legal news

SCOTUS provides wonderful civics lesson

Dear readers of High Plains Blogger, I am happy to report to you that our U.S. Supreme Court has issued a ruling that sparkles on a number of fronts.

It ruled 7-2 that the president of the United States is not above the law. The ruling said that Donald Trump’s financial records are open to grand jury scrutiny in Manhattan, New York City, which is examining potential criminal conduct from the president.

The ruling demonstrated the value of having an “independent federal judiciary.” Two justices who joined the majority were nominated by Donald Trump. Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh sided with Justices Elana Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Chief Justice John Roberts in this seminal ruling

Why is that important? It’s because the federal judiciary has become the target of partisans who worry that the SCOTUS has tilted too far to the right, that it will bend to the will of a president who demands loyalty at all levels … even from members of the federal judiciary.

Federal judges get appointed for life. The founders intended for them to be free of political pressure. Today’s ruling suggests to me that the nation’s highest court is delivering on the founders’ promise.

It’s not clear whether the nation will see Trump’s tax returns prior to the November presidential election. That’s really not the point, as I have thought about the ruling over the past few hours. Trump will bob and weave for as long as he can to keep them out of public view.

The ruling, though, does establish a clear legal concept that presidents of the United States cannot invoke their incumbency as a shield against prosecutors.

I doubt it will prevent Donald Trump from trying every dodge he can find to keep those records out of public view.

Still, I am heartened to see the strength of an independent federal judiciary show itself in front of the nation.

medical news

Doubt creeps into thinking about resumption of sporting events

Oh, I do hate being a Negative Ned … but plenty of doubt is creeping into my noggin about whether we ought to resume sporting activities that occur in front of crowds.

Let’s consider a couple of things.

First, Tulsa, Okla., has reported a significant spike in the cases of COVID-19 after a political rally attended by about 6,500 spectators. Donald Trump went to Tulsa to restart his re-election campaign and now we hear about a surge in infection in that city and surrounding area.

Second, the Ivy League has just announced it is canceling all fall sports. No intercollegiate sports will occur in that conference. Why? Sports and school officials are concerned about infection coming from the pandemic.

The Texas State Fair canceled its 2020 event. The Big 12, though, plans to play the Texas-Oklahoma college football game anyway. They won’t pack the Cotton Bowl, but still the place will have plenty of fans.

Major League Baseball is going to restart its season soon, along with the NBA, the NHL and the pro football will start training camps soon. Some players are boycotting the season out of fear of getting sick. Others might follow.

I am just at the point now of worrying whether the risk is worth the reward.

We are hearing too many reports of “hot spots” springing up all over the country. Arizona is the latest place to receive the dubious designation of “epicenter” of the pandemic. Texas isn’t that far behind.

I express these doubts and concerns as someone who wants a return to collegiate football. My beloved Oregon Ducks are supposed to play a big non-conference game in Eugene on Sept. 12 against Ohio State. There is no way they can pack Autzen Stadium full of fans to cheer on the Ducks. I now am doubting whether it’s wise to even play the game.

I am now officially beginning to wonder whether the Ivy League has blazed a trail down which other athletic conferences should travel.

legal news

SCOTUS delivers needed gut punch to POTUS

Well now, this is judicial independence at its finest.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a stunning 7-2 ruling, has told Donald John “Lawbreaker in Chief” Trump that he is not above the law and that a New York-based prosecutor is on solid legal footing in seeking Trump’s financial records as part of an ongoing investigation.

Why is this so remarkable? Two conservative justices nominated by Donald Trump, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, sided with the majority in declaring that the president of the United States is “not above the law.”

What does this mean? Well, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. gets to proceed with a probe into whether Trump broke the law when he wrote a stripper a $130,000 check to buy her silence over an allegation that she and Trump had a one-night affair prior to Trump taking office as president.

Vance is going to obtain Trump’s complete financial record as part of his probe and then we might learn about those mysterious tax returns that Trump has refused to release to the public for its review.

Donald Trump has been fighting all of this hammer and tong, as you might expect. He staked his argument on a notion that a president is not subject to grand jury inquiry. The high court said “no so fast, Mr. President.” Indeed, Justice Kavanaugh made the specific point that the president is not above the law.

The next question now is whether Cyrus Vance will move quickly in obtaining that information and will it become known prior to the Nov. 3 presidential election. I won’t offer a prediction, but instead will express my desire that the public is given a chance to review Donald Trump’s financial dealings prior to deciding whether he deserves another term in office.

