Tag Archives: US Constitution

media news, national news, political news, State news

Trump increases pols’ antipathy toward media

What is it about politicians who make lame jokes and then fail to own them?

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is just the latest in a long and growing line of pols who have committed that transgression.

But here’s the deal: Abbott’s lame joke is speaking to a larger — more serious — issue involving the media and the politicians they cover.

The governor this past week signed into law a bill that reduces the amount of money that concealed handgun carry applicants must pay to obtain their license. Then he went to a shooting range, fired a few rounds at a target and then joked that he would carry the target around “in case I see any reporters.”

Few folks are laughing.

You see, it’s the context of Gov. Abbott’s remarks that are so damn troubling.

We can thank the president of the United States for it.

Donald Trump has all but declared war on the media. He calls them the “enemy of the people.” He accuses mainstream news outlets of producing “fake news.” He refuses to answer tough questions from the media. He calls news media outlets “a disgrace” and calls reporters “among the most dishonest people” anywhere. He reportedly told the then-FBI director that reporters should be jailed if they report on leaked classified material.

Trumpkins show up at his rallies wearing t-shirts that suggest journalists should be hanged.

Now the governor of Texas makes a goofy joke that seems to suggest it’s OK to shoot reporters. He won’t take it back. He won’t apologize for the hideous timing of the remark, coming as it did just two days after a Republican congressional candidate “body slammed” a reporter for asking him about the GOP health care overhaul.

Is this the era into which we have entered? That it’s OK to intimidate reporters for doing their job? That the First Amendment protection of a “free press” isn’t to be taken seriously, let alone literally?

Mimi Swartz, writing for Texas Monthly, has asked the governor to take it back. You can read her essay here. I don’t expect Abbott to do as she asks.

Sadly, neither do I expect the president of the United States to back off his own campaign against the media assigned to report his actions to the people he governs.

 

national news, political news

‘I, alone … ‘ should have been given us a clue

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Donald J. Trump’s time as president has lasted all of about 122 days — give or take — yet it seems like forever already.

As I look back on this man’s stunning political ascent, I am struck by one moment that I believe in hindsight should have given us a clue on what we might expect.

He stood before the Republican National Convention this past summer in Cleveland and declared that “I, alone” can repair all the things he said are ailing the country.

Setting aside for a moment or two the myriad problems that are bedeviling this man and his administration — and which might cost him his office — that particular statement suggested to me at that moment that this fellow really doesn’t get it.

He doesn’t understand one of the principal tenets of governing, which is that he is participating in a team sport. It’s so critical to understand that notion at the federal level, where the founders established a triple-layered governmental system where one branch holds no more power than the other two.

The presidency is but one branch; it must work in tandem with the Congress. Waiting in the wings to ensure that the executive and legislative branches don’t violate the Constitution are the federal courts, comprising actual judges, not the “so-called” types who render decisions that might go against whatever the president wants to do.

Donald Trump ignores political decorum, custom and practice. As some have noted, he does so either out of ignorance or does so willfully. I’ll take Trump at his word that he is a “smart person,” which means he is invoking a willful disregard for how the federal government is supposed to work.

The concept of governing by oneself does not work. It cannot work. The president is getting a real-time civics lesson in how the nation’s founders established this government of ours. He has vowed to run the country like his business. Yeah, good luck with that.

A business mogul can fire people at will. He can order underlings around, make them do this or that task. He can threaten, bully and coerce others.

When he takes the reins of the executive branch of the federal government, all of that prior experience gets thrown out the window.

How does the president tell Congress — comprising 535 individuals with constituencies and power bases of their own — to do his bidding? And how does the president actually defy the federal judiciary, which the founders established to be an independent check on every single thing the president and Congress enact?

Yes, the Republican Party’s presidential nominee gave it all away when he stood there in Cleveland and bellowed “I, alone” can fix it.

No, Mr. President. You cannot. Nor should you have ever tried.

Moreover, I believe his repeated efforts to trample over Congress and the federal courts are going to bite him hard in the backside as he seeks to defend himself against the other troubles that are threatening him.

national news

Does the president still think invoking Fifth means guilt?

Donald J. Trump was simply outraged during the 2016 presidential campaign about Hillary Clinton’s aides invoking their constitutional protection against self-incrimination.

Doing so, he said at the time, meant they likely were “guilty as hell” of committing a crime.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/22/politics/trump-campaign-staff-fifth-amendment-flynn/index.html

The issue had to do with Clinton’s e-mail controversy and other matters. Trump was running against Hillary for the presidency, which meant that such activity just made his case for him.

