Tag Archives: insurrection

national news

More to the D.C. riot story?

(AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

A North Texas chief of police blurted something out the other day that caught me by surprise.

I won’t reveal his identity, as he doesn’t know I am writing this, but he sent a chill up my spine when he said it.

He mentioned a conversation he had with a classmate who attended the FBI Academy with him; the classmate is now employed by a D.C.-area police agency. He said “there’s a lot more to the story” behind the Capitol Building insurrection than we’ve been told.

A lot more? I asked. Tell me the rest of the story, I implored the chief. He couldn’t speak candidly with me at that moment, so I let the conversation lapse.

It comports, though, with what is beginning to be reported about theories regarding the source of the riot that erupted after Donald Trump incited the rioters to march on Capitol Hill the morning of Jan. 6. We’re hearing investigations into possible collusion — yep, there’s that word again — between members of Congress and leaders of the mob that had descended on Washington to contest Congress’s constitutional duty to ratify President Biden’s victory over Donald Trump.

The House of Representatives, of course, took swift action Wednesday by impeaching Trump for the second time, just a week before he exits the office and clears the way for Joe Biden.

Something tells me — I don’t know what that “something” is — that we might, indeed, learn a lot more than we ever thought we would learn about what transpired immediately prior to the rebellion we witnessed in real time.

DC riot

Respect for the flag?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Millions of us have seen the videos of the rioters storming into the Capitol Building.

One segment is particularly galling. You see images of rioters beating a Capitol police officer … with a pole attached to Old Glory. Yes! The rioter in that sequence is using the Stars and Stripes itself to bloody and injure a law enforcement officer who was trying to prevent the riot from spilling into the halls of our government.

It is ironic in the tragic extreme.

The mob descended on the Capitol Building at the urging of Donald J. Trump, who now stands set to be impeached a second time on a charge of “inciting an insurrection” against the very government he swore to protect and defend.

Think, too, of the hideous hypocrisy of the terrorists who profess some sort of perverted “love of country” while using the very symbol of our beloved nation as a cudgel to batter public servants who are charged with, um, protecting the public.

This is just one more example of the tragedy that unfolded in real time this past week and why we need to be on guard against those who proclaim faux piety about how much they love our nation.

national news

By all means, Sen. Cruz … resign!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

An editor of mine used to say that “when one person calls you an ass, you blow it off; when many of them say so, then you need to start shopping for a feedbag.”

A lot of Americans these days are calling for the resignations of U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley. Why? Because they led the Senate’s effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. They both will couch their intentions behind merely seeking to “ensure the integrity” of the electoral process.

That is a pile of steaming bullsh**. They intended to somehow restore Donald Trump’s political fortunes and return him for a second term as president. Never mind that a majority of Americans endorsed Joe Biden as the next president or that the elections in each of our 50 states and the District of Columbia were conducted under the tightest security in history.

Yeah, these two clowns need to quit. They won’t go anywhere. At least not until someone finds something incriminating about them and can prove it … which is more than Cruz, Hawley and the other vote fraud conspiracy theorists were able to do with their phony allegations of “widespread” corruption of the electoral process.

Both of these nimrods won’t stand for re-election until 2024. They both have earned censure in the Senate, as do  the House members who joined them in that moronic effort to subvert our democratic process. Cruz, the Texas Republican, and Hawley, the GOP’er from Missouri, need to be stripped of their committee assignments and sent to the back of the Senate chamber.

Will any of that happen? Oh, probably not. However, enough Americans are calling them asses for what they tried to pull off that they surely have earned the scorn they are receiving.

national news

Yep, Trump is, um … consequential

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald J. Trump has redefined the term “consequential,” as in he has been a “consequential president” for most of the four years he held the office.

The greatest consequence of the Trump tenure as president is about to occur this week. The U.S. House of Representatives is a lead-pipe cinch to impeach for the second time. To be clear, it appears to be equally certain that this impeachment won’t result in Trump’s removal from office. He’s only got nine days to go before President Biden takes the oath of office.

However, the guy who always wanted to make a name for himself — whether it was in business, in entertainment and now in politics — is going to hit the big time, if you know what I mean.

