Tag Archives: US Constitution

religious news

Revisiting myth of our ‘national Christianity’

Some issues just never go away. They lurk on the edges of our national consciousness, occasionally returning to a spot under the lights.

I have written a number of blogs on this venue about whether we live in a “Christian nation.” I concluded long ago that the founders deliberately left the word “Christian” out of our Constitution.

Here’s a post from 2015:

https://highplainsblogger.com/2015/07/a-christian-nation-never-have-been-one/

I suspect we’re going to be talking, maybe soon, about this issue once again. After all, the president who’s alleged to have had an affair with a porn queen has been courting the evangelical community since he began running for the office. I fully expect the evangelicals to talk about religion and their “faith” in the president.

Indeed, I saw a tweet this morning that reminds us that Barack Obama and George W. Bush were faithful to their wives, but it took a serial philanderer who’s allegedly involved with a porn star to get evangelical Christians so energized.

And somewhere along the line, someone is going to blurt out some nutty notion that the United States is a “Christian nation,” that it is rediscovering its Christian roots.

I’ll say it again, just as I will say it now.

Baloney!

We aren’t a Christian nation. We are a nation founded by and large by men who adhered to Christian principles; many of them were men of faith who didn’t necessarily follow Jesus Christ’s teachings. Yes, there is a Judeo-Christian ethic written into the Constitution.

However, the founders explicitly excluded any reference to Christianity in the nation’s founding document. Why? Because those men fled religious persecution from tyrants who demanded that they must believe a certain way. They came across the ocean intent on preserving people’s right to worship as they please — or not worship if that is their choice.

I am acutely aware that the founders didn’t craft a perfect document. It didn’t grant full citizenship rights to every living human being in this newly created country. But on the issue of the nation’s religiosity, they got it right.

God bless those brave and wise men.

national news

Prior restraint? No can do, Mr. President

Now we have this: Reports have surfaced that Donald Trump’s legal team is researching ways to prevent “60 Minutes” from broadcasting an interview with the porn queen with whom the president allegedly had an affair in 2006.

Let’s see. What do we make of that?

I believe it tells me that there’s something to all this baloney about a six-figure sum of money being paid to keep the porn queen quiet.

The president denies that he had an affair with this woman, who’s making quite a bit of hay of late over the publicity that has swarmed all over her — and the president. The affair allegedly occurred about a year after Trump married his third wife, Melania, and right after his wife gave birth to the couple’s son.

The porn queen/adult film producer and director has filed a lawsuit claiming that the non-disclosure agreement is null and void because Trump never signed it. He didn’t even sign it using an alias he was using at the time … sheesh!

Thus, she contends, she is able to talk all she wants about whether she had an affair with the man who would become president of the United States, despite being paid $130,000 in hush money by Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.

One more thing.

The First Amendment protects a “free press.” In the 21st century, that also includes broadcast media. The U.S. Constitution prevents government from interfering in the media’s effort to do its job.

I shall add that Trump is always the president. He is the head of government. He cannot compartmentalize these issues.

Prior restraint of the media, Mr. President, is not an option.

political news

Condi Rice: Squishy liberal? Hardly

Can we add Condoleezza Rice to the ranks of those who are thinking aloud about how the Second Amendment applies to the real world of today, compared to when it was written?

Let’s start by dismissing the notion that the former secretary of state, national security adviser to President George W. Bush and all-round brainiac is some squishy liberal. She isn’t.

The Parkland, Fla., school slaughter has Rice thinking about the Second Amendment. According to The Hill: “I think it is time for us to have a conversation about what the right to bear arms means in the modern world,” Rice told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. “I don’t understand why civilians need to have access to military weapons.”

“We wouldn’t, we wouldn’t say you can go out and buy a tank,” she continued. “So I do think we need to have that conversation.”

Could the authors of the Second Amendment in the 18th century envision a time when weapons such as the AR-15 that the Parkland shooter used would be available? I doubt it, folks.

So, let’s have that discussion. Shall we? Can we have it without going apoplectic?

Maybe someone as distinguished and admired as Condoleezza Rice can lead it.

national news

When is it the ‘right time,’ Mr. Speaker?

U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan is showing his gutlessness yet again.

He said it is “too early” to discuss gun violence in the wake of the latest gun-related tragedy.

A gunman killed 17 people in Parkland, Fla. on Valentine’s Day. Seventeen lives were snuffed out by a lunatic with an AR-15 assault rifle. He bought the gun legally, according to authorities. OK. Let’s start there.

How does someone who exhibited some warning signs of violence purchase an assault weapon legally? Are there any legislative remedies available to prohibit someone from buying a rifle that is designed to inflict maximum casualties in a minimum amount of time?

The speaker says it’s too early to talk about that. What utter crap!

