Tag Archives: GOP

local news, State news

Listen up: Texas cannot secede!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Is it OK to presume that every state legislative body has a wacky caucus in its ranks? If so, then Texas isn’t alone in the legislative wackiness that presents itself from time to time.

Consider this from a Republican state representative, Kyle Biedermann of Fredericksburg, who has pitched a resolution calling for a statewide election to determine whether Texas can secede from the Union.

Yes, the secessionists have returned! Oh, my. When does the madness stop? Don’t answer that. I know that it will never stop. It will never end.

The Texas Tribune reports what many of us know already, that the state cannot secede legally. The Civil War took care of that, right?

Texas seceded once already, joining the Confederacy in trying to break apart the United States of America. It went to war against the government, against fellow Americans. The issue? Slavery. The Civil War ended correctly, with the Union prevailing.

The Tribune wrote this about Biedermann’s idea:

“It is now time that the People of Texas are allowed the right to decide their own future,” he said in a statement announcing the legislation.

The bill d oesn’t appear to have much of a chance. And even if it did, experts say, Texas can’t just secede.

“The legality of seceding is problematic,” Eric McDaniel, associate professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin, told The Texas Tribune in 2016. “The Civil War played a very big role in establishing the power of the federal government and cementing that the federal government has the final say in these issues.”

Texas can’t secede from the U.S. Here’s why. | The Texas Tribune

Texas declared independence from Mexico in 1836. We joined the Union in 1845, adopting a resolution that contained language that said the state could partition itself into four parts if it wanted. Indeed, a former Texas Panhandle legislator, David Swinford of Dumas, once pitched the notion as recently as 1991. I asked Rep. Swinford whether he meant it as a serious proposal … and he did not say he was joking. 

Secession, though, is a non-starter. The Tribune cites a bit of wisdom offered by the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia: “The answer is clear,” Scalia wrote. “If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede. (Hence, in the Pledge of Allegiance, ‘one Nation, indivisible.’)”

national news

Censure the loony bird

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Marjorie Taylor Greene certainly has made a name for herself in just a few days in public office.

Her name is, well, mud. She is a Republican congresswoman from Georgia who is aligned with the QAnon comprising conspiracy nut jobs and lunatics.

What does the House of Representatives do about this moron in its midst? Jack Shafer, senior media writer for Politico, has an interesting idea: censure her and then let the voters in her congressional district decide whether to keep her in 2022.

Not a bad idea. As Shafer writes in Politico: Nowhere in the Constitution—and this is excellent news for freshly sworn-in Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.)—does it stipulate that a House member must have the mental capacity to cook on all four burners.

This is in keeping with the Framers’ general idea that only the lowest bars should be set for officeholders. They declined to cordon off Congress with credential and qualification roadblocks, stating in Article I, section 2, clause 2 that House members need only be 25 years old or older and a U.S. citizen for at least seven years. This left plenty of room for the daft, the moonstruck, the brainsick, the rabble-rousing and the witless to run for the seats. And they have, often gaining office, as Rep. Greene recently did, to the horror of many.

Opinion | Expelling Marjorie Taylor Greene Is Just Crazy Talk – POLITICO

The House has punished members for making untoward statements. Former Rep. Steve King, the Iowa Republican who repeatedly spoke fondly of white supremacy, was stripped of his committee assignments. All he could do for the remainder of his term was cast recorded votes on the floor of the House. The voters in his House district took care of King’s political career … by voting him out of office.

That well could happen to Marjorie Taylor Greene, if the House has the gumption at the very least to censure her.

media news, national news

Vowing to hear all sides

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It is time for your friendly blogger to make a solemn, sincere and honest vow.

I hereby pledge to read more political commentary with which I disagree. The Age of Trump has given way to the Age of Biden. The change in political tone and tenor in Washington thrills me greatly.

However, I need to make a confession. I didn’t listen to as many arguments that favored the tone that Donald Trump set during his term as president as I should have done.

