Monthly Archives: August 2022

local news

Goodbye, Louis Gohmert … don’t hurry back!

Louis Gohmert is the lamest of ducks. That’s the good news. Even better news is that he isn’t likely to return to Congress, where he didn’t exactly distinguish himself as a legislative giant.

Instead, Gohmert — a looney-bin Republican from Tyler — set himself apart as a gadfly and someone who is all too willing to foment The Big Lie about the 2020 presidential election.

Hey, that’s not the only Big Lie to which Gohmert attached his name. Gohmert was among those in Congress who once doubted whether Barack Obama was qualified to for president of the United States. He cited that phony notion that President Obama was born in Kenya, despite proof that the 44th POTUS was born in Hawaii.

Part of congressmen’s and women’s greatness must rest in the number of laws with their names on it. Gohmert authored one bill that became law. That’s it.

He spent the rest of his time in Congress acting like the royal pain in the ass he became.

Louie Gohmert leaves Congress with one law and many falsehoods | The Texas Tribune

Gohmert decided to run for Texas attorney general and finished last in the Republican Party primary this spring. Too bad, Louis.

I wish Gohmert’s leaving the political scene signaled a new day in Texas politics. I fear it won’t. There remain too many GOP loons out there ready to step up and take his place as a leader of the nut job wing of a once-great political party.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, legal news, national news

So many options for AG and others to ponder

As I sit here in the peanut gallery far from Ground Zero in the Donald Trump investigation hotbed, I find myself thinking about the options that await the former president of the United States.

Only one of them looks good and at this moment it appears to be the farthest from taking shape.

Attorney General Merrick Garland is among those who are trying to determine whether to indict the ex-president on criminal charges. We also have the Fulton County (Ga.) district attorney looking into allegations of vote tampering and the New York state AG examining whether Trump’s business committed crimes. Oh, and then we have the House of Reps’ select committee examining whether Trump broke the law by inciting the mob of traitors to storm the Capitol on 1/6 and seek to stop the certification of the 2020 election … that Trump lost to Joseph R. Biden Jr.

There’s nothing cast in stone that says Garland must indict Trump on anything, let alone on the most serious charges he might be considering. The AG could determine there isn’t enough to send Trump to prison for the rest of his life, so he might decide to pursue lesser charges.

Then the DA in Fulton County, Fani Willis, also might determine that Trump didn’t really seek to interfere with the election by demanding that the state “find” enough votes to put him over the top.

New York AG Letitia James also could find that she doesn’t have the goods on Trump’s business, even though his chief financial officer has pleaded guilty to tax fraud and is awaiting a sentence.

And what about the House panel? The committee has compiled a mountain of evidence that suggests everything from inciting insurrection and dereliction of duty on 1/6. The testimony we have heard has been stunning in the extreme!

But you see, Trump is facing a mounting array of legal challenges … even as he supposedly ponders whether to run for the presidency yet again in 2024. My strong sense is that one of those challenges is going to fall hard on The Donald.

The least likely option would be for none of these probes to produce a formal criminal charge against the former president. I understand fully the gravity of taking such a step. I also grasp the blowback that would occur from the cultists out there who continue to excuse the ex-POTUS’s conduct at all levels in the period after the 2020 election.

It just occurs to me that the very last person on this Earth I would want to be is Donald John Trump.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, education news, local news

School security: No. 1

We live in an era that is bordering on insanity, given that public school systems are having to clear the decks to ensure that the children and educators in their charge are safe from gun-packing madmen.

I am privileged to cover a public school system in North Texas that, to my way of thinking, is approaching this matter rationally and with all due diligence.

Farmersville Independent School District employs a full-time police force to keep its four campuses safe. They have a chief of police, Steve Wade, who is a seasoned, state-certified police officer. The men and women under his command are certified as well.

The school district recently went hunting for what they called “hall monitors” who would help lend extra sets of eyes and ears on student activity at the high school, the intermediate school, the junior high and the elementary school. The police department fell short of the applicants it needed to hire the monitors.

So, what did the district’s top cop do? He hired two more certified officers to join his force, which now will comprise five officers plus the chief. The officers are good ones, too. One of them is moving from the Farmersville Police Department to the school district force. She was named officer of the year for Farmersville PD in 2021. The other officer is retired from Garland PD, where he served — and this really is an attention-getter — as commander of the department’s Special Weapons and Tactics unit. Yep, Farmersville ISD’s department has a SWAT commander in its midst.

The school district has made a commitment to protect its students, faculty and staff with sworn law enforcement professionals and have decided that it will not arm its teachers. Superintendent Micheal French made that point abundantly clear to me, that Farmersville will not put guns in the hands of teachers.

In case of trouble the district is going to entrust the professionals it has on its payroll to protect and defend the precious children and the educators who teach them.

This is the world in which we are living. I applaud the school district for keeping its wits about it as it seeks rational solutions to quell this epidemic of violence.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Uncategorized

Pro-life, pro-choice … or both?