He is now the president. One of his former trusted aides, ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn, is invoking his Fifth Amendment rights. He has refused to answer a Senate Intelligence Committee subpoena. He has a lot of questions to answer about his relationship with the Russian government and whether he allegedly worked with the Russians to influence the 2016 election.

Flynn was fired 24 days into his new job.

Does the president still think Flynn’s decision to invoke the Fifth mean he is “guilty as hell” of a crime? Well, do you, Mr. President?

International news

Preferring the U.S. method of letting ’em protest

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross cannot possibly be a dim bulb.

Or can he?

Ross offered a critique of the welcome that Donald J. Trump’s presidential entourage received in Saudi Arabia.

“There’s no question that they’re liberalizing their society, and I think the other thing that was fascinating to me, there was not a single hint of a protester anywhere there during the whole time we were there,” Ross said in an appearance on CNBC. “Not one guy with a bad placard.”

Not one guy, eh?

Someone ought to inform the secretary that public protest in Saudi Arabia remains highly illegal. Protesters generally are rounded up, arrested, given lashes until they bleed … you know, the kind of thing that occurs in countries run by repressive regimes.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/wilbur-ross-trumps-saudi-visit_us_5922dd3ce4b03b485cb31054

CNBC reporter Becky Quick sought to inform Ross of those prohibitions. He answered:

“In theory, that could be true,” he replied. “But boy, there was certainly no sign of it. There was not a single effort at any incursion, there wasn’t anything. The mood was a genuinely good mood, and at the end of the trip, as I was getting back on the plane, the security guards from the Saudi side who’d been helping us over the weekend all wanted to pose for a big photo op, and then they gave me two gigantic bushels of dates as a present, a thank you for the trip that we had had. That was a pretty from-the-heart, very genuine gesture and it really touched me.”

I believe I will stick with the American way. It allows protests. It gives people the freedom to speak angrily against the government, although the only stipulation I can find in the First Amendment is that it guarantees the right of citizens to protest “peaceably.”

Violence? Nope. Can’t do that, not even in America.

It still sure beats the dickens out of the prohibitions against such behavior in Saudi Arabia.

media news

Oh, and let’s toss reporters into prison, too, shall we?

Amid all the political shrapnel that’s flying around after the latest explosion from inside the White House, we have this little item that went virtually unnoticed.

The president of the United States sat down earlier this year with the FBI director and opened a conversation with a statement about whether the FBI should “imprison reporters” who report on leaked classified information.

Yep, that would be Donald J. Trump telling that to James Comey. I reckon Comey didn’t precisely buy into that line of crap from the president, but I’m just guessing at this point.

What in the world is Donald J. Trump trying to do here?

To my way of thinking, his complete ignorance of the America’s foundational basis is being put on full display.

Mr. President, the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment does not allow the government to do the very thing you suggested should be done. You do not understand that. I am now absolutely certain that at 70 years of age, you never will.

We’ve been caught up in the Big Story of the Week, which is that the president possibly committed a criminal act by asking Comey to shut down an ongoing FBI investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s contacts with Russian government operatives. This is getting serious, folks.

However, we narrowed our focus a bit too hastily. The bigger picture suggests a president infected with paranoia over how the media do their job. It is to report the news. If the news is about those who leak information to the public, then the media have an obligation to perform their duty.

Threats of imprisoning reporters cannot be tolerated.

Just as a refresher, here is what the First Amendment says in its entirety; I will italicize and bold-face a specific point for emphasis:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Are we clear?

national news

Hold up on ‘impeachment’ talk

Donald J. Trump may have committed a monumental mistake by divulging highly classified information to visiting Russian diplomats.

He well might have put some intelligence operations in jeopardy; indeed, let us pray we don’t lose any lives as a result of whatever he might have told the Russians who he welcomed into the Oval Office.

Social media are buzzing with talk about impeachment, that the president might have committed a treasonous act.

Let hold on here.

I detest Trump as much as the next guy. However, it’s good to realize that in order to be impeached by the House of Representatives and tried by the Senate, a president needs to commit a “high crime and misdemeanor.” Trump likely didn’t do anything illegal.

You can bet that he might have done something that is far more “careless” and “reckless” than anything Hillary Rodham Clinton did when she used her personal e-mail server while she was secretary of state. Did the president commit an impeachable offense?

It’s not likely.

Trump pops off

There well might be other grounds on which to impeach the president. I can think of obstruction of justice, for one thing, dealing with his decision to fire FBI Director James Comey, who at the time of his firing was in the middle of an investigation into whether Trump had an improper relationship with Russian government officials.

The Emoluments Clause in the U.S. Constitution also might prove problematic for Trump as he continues to have interests in businesses that have dealings with foreign governments.

