Tag Archives: Ted Cruz

national news, political news, State news

Cruz now favors activist federal government

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Ted Cruz keeps giving me — and others — so much grist for commentary.

The freshman Texas Republican U.S. senator now has this doozy of an idea. Let’s amend the U.S. Constitution to prevent states from overturning bans on same-sex marriage.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/10/06/cruz-amend-us-constitution-preserve-marriage-bans/

This comes from a tea party darling, someone who’s railed time and again during his still-brief time in the Senate over federal government overreach into states’ business.

Not so, however, when it comes to one more issue that now needs to become part of the federal Constitution.

Oh, Ted. Keep delivering these hits. Please.

Cruz got angry at the U.S. Supreme Court over its refusal to hear some state cases involving the overturning of bans on gay marriage. He called it a matter of gross judicial activism. Indeed, as a learned friend of mine noted, the high court exercised “judicial restraint” in refusing to hear these cases.

That won’t deter the runaway freight train aka Ted Cruz.

He’s going to try to get Congress to approve a constitutional amendment that places federal authority over state authority.

I swear I understood Cruz was a champion of states’ rights. What happened?

Oh, I almost forgot. Cruz wants to run for president in 2016 and he’s got to appease that right-wing GOP “base.”

legal news, national news, political news, State news

One more reason to detest Ted Cruz

That settles it: Ted Cruz is my least favorite of the 100 men and women who serve in the U.S. Senate.

Why the additional scorn? Well, the freshman Republican from Texas said this about the Supreme Court’s decision to refuse to review state laws banning same-sex marriage:

“This is judicial activism at its worst.”

OK, he said some other stuff too in criticizing the high court. He accused the justices of “abdicating its duty to uphold the Constitution.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/10/ted-cruz-supreme-court-gay-marriage-111655.html?hp=l7

Judicial activism, eh?

I think I can come up with at least one greater example of judicial activism perpetrated on this nation by the Roberts Court, one of the more so-called “conservative” courts in the nation’s history. Let’s try the Citizens United case.

Remember that one, Ted? That’s the case that determined that corporations are people, too — to borrow Mitt Romney’s (in)famous phrase during the 2012 presidential campaign. The court decided to let corporations spend all the money they wanted on political campaigns, just like regular folks. It determined that multi-zillion-dollar business interests have as much say in determining who gets elected as poor schleps like me who might want to write a $20 check to the candidate of my choice.

So, if you’re a candidate who then gets elected, who are you going to listen to more intently: the mega corporation or the individual contributor?

That, Sen. Cruz, is how I would define judicial activism.

This label often is used by conservatives to rip apart liberal judicial rulings. These critics, such as Cruz, ignore at their peril their own brand of judicial activism.

The Roberts Court showed it can be as activist as, say, the Warren Court was in the 1950s.

Cruz surely knows this.

A dear friend of mine who visited my wife and me this past weekend served in government and journalism for more than 40 years. He said of Cruz, who he described as “smart as they come”:

“Intelligence is inherited. Wisdom must be earned.”

national news, political news, State news

Who's going to jump in '16?

It’s getting fun watching the prospective candidates for president in 2016 start hedging whether they’re actually going to make the plunge.

The latest apparently is Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who might run for the Republican nomination in two years.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/219692-rubio-decision-to-run-in-2016-wont-depend-on-bush

Rubio says his decision won’t depend on whether former Florida Gov.Jeb Bush decides to run. Rubio says he hasn’t talked to the former governor, but the fact that he’s talking about it at all suggests — to me, at least — that he’s got Jeb on his radar.

So, let’s ponder these other possibilities:

* U.S. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan says he likely won’t run if his 2012 Republican presidential nominee running mate Mitt Romney jumps in. No word from Romney what he plans to do if Ryan goes ahead with a run.

* Vice President Joe Biden likely will consider backing out of the Democratic contest if former senator, former secretary of state and former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton decides to go for it.

* Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas wants to seek the GOP nomination, but will he go if another talkative Texan, lame-duck Gov. Rick Perry jumps into the race?

* And is Perry going to make the leap if Cruz decides it’s his time to run?

Of all the fascinating what-ifs to ponder, I’m interested mostly in the Texas two-step that might play out between Perry and Cruz.