Occasionally I have to grapple with my position on abortion. Am I pro-choice? Am I pro-life? Truly, this issue causes me some grief. To alleviate that grief, I have determined I am both.

I now shall explain myself.

If a woman were to ask me for advice on whether to abort a pregnancy, I could not counsel her to do so. Therefore, that resistance to pro-abortion counseling makes me — in my view — pro-life on the issue.

However, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that strips the court’s Roe v. Wade ruling of its power spurs another emotion within. You see, I also believe that government should not govern how women can manage their own reproductive process. That is not a governmental call. Such heart-wrenching decisions belong only to the woman, her partner, her physician, her spiritual leader and, yes, the god she worships.

I have thought about a gentleman with whom I attended church in Amarillo. His name is Doug and he once told a crowd of fellow churchgoers in a voice loud enough for many of us to hear that he was both a “creationist and one who believes in evolution.”

I learned then that Doug, a fellow who is quite a bit older than I am (which is really saying something), takes the same expansive view of Scripture that I do. We believe that the biblical version of “six days” worth of work creating the universe doesn’t mean the same six calendar days we use to measure that length of time.

So it can be with abortion. I see myself as both pro-life and pro-choice on an issue that when all is said about it really is none of my business.

As a 70-something-year-old man I never have had to make that choice for myself, nor will ever have to make it for as long as I walk this good Earth. Nor do I ever expect a woman to ask me whether she should make that choice for herself.

That suits me fine, too … because I never could say “yes” for any woman to commit such an agonizing act.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, State news

Another Democratic sleeper emerges

Just as Texas Democrats seem to pin their hopes on Beto O’Rourke breaking the Republican vise-grip on statewide elected office, another Democrat emerges to, um, quite possibly become the one who does the deed.

Rochelle Garza is the Democratic Party nominee for Texas attorney general, the high-profile contest featuring a Republican who, by all rights, should be in jail by now.

Garza is a former lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union — the bogeyman of the right, but in fact the organization dedicated to protecting our Bill of Rights. She is facing Ken Paxton, the GOP incumbent AG who has been under felony indictment almost since he took office in 2015; he is awaiting trial on securities fraud and could spend a hefty amount of time in the slammer if a jury convicts him.

A recent Dallas Morning News/University of Texas-Tyler poll shows Garza surging against Paxton, trailing the AG by two percentage points. Which makes the race a virtual dead heat.

Can this so-called “upstart” defeat the soiled and sullied AG, the guy who saw a lawsuit he filed against states that had seated electors in support of President Biden tossed out because he lacked any standing in the matter? You see, Paxton is a lousy lawyer to boot, in addition to being an alleged crook and a cheat.

A Collin County grand jury indicted Paxton on a charge that he failed to inform securities investors of his connections to an investment company. The case has been kicked around from court to court. By all rights, it should have been adjudicated long ago, but it hasn’t.

Just when many of us thought the key to returning Texas to a two-party-state status rested with Beto O’Rourke’s bid to defeat Gov. Greg Abbott, it well might occur if Rochelle Garza can keep surging and give Ken Paxton a stiff shove out the door.

I am eternally hopeful.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Wyoming = cult playground

Who would have thought Wyoming — one of the most Republican-leaning of our 50 states — would serve as a petri dish to examine what has become of a once-great political party.

Its sole member of the House, Liz Cheney, got hammered in the GOP primary, losing to Harriet Hageman by more than 30 percentage points. Hageman had earned the endorsement of the Cult Leader in Chief, Donald Trump. Why would the former POTUS go against a House member — Liz Cheney — who voted with him more than 93% of the time? Because Cheney voted to impeach Trump after he incited the 1/6 insurrection.

Let’s look briefly at Cheney’s electoral history in Wyoming.

  • She was elected in 2016 with more than 60% of the vote.
  • Cheney won re-election in 2018 by an even greater margin and then was named House Republican Conference chair, putting her third in line in power behind GOP leader Kevin McCarthy and GOP whip Steve Scalise.
  • Cheney won the GOP nomination in 2020 with 73% of the vote and the general election with a 69% margin.
  • Then came the 2022 Hageman/Trump cult buzzsaw.

Now she’s out … or will be by the end of the year.

The only thing Cheney did “wrong” was to turn against Trump, who has captured the hearts, minds and what passes for the “soul” of the Republican Party, which he has transformed into a cult cabal.

Wyoming has served up the perfect test case for what is wrong with the Grand Old Party.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Don’t walk away, Liz Cheney

Right-wing media commentators have been roughing up one of their own recently and it isn’t a pretty sight.

U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican and Donald Trump’s No. 1 political enemy, got thrashed in this week’s GOP primary. What has been the reaction from some in the conservative media?

They are calling on her to resign from the House now, step away from her role on the House select 1/6 committee and, in effect, keep her mouth shut.

She should do none of that. Cheney’s term in office expires at the end of this year, which means this good-government progressive wants her stay on her watch and continue to hold Trump accountable for the crimes he committed while inciting the 1/6 insurrection.

