By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Now he speaks out,

U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry, who rose to the ranks of one of his party’s top lawmaking leaders, had remained virtually silent about the conduct of Donald J. Trump.

Then he announced his retirement from Congress, where he served since 1995. What do you suppose happened to the Clarendon, Texas, Republican? He found his, um, voice.

He has needled his fellow GOP colleagues for following a “mindless sort of obedience” to the lame-duck president. He says their blind fealty “undermines our institutions.” Well, yeah!

Thornberry told the Dallas Morning News that “Congress was created to be and meant to be a separate branch of government — not one in which its members take their direction from a president of either party.”

Thornberry also had some choice words for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and the 126 GOP members who joined him in a loony lawsuit filed in the U.S. Supreme Court. The suit sought to nullify millions of votes that went to President-elect Biden. Paxton had no standing or right to intercede in other states’ electoral processes, the court ruled. Thornberry agreed, saying that had Paxton had succeeded there could be no end to the type of mischief that other states could do to Texas’s own electoral system.

Suffice to say that Thornberry did not his colleagues’ effort to climb aboard the Paxton clown car.

I appreciate Thornberry’s newfound candor. He was my congressman for more than two decades when I lived and worked in Amarillo. I had a fruitful professional relationship with him and I wish him well as he charts a new course in his life.

I just wish he had revealed his candor a whole lot earlier.