Perry’s been to the well once already. He flamed out badly before the first primary took place in New Hampshire. He’s trying to re-craft his brand. Cruz is the still-quite-new junior senator from Texas who entered the upper congressional chamber in January 2013 with his mouth blazing away. He hasn’t shut his trap since.

Both of these guys have never seen a TV camera they didn’t like. Cruz is especially enamored of the sound of his voice and the appearance of his face on TV.

It’s going to be tough for both of them to run for president, each trying to outflank the other on the right wing of their already-extreme right-wing party.

Who will jump in first? And will the other one back away?

And what about Ryan and Romney, Biden and Clinton, and Rubio and Bush?

This is going to get tense.

national news, political news

How to define a 'Values Voter'?

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It is amusing, although not in a guffawing kind of way.

The Values Voter Summit has declared U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to be its kind of politician. They like his “values.”

Good for him.

I am left to wonder, though, why the conservative wing of the once-great Republican Party has laid claim to speaking for American voters’ values.

It must be marketing. The far right wing of the GOP has managed to brand itself as representing “values.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/ted-cruz-values-voter-conference-111363.html?hp=l4

Once-moderate GOP leaders need not step up to the microphone at this Washington, D.C. gathering. Democrats? Don’t even think about it. The podium belongs to those on the far right. It’s their values that count.

My values? Forget about it.

However, let’s look at the values of those who haven’t attended these “summits.”

I’ll gladly stand as an example of one of those Americans. For instance:

* I’ve served my country in uniform, gone to war for the U.S. of A. and served honorably in the U.S. Army.

* I have been married to the same woman for more than 43 years. We love each other deeply.

* My two sons are both upstanding men who now are in their 40s. We see and hear from them regularly. They’re hard-working, industrious, intelligent, well-educated, good-hearted men who make us proud every single day.

* I pay my taxes on time every year.

* I attend church fairly regularly and have served as an elder at the mainstream Presbyterian church my wife and I attend.

* I have voted in every presidential election since 1972. I split my ticket generously between Democrats and Republicans up and down the ballot. But I have voted Democrat for every presidential candidate going back to that first vote, when the Vietnam War was starting to wind down.

Ah, yes. There it is. That’s why I’ll never be seen at one of those Voters Values Summit meetings. I have voted for those dreaded Democrats for president.

The rest of it? I think I am an individual with pretty sound values — and I am quite sure I speak for many millions of other values-driven Americans who aren’t part of that right-wing fringe of society that shouts about its own values and thinks it speaks for all Americans.

Hardly.

International news, national news, political news

We are not engaging in a religious war

The Values Summit is underway in Washington, D.C., and the usual cavalcade of kooks is drumming up something akin to a religious war.

The international war on terror, they imply strongly, is a war between Christians and Jews against Muslims.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/ted-cruz-values-voter-conference-111363.html?hp=f2

Let’s hold on here.

It is a war pitting civilized human beings against cult followers.

Michelle Bachmann, the lame-duck Minnesota congresswoman, kept harping on what she called “Islamic terrorists.” So did lame-duck Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and a roundtable of “experts” who contend that Muslims pose an existential threat to our way of life.

Give me a break.

Another conservative American president, George W. Bush, was quite astute back when this war began immediately after 9/11 to declare that America is not waging war against Islam. He singled out the terrorists who have perverted a great religion to suit their insane political cause. Does anyone remember when President Bush visited a mosque in New York immediately after touring the wreckage of where the World Trade Center stood?

The Islamic State is not a religious organization. It is a cult. It is a cabal of sociopathic murderers who seek to use religion as a pretext to commit heinous acts of terrorism on innocent people.

They are the enemy. The do not represent Islam any more than, say, the crackpots at Westboro Baptist “Church” in Topeka, Kan., represent Christianity.

The task now is to persuade the goofballs on the right to quit trying to make this a religious war.

It is no such thing.

national news, political news, State news

Sen. Cruz denies the obvious

Someone will have to pass the smelling salts to me. I must have been in a stupor the past year or so.

Either that or U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is utterly delusional.