To be sure, I believe Cheney inflated the significance of her primary defeat by comparing her fate to what happened to the father of the Republican Party, America’s greatest president Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln lost two congressional contests before being elected president in 1860, Cheney reminded us, as if to suggest that her own congressional loss might signal her ascent to the White House in the future.

She is getting way ahead of herself.

However, I do not for one instant believe she should step away. Cheney is providing a valuable voice of reason where few of them exist within her GOP.  Moreover, she is performing valuable service as vice chair of the committee led by Mississippi Democrat Bennie Thompson.

My advice to Rep. Cheney? Stay the course. Wyoming voters elected her to serve until the end of 2022. She has more work to do on behalf of the effort to preserve, protect and defend our precious democratic process.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news, national news

‘Law and order’ gives way to chaos

A truly astonishing metamorphosis is occurring within what we used to call a great American political party.

The Republican Party used to believe in law and order, in the sanctity of the badge that men and women wore while enforcing the law, in their belief that a strong police force was the best deterrent against runaway crime and chaos.

What’s happened to the GOP?

The FBI secured a legally acquired search warrant to allow agents into the home of a former Republican president of the U.S.A. and suddenly the FBI has become the enemy.

Now we find political progressives — whom conservatives once denigrated as being “soft on crime” — rushing to defend the FBI against the attacks coming … from the right!

The metamorphosis is unbecoming in the extreme. For instance, it features physical threats against FBI agents, with threats of “civil war” coming from the very individuals who in another era would never utter such nonsense out loud.

The world has gone nuts!

It seems the change is the direct result of the cult that has formed around a former president of the United States. The cult places idolatry of the former POTUS ahead of all else, even time-tested policies and philosophies that once formed the basis of the once-great political party.

For as long as the cult dictates how Americans shall behave, there will be no making sense of what is occurring. It does require those of us who oppose the cult to remain vigilant and alert to the dangers the cult followers present.

Indeed, any “talk” of civil war must not devolve into the real thing. We did that once in this country. It nearly destroyed us.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

One for two in midterms?

Handicapping political races is among the more dicey endeavors I ever have tried, which is why I am shying away from handicapping the 2022 midterm contests.

Specifically, it is dangerous to predict how the midterm elections will turn out, which party will control Congress’s two legislative chambers.

I do have an idea based on trends I keep hearing about.

The U.S. Senate might not flip from Democratic to Republican control. What’s happening? It appears the GOP is shooting itself in both feet by fielding certifiable nut cases in key races they had hoped to keep or flip into GOP control.

Mehmet Oz is running for the Senate in Pennsylvania. One problem: He doesn’t live there; he hangs his hat in New Jersey. His opponent, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, appears to be pulling away. GOP Sen. Pat Toomey is retiring, so that one might flip from R to D.

Ohio might go from red to blue also. Republican Sen. Rob Portman is retiring. Rep. Tim Ryan is the Democrat running to succeed him. The GOP challenger is J.D. Vance, another nut job. Ryan is leading and he, too, could pull away. Another state might go from R to D.

Democrats appear set to hold onto two seats formerly thought to be ripe for the picking. Sen. Mark Kelly is looking strong against his GOP challenger. My favorite contest this year could be Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock vs. GOP dumbass Herchel Walker. The Rs thought Walker could pilfer this one. They are wrong. Walker’s only claim to any sort of fame is his stellar college and pro football career. Beyond that? This man might be the most unfit candidate ever to suit up for a political office.

One more: GOP Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin might get tossed out by Democratic challenger Mandela Barnes. Oh, how I would love to see that occur.

The Senate stands at 50-50. When the ballots are counted in November, it could be a 53-47 Democratic majority.

The House? That one looks more problematic for Democrats, although I keep seeing that the projections for a “Red Wave” are diminishing from a tsunami to a pebble in a puddle.

It is going to be an invigorating and likely angst-ridden election season coming up. The spirit of our democratic process — despite Donald Trump’s efforts to subvert it — appears to be alive and well.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Judge to unseal part of affidavit?

Call me surprised that the magistrate judge who issued the search warrant to allow FBI agents to look for evidence in Donald Trump’s home has indicated he will unseal part of the affidavit the feds produced to persuade him to act.

I thought he should keep the affidavit secret, that it would jeopardize the investigation into whether Trump broke any laws when he squirreled classified documents away from the White House.

Right wingers, along with Trump, argued that the judge, Bruce Reinhart, unseal all of it in the name of total transparency.

He appears to be splitting the difference.

Trump’s legal woes enter yet another protracted phase – POLITICO

My hope going forward is that the Justice Department will be able to continue in its pursuit of the truth behind the 1/ 6 insurrection; so will the House select committee examining that assault on our democracy … at Trump’s behest.

This is a hyper-sensitive case that needs, in my view, hyper-sensitive eyes and ears that protect the evidence against those who could use it against the government’s pursuit of the truth.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com