President Andrew Johnson got impeached and came within a single vote in the Senate of being convicted. President Bill Clinton got impeached and the Senate never came close to convicting him on any of the three articles it considered. Then came Trump’s first impeachment. He, too, skated clear with little to worry. Why? Because the GOP caucus in the Senate — except for Mitt Romney of Utah — lacked the guts to do what needed to be done; Trump needed to be convicted for seeking dirt on Biden from a foreign government.

Now he’s done it! He incited the riot that damaged the Capitol Building. It killed five people, including a D.C. Metro police officer. Trump called for an insurrection against the government. It’s on the record. We all saw him do it. We heard the words. He wanted the mob to prevent Congress from ratifying Biden’s election as president in 2020.

Now the House is going to make history by impeaching Trump a second time. House members will make the case that Trump must be barred from holding any federal office in the future. I am not at all confident they will persuade enough Republican senators to show the courage they need to keep this presidential idiot out of public office for the rest of his life.

But … by golly, Donald Trump has shown himself to be a “consequential president.” 

national news

Let’s not put this tragedy behind us

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Let’s be crystal clear, shall we?

The tragedy that unfolded this week in front of the world must remain at the top of our conscious thoughts for well past the long term. Let’s try … forever!

Donald Trump might be impeached a second time. He might stand trial a second time in the Senate. For all I know he might even be acquitted a second time by gutless Republican senators.

The insurrection we witnessed must not be allowed to be shoved aside. It’s nowhere near possible for us to simply say, “It’s time to move on.” I am one American patriot who intends to keep talking and writing about this until I no longer am able.

Trump will be out of office in 12 days. There isn’t much time to exact justice on this lawless individual. However, the House must clear the deck to get this job done; so must the Senate do its job.

You saw Trump say what he said. He told the mobsters they should storm the Capitol. They did. They damaged the center of our democratic institutions. They ransacked offices. Five people died! One of them was a police officer injured in a melee with rioters.

This is not the kind of tragedy you can place on the back shelf. Let’s not forget about it. Yes, we need to get back to the task of governing. We can do that when President Biden and Vice President Harris take their oaths of office.

But they face a steep hill to climb. It happens to be the mobsters who continue to believe the lies that Trump has fed to them. They will continue to believe in the phony voter fraud allegation. They will insist the election was stolen from their guy. They will continue to present a clear danger to our democratic system.

Let’s not be coy about the possibility — remote as it might seem — that they could do once again what they tried to do Wednesday night at the urging of the president of the United States.

We’re going to have a new president and vice president in office soon. We already have a newly reconstituted Congress. They all must govern effectively. I get that.

However, we also must never forget what we witnessed this week. Not only that, we also must not allow the repercussions of what we are feeling at this moment to subside, to disappear and for us to fill ourselves with any sort of false sense of security that all is good.

It isn’t. Not be a long shot.

national news

Trump carves his legacy in stone

(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald J. Trump has carved his presidential legacy into stone.

It cannot be covered up, or ground clean, or wiped away. He stood this morning before a crowd of Trumpsters and egged them on, urged them to march on the Capitol Building, the heart of our government.

The mob took him at his word. They marched on the building, stormed into the House and Senate chambers. They sent our members of both chambers of Congress scrambling for their safety.

It’s all on Trump. It’s all on him. This insurrection, which forced a shutdown of Congress, ended a constitutional discussion aimed at ratifying the results of the 2020 presidential election.

If there was a more graphic, hideous and profound example of Donald Trump’s unfitness for the presidency, the man himself showed it in all its ugliness.

A woman was shot in the Capitol and later died. Others were injured in the melee. The capital police, assisted by Virginia and Maryland law enforcement officers fought to restore order. They did so, but at a terrible cost to the nation’s international standing.

The rioters bred fear into the hearts of millions of us who were watching from afar, not to mention those who are watched it up close.

The person who deserves the lion’s share of the blame for this? Donald J. Trump, the lame-duck president of the United States.

He should resign the presidency. Or the House should commence impeachment proceedings immediately. Or, and this also is a possibility now, given the hideous riot we witnessed, the Cabinet should meet to invoke the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to replace him immediately. Let the vice president serve the remainder of the current presidential  term.

