Monthly Archives: July 2023

legal news, local news, State news

Next up: Paxton trial

The Texas Senate has adjourned for the time being, until it convenes in early September to take up another matter that has nothing to do with legislating.

It has everything to do with good government and whether Texas deserves an attorney general who isn’t always under investigation for this or that alleged criminal activity.

The trial of impeached Republican AG Ken Paxton will commence Sept. 5. The House impeached Paxton in a decisive, bipartisan vote. This week, the legal team leading the prosecution gained an important Republican member, former Texas Supreme Court Justice Harriet O’Neill.

O’Neill, who returned to private law practice in 2010, calls the charges against Paxton “clear, compelling and decisive,” and she is looking forward to joining the legal team prosecuting the attorney general.

The multiple articles of impeachment cover a wide range of allegations, including bribery, abuse of office, obstruction of justice. The notion that O’Neill has joined the team isn’t lost on those involved with the impeachment.

According to the Texas Tribune: State Rep. Andrew Murr, R-Junction, who leads the House General Investigating Committee and the Board of Impeachment Managers, called O’Neill a “respected, conservative jurist.”

“As a longtime judge and elected official, she understands the gravity of this matter and its importance to the state of Texas,” Murr said in a statement.

Harriet O’Neill, retired Republican justice, joins team impeaching Paxton | The Texas Tribune

Indeed. She is far from alone in honoring the pending trial’s “importance to the state.” If he’s convicted, Paxton’s disturbing tenure as the state’s chief law enforcer comes to a halt. He’s been under state indictment almost since Day One on a charge of securities fraud. A team of whistleblowers alleged criminal activity.

Texans deserve far better than what they are getting from the state’s top legal eagle.

The hurdle for conviction is high. Texas needs two-thirds of senators to vote to convict the AG. I am going to hope we can get past the Paxton Era and move ahead with an attorney general who isn’t stained and sullied by scandal and corruption.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Sports news

‘No’ on review of calls

I will admit to being a professional sports fuddy-duddy, given all the technology being introduced to manage the conduct of various games.

Allow me this brief rejoinder to one of those elements: instant replay.

I attended a big-league baseball game Friday night in Arlington, Texas, where my friend and I watched the Texas Rangers blow out the Cleveland Guardians. What’s more, they did it without a lick of help from the umpires.

The Rangers filed one challenge to a play at the plate. A runner was called “out!” … and he was out, by a mile. The review of the video proved the call was the correct one.

Which brings me to my point. We should let the umpires do their job. They have to make decisions in a split second. You know what? They get it right about, oh, 99% of the time. It never ceases to amaze me how the momentum of games is disrupted by the challenges allotted to managers of both teams.

Well, the game we witnessed in Arlington was left to the athletes. It cheers me to no end to see the Grand Old Game played the way it’s intended.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Still ‘no!’ on term limits

With all the back and forth about political corruption and calls from prominent pols to enact term limits on members of Congress … my position on that matter remains fundamentally unchanged.

We don’t need mandated term limits for politicians who run for Congress. Indeed, we already have them. They occur every two years for House members and every six years for U.S. senators. They are elections.

I also want to disabuse you of the myth that Congress is overrun by longtime House members and senators who have been in office since The Flood. A Congressional Quarterly study done years ago pointed to a healthy turnover of politicians serving in Congress. The study showed that a tiny minority of lawmakers had been in office for more than, say, three or four terms.

As a practical matter, getting Congress to approve a constitutional amendment mandating term limits is problematic, to be sure. That is what it would take for such a proposal to become law. We have our share of pols who say they favor term limits, then they run for re-election to their umpteenth term. Some of them do so successfully; some do not.

There you have it. Term limits at work in Congress.

I once harbored the notion that we should repeal the 21st Amendment limit presidents to two terms. Enacted in 1951, the amendment was meant to prevent presidents from seeking more than two terms after President Roosevelt was elected to office four times. He died just a few weeks after taking office for his fourth term.

The office does take its toll on the occupant, as FDR’s demise — in his mid-60s — demonstrated. Therefore, keep the 21st Amendment on the books.

Members of Congress, though, do not need to be ordered out of office. The voters will have their say if enough of them think their congressman or woman is doing a lousy job.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, legal news

Prosecutor vs. Perpetrator

Watching the drama building as the prosecutor pursues the perpetrator, I cannot help but be struck by the profound differences in  the way these men act in public.

Let’s look first at the prosecutor. His name is Jack Smith, appointed special counsel to investigate alleged crimes committed by the perp.