The matter now rests in Cyrus Vance’s hands.

Let’s get busy, Mr. Prosecutor.

International news

Still waiting for something from Trump on this bounty matter

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Donald Trump has remained silent on what might be the most heinous act of treachery perpetrated during this individual’s tenure as president of the United States.

Intelligence reports are piling up that say the same thing: Russian agents paid bounties of as much as $100,000 to Taliban fighters who kill U.S. service personnel.

Trump has taken aim at the reporting of this story. He calls it “fake news.” He reportedly is looking for the White House staffer who leaked the information to the media.

Has he said a word publicly about Vladimir Putin’s role in this astonishing act? No. He hasn’t. He won’t, either. Why? Because I happen to believe Putin has some goods to deliver on Trump that the U.S. president doesn’t want known.

It could be damn near anything. It’s as much a mystery to me as the tax returns that Trump refuses to release, even though he once promised to release them.

What we have here is an act of treachery on the part of a hostile power toward our fighting men and women. We well might have a much more egregious act by the president who took an oath to protect our servicemen and women. He has failed in his duty as commander in chief.

national news

Would POTUS hide a positive result from us?

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It is fair to ask, given Donald Trump’s penchant for prevarication, to wonder how he might handle a positive test result on the COVID-19 virus.

My wandering mind asks: Is it at all possible that Donald Trump would seek to hide from the public a test — on himself — that came up positive?

I ask only because I distrust Trump’s ability or willingness to divulge the full truth were it to become necessary to tell us grim news about his own health. I don’t want to think he would hide that information from us, but I am pulled in that direction only because of his long-standing record of lying, of evasion, of deflection.

He does this at every turn, takes every opportunity to lie when all he has to do is tell us the truth. Trump has told us about his astonishing good health. I am forced to believe that anything that tells us something different wouldn’t be true to his own constant boasting.

I don’t want Donald Trump to fall ill. I also do not want him to hide it from us if he tests positive for a virus that poses a serious threat to the president’s very life. His record as a liar makes me wonder.

national news

How dare he say this about Sen. Duckworth?

U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth favors removing statues and other monuments to slave owners and Confederate soldiers.

The Illinois Democrat has been vocal in her belief. She has drawn a sharp rebuke from Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, who said this, according to Yahoo.com:

“You’re not supposed to criticize Tammy Duckworth in any way because she once served in the military. Most people just ignore her. But when Duckworth does speak in public, you’re reminded what a deeply silly and unimpressive person she is,” Carlson said, adding, “It’s long been considered out of bounds to question a person’s patriotism. It’s a very strong charge and we try not ever to make it. But in the face of all of this, the conclusion can’t be avoided. These people actually hate America. There’s no longer a question about that.”

Well, consider this, too. Duckworth flew helicopter for the U.S. Army and in 2004 her chopper was hit by an Iraqi rocket-propelled grenade. She lost both of her legs.

Is that the kind of sacrifice one makes if they “hate America”?

I don’t think so.

Sen. Duckworth is an American patriot who bled for her country. Tucker Carlson, I should point out, did not serve in the military.

national news

Hoping for a President Biden … but not predicting it!

I learned a bitter lesson from the 2016 presidential election, which is that I am a terrible political prognosticator.

I predicted Hillary Clinton would be elected president. Late in the campaign I was foolish enough to think she’d win in a landslide. I couldn’t foresee the FBI reopening an investigation into that email non-story, nor could I predict that Clinton would ignore key swing Rust Belt states down the stretch.

Thus, the door was flung wide open for Donald Trump to traipse through. He won. I was horrified. I still am horrified at the prospect of this clown’s potential re-election.

Trump’s polling at this moment looks dire. He well might lose to Joe Biden, the Democrats’ presumed nominee. Biden is polling 10 to 12 percentage better than Trump. The president looks as though he is flailing.

However, I am not going to predict that this Biden advantage will hold up. I will hope for it. I might even pray for it.

Joe Biden was not my first choice to be the Democratic Party nominee. I wanted someone to jump out of the tall grass and surprise everyone, mimicking the way Jimmy Carter did in 1976. That never happened.

Biden’s campaign was considered so much road kill after the first two primary events. Then he got an endorsement from Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, the leading African-American member of Congress; Biden won the South Carolina primary on the backs of black voters.

Now he stands on the verge of being nominated. I am all in.

Biden pledges to restore “the soul” of the nation that has seen its soul captured and re-created in the hideous image of Donald Trump. He now is talking about immediately reversing Trump’s decisions: on immigrants who were brought here illegally as children; on removing the nation from the World Health Organization; on removing us from the Paris Climate Accords; on restoring our commitment to the Iran nuclear deal.