And spare me the “all sides are guilty” argument. No. This hideous demonstration of incompetence belongs solely to Donald Trump.

This man is a dire threat to our national security.

national news

Yes, I am surprised

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

National media are full of pundits, analysts and others who are proclaiming their lack of “surprise” at the horrifying events that unfolded in the District of Columbia.

I am not going to join that chorus. Instead, I am going to offer an apology to those I have spoken to privately that the tragedy we witnessed today caught me by surprise.

Maybe I am slow on the uptake. Maybe I just didn’t take Donald Trump as seriously as I should have when he continued to fan the embers of mistrust about the 2020 election’s integrity. Just maybe I overestimated the quality of the rank-and-file Trumpkin Corps of believers in this guy’s cult of personality.

I suppose my surprise makes the events that unfolded today seem all the more frightening. Having been blessed tonight with a bit of hindsight over what happened, I know understand more clearly that we all should have been more alert to what could happen.

The cabal of kooks who sought to challenge President-elect Biden’s victory over Trump in November have committed an act of sedition against the United States. I have no doubt about that.

As a member of my family said tonight, perhaps their being forced to lie face-down on the floor under their desks while protesters stormed the Capitol building will persuade them to cease this idiotic, moronic protest of the Electoral College tally.

One would think.

However, I am left now to ponder a reality I truly didn’t see coming. It is that Donald Trump is a Pied Piper who leads a horde of mindless minions who today proved their willingness to stop a branch of our federal government from performing their constitutional duty.

national news

Words fail me

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Words cannot possibly do justice to what the nation is watching unfold before us on our TV screens.

Pro-Donald Trump mobsters have stormed the U.S. Capitol Building, egged on by their hero. They have disrupted a constitutional exercise aimed at determining who is the next president of the United States.

The nation’s capital is on lockdown. These vandals have inflicted damage not just on our physical structure, but on democracy itself.

And the president of the United States, the moron for whom these mobs are marching? He owns it … fully.

International news

'Insurrection' is such an insidious term

The word “insurrection” has been raised in the debate over opposition to President Obama’s constitutionally mandated authority.

I looked it up to be sure it is being used in the correct context. The trusty ol’ American Heritage Dictionary says this of the term: “The act or instance of open revolt against civil authority or a constituted government.”

Scary, yes? Absolutely.

Colbert King of the Washington Post suggests and insurrection may be mounting against Obama’s authority in states that are clinging to some notion that they can ignore federal mandates.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-rising-insurrection-against-obama/2015/04/03/d00e39f6-d94f-11e4-ba28-f2a685dc7f89_story.html

The lead in his column says this: “It’s a scary thought, but here it is: If some red states were to openly defy the authority of President Obama in the exercise of his constitutional duties, would today’s Republican Congress side with him? Or would they honor the insurrection?”

King isn’t sure Republicans in Congress would stand with the president. Take a look at his column.

He cites a recent Arizona House of Representatives decision, approved on party lines, that “prohibits this state or any of its political subdivisions from using any personnel or financial resources to enforce, administer or cooperate with an executive order issued by the President of the U.S. that has not been affirmed by a vote of Congress and signed into law as prescribed by the U.S. Constitution.”

Do you get it?

It means the Arizona legislature would oppose a constitutionally valid executive order that didn’t have congressional approval.

Arizona’s elected representatives are trying to stick it in the president’s eye.

The state Senate has to approve it before it becomes law.

Suppose it does. Arizona then would claim authority to ignore any federal decision made by the White House that is supposed to affect all 50 states. Arizona is one of the 50.

Colbert wonders why this issue has gotten the silent treatment on Capitol Hill: “The word ‘insurrection’ does come to mind. Yet the resistance out West to federal authority has been received in virtual silence on Capitol Hill. It’s almost as if the GOP Congress wanted an uprising against the president.”

It’s one thing to disagree with a president, or with Congress, on policy matters. The idea, though, that some Americans are pondering the idea of open revolt — an insurrection — simply goes beyond the pale.

Something quite dark and sinister seems to be brewing out West.