As outrageous as Trump’s relationship with Russia is proving to be, his reported carelessness with classified information doesn’t rise to the level of impeachment.

The founders set a high standard for such an action, although President Clinton’s impeachment did seem to stretch far beyond what one would constitute grounds for impeachment. Congressional Republicans hung their impeachment vote on the president’s failure to speak the truth under oath to a federal grand jury which asked him about his relationship with that White House intern; U.S. senators, though, acquitted him in the trial that ensued.

It’s good to scale back the impeachment talk regarding Donald Trump as it relates to this latest bombshell. What he might have done stinks to high heaven and there well could be blowback. Impeachment? It doesn’t appear to be a natural consequence of what the president might have disclosed to his Russian guests.

national news, political news

Trump launches potential war of attrition

I long have thought that every human being has a limit to the amount of emotional baggage he or she can lug around.

Accordingly, it’s fair to wonder just how much bedlam Donald John Trump can endure as he continues — in some form or fashion — to govern the United States as its president.

His first 100-plus days as president have been a stunning exercise in chaos, controversy and confusion.

It’s making me wonder — and I’m quite serious about this — whether Trump has the stamina to continue to function in this manner. My memory of presidential transition goes back to when John Kennedy took over from Dwight Eisenhower in 1961. No one has managed to create the number of firestorms so early in their presidency as the 45th man to hold that office. Not even Lyndon Johnson, who became president in 1963 in the midst of a horrifying national tragedy; or Gerald Ford, who ascended to the presidency in 1974 in the wake of a crippling constitutional crisis and scandal.

In a related matter, it’s also fair to ask just how much of this the public can withstand.

Just in the past week, we’ve seen the president fire the FBI director and ignite a political wildfire that continues to rage out of control. Trump cannot formulate a cogent message. His White House communications team is flummoxed hourly it seems by contradictory statements pouring out of the president’s pie hole.

How do they handle it? How can they withstand this level of chaos?

And I haven’t even mentioned what seems like an increasingly real possibility that we might have an impeachment process starting to take shape in the U.S. House of Representatives.

There might be an obstruction of justice charge leveled at the president over the threat he leveled at James Comey two days after he fired the FBI boss; Trump well might have sought to bully the FBI into backing off its investigation of the president’s campaign and whether it colluded with Russians seeking to sway the 2016 election.

Then we have the Emoluments Clause issue, and questions about whether Trump’s businesses have been enriched by contracts with foreign governments. The U.S. Constitution prohibits presidents from obtaining any such financial gain, yet the president continues to hold onto his worldwide business interests.

I suppose I could mention the continuing string of lies and defamatory statements he makes about his predecessor as president, the woman he defeated in 2016 and any number of individuals and organizations opposing him.

What happens, too, if he crosses yet another “red line” by restricting the media from doing their job, which the Constitution guarantees them the right to do without government interference?

Ladies and gents, we have elected someone who continues to demonstrate every single day that he doesn’t know what the hell he is doing. He is unfit for the office he holds. He is making a mockery of the presidency and, sad to say, of the greatest nation on Earth.

His legislative agenda — whatever it is! — is going nowhere. Jobs bill? The wall? Tax reform? Health care overhaul? How does he do any of it while the tempest over what the Trump calls “the Russia thing” continues to boil over?

Are you frightened yet? I damn sure am.

media news

No surprise that POTUS skips correspondents dinner

The White House Correspondents Association is having its annual dinner tonight.

One of the normal attendees is missing. That would be the president of the United States. Are you surprised? Me neither.

Donald J. Trump has declared the media to be the “enemy of the people.” He has accused the media of peddling “fake news.” He said just today that the media have “purposely” reported “negatively” his first 100 days in office.

Did anyone really expect the president to stand before a large banquet room full of media representatives, wisecrack his way through a routine, slap a few backs as if he really harbors no ill feelings toward the media? Of course not!

What the president has done, of course, is attack an institution that was guaranteed protection from government bullying and coercion. That guarantee is written explicitly in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That has not mattered to the president, who has banned certain media outlets access to his administration and scolded certain media members harshly in public for allegedly reporting falsehoods.

How ironic it is. You’ll recall that in 2011 Trump — then just a mere real estate mogul and reality TV celebrity — sat among the media at a White House correspondents dinner. That was the event in which President Barack Obama poked fun at Trump, needling him for promoting the “fake news” about the president’s place of birth and assorted other mistruths. He did all that, by the way, on the same day he ordered the CIA-Navy SEAL operation that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden.

