Tag Archives: POTUS

legal news

Should judges speak out more?

A former Clinton administration Cabinet official poses an interesting question in light of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ rebuke of Donald Trump.

Should they speak out more? asks former Labor Secretary Robert Reich.

My quick answer: no, they shouldn’t.

Roberts said this today: “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them. That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”

It’s a rare rejoinder coming from the nation’s top jurist aimed at the nation’s top governmental executive.

We can argue all day about whether the federal judiciary is actually independent. Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate confirmation hearing showed just how political the high bench has become, many would argue. I won’t join that debate today.

The issue is whether the president should be condemning them or whether judges should be let loose to respond.

Donald Trump has been castigating judges, calling them “Obama judges” or “so-called judges” or judges who oppose his policies because they are appointed to the bench by someone from another political party.

The chief justice is responding cleanly and succinctly to the president.

It’s the rare quality that gives the statement its gravitas, adds weight to it. It lends and air of added ummmph to the chief’s rebuke of the president.

Thus, my hope would be that federal judges — let alone the chief justice of the nation’s highest court — would remain quiet. If they all start offering opinions about careless statements coming from politicians, the frequency would clearly water it all down.

I welcome the chief’s remarks. That they are so rare makes them even more significant.

legal news

SCOTUS chief to POTUS: No such thing as partisan judges

Listen up, Mr. President. Sit up straight and pay attention. The chief justice of the United States of America is speaking words of wisdom.

Chief Justice John Roberts has informed you, Donald Trump, that the country doesn’t have “Obama judges, or Bush judges or Clinton judges.” The federal judiciary, he reminded all of us in a statement issued today, is an independent branch of the government. The men and women who adjudicate cases must be free of partisan consideration, such as the individual who nominated them to whatever bench where they sit.

It’s a rare event to have the chief justice admonish a politician, Mr. President. Congratulations, you’ve stirred the pot!

The chief is admonishing you for those intemperate remarks you keep making about judges. You had the gall to refer to a U.S.-born federal jurist as a “Mexican” only because he is of Mexican heritage; the judge was ruling against your anti-immigration efforts. You referred to another judge based in Hawaii as a “so-called judge” because he knocked down your Muslim travel ban. Another judge who ruled against your recent asylum ban became an “Obama judge.”

Thus, the chief justice got riled enough to speak out against your careless references to the men and women who sit on our federal bench.

Perhaps he’s ticked that you criticized him directly for his vote in 2012 to preserve the Affordable Care Act. That makes it even worse, Mr. President.

You, Mr. President, keep demonstrating an absolute and unwavering ignorance of the roles that the co-equal branches of government play. You don’t understand the limits of your own executive power, or the limitations placed on the legislative and judicial branches of government. Your habitual loud mouth and careless rhetoric underscore your own ignorance of the governmental framework you took an oath to “preserve, protect and defend.”

I am glad to know that Chief Justice Roberts has called you out, although his language — quite understandably — was measured and scholarly.

I know you won’t learn from this. I just had to weigh in anyway.

Mr. President, you simply scare the spit out of me.

national news

Trump-Pence 2020 in possible doubt?

It’s not unheard of, but in recent years it’s a rare occurrence when a president of the United States jettisons a vice president and runs with a new running mate while seeking re-election.

Newsweek magazine is reporting that Donald Trump’s key advisers are floating the notion of replacing Vice President Mike Pence with U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley.

Why? Because the vice president was highly critical of that hideous “Access Hollywood” tape in which the future president disclosed how he could grab women by their genitals. Pence, a devout Christian, reportedly was incensed over what he heard … and Trump hasn’t forgiven Pence for the apparent “disloyalty,” according to Newsweek.

I am not going to dictate what I think Trump should do. That’s his call. Frankly, the vice president’s future is of little interest to me, other than whether he would ascend to the presidency if — dare I suggest it — that Trump doesn’t finish his term.

The most recent president to switch VPs was Gerald R. Ford, who kicked Vice President Nelson Rockefeller — who was appointed to the office — to the curb. President Ford selected Sen. Bob Dole as his 1976 running mate. The president lost his bid for election to the office to which he was appointed to Jimmy Carter.

