Tag Archives: GOP

national news

Enter the Three Stooges

It is tempting, I suppose, to attach some sort of label to three U.S. senators who “distinguished” themselves with their pitiful performances at the Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing for Ketanji Brown Jackson, selected by President Biden to join the Supreme Court.

Three Amigos? Nah! Three Musketeers? Nope.

How about … Three Stooges? Yeah, that’s the ticket!

Sens. Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley all were disgraceful in their own respective ways as they sought to tear down a distinguished jurist’s record by ascribing all sorts of phony nefarious motives to decisions she made from the bench and in practice as a public defender.

They all sickened me. Yes, I am on record as wanting Judge Jackson to take her place on the nation’s highest court. I also am on record as loathing the way Republican senators reacted initially to President Biden’s selection of Judge Jackson and then to the way they behaved during the confirmation hearing.

I will hold out a sliver of hope that some GOP senators — maybe two of ’em — will see fit to confirm her when the full Senate casts its vote.

As for the Three Stooges — two of whom (Hawley and Cruz) apparently want to run for POTUS in 2024 — I just will be content to scoff at their antics and to hope eventually they all get booted out of the Senate. I don’t want any of them voting on laws that affect my family and me.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

The system is broken

This is no great flash, but I feel obligated to say it anyway: The confirmation hearing for Ketanji Brown Jackson shows that the U.S. political system is broken and it needs immediate urgent care.

What also is not exactly news is that the system has been broken for too long and it has needed repair for as long as we have witnessed the system’s fraying.

Judge Jackson wants to join the U.S. Supreme Court, succeeding the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer. She is eminently qualified and she deserves to take her place with the rest of the court.

She will get there, or so it appears. Democrats have enough Senate votes to confirm her. The Senate Democratic caucus likely will hold together to confirm this excellent nominee. Indeed, when a president exercises the prerogative given by the public that elected him, it falls on the president to find the most qualified nominee for this critical post. President Biden has delivered the goods by nominating Judge Jackson.

Senate Republicans, though, have spent the past two days dredging up phony excuses to oppose Jackson’s nomination. Their scurrilous misrepresentation of Jackson’s stellar record only demonstrates the broken political system that needs repair.

I long have adhered to the notion that presidential prerogative should grant presidents the right to make recommendations to these critical posts, even lifetime jobs to the federal judiciary. Yes, the Senate has the right granted by the Constitution to offer “advice and consent” on nominees. However, Judge Jackson’s nomination has been twisted and perverted into a form that needs to be straightened out.

The system that has created the great partisan divide in Congress is the culprit. Ketanji Brown Jackson deserves far better than what she endured.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Stupidity abounds!

Of all the questions I have heard over many decades listening to Senate and House hearings, I believe I have listened — hands down — to the stupidest question ever uttered by a U.S. senator directed at a witness before the committee on which she sits.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, actually asked Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson — President Biden’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court — to “define a woman.” I will admit that I wasn’t entirely dialed into the topic on which Blackburn was seeking an answer.

However, I watched Judge Jackson’s frozen facial expression after she heard it and was stunned beyond belief that she didn’t bust out laughing at the absurdity of the question.

I am not at all clear how Blackburn intended for Judge Jackson to answer that idiotic query. Does she offer a detailed description of the female anatomy? Blackburn also asked Jackson to “define a man.” Again, does she offer detail on the, um, characteristics that comprise the male anatomy?

When Jackson did not answer Blackburn’s question, the senator then sought to suggest that the jurist was intimidated by the inquiry.

Oh, brother. What I witnessed was a know-nothing politician seeking to embarrass a top-tier jurist. All the pol did was heap ridicule on herself.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

‘No religious test’

Lindsey Graham today asked what in another era would have been considered a question worthy of scorn and instant rebuke. The Republican U.S. senator asked a nominee for the Supreme Court, “What is your faith?”

Ketanji Brown Jackson answered “Protestant.”

OK, why should Sen. Graham have been slapped down? Because of Article VI in the U.S. Constitution, which reads, in part: ” … no religious test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

I watched Graham ask the question today in real time. I was troubled at the moment I heard it. Then it dawned on me. The Constitution disallows any sort of religious test for “any Office or public Trust.”

That includes the United States Supreme Court!

We witnessed today a remarkably ignorant performance by a member of the U.S. Senate who, had he understood the Constitution he took an oath to “protect and defend,” never would have asked a Supreme Court nominee a question that clearly violates the rules set down by the nation’s governing document.

Despicable.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Hearing previews 2024 campaign

Ladies and gentlemen, I am prepared to declare that we are witnessing with the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on whether Ketanji Brown Jackson should join the Supreme Court a preview of the 2024 Republican Party presidential primary.