Now that Trump has holed up in his glitzy south Florida resort, I intend to examine more carefully the conservative antidote to the surprisingly progressive tone that President Biden is striking as he seeks to take control of the crises that awaited him.

I look at a number of Internet sites each day. The one that provides the widest range of views is RealClearPolitics.com, which I scan daily. The RCP site is chock full of progressive, centrist and conservative thought. They’re all reputable and I now intend to examine those views that differ from my own bias.

RealClearPolitics – Live Opinion, News, Analysis, Video and Polls

Do I expect to “come out” as a born-again conservative? Hardly. I just believe I should practice what I occasionally preach to those who take time to read my rants on High Plains Blogger. One of my occasional rant topics deals with narrow-mindedness.

As my dear mother used to say, “That guy is so narrow-minded, he can look through a keyhole with both eyes.”

I don’t intend to be “that guy.”

national news

What about this loon’s supporters?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

While the nation debates and wrings its hands over the rise of nut-job politicians in Congress, it is good to remember something critical: They all won elections by getting more votes than their opponents.

Which means that they obtained majorities among those who cast ballots. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is the nut job du jour who has been getting the bulk of the media’s attention of late. And I do believe she is nuts.

The question we need to ponder is this: How do candidates who believe what this QAnon disciple says out loud gain the support of most voters in their political jurisdiction?

Greene represents the 14th Congressional District of Georgia, covering part of the northwestern part of the state. It went strongly for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. President Biden won the state’s overall vote, but not in the district that Greene won.

In 2020, she defeated John Cowan in the GOP runoff. Then she ran against Democrat Kevin Van Ausdal, who pulled out of the race in September 2020, meaning that Greene ran unopposed. So, she won with 75 percent of the vote.

As frightening as she is — contending that notorious school massacres were hoaxes and that Muslims are unfit for public office — what’s even scarier is that she pulled most of the voters in her district along with her.

It makes me ask: Are most of Georgia’s 14th Congressional District voters as crazy as their member of Congress?

If not Rep. Greene, then who is waiting in the tall grass to ascend to power in that part of the country?

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a serious crisis on our hands if our fellow citizens continue to elect certifiable nut jobs such as Marjorie Taylor Greene to our federal legislative branch of government.

national news

Unify Congress? Hah! Good luck

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden’s stated intention to “unify” the nation is facing a major hurdle very close to the president’s new home.

Just down the street from the White house sits Congress. Its members are at each others’ throats. Democrats are angry and some are frightened of their Republican colleagues. Why? Because many of them have given tacit approval of the insurrection that could have produced casualties among members of Congress.

Meanwhile, GOP members are continuing their harangue against the election that President Biden won over Donald Trump.

Some members of Congress don’t want to work with their colleagues. Many of them want their offices relocated because of actual fear of how their colleagues might treat them.

Yes, there is a serious rift opening wide among members of Congress. As Politico has reported: Some House lawmakers are privately refusing to work with each other. Others are afraid to be in the same room. Two members almost got into a fist fight on the floor. And the speaker of the House is warning that “the enemy is within.”

Forget Joe Biden’s calls for unity. Members of Congress couldn’t be further divided.

‘I’m just furious’: Relations in Congress crack after attack – POLITICO

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has declared that the “enemy is within” the halls of Congress. She is specifically pointedly of some House members who adhere to the QAnon lunacy that school shootings are hoaxes and that Muslims cannot serve in public office. Pressure is building to a full boil among Democrats to expel Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene of Georgia, who said during the 2020 campaign that it is time to “shed blood” to reverse trends she opposes.

I want Joe Biden to succeed in unifying the country. I do not have an idea on how he should do so, other than for him to call on senior Republicans in the House and Senate — men and women he knows well — to persuade them to close the yawning divide between the parties.

It’s just that the president has to start seeking unity in the other co-equal government branch.

national news

QAnon infects our politics

Staff photo by C.B. Schmelter

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Time for another fusillade against a QAnon-believing member of Congress.

U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene has become — with justification — the embodiment of what is wrong with many elements of the modern Republican Party.