Newsweek reports: The president could be considering new strategies for his next campaign after Republicans were dealt major blows in last week’s midterm elections. Democrats picked up at least 36 seats to retake the House and prevented Republicans from further bolstering their lead in the Senate. This was an election Trump had turned into a referendum on his first two years in office.

Indeed, as I watched the returns roll in, it appears to many of us that Trump lost that “referendum” … bigly, if you know what I mean.

Does he toss the vice president overboard in some sort of hail-Mary effort to save his presidency? Not a damn thing would surprise me.

economic news

POTUS pitches tax cut before midterm election? Can’t happen

Donald Trump’s ignorance about the federal government was on full display at a campaign rally.

The president promised a 10 percent tax cut before the midterm election. Cheers erupted from the crowd.

Oh, but wait. Congress initiates tax measures. Congress isn’t meeting. The president cannot enact a tax cut by himself.

Cutting taxes is a complicated matter. It requires negotiation among lawmakers and with the White House.

So it is that Donald Trump has shown us yet again that he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. He can say things. He can elicit cheers from adoring crowds.

He cannot deliver anything by himself. None of this matters to his base. This is the “new normal” in Washington: A president doesn’t know what he’s talking about … and neither does the crowd that cheers him on.

national news

She’s ‘credible’? Then she’s not? Which is it, Mr. POTUS?

1 Comment

Donald John Trump keeps demonstrating his astonishing ability to contradict himself. What’s more, his “base” of followers keeps demonstrating its own remarkable talent for looking past this man’s hypocrisy.

The president as recently as a week ago said Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault is a “credible” accuser, someone who deserved a fair hearing of her grievance.

Then in a campaign rally in Mississippi just yesterday, the president decided to mock Ford and, yes, challenge her credibility.

He even sought to mimic the accuser’s voice, which came from someone who admitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee that she was “terrified” to be testifying before the panel on national television.

Trump mocks Ford

I only can ask rhetorically, because the president has no clue as to how he might answer it were he to see the question: Which statement — credible or the mocking tone — reflects your actual point of view, Mr. President?

This individual, Donald Trump, is utterly, completely and categorically lacking in anything resembling a principled basis for the statements that pour out of his mouth.

However … he “tells it like it is.”

Disgraceful.

International news

Trump, Kim ‘fell in love’? Weird, man!

I know he was uttering a figure of speech.

I know he didn’t mean it literally as he spoke those words.

I know this isn’t even anything approaching a real “romance,” let alone a “bromance.”

Still, for the president of the United States to say that he and North Korea’s ruthless, murderous, ham-fisted dictator “fell in love” after a series of angry tweets, public statements and threats sounds, well, more than a bit bizarre.

Donald Trump fired up a West Virginia campaign rally crowd with this riff: “He wrote me beautiful letters and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”

He referred, of course, to North Korean strongman Kim Jong Un, with whom he has had — shall we say — a most unusual man-to-man relationship.

Trump has referred to Kim as “Little Rocket Man,” but also has called him a “smart cookie.” I don’t know precisely what Kim has said about Trump, but I guess he has written some kind and likely quite flattering words to him in those “beautiful” and “great letters.”

I believe I am now officially creeped out.

Donald Trump

Let’s compare apples to apples

Five days ago, Donald J. Trump posted a message on Twitter that proclaimed for the umpteenth time that his poll numbers are “better” than those posted by former President Obama.

He wrote: Presidential Approval numbers are very good – strong economy, military and just about everything else. Better numbers than Obama at this point, by far. We are winning on just about every front and for that reason there will not be a Blue Wave, but there might be a Red Wave!

The raw polling data can be disputed. However, I feel the need to look briefly at the comparative moments in time of both men’s presidencies.

Barack Obama took office on Jan. 20, 2009 while the nation’s economy was in free fall. Banks were closing. Investment firms were collapsing. People were losing their jobs by the thousands daily.

By August 2010, the economy had not yet made the turn, but it was starting to show signs of life. It got so good that Obama was re-elected in 2012 and the jobless rate continued to decline right up until the end of his presidency.

Enter Donald Trump, who took the oath on Jan. 20, 2017. The economy was in far better shape than it was when his immediate predecessor took office.