It’s not too early. It’s never too early. Our nation is grieving yet again after a massacre at a public school. I am sickened in the extreme at this news. What’s more, I also am sickened at the lack of our will among our political leadership to take this matter on in a forthright manner.

The president spoke to us this week about love and caring for the victims. He said the students who witnessed the carnage are not alone and “never will be.” I appreciate Donald Trump’s statements about the need to protect our students and to tackle the ravages of mental illness. He’s right.

However, the president hasn’t yet broached the subject of gun violence. He hasn’t offered any ideas on how we might legislate some solution, or begin to craft a path toward some remedy that doesn’t violate the constitutional guarantee of gun ownership.

Let’s talk about this, shall we? It’s not too early. If not now, then when is the right time?

national news

Where is that solution to this violence?

I hate repeating myself. It frustrates me terribly when I find myself saying the same things over and over … much as I did to my sons when they were growing up.

Not to mention how frustrated they must have been. You know?

Thus, I am aghast at having to say once again: How in the world do Congress and the president find a solution to curb gun violence that doesn’t weaken one of our cherished constitutional amendments. I am referring to the Second Amendment, the one that guarantees gun ownership in this country.

The debate is being joined once again in the wake — once again! — of horrific tragedy. Seventeen people died Wednesday in a horrifying massacre at a Parkland, Fla., high school. A former student is in custody.

He entered the school with an AR-15 assault rifle, a weapon he purchased legally.

I am not smart enough to come up with a legislative solution to this problem. I merely sit out here in Flyover Country, writing a blog and offering commentary on this and/or that issue of the day.

The issue of this day happens to deal with guns and the violence that comes from those who possess weapons with the sole aim of killing as many beings as humanely possible.

A shooter walked into the high school and killed a lot of people quickly. Does the Second Amendment guarantee a lunatic the right to purchase a weapon that the authors of that amendment never envisioned in the late 18th century?

Gun-rights groups say, “Yes, it does!” They add, “Not only that, don’t even think about watering it down.” Then they bully our elected representatives into supporting their view. Members of Congress back off. They flinch. They quiver. They don’t act.

They’re smart enough to know how to craft legislation that perhaps can make it just a bit tougher to purchase an assault weapon.

Yes, I know what you might ask: Would any law have prevented the slaughter in Parkland? My answer? I have no earthly idea.

I do believe that we cannot let our lack of assurance about the effectiveness of these laws prevent our elected lawmakers from seeking solutions.

Moreover, I also believe that the Second Amendment is written broadly enough to allow for some controls on the weapons we allow and on those who can purchase them. I know we have restrictions already on who can purchase these weapons. I also know those restrictions aren’t limiting the tragedy that keeps recurring.

Can’t we do better? I believe we can.

I also believe we must.

national news

We may never solve this national crisis

One of my oldest and dearest friends has just posted a message on social media that I want to share in this blog.

Tim was my best man in 1971 and has forged a successful career in law. I admire him more than I’ve ever told him, until now.

Here is what he wrote:

In everything I do in my personal life, my professional life, my Rotary life, I am a “glass half-full” guy. I am an optimist. I believe that things can and, with determination, WILL get better. I believe in the inherent good in people in all walks of life. All of this is true in every area of my life but one: To those who plead, through eyes filled with horror and tears, that gun violence must stop, I say: It will never happen. This country, with orders of magnitude more guns and gun deaths than any other country in the world, is too far gone. The gun lobby is too strong. The pathetic “2nd Amendment” excuse is too widely embedded. Our legislators are too deep in the pockets of those who profit from death. Over and over and over again I hear “We must take action to stop this!” and that is the news for a week, maybe two, and then we are right back in the murderous gunsights, losing more people to gun violence each year than in the worst year of traffic deaths. And the hand-wringing and tears is as far as this will ever get. I am so ashamed of what went wrong in our country, and utterly without hope that it will ever, ever, ever get better.

The massacre today in Parkland, Fla. has scarred us all. Americans all across the land condemn gun violence. They call for something to be done legislatively to end it. Nothing happens.

I fear that my dear friend has encapsulated what many of us have feared all along. There is nothing we can do now to prevent this kind of slaughter from recurring … again and again.

It is to our everlasting shame.

national news

How might POTUS exit?

Forgive me for getting ahead of myself, but my mind sometimes wanders far a good bit into the future at times.

My mind is teasing me at the moment with this question: How is Donald John Trump going to exit the presidency of the United States?

I keep wondering if he is capable of going out with grace, keeping the tradition long established by a “peaceful” and “seamless” transition of power from one president to the next one.

I won’t predict when that transition will occur. I guess it’s OK to mention five options that await the president:

  • He could get re-elected in 2020 and serve the remainder of his presidency until he must exit, according to the U.S. Constitution.
  • He could be defeated for re-election in 2020.
  • He might decide against seeking a second term.
  • He could be impeached by the House of Representatives and then convicted in the Senate after Democrats re-take control of both congressional chambers in the 2018 mid-term election.
  • He could quit before being impeached.