Smith has been studied, measured, professional, discreet, reticent. He has been faithful to his pledge to grant the perp in this case the presumption of innocence to which he is entitled. Yet he has compiled an astonishing array of evidence that the perpetrator knew he lost an election in 2020 but tried to overturn the results. He also has assembled a mountain of evidence that the perp took highly classified documents to his home in Florida and kept them in highly unsecured locations.

The perpetrator is Donald John Trump, the former president of the United States.

Trump has been, well, shrill, venal, vile, deceitful, defamatory, profane, highly vocal in his objection to the investigation that has taken place. He ignores lawyers’ advice to keep his trap shut. He continues to denigrate the prosecutor’s reputation, asserting that Smith has it in for him. He’s also chosen to hurl epithets at Smith’s wife who, as near as I can tell, has nothing at all to do with the probe underway.

Even if I didn’t already believe that the perpetrator is guilty of the crimes for which he has been indicted, I would be rooting for the prosecutor. Why? Because I believe strongly in the criminal justice system for which the prosecutor is working. I believe in the rule of law.

The prosecutor is facing a form of competition, as has been reported, from local district attorneys who are conducting their own probes into the perp’s post-2020 election behavior. They, too, might file indictments alleging criminal activity involving the search for votes that didn’t exist and for attempts to coerce and bully state election officials to overturn an election.

Do we hear the prosecutor telling the local DA’s to back off? That they should let the feds have first crack? The prosecutor is a seasoned pro with many years of experience under his belt. Granted, the perp in this instance happens to be the first of his kind ever held under investigation … given that he is a former POTUS, for crying out loud!

But my money clearly is on the prosecutor to deliver the goods in due course.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, Sports news

Ump let the players play!

I feel the need to offer a brief critique of the Major League Baseball game I attended Friday night at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas.

What about it? Hardly anything to criticize about it?

I want to offer one comment, though, on the rule changes enacted this year to speed up these games. They work.

MLB has put a timer on pitchers. They have to toss a pitch within a certain amount of time. They are warned by the home-plate umpire. The home-plate ump, Mark Ripperberger, offered one warning to a pitcher. The rest of the night? He let the players play the game, which is what umps should do.

It took a little less than three hours to finish it.

There was exactly one appeal of a call, which wasn’t even close. A Texas Rangers runner was thrown out at home plate. He was out — as the saying goes — by a “country mile.” Texas Rangers manager Bruce Bochy thought he would appeal the ruling. It was upheld … and the Rangers faithful, of course, booed the decision, even though it was so very correct.

This was my first big league ballgame in nearly 60 years. It was enjoyable to the max. I got to spend some time with a good friend and former colleague; we gossiped about this and that individual we knew and with whom we worked.

Not only that … the good guys won the well-played game of hardball!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, national news

Trump Fatigue sets in

You may choose to believe or disbelieve what I am about to say, but it’s true … which is that I am getting weary of all things Donald John Trump.

Yes! I want this to end! I want to stop thinking about what this idiot might do next to call attention to himself. I want to get on with serious policy discussions about serious policy differences between serious political leaders.

Trump offers nothing serious or sober to any of this. He offers only drama, chaos, narcissism, threats against democracy.

He is in the middle of multiple legal battles, none of which is likely to end well for him. If he’s convicted, say, of violating the Espionage Act in hiding those documents at his joint in Florida, he’ll fight the prison sentence that awaits him.

People such as me will comment on it, as we must. I don’t want to do it, but I will.

Just to be crystal clear: I do not believe Donald Trump will be elected POTUS. I remain dubious as to whether he will remain in the campaign for the White House.

He will remain on center stage, though, as an ex-POTUS and rabble rouser extraordinaire.

I just want him to vanish. Forever.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Identity ‘crisis’ arrives

A single sudden, savage and sad event has thrown me into a form of identity crisis I never gave a moment’s thought until that event arrived more than five months ago.

Feb. 3, the worst day of my life, culminated that evening with the passing of my bride, Kathy Anne, from brain cancer.

We got married when I was not quite 22 and she was not quite 20. I am now 73 years of age, which means for almost our entire adult lives we were identified with each other.

We were husband and wife. We were “together” for 52 years, or to put it another way, we became a couple the moment I planted a kiss for the ages on her two days after she first appeared before me, like a vision.

Now she’s gone. I have difficulty thinking of myself as a “single” man. I cannot quite make that leap. It’s weird. Perhaps others who have experienced similar loss know of what I am speaking. I don’t like using the “w” word to define me; you know what it stands for, yes?

Some young man came to my door a few weeks ago to pitch a solar panel program he wanted to sell me. We chatted for a minute, then he asked, “Are you married?” Believe it or not, I took me about 15 seconds to muster up the ability to say, “No. I am not.”