I give the president credit for the great job numbers that have accrued since he took office. But it’s good to understand that he started with a much higher benchmark than the one Obama inherited eight years earlier.

I just hope that Trump’s damaging trade wars with the EU, China, Canada and Mexico don’t undo much of the good that has occurred. I fear there the damage is beginning to stretch our economy at the seams.

political news

‘President Avenatti?’ For real?

Say it ain’t so, counselor.

Michael Avenatti, whose only claim to national notoriety rests with his legal representation of a porn star who alleges she had a one-night stand with a future president of the United States, says he is considering a run for — gulp! — the presidency of the United States.

Oh … my … goodness!

Do you know what this tells me? It tells me that Donald J. Trump’s election as president in 2016 cements the notion that anyone can be be elected to the highest office in the land. Prior qualifications don’t matter. It doesn’t matter whether they have prior public service experience. Nor does it matter if they understand fully the complicated machinery that constitutes the federal system of government.

Avenatti was, shall we say, on no one’s radar prior to emerging as Stormy Daniels’s lawyer.

“I’m exploring a run for the presidency of the United States, and I wanted to come to Iowa and listen to people and learn about some issues that are facing the citizens of Iowa and do my homework,” Avenatti told the Des Moines Register.

As the saying goes: Only in America.

2016 election, Donald Trump, national news

Still can’t connect the words ‘President’ and ‘Trump’

1 Comment

It is with some measure of regret that I must announce that more than 18 months into Donald Trump’s term as president I remain unable to connect the words “President” and “Trump” consecutively.

I wish it were different. Honest. I do wish it! I am no closer to making that leap than I was when he won the election in November 2016.

It’s not the president’s policies that bother me to this extent. Heck, I disagreed with many of his predecessors repeatedly. I disagreed with President Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq; I have disagreed with President Obama’s seemingly personal ownership of public offices during his time in the White House; there was President Clinton’s perjury about over the Lewinsky relationship.

And on it goes.

All of those men, though, knew how to act. They behaved in a manner that lent dignity to their high and exalted office.

No, the problem I continue to have with Donald Trump remains of a personal nature. Yes, I disagree with his policy. However, were he ever to start acting, sounding and comporting himself like the head of state/head of government/commander in chief/leader of the free world, there would be a significant difference in the way I refer to him in his blog.

He does none of that.

Let’s just flash back a couple of days to that hideous re-election campaign rally in Pennsylvania. He pranced around the stage. He referred to a member of Congress as “a low IQ person”; he keeps referring to the media as the “enemy of the people” and purveyors of “fake, fake, disgusting news.”

He lies incessantly, to the point that I cannot take a single, solitary statement that flies out of his mouth at face value. Nothing! I am suspicious of every word he utters, every proclamation he makes.

How in the world can I refer to this individual by attaching his duly elected title directly in front of his name? I cannot.

I won’t give up every shred of hope that one day he’ll get it. That one day he’ll learn how to conduct himself with dignity and decorum. You see, I am an eternal optimist.

I want this guy to start acting  and sounding like a president. I just don’t expect it of him.

national news, political news

POTUS turns back on intelligence chiefs

The nation’s top intelligence and national security gurus stood before the nation this week at the White House and declared what many of knew already.

The Russians attacked our democratic system in 2016 and are engaging in a similar attack at this moment, trying to disrupt the 2018 midterm election.

All of them said the same thing. They sang in perfect harmony.

Then the president of the United States jetted off to a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. He rambled on for more than an hour. He trashed the “fake news” media. He railed against Democrats. The president called the Russian attack a “hoax.”

Do you think Donald John “Stable Genius” Trump Sr. would deign to offer some perspective or context about what the nation’s intelligence hierarchy had said just a little earlier in the day in the White House? Heavens no!

Trump was intent on whipping up the crowd that gathered to hear his campaign pitch. Mission accomplished, Mr. President.

He continues to dismiss this Russian attack. He continues to give short shrift to the need to protect our democratic process against future attacks. He ignores the “blinking red lights” that Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said are warning us of impending peril at the hands of hostile-power cyber warriors.

As I listen to the president’s voice keep rising, and as I watch him rant and rail against his foes, my fear keeps getting reaffirmed.

The president is not living up to the sacred oath he took to protect the government and, thus, our nation, against our enemies.