Taylor-Greene is on record saying some of the most outrageous statements imaginable. Such as this piece of dookey: that the massacre of first- and second-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary School and high schoolers at Marjorie Stoneman High School were made up, that they didn’t happen.

So, what does the House GOP leadership do? It places her sorry a** on the House Education Committee.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has yet to condemn the frothing rambling of this moron. He has given her a forum to further her idiocy on a committee that helps set federal public education policy that affects the very children threatened by the violence that the Georgia Republican lawmaker helped incite on the Sixth of January.

Taylor-Greene is about as un-American, un-democratic, unpatriotic an individual as I ever have witnessed, albeit from a safe distance far away from Capitol Hill and from this idiot’s Georgia congressional district.

Taylor-Greene, though, is far from the only danger to the democracy now serving in the U.S. House. Mo Brooks is another Republican, from Alabama, who stood among the terrorists who stormed Capitol Hill on the Sixth of January. He wasn’t seen smashing windows or beating security officers with flagpoles or hurling fire extinguishers at Capitol Police officers. He did, though, incite violence by cheering the garbage spewed by Donald J. Trump.

I am among those American patriots who is ready to welcome a new day on Capitol Hill. That day already has dawned in the White House, with the expulsion of Donald Trump and the election of Joe Biden. Congress, though, is still infected with morons/imbeciles/nut jobs who have the power to enact laws that affect the rest of us.

I am not proposing to censor or stamp out opinions with which I disagree. I do condemn in the strongest language I can muster the astonishing notions that pour forth from individuals who espouse certifiably insane notions.

Marjorie Taylor-Greene is one of them.

There. I am done with this numbskull. For now!

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This isn’t our ‘best’

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Make no mistake, I am not a Pollyanna. I know good bit about our political system, about how we can elect zeroes as well as heroes to our governing bodies.

But, oh brother, we have an astonishing number of numbskulls in Congress, taking power and being handed the opportunity to make laws that govern all of us, not just those who send them to Congress from their various states and congressional districts.

Marjorie Taylor-Greene, I am talking about you.

Rep. Taylor-Greene is the walking, talking embodiment of a domestic demon in our midst. She represents a Georgia congressional district and she is a believer in that QAnon cult that has gripped millions of Americans by the genitals.

She believes Muslims cannot serve legitimately in Congress; she has stated that the Sandy Hook and Parkland, Fla., school massacres were hoaxes; she says President Biden stole the election from Donald Trump; she has called for the summary execution of Democrats.

Yes, she is now among the 535 men and women who serve in the legislative branch of government.

She is a traitor. A potential terrorist. She is certifiably unfit to serve in a public office.

And yet … the folks in her congressional district sent her to Capitol Hill. Astonishing, yes? You know the answer. It is frightening in the extreme.

The news gets even worse. Congress contains others who hold the same view as this idiot. Oh, and the Republican leadership to which she ostensibly answers isn’t calling her, slapping her down, telling her to keep her mouth shut. They stand behind the First Amendment’s free speech clause.

I am a big believer in free speech and in the First Amendment. I also believe free speech should be responsible and shouldn’t be perceived as a threat to our very government.

This member of Congress doesn’t represent our best. She represents the worst of us.

national news

GOP continues to cower

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Listen up, America.

Have we just witnessed a precursor to the verdict we can expect from the U.S. Senate that is putting Donald Trump on trial after his second impeachment by the House of Representatives?

I am afraid so. The Senate voted today to narrowly defeat a GOP measure to dismiss the trial on grounds that it isn’t constitutional. Five Senate Republicans joined Democrats in moving ahead. The vote was 55-45. The GOP senators with guts are: Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Pat Toomey and Ben Sasse.

The rest of ’em? All cowards. They are cowering under threat of reprisal by the Trump cultists in their home state who will go after them at the next election.

They contend that the Constitution calls for impeachment to remove a president. Donald Trump already is gone, they say, so the trial is irrelevant and is unconstitutional.