I won’t predict which of those events will occur. In a strange way, though, it seems quite likely to my own mind that no matter how this man exits the presidency, he isn’t going to go away quietly.

Donald Trump just ain’t wired to behave the way those who occupy this exalted office usually do.

Let’s all prepare for continued turbulence.

media news

Weaken libel laws? No can do, Mr. President

Donald John Trump wants to make it easier to sue publications for libel. The president vowed to change laws he called a “sham” and a “disgrace.”

Really, Mr. President?

He made the vow at the start of a Cabinet meeting in the White House.

Where can I start? I’ll give it a shot.

Trump said journalists cannot write stories that are knowingly false and then smile while they count their money as it pours into their bank account.

True enough, Mr. President. Except that current libel laws ensure that those who publish “knowingly false” stories are punished.

As for whether the federal government can rewrite the law, I need to remind Donald Trump that the U.S. Constitution declares in the First Amendment that there should be a “free press” that is allowed to do its job without government interference.

The founders wanted to ensure that a free press could function without fear of intimidation and, thus, established a high bar for public officials to clear if they decide to sue for libel.

The object of Trump’s tirade clearly is the publication of “Fire and Fury,” the highly controversial book written by journalist Michael Wolff, who reports some mighty scathing remarks from former and current White House staffers who had some disparaging things to say about Donald Trump. The president calls it all fiction; Wolff, of course, stands by his reporting in the book.

National Public Radio reports: And this is hardly the first time Trump has railed against libel laws, which as a matter of practice are made by the states and backed by a U.S. Supreme Court precedent that sets a high bar for public figures wanting to prove libel.

So, what is left for Trump to do? He can nominate Supreme Court justices who are willing to water down the First Amendment. However, he then sets up a proverbial “litmus test” for potential appointees.

Would he dare ask them prior to selecting them whether they would pledge a sort of loyalty to the president by agreeing beforehand to rule favorably on a libel case that comes before the nation’s highest court?

Now that I think about it, I believe he would … to his shame!

Trump’s war on the media keeps getting hotter.

Frightening … and dangerous.

national news

25th Amendment? Let’s not go there

The U.S. Constitution’s 25th Amendment allows for the removal of a president if he is deemed unfit for the office.

The bar is set extraordinarily high.

The amendment is now on the lips of Washington, D.C. officials who seem to think Donald J. Trump has gone around the bend.

Let’s hold on here!

I’ve already stated my concern over what I call “armchair diagnoses.” There’s been a lot of that going on these days as the president keeps firing off those tweets boasting about the size of his nuclear button and threatening North Korea with annihilation.

However, no psychiatrist has examined the president — at least that I am aware of — and offered a firm medical diagnosis.

Which begs a question. What would a president have to do to be tossed aside?

I guess a president would have to slap a kid who’s touring the White House. Perhaps he would have to drool all over himself. Maybe he would have to berate a senior White House adviser publicly, using what my dear old Dad used to call “the functional four-letter word.”

Donald Trump hasn’t done anything like that.

There well might be a political reason to remove the president. That is where impeachment comes into play.

The 25th Amendment, though, remains the remotest of possibilities — even for a president who acts as squirrely as this one.

media news

POTUS declares war on media

It’s been on-going ever since Donald John Trump declared his presidential candidacy in June 2015.

He’s been at war with the media that seek to report the news relevant to his campaign and now, his presidency.

As Steve Schmidt, a longtime Republican Party political activist, has noted: Trump now has all but declared Fox News to be the state’s official news medium. Why is that? Because Trump just relishes the network’s obvious bias in his favor.

Other media outlets? They’re all the “enemy of the American people.” The president, with his alarming and frightening petulance toward the rest of the media, has broken with a couple centuries’ worth of tradition involving presidential relationships with a free press.

Consider, too, the words of a longtime public servant who now works as a “contributor” to CNN. Retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden — the former head of the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency — laid it on the line.

Hayden fires back at Trump

Hayden wrote this on Twitter: “Until now it was not possible for me to conceive of an American President capable of such an outrageous assault on truth, a free press or the first amendment.”

Think not just of what Gen. Hayden said, but also consider that this man would say it. Michael Hayden served with distinction and honor under presidential administrations of both major political parties.

Hayden was responding to this tweet from Trump: “Fox News is MUCH more important in the United States than CNN, but outside of the U.S., CNN International is still a major source of (Fake) news, and they represent our Nation to the WORLD very poorly.”

I get that Trump gored Hayden’s proverbial ox with that ridiculous message. However, I believe Hayden’s description of Trump’s view of the media is correct. He is conducting an “outrageous assault on truth, a free press” and, yes, on the First Amendment.

This individual, the president of the United States, is a disgrace to the high office he occupies.