Hey, maybe Donald Trump believes Barack Obama’s act is too difficult to follow, given the former president’s impeccable comic timing. Nah, probably not.

Maybe the president will bury the hatchet with the media and recognize publicly that the media have a job to do, which is to hold public officials — including the president of the United States — accountable for their actions and decisions.

legal news

Break up the 9th U.S. Circuit? C’mon, get real

Donald J. Trump keeps ratcheting up his open combat with the federal judicial system.

The president wants to break up the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals because — doggone it, anyway! — the judges keep issuing rulings with which he disagrees.

Poor guy. That’s how it goes sometimes, Mr. President.

The 9th Circuit has ruled against the president’s ban on refugees seeking entry into this country from majority-Muslim countries. That just won’t stand in Trump’s world. So his solution is to dismember the court, which is based in San Francisco and is considered to be arguably the most liberal appellate court in the federal judicial network.

He said lawyers shop for friendly judicial venues and the president believes the 9th Circuit is a favorite forum to hear cases pitting the federal government against anyone else.

Give me a break.

Conservative courts have ruled against liberal presidents. Indeed, liberal courts have ruled against conservative presidents as well. Have presidents of either stripe been so thin-skinned that they’ve sought to break up an appellate court? Not until this one took office.

Leave the court alone, Mr. President.

A better option for the president would be to craft laws that can withstand judicial challenge. Federal judges in Hawaii, Washington state and Maryland all have found sufficient fault with the Trump administration’s effort to ban refugees to rule against them. Appellate judges have upheld the lower court rulings.

In a strange way this kind of reminds me of when President Franklin Roosevelt sought to tinker with the federal judiciary by “packing” the U.S. Supreme Court with justices more to his liking; he sought to expand the number of justices on the nation’s highest court. He didn’t succeed — thank goodness.

To be sure, Trump isn’t the only recent president to bully the federal judiciary. Barack Obama called out the Supreme Court while delivering a State of the Union speech in 2010 over its Citizens United ruling that allowed unlimited political contributions by corporations. The president was wrong to do so — in that venue — with the justices sitting directly in front of him.

The nation’s founders sought to establish an independent federal judiciary that ostensibly should be immune from political pressure. The president is seeking to bully the court system through a number of methods: He calls out judges individually and criticizes the courts’ decisions openly and with extreme harshness.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals needs to remain intact and the president needs to live with the consequences of how it interprets the U.S. Constitution.

national news, political news

What has the president learned in 100 days?

Let’s turn away for a moment from what Donald Trump might have accomplished during his first 100 days as president to what he might have learned during that time.

The president’s list of accomplishments is pretty damn skimpy.

His learning curve, though, has been steep. I hope it’s beginning to flatten out.

What’s the most glaring eye-opener for the president? It’s that you cannot run the federal government the way you run a business.

At virtually every turn along the way since taking office, the president has been forced to swallow that bitter pill. A man who became used to getting his way because he demands it has learned that the federal government is structured — on purpose — to function on an entirely different set of dynamics.

The nation’s founders crafted a brilliant governing document. When you think about it, while the U.S. Constitution grants the president significant executive authority, it does not imbue the office with ultimate governing authority. The founders divvied up power among three branches of government: executive, legislative and judicial.

It’s that darn legislative branch — the U.S. Congress — that has a say in what becomes law. Donald Trump’s business experience doesn’t mean squat to many of the 535 men and women who comprise both chambers of Congress. They, too, have their constituencies to which they must answer. Yes, the president represents the nation, but Congress — as a body — also represents the very same nation.

Can you govern the nation like a business? No. Never. Not a zillion years.

Trump needs to understand that governance is a team sport. He cannot threaten members of Congress if they resist his legislative proposals. He cannot exclude members of the “other” party from key negotiations. He must abandon the “I, alone” mantra — which he bellowed at the Republican National Convention this past summer — that threatens to haunt him for as long as he is president.

And then there’s the judicial branch. The federal judiciary comprises individuals who hold lifetime appointed jobs. Their mission is to ensure that laws do not violate the Constitution. The founders granted them independence from the executive and legislative government branches.

Those judges have the constitutional authority to knock down executive orders, or to put the brakes on laws enacted by Congress. They aren’t “so-called judges” whose status as “unelected” jurists doesn’t diminish their authority.

I hope the president has learned at least some elements of all this during his first 100 days. If he doesn’t, then we’re all going to be in for an extremely rough ride.

However, we’re all just spectators. The president will need to hold on with both hands if he has any chance of getting anything done during his time in office.

We are witnessing the consequence of electing someone with zero public service experience. Mr. President, the federal government bears no resemblance — none! — to the businesses you built.