Biden got beaten up during Democratic primary debates when he boasted of his ability to work with Republican legislators. I want him to bring that ability with him into the Oval Office. I am a firm believer in good government, not necessarily big government. Donald Trump doesn’t know how to cobble together a good government coalition. Joe Biden has many decades of experience working within Congress and the executive branch as vice president for two successful terms with the Obama administration.

Biden is no wacky socialist. He is, as Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham described him, “one of the finest men God ever created.”

I want Joe Biden to be elected president. I want to make that prediction, but I got burned in 2016. Therefore, I will rely on my hope that a better day will dawn once we count the ballots for president.

State news

Texas GOP cancels in-person convention!

With apologies to Walter Winchell: Flash out there to Mr. and Mrs. North and South America and all the ships at sea!

The Texas Republican Party, apparently heeding the threat by the Democratic mayor of Houston, has canceled its in-person convention set for next week in Texas’s largest city.

Mayor Sylvester Turner had sought to quash the convention, fearing the spread of the COVID-19 virus. The state GOP pushed back. Well, I guess the party thought differently.

There might be a “virtual” convention. I’m OK with that.

A gathering that would have brought thousands of attendees to the George Brown Convention Center — in this tenuous time — clearly was a non-starter.

local news

No, Mr. POTUS … not ‘everyone’ behind a rush back to classroom

Donald Trump is getting way ahead of himself again. Imagine that, if you can.

Now he says “everyone” wants children to return to the classroom this fall. The “Educator in Chief,” though, is speaking way out of school, if you’ll pardon the pun. I am among the “everyone” to whom he refers and I am not yet ready to push our children back into classrooms.

Medical experts, including those who are “advising” him on the pandemic response, say something different. They caution against rushing to reopen public school classrooms. Donald Trump won’t be dissuaded from pursuing this latest form of political idiocy.

I no longer have kids in school. I do have a couple of grandkids, though, who finished the 2019-20 academic year at home. Their schools in Collin County, Texas, might decide to reopen their classrooms, or they might decide to keep the students at home, providing them with online study materials. Last time I looked, Texas’s rate of COVID-19 infection was soaring into the sky.

This gets directly to one of the points I want to make. Which is that these decisions will occur at the state level in conjunction with what local school officials recommend. The president of the United States has no authority to dictate what schools systems should do, just as he didn’t have any authority to order states to reopen their business communities.

Oh, but Trump now says he might withhold federal money to those states that do not order their schools to reopen their classrooms.

This is nothing but political bullying.

Do I want my grandkids back in class? Sure … but only if their schools can assure us they will be safe, that they will return to a learning environment that protects them from needless exposure to potential harm from a dangerous virus.

If they can’t provide that assurance, then students should stay home … and Donald Trump needs to keep his trap shut!

political news, State news

Mayor Turner deserves a prize

Since politics has infected the discussion of public health and the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on human health and welfare, I want to offer a prize to Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner.

The mayor has earned the prize for the most politically courageous act as Texas tries to reel in the impact of the pandemic.

Turner is a true-blue Democrat. He has just initiated a process he hopes will block the Texas Republican Party from staging its annual convention at the George Brown Center in Houston.

As you might expect, the Texas GOP has accused Turner of stepping on the party’s right of political expression. Turner, though, has put public health ahead of partisan point-scoring. The convention is expected to attract about 6,000 visitors to the Brown Center. They’ll be stuffed in there, exposing each other to potentially deadly viral germs.

Turner wants to prevent that from occurring in the city he leads. Can you blame him? I cannot.

The Texas Tribune reported this about the state GOP’s response:

Party Chair James Dickey responded later Wednesday, criticizing Turner for “seeking to deny a political Party’s critical electoral function” after the mayor recently allowed protesters to demonstrate there “without any of the safety precautions and measures we have taken.”

Dickey also said the party’s legal team was assessing the city’s ability to cancel the convention and weighing its legal options.

“We are prepared to take all necessary steps to proceed in the peaceable exercise of our constitutionally protected rights,” Dickey said in a statement.

I would expect the party leaders to invoke their “constitutionally protected rights.” Those rights, though, do not entitle them to put citizens in potentially dire harm if they attend this event, get sick and possibly die as a result.

Surely the state GOP deserves to have its voice heard. Why not do so during a “virtual” convention that doesn’t expose people to the effects of a potentially fatal viral infection?

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