Oh, my. Forty-five out of 50 Senate Republicans want to give a pass to a president who fomented a riotous mob into violence on the Sixth of January. What in the world is wrong with these idiots, er … individuals?

The terrorists captured the very floor of the Senate, where our lawmakers do their jobs. They threatened to kill then-Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, only God knows who else might have been killed or wounded in action had the rioters had gotten their hands on them.

None of that is sufficient to persuade most GOP senators to proceed with a trial that should occur, if only at this point to keep Donald Trump out of the political scene … for the rest of his miserable life.

Stay tuned, folks. It looks to me as though a Senate trial conviction is slipping away.

national news

Trial outcome runs into political reality

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(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I hate to deliver bad news, but I am going to deliver some right here.

It appears that the upcoming Senate trial of Donald J. Trump is not going to produce a richly deserved conviction of the former president. It has nothing to do with the evidence that he incited an insurrection. It has everything to do with what I expect to be a display of political cowardice among Senate Republicans who will face the mother of political revenge if they do the right thing.

The House impeached Trump on an allegation that he whipped the rioters into the frenzy that erupted when they stormed into the Capitol Building on the Sixth of January. I saw the president make those remarks. I saw the rioters’ response to it. Trump committed an act of incitement of insurrection.

The Constitution sets a high bar for the Senate to convict a president. It states that two-thirds of senators must agree. That means 17 GOP senators have to do the right thing.

Ten GOP House members joined their Democratic colleagues in impeaching Trump. The most notable of them is Rep. Liz Cheney, a member of the Republican leadership. She has been threatened with a primary challenge; some of her fellow GOP colleagues want her replaced as a congressional leader.

Therein is the problem facing Republican senators who might be inclined to convict Trump. Do they do what’s right and convict or do they seek to salvage their Senate careers by deciding to acquit?

The Senate will convene a trial on Feb. 9. The delay is of no particular consequence, given that Trump is now out of office. The only goal remaining is for Democrats and at least 17 Republicans vote to convict him, setting up a follow up vote: whether to ban Trump from ever seeking public office, which requires only a simple majority.

So … here we are. Fifty Senate Republicans face a reckoning. Do they punish a former GOP president who demonstrated for all the world that he is unfit for public office? Or do they scurry into the tall grass and avoid angering the cultists who continue to worship the ground on which Donald Trump treads?

I fear the latter … to their everlasting shame.

national news

Keep the filibuster, however …

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Democrats smell a certain radical political overhaul in the making.

They need to take great care if they intend to enact it. The filibuster rule in the U.S. Senate looms in the proverbial gunsights of congressional Democrats and their fellow activists out here in the peanut gallery.

They want to end it now that they have control of both congressional chambers and the White House

Senators can filibuster while opposing legislation they oppose. One of them can stand on the Senate floor and talk about anything they want. Sometimes they read from children’s books, or ramble on about this or that … they just bluster.

It requires a super majority of senators to end a filibuster.

The aim is to stop legislative momentum. The filibuster can be abused. And it has been abused in recent years, chiefly by Republican senators.

Democrats see an avenue to end the procedure now that they have the slimmest of majorities in the Senate, which is split 50-50; but Democrats have a weapon in the person of Vice President Kamala Harris, who can break a tie.

The filibuster — which dates to era of ancient Rome — protects the minority members’ political interests. Do I want the GOP to advance its legislative agenda? No. I don’t. I do, though, want to caution any Democratic zealot that their party is unlikely to remain in the majority forever. Political cycles have a way of wresting control from one party and handing it to the other one.

What happens if and when Republicans get control of the Senate, or the House or even the White House in the future?

I want to protect this process, with one provision: Democrats invoked what they called the “nuclear option” in 2015 by voting with a simple majority to end a filibuster that sought to block a judicial nominee put forward by President Obama. I don’t have a problem with maintaining that option.

As for the filibuster itself, let us just remember that what goes around, comes around. 

I am glad to see Democrats in control of the White House and Capitol Hill. Let’s not get carried away … hmmm?