Identity crises occasionally afflict middle-aged men. We hear occasionally of “mid-life crises.” I didn’t go through one of those back when I was in my 50s. Kathy Anne kept me young … if you get my drift.

Now I am embarking on this unknown trek toward some unidentified destination. I am suffering a new sort of crisis as I soldier on.

I am writing about it only to put it out there. It makes me feel somewhat relieved to be able to share it with others who perhaps understand the feelings being expressed.

It’ll pass … eventually.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

Putin commits No. 1 blunder

In the annals of strategic blunders, it appears to me that an all-time mess-up might have been committed by Russian dictator/tyrant/goon Vladimir Putin.

He invaded Ukraine in February 2022 thinking the war would be brief, that he would install a puppet government in Kyiv, he could bring his troops home, he could force NATO to fall apart and could have his way in that part of Europe.

Wrong!

President Joe Biden declared this week on his trip to Lithuania and then to Helsinki, Finland, that Putin already has “lost the war” in Ukraine.

His military is third-rate at best; Ukraine has shown itself to be more than capable; NATO not only has held together, it has grown; Finland’s inclusion in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization effectively doubles the size of territory bordering Russia.

Oh, and the alliance has held because of Biden’s expertise in foreign policy and his steady leadership as president of the world’s pre-eminent military and economic superpower.

My sense now is that it might be time to start pressuring Putin to begin negotiating a way out of this war. We have supplied Ukraine with plenty of arms, ordnance, various supplies and training to handle the supposedly vaunted Russian military. The Russians have demonstrated time and again a level of battlefield incompetence that no one saw coming.

President Biden is not overstating what looks to be more obvious all the time … that Russia has already “lost” the Ukraine War.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

medical news

Where is Fauci Squad?

The congressional Republican hit squad made a grim prediction on the eve of the 2022 midterm election.

They would, if they regained control of the House of Representatives, launch an immediate investigation into all the wrongs committed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the one-time coronavirus guru hired first by Donald Trump and then kept by Joe Biden to lead the nation out of the pandemic crisis.

They accused Fauci of lying, of covering up the cause of the pandemic, of spreading confusion. They were going to get to the bottom of it all right then and there … they said with passion.

What the hell?

Fauci has retired. He’s spending more time with his wife, his children and grandchildren. He is out of the limelight. For my money, the man deserves a medal. Hell, he ought to get several medals for putting up with the ration of horseh** he got for four years during the Trump years and during the time he served the Biden administration.

Oh, wait. I almost forgot. The Republican congressional caucus has been sniffing around Hunter Biden’s laptop, looking for crimes that they say he committed. Then we find out that an informant who reportedly was friendly with the GOP caucus is an arms dealer who worked for China … and who now is on the lam.

As for Fauci, the GOP continues to be distracted by other phony probes to spend any time looking into so-called wrongdoing by a dedicated infectious disease physician.

From my perch in the cheap seats, Anthony Fauci is a hero who saved millions of American lives. The GOP chumps looking for dirt to throw at him continually disgrace the government they have pledged to serve.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

political news

What’s so wrong with ‘career politicians’?

You’ve heard it said millions of times, that someone is unfit for public office because he or she is a “career politician.”

I want to speak in favor of those who choose politics for a living, those who select public service as a career goal. I’ve never quite understood why these “career politicians” so often are held up as figures to be ridiculed, denigrated, reduced to four-letter words.

I am not a Pollyanna about this stuff, mind you. I’ve been watching career pols do their jobs for a long time. I spent nearly 37 years in the journalism trenches reporting and commenting on their activities. Some of them were, um, less than noble. I concede that point with no hesitation.

I’ve watched a few of them up close attain national stature. The meanest of them no doubt was the late Jack Brooks, the Democratic congressman from the Golden Triangle of Texas. He used to refer to himself as Sweet Old Brooks. Yep, he was an SOB, but he was “our SOB,” or so the saying went in Beaumont, Port Arthur and throughout Brooks’s congressional district.

Here’s the thing about Brooks: He got things done for his district. His constituents re-elected him many times because his staff did a good job of listening to people’s needs, concerns, gripes.

Career pols comprise a shrinking portion of Congress these days. Voters have expressed themselves with their ballots, turning away politicians who perhaps overstay their welcome. They bring in newcomers. In this current climate, many of the newbies see themselves as media stars, pushing their way into view of TV cameras. I cannot predict how they will wear over time.

I am not going to dismiss them immediately as flashes in the pan, although I am quite willing to make an exception to that rule: e.g., GOP U.S. Rep. George Santos of New York, the serial liar who needs to get the boot at the next election.

All told, though, I welcome career politicians. Someone has to do this job. Those who are willing and able to make public service a career and are willing to serve honorably, well … may they continue in their chosen field.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com