Now we know the nature of the illness that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sought to keep from the American public and the president of the United States.

It’s prostate cancer. I want to join Americans far and wide in wishing a speedy and complete recovery from a disease that strikes one in six Black Americans and one in eight of all Americans.

However, none of this lessens the nature of the mistake Austin made in hiding himself from public view for four days and even keeping his whereabouts a secret from those in the White House who had every reason in the world to know his status.

That includes Joe Biden, the commander in chief of the monstrous military operation that Lloyd Austin administers.

Biden was kept in the dark for four days during a period of extreme military tension. Wars have erupted in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip. Ukrainians are seeking to fend off an invading force of Russians; Israel is seeking to destroy the terrorist organization that sought to kill  thousands of Israelis with a hideous rocket attack on Oct. 7.

The United States is involved as it provides financial and military assistance to Ukraine and the Israeli Defense Force.

The secretary of Defense needs to be available 24/7 … period.

Secretary Austin need not lose his job over this mistake. He does need, however, to be scolded harshly by the president of the United States.

Austin was trying to protect his “privacy.” That’s a noble notion, except that the defense secretary is as public an official as anyone who holds that title, which means to me that he sacrifices his “rights of privacy,” particularly during these perilous times.

Still, I wish Lloyd Austin well and will pray he recovers from what ails him. Just don’t allow a recurrence of this sort of vanishing act!

One of the tricks I learned quickly upon moving from Amarillo to the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex is how to navigate smoothly along this region’s massive highway network.

I’m sure you’ve heard about the traffic in this part of the world. Dallas’s traffic jams have become legendary … and Fort Worth is no picnic either.

Rule No. 1: Never attempt to get anywhere during “rush hour,” morning or afternoon. You wait patiently to schedule your sojourns when you expect everyone out there to be either at work in the morning or at home in the evening.

Rule No. 2: Find back roads that could get you there nearly as quickly as the freeways/turnpikes/parkways/toll roads. That’s problematic, given that others might already have discovered those back roads, rendering them next to impossible to navigate.

I drove today from Collin County all the way to southwest Tarrant County. I left after the morning rush and returned prior to the evening rush. The drive is about 60 miles in length, taking me a little more than an hour to complete.

I did so in both directions with little fuss and even fewer four-letter words muttered under my breath at the traffic jams. What’s more, when you live in West Texas for as long as my wife and I did — 23 years — you learn that to get anywhere, you just have to drive a good bit to get there.

None of this accounts for the possibility of an 18-wheeler overturning and spilling toxic substances all over creation.

Just wanted to share this learning experience with you. I realize it’s no great discovery on my part, but it sure allows me to go from Point A to Point B and back again without undue stress.

At least the U.S. House Republican conference can declare that it well might not have flown the coop completely … at least not yet.

The House GOP selected Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana as its candidate to be the next speaker. He’s not a good choice. Then again the House GOP caucus has a dearth of decent men and women I would want to be speaker of the House.

Then again …

House Republicans could have turned to Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio to succeed Kevin McCarthy as speaker after McCarthy was booted out of the powerful post this past week. Jordan would have been far worse for the House and, more to the point, for the country had he been allowed to compete for the role of Man of the House.

Donald Trump endorsed Jordan, who has been one of the ex-POTUS’s major apologists since Trump lost the 2020 election to Joseph Biden. It is clear to me that Jordan would have taken the House toward the proverbial cliff, sending it off on even more probes to find alleged (and non-existent) wrongdoing among leading Democrats.

The Democratic caucus will nominate someone, too. The frontrunner appears to be House minority leader Hakeen Jeffries of New York. He likely won’t be elected speaker. However, Jeffries elevate the House’s cumulative IQ simply by serving in the chamber.

Congress is broken. The House GOP caucus needs to be tossed aside and reassembled into an organization that follows more closely what the framers had in mind when they crafted the “loyal opposition.”

OK, so I’ll damn the House GOP caucus with faint praise for nominating Scalise as the next speaker by declaring … that it could’ve been a whole lot worse.

It appears to be done. Donald John Trump has been indicted over issues relating to his taking of classified documents from the White House at the end of his term as president.

All the smart money said it was coming.

The smart money, though, is divided on what could be the consequence of what awaits the former POTUS and one of the Republicans seeking to win the next presidential election in 2024.

Because the ex-POTUS, through an astonishing personal appeal he holds on his cult of followers, has lowered the bar for what is acceptable in our politicians. We used to believe in this country that a politician under indictment is not fit for office. The guy is now the reported frontrunner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.

An indictment from a special counsel working for the Justice Department is forthcoming. What will the political consequence be once it arrives? The GOP base, so far, has shown little inclination to abandon an individual who’s been impeached twice, indicted by a New York grand jury and stands convicted of being liable in the defamation and sexual abuse of a woman who sued him in federal court.

The GOP base’s argument? The system is corrupt. The fix is in. It has been “weaponized.”

None of this, of course, diminishes the legal consequences that the ex-POTUS will face. Those consequences are enormous. This individual could go to trial for taking classified documents from the White House and could, if convicted, face a lifetime in prison.

It’s the difference between the politics and the legality of this situation that simply blows my mind.

How in the world does anyone justify or condone a politician who takes an oath to defend and protect the Constitution and then incites a traitorous mob to destroy the very principles embedded in that document? How do you defend someone who takes classified documents from the White House in direct violation of federal law?

These are the most perilous times imaginable. I am going to cling to my faith in the Constitution, that it will survive ultimately this dire challenge.

It must. The consequences of failure are too frightening to ponder.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com