I’ll go with the latter for now.

http://blog.mysanantonio.com/texas-politics/2014/09/cruz-denies-playing-role-in-congressional-gridlock/

Cruz is a Texas Republican who has denied playing a role in shutting the government down over a fight about the Affordable Care Act. He said at Texas Tribune Fest that the “blame” belongs to President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Cruz’s role in that debacle? He says he didn’t have any role to play.

Huh? Cruz’s Republican colleague in the Senate, fellow Texan John Cornyn, said otherwise.

So has every observer of Capitol Hill — Democrat, Republican, independent, media observers — said that Cruz was a key player in the shutdown.

He filibustered against the ACA trying to repeal it. Didn’t he do that?

Of course, Cruz blamed the media — which he said sides with Democrats — for the characterizations attached to the junior senator. According to a blog posted by the San Antonio Express-News: “Remarking that Republicans are usually criticized as either crazy or evil, Cruz said he took it as ‘somewhat of a back-handed compliment that the press has invented a third caricature of me, which is crazy.’”

Well, he’s not crazy. Almost everything he’s done publicly since joining the Senate in January 2013, though, reveals a burning ambition. He’s been out front on high-profile issues almost from Day One of his still-young Senate tenure. He ignores Senate decorum. He’s drawn the ire of fellow Republicans as well as Democrats.

Now he says he had nothing to do with the government shutdown.

The young man possesses some serious hubris.

International news, political news

What's this? Ted Cruz is right about something?

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Imagine my shock and horror when I read something that came out of Sen. Ted Cruz’s mouth that I found agreeable.

The Texas Republican says the United States should revoke the citizenship of any American known to have taken up arms with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Being a fair-minded guy, I want to stipulate that not every loathsome politician is utterly devoid of a good idea once in a while.

Cruz’s notion, as I understand it, is perfectly OK with me.

“There can be no clearer renunciation of their citizenship in the United States, and we need to do everything we can to preempt any attempt … to re-enter our country and carry further attacks on American civilians,” Cruz said.

Amen to that.

I’d like to take that point a step or two further.

First, we should revoke the citizenship of any American known to associate with any terrorist organization. Let’s not limit it to ISIL membership. Al-Qaeda has done terrible things to Americans, as we all know; it, too, has boasted of American-born members, some of whom have been killed by U.S. forces in the on-going war against international terror.

Second, revoking U.S. citizenship of known terrorists removes them from any effort to exempt them from becoming victims of military strikes. I’ve said already that I have no difficulty with American forces killing Americans who’ve taken up arms against their country. Others have questioned the correctness of killing U.S. citizens without giving them “due process.” By my way of thinking, those citizens gave up their rights to due process the moment they suited up in enemy colors.

These so-called Americans have all but renounced their citizenship. Ted Cruz’s idea takes that renunciation a key step further.

Now that I’ve said something in agreement with Ted Cruz, I’ll need some smelling salts.

Still, his idea is on point.

 

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'Perry vs. Cruz' enters new phase

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Whether the governor of Texas actually serves any jail time if he’s convicted of anything illegal remains an open question.

I doubt he’ll be eating jail food. I’m not even sure he’ll be convicted.

Rick Perry’s indictment for allegedly abusing the power of his office, however, does bring into question whether he’ll be able to challenge for the White House in 2016. Why, he’s not even the most popular Texas conservative thinking about running for the presidency.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/08/16/while-flirting-2016-perry-cruz-woo-same-groups/

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is the darling of the conservative movement these days, although Perry’s been making inroads with the Republican Party base. He deployed 1,000 National Guard troops to protect us against those children fleeing repression in Central America, which of course has the GOP faithful all fired up.

Texas GOP voters, though, seem to like Cruz’s fiery rhetoric. “As the Texas Tribune reports: Even before his recent legal troubles, Perry was already operating in Cruz’s shadow, as most conservative activists in attendance made clear they would rather see the freshman senator vie for the White House in two years than the three-term governor.”

The indictment issued in Travis County is resonating far beyond the Texas capital city. It gives the governor one more potential embarrassment that he must put behind him. His brief run for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination ended badly in a series of missteps, misstatements, forgetfulness and downright weird behavior.

Now this.