It’s an unattractive spectacle and I detest the notion that a respected jurist is being used as a political football by senators who might seek their party’s presidential nomination in 2024.

I’m talking about Ted Cruz of Texas, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Josh Hawley of Missouri.

They are trying to push hot-button issues dealing with race and abortion and trying to appease the nut-job “base” of the GOP voting bloc while they grill Judge Jackson.

To the nominee’s great credit, she is holding up well under the onslaught.

President Biden promised to present a highly qualified nominee to succeed Justice Stephen Breyer. He delivered when he nominated Judge Jackson.

I continue to salute Jackson’s former role as a public defender. The Supreme Court hasn’t yet welcomed a jurist with that kind of background. Jackson has talked about understanding a defendant’s mindset and the value that understanding has brought to her experience for the past decade as a judge. That aspect of her background alone would bring remarkable and laudatory diversity to the nation’s highest court.

That, of course, won’t stop the GOP presidential hopefuls from parsing her past comments and seeking to damage her reputation by suggesting things about Judge Jackson that do not exist.

From my vantage point, they are embarrassing themselves and have been unable to lay a hand on the nominee’s stellar standing.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, media news

Ethical breach? Yep!

A candidate for a Texas Senate seat has confirmed for me a suspicion I had hoped would prove false. Dang! I hate to rat out someone who works at a newspaper that paid me nicely for nearly 18 years.

I reached out to a candidate who had lost the Republican primary to Kevin Sparks, who won the GOP nomination for Texas Senate District 31. I was curious about something I read on the eve of the March 1 primary in the Amarillo Globe-News: It was a lengthy op-ed column from the guy who won the primary; he extolled his virtues as a candidate for the Senate seat. It was, to put it bluntly, nothing more than a political advertisement for which he should have paid money. He didn’t. The newspaper granted him the space for free.

I asked the fellow who finished second in that primary — Tim Reid of Amarillo — whether the newspaper had given him the space to sing his own political virtues. His answer: “Not at all. The GN didn’t even run my announcement press release.”

Let me blunt. The Globe-News committed what I consider to be a serious ethical sin. It occurred in two parts. One was that the paper reportedly offered only candidate — the man it endorsed for the primary — a chance to bloviate on why voters should choose him over any other candidate in the race. The second sin concerns the timing of the op-ed column: It ran on the day before the election, giving no one a chance to rebut, refute or rebuke whatever the candidate had to say about himself.

I also reached out to the editor of the opinion pages of the Globe-News, inquiring about whether any of this is true. He hasn’t responded. Therefore, I feel no hesitation about speaking my mind about how I believe the readers of a once-good newspaper have been let down by the publication.

Fairness dictated that the newspaper would offer all the candidates the same opportunity to speak out. It is unfair in the extreme that a publication such as the Globe-News would fall far short in meeting that responsibility. What’s more, the notion of fairness also requires the newspaper to grant anyone the chance to challenge an assertion that a candidate makes about himself, or about his opponents. Sparks didn’t say a word in his essay about another candidate, so that’s not an issue.

However, what is an issue is the obvious bias displayed by the publisher of the Globe-News in favor of one candidate for public office. That is unacceptable.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Big Lie involves just one contest?

to insist that the “widespread voter fraud” that allegedly prevented The Donald from winning re-election without also suggesting that other contests throughout the ballots in all states also deserve to be examined.

The Big Lie involves only one contest in the 2020 election. The race for president was the only contest that became targeted by voter fraudsters. No race for governor, or for U.S. Senate, or U.S. House, or state legislatures, or county clerks, sheriffs, district attorneys have been questioned.

Just the race for president.

Hmm. What is going on here? Don’t answer. I know the answer. What is happening is that The Donald’s cult is keeping this Big Lie alive. The Donald won’t concede that he lost to Joe Biden in 2020. His refusal to accept his defeat only has fed the anger that the cultists share with their leader. The anger is festering and threatens to burst, like a boil on the buttocks and it will infect the entire electoral system.

This is a monumental tragedy playing out in real time.

For anyone to accept that the cult leader is an acceptable candidate for the presidency — yet again! — after his disgraceful conspiracy-mongering is utterly beyond me.

I realize fully that I don’t understand a lot of things in life. The Big Lie, though, is easy to explain. It draws breath because one individual cannot accept the obvious fact that he lost an election. What is more difficult for me to grasp is how the single 2020 election can be separated from all the rest of the balloting. The casualties, sadly, are the dedicated state and local elections officials who worked damn hard to ensure that all the elections that took place were done fairly, legally and were free of corruption.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Judge Jackson: get set for grilling

The mood of the times requires — I am sorry to admit — that even highly qualified presidential nominees are going to endure the third, fourth or fifth degrees from the individuals who will pass judgment on whether they should assume the post for which the president has nominated them.

