrote, “is this court.”

So it is that Supreme Court, with his conservative supermajority, has decided to enact an activist agenda by ruling that a half-century of “settled law” had been decided wrongly.

Pitiful.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

SCOTUS credibility at issue

The U.S. Supreme Court has a credibility problem. It’s serious, I’m telling you.

It ruled in just the span of a few days that New York does not have the authority as a state to govern concealed handgun carry and then decided that states must decide whether women can obtain a legal abortion.

Two justices — Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — reportedly told Sen. Susan Collins that Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion ruling that the court has just tossed aside, was “settled law” and that they wouldn’t trifle with it. Well, they damn sure did.

“This decision is inconsistent with what Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh said in their testimony and their meetings with me, where they both were insistent on the importance of supporting long-standing precedents,” Collins wrote.

This calls into question whether the court is as independent and impartial as the founders envisioned when they created the federal judiciary.

Having said all this, I stand by my refusal to endorse the notion of expanding the court’s number from nine to whatever progressives want to install.

What has to happen is that American voters need to decide whether the Supreme Court’s current makeup is reason to vote for members of Congress and for presidents who will honor the rule of the majority.

Donald Trump vowed to nominate justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade. He made the pledge while running for president in 2016. Yes, he established the proverbial “litmus test” for judicial candidates to pass. He said so reportedly knowing that most Americans favored keeping Roe on the books. They, too, understood the meaning of “settled law” and wanted to give women the right to choose whether to take a pregnancy to full term.

The high court has thrown all of that aside with its Roe ruling. Moreover, it has spoken out of both sides of its collective mouth by declaring that states could decide whether to allow abortion but that they had no authority to decide how to govern firearm ownership.

Credibility? It’s missing from the Supreme Court.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

Why seek pardons?

Let’s call ’em the Six Musketeers. What do they have in common, other than being Republican members of Congress?

They asked their one-time cult leader/guru/top-shelf liar in chief for a blanket pardon before he left office.

This begs a serious question. Why would a member of Congress seek a presidential pardon if they were damn sure they were innocent of any crimes related to the 1/6 insurrection that occurred two weeks before Donald Trump vacated the White House?

Hmm. Well, you know their names. Here they are anyway.

Louis Gohmert, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Mo Brooks, Andy Biggs, Scott Perry. 

Their names surfaced during this past week’s televised hearing of the 1/6 House select committee that is examining the issues that led to the attack on our nation’s Capitol Building … when Congress was convened to count Electoral College votes and then certify the election of President Biden.

These six clowns — two of whom, Gohmert of Texas and Brooks of Alabama, are leaving Congress at the end of the year — all allegedly engaged in some of the law-breaking committed by The Donald in his quest to remain in power. Except they deny doing anything wrong. Really?

My favorite among them is Greene, who had just been elected to her Georgia congressional seat in November 2020. My goodness, she had just taken her oath of office three days before the insurrection. So it took her no time at all to sink herself up to her armpits in the sleaze being peddled by Trump and the rest of his Corps of Cultists … allegedly.

This is the clown show that the cult followers insist we return to power in Washington, D.C. It is instead an act that needs to be run out of town.

The House select committee is going to resume its hearings soon after doing some more sleuthing around for more evidence to deliver us in a final report. Maybe it can uncover some more crooks who sought pre-emptive pardons for crimes they say they didn’t commit.

What a load of crap!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

SCOTUS shows its consequence

There can be no greater example of electoral consequence than the decision delivered this week by the U.S. Supreme Court that overturns Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that legalized abortion in the United States.

Ponder this for a moment:

Justice Clarence Thomas is the court’s senior member, serving on the high court since 1991; the man who selected him, President George H.W. Bush, left office in 1993. Justice Samuel Alito joined the court in 2006; the president who nominated him, George W. Bush, left office in 2009. Chief Justice John Roberts took his post in 2005 after being nominated by President George W. Bush.

Those three conservative justices have stayed far beyond the terms of their political sponsors. The same likely will hold true for three more judicial conservatives, Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, all of whom were nominated by Donald J. Trump.

Remember, too, that Trump declared while running for office in 2016 that he would find “two or three” justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade. He did … and they did. They, too, are likely to remain in office many decades after Trump leaves the scene.

Justice Stephen Breyer is retiring and will be replaced by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Biden’s lone selection (so far!) to the nation’s highest court.

Yes, elections have consequences. I now shall assert that the next president election must be determined at least partly by how voters want their Supreme Court to function well into the future.

Do we really want a SCOTUS making far-reaching decisions based on justices’ own religious bias?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com