Say this, though, for Cruz. He’s coming to his friend’s defense, issuing this statement: “Unfortunately, there has been a sad history of the Travis County District Attorney’s Office engaging in politically-motivated prosecutions, and this latest indictment of the governor is extremely questionable. Rick Perry is a friend, he’s a man of integrity – I am proud to stand with Rick Perry. The Texas Constitution gives the governor the power to veto legislation, and a criminal indictment predicated on the exercise of his constitutional authority is, on its face, highly suspect.”

That statement isn’t likely to improve Perry’s possible presidential campaign chances. Look for Cruz to ramp up the conservative rhetoric, hitting every GOP base hot button he can find, even at his “friend’s” expense.

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Ted Cruz: Texas-sized embarrassment

Ted Cruz is my senator. I accept that he’s one of two men who serve in the U.S. Senate on behalf of Texas.

I didn’t vote for him in 2012. I likely never will vote for him for anything. Still, he’s my senator.

And that gives me the right to declare that I am ashamed of him. Deeply so, in fact. His latest shameful attack has been leveled at the State Department, the Federal Aviation Administration and the president of the United States over his idiotic suggestion that the FAA ban on U.S. flights to Israel is somehow intended to do actual harm to our strong ally in the Middle East.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/ted-cruz-faa-ban-state-department-109322.html?hp=l21

This guy is a Harvard-educated lawyer, right? He’s supposed to be a bright guy, correct? What on God’s Earth is he suggesting here? It cannot possibly be that President Barack Obama actually wants Israel to be wiped off the map, which is what the Hamas terrorists want to happen.

Hamas launched the conflict in Gaza by firing rockets into Israel. The Israelis have responded with tremendous force to put down the uprising. The terrorists have ratcheted up their own response by landing a rocket near the major international airport outside of Tel Aviv.

The FAA suspended U.S.-carrier flights for less than two days. The ban has been lifted. Cruz, though, has suggested the FAA, the State Department and the White House are politically motivated, that they want to harm Israel.

Commentators on the left have compared Cruz’s fire-breathing rhetoric to the stuff that came out of Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s mouth in the 1950s, when he accused the State Department of hiring communists.

I’m wondering now if Ted Cruz’s reckless implications today will produce the kind of response that McCarthy drew from his critics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1eA5bUzVjA

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Flight ban was no embargo

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The Federal Aviation Administration has lifted its brief ban on commercial U.S. jet service to David Ben-Gurion International Airport.

Did the FAA knuckle under to some ridiculous political criticism? I hope not.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/faa-lifts-flight-ban-to-tel-aviv-109319.html?hp=r5

The FAA had banned the flights into Tel Aviv’s air terminal, citing security concerns created by Hamas’s rocket attacks on Israeli civilians. One rocket landed about a mile from Ben-Gurion, causing the FAA to suspend U.S. air carrier service to the massive airport.

Then came the ridiculousness from the likes of former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. Their complaint? They called the flight-service suspension an “economic embargo on Israel” that punished the Israelis unfairly.

Bloomberg even went so far as to board an Israeli El Al Airlines jet from New York to Tel Aviv, and fly to Israel to make some kind of bombastic statement criticizing the suspension.

Cruz, of course, wasted no time plastering this decision — which was made independently by the FAA — on President Obama. This has become a common theme from Cruz and other loudmouthed Republican lawmakers: Let’s be sure to politicize this any way we can and, oh yes, be sure to put the blame squarely on the president; and in this case, let’s be sure to imply that he is following some kind of “anti-Israel” policy, which of course is standard for someone with “pro-Muslim” leanings.

Their stupidity is mind-boggling.

And to think Republicans still rail at those who — they contend — still want to blame George W. Bush for the nation’s economic mess and all these foreign-policy crises.

Well, the ban on U.S. carriers’ flights to David Ben-Gurion has lifted. That’s a good thing. The FAA assessed the security risk and determined that it’s OK to fly there.

Take it from me, as one who’s flown in and out of that terminal: You haven’t lived until you’ve been interrogated by an Israeli airport security official prior to boarding an outbound flight from David Ben-Gurion International Airport.

They know how to protect themselves against terrorist attacks.

As for the FAA, they were being extra cautious. Given the stakes involved, I’m glad they locked down those flights.