Thus, Ketanji Brown Jackson needs to prepare herself for the grilling of her life as she sits before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will determine whether to move her nomination to the full Senate for confirmation.

Judge Jackson will sit eventually on the U.S. Supreme Court once she goes through the inquisition that awaits her. As near as I can tell, she is supremely qualified to succeed Justice Stephen Breyer, who is retiring when the current SCOTUS term ends. However, that will not stop Republican senators from looking for any excuse to vote “no” on this individual’s nomination. Her stellar legal career be damned! Same for her judicial temperament. Never mind that her knowledge of the law likely eclipses every single senator — Democrat and Republican — who will run her through her paces.

Texas’s two senators, Republicans John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, are likely negative votes regardless of anything Judge Jackson will tell the committee. I expect the Cruz Missile to vote “no”; he couldn’t ever find it within that organ he calls a heart to approve a sterling nominee put forward by a Democratic president. I expected more from Cornyn, but his public comments suggest to me that he leans “no” without hearing a word from Judge Jackson.

I am not going to harp on the obvious knowledge of most Americans that Judge Jackson is an African American woman; President Biden pledged to appoint someone such as Judge Jackson when he ran for the office in 2020.

Her sparkling legal background makes her a stellar nominee, regardless of the president pledged.

It won’t be a smooth ride to the nation’s highest judicial bench … but damn, she needs to get there.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

How can this riot stand?

No doubt about this: I will go to my grave never understanding how in the name of sanity can anyone justify what happened on 1/6, how anyone can possibly view the riotous mob of traitors as a demonstration of “legitimate political discourse.”

The mob stormed Capitol Hill on the urging of a president of the United States who had lost re-election, who then exhorted his fanatic followers to “take back” the government and to “fight like hell” if they felt the need to rough up whoever stood in their way.

So, the rioters did what they were encouraged to do.

Every time I watch video of that hideous demonstration of sedition, I get angry all over again. The traitors threatened to “hang Mike Pence!” per the signs they were carrying. Have you seen the pictures of the noose? Lovely, yes? Pence, the vice president on that day, was performing his constitutional duty by leading the certification of the Electoral College tally that elected Joe Biden as president. Biden’s predecessor would have none of it. Hence, he incited the rioters.

And yet, there remains to this very moment congressional Republicans — who fled for their lives in the face of the rioters on 1/6 — who deny what they witnessed in real time. They cast votes against impeaching the POTUS who fired up the mob. Some of them have said the mob was acting like any “tourist” group strolling through the Capitol Building.

You … bet. I don’t think any group of tourists would have sh** on the floor of the Capitol Building, or smashed through windows, or yelled profanities at police officers seeking to protect the House members and senators who were the traitors’ targets.

There needs to be some justice delivered for what happened on 1/6. We’re starting to get some trial results. A Wylie, Texas, man has been convicted of five felony counts related to his role in the riot. There will be many more trials and deals struck along the way.

The president who caused it all? His day is coming, too. He needs to be held to account for the insurrection he incited. I do not want to check out of his world knowing that he has slithered his way clear once again.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Empower Texans tightens its grip

A right-wing political action group has lusted after legislative districts in Texas since the beginning of time, or so it seems. Empower Texans has tried to oust Texas Republicans from their seats by offering GOP primary opponents more to its liking.

It’s had a mixed record in that regard. However, the group led by a fellow named Michael Quinn Sullivan has scored some victories that for my money should cause concern across the great state.

I want to look specifically at a West Texas Senate district that will have a newbie representing it for the first time since 2004. Kel Seliger, a former Amarillo mayor, got elected to that seat after Teel Bivins vacated it to become the U.S. ambassador to Sweden. He has done well representing the entire district. His occasional beefs with conservatives in the Texas Senate pissed off Sullivan, who sought to “primary” Seliger over several election cycles. He had no luck in getting Seliger defeated.

Seliger, for his part, spoke badly of Sullivan and Empower Texans.

The veteran politician is leaving office at the end of the year. Kevin Sparks is the GOP nominee to succeed him. He will win the election this fall; I think he’s unopposed.

Sparks is another Empower Texans stalking horse. He will make very nice with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the Senate’s presiding officer and an individual with whom Seliger had plenty of beefs over the years. Patrick got so angry with Seliger over comments Kel made about a key Patrick aide that he stripped Seliger of his committee chairmanships and sent him to the back bench.

My trick knee is telling me that Sparks will cozy up to Patrick and do whatever the hell Patrick wants him to do. That will suit Empower Texans just fine, because Sparks is its guy in Austin.

I should add that Sparks hails from Midland, which is where Empower Texans is based. Get it? Sparks is an Empower Texans homey.

Thus, the right-wingers have tightened their grip on the Texas Senate. So very sad.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com