Monthly Archives: July 2024

national news

Trump: luckiest pol … ever!

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Donald J. Trump is vying for the unofficial title of luckiest politician of all time.

Ponder this for a moment. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died in early 2016 and President Obama sought to nominate Merrick Garland to the SCOTUS vacancy. The Senate’s premier obstructionist, GOP leader Mitch McConnell, intervened, saying that Obama didn’t have the right to nominate anyone in an election year. McConnell blocked Garland’s nomination hoping that Trump would win in 2016. Trump won in what will go down as the greatest political fluke in US history.

Then the new POTUS named three justices to the court.

Together, along with three other right-wing justices, they have determined that POTJSes have immunity against prosecution for crimes committed while performing their official duties. Trump already has been convicted of 34 felony counts, but that doesn’t stop him from running again.

Trial judges down the line are now hamstrung by the high court’s immunity ruling, possibly enabling Trump to run out the clock and hope — and man, this pains me to write this — that he wins the 2024 election … which would doom any chance of any conviction on any of the remaining trials.

That the presumptive GOP nominee is even in a position to win the next election baffles me beyond all measure. It is stunning in the extreme. This guy is without question the most immoral reprobate ever to seek high political office.

Yet there he is, riding this god-awful wave of good luck possibly right back into the White House, the one place on Earth where he never should be seen again.

Go … figure!

legal news

SCOTUS trashes another established notion

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Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has laid waste to another established legal tenet, let us look briefly at what might lie ahead.

The court, ruling 6 to 3, has decided that presidents do have presumed immunity from prosecution if they commit wrongdoing while sitting in the office. The court let stand the notion that a president can be prosecuted for acts he committed after he leaves office.

We all thought that “no one is above the law.” Well … that’s not quite true. It means, in this matter specifically, that Donald Trump was within legal authority to provoke the Jan. 6 onslaught on the Capitol and then do nothing to stop it while mobsters assaulted the cops, crashed through windows, defecated on the floor of our Capitol and threatened to execute the VP if he didn’t obey Trump’s command to overturn the result of the 2020 election … which Trump lost to Joe Biden!

Does this mean, therefore, that Joe Biden could send a special forces sniper team to assassinate his opponents before he leaves office? Of. course not … except that the court ruled that illegal acts might be protected.

When I served in the US Army long ago, I was told that we didn’t have to obey unlawful orders. We were instructed to resist them. Vice President Mike Pence received what to my mind was an unlawful order from Trump to “do the right thing” by stopping the certification of the 2020 election result. Pence has said all along he didn’t have the authority to act.

He followed the law and the US Constitution. Trump should be tried for issuing that order. SCOTUS, again in my view, got this ruling wrong.

legal news

No one is above the law? Pfffttt!

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If you thought for a nanosecond — as I did — that “no one is above the law,” then what we have received today from the U.S. Supreme Court is a decision that dispels such foolishness.

The court, ruling 6 to 3, has decided that Donald J. Trump is granted “presumptive immunity” from prosecution for acts committed while he was still in office. That includes pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

The six votes all came from Republican-appointed justices; the three dissenting justices all were selected by Democratic presidents. Who knew … right?

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. According to The Hill: Roberts wrote that whenever the president and vice president are discussing official responsibilities, they are engaging in official conduct — and, presiding over the certification of the 2020 presidential election results is a constitutional and statutory duty of the vice president.

“The indictment’s allegations that Trump attempted to pressure the Vice President to take particular acts in connection with his role at the certification proceeding thus involve official conduct, and Trump is at least presumptively immune from prosecution for such conduct,” Roberts wrote.

The indictments of Trump presumed what Attorney General Merrick Garland has preached, that “no one is above the law.” Not true, according to the SCOTUS. The court’s logic applies even to discussion that involve knowingly conspiring to break the law.

SCOTUS did kick some of the indictments back to a lower court. More delay is coming up. The case involving the Jan. 6 assault on the government likely won’t go to trial until after the election.

Then, if — God forbid! — Trump wins, well … you know how that ends.

local news

My journey is complete

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Drum roll, please, for I am about to make an announcement.

The journey through darkness I have written about extensively on this blog since I lost my lovely bride, Kathy Anne, to cancer has for all intents reached its end.

So much has happened to my family and me since the worst day of our lives came crashing down on us. We lost the pillar of our family to glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. She lost her valiant battle and left her family and friends in a profound state of grief.

I commenced my return back from the darkness by writing about that journey on High Plains Blogger. You know what? It helped me beyond measure. I found it within myself to share my grief with the whole world. The process filled me with hope that I could get through this period.

And I have done so!

I have told you about how I searched for light at the end of this journey. I am happy to report that the light on this day is far brighter than I ever imagined it would be immediately after Feb. 3, 2023 … which I have labeled as the worst day of my life.

Every one of those who comprise my worldwide network of friends and acquaintances have said the same thing: The pain never will go away. It will return without warning. You, though, will learn to manage it. You know what? They all were right! Here is a compilation of the entries I posted on High Plains Blogger.

Kathy Anne | Search Results | High Plains Blogger

I have learned that the overarching lesson in dealing with grief is to not let it consume me. It hasn’t. I am moving on with my life. Yes, I have some aspects of that new life to work on … but I can do so with a clear head and a heart that is not nearly as damaged as I reported earlier on this blog.

As one of my sons informed me, “If you can get something positive accomplished in spite of your grief, then you’re doing OK,”

There you have it … but I am happy to declare myself to be far better than OK. Kathy Anne would insist on it.