Tag Archives: Barack Obama

military news

Mullen is right about Bannon: He doesn’t belong on NSC

Michael Mullen knows a thing or three about national security.

He’s a retired Navy admiral who served as Joint Chiefs chairman under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Mullen also believes that Donald Trump’s chief political adviser — Steve Bannon — should not be on the principals committee of the National Security Council.

My reaction? No-o-o-o-o!

Mullen has written his feelings in an op-ed published by the New York Times.

Mullen made his point clear. Bannon is a political hand. He is not a national security expert. Indeed, Trump demoted the current Joint Chiefs chair and the director of national intelligence to make room for the former Brietbart.com editor, and a guy believed to harbor dangerous views about white supremacy.

“Every president has the right and the responsibility to shape the security council as he sees fit,” Mullen added. “But partisan politics has no place at that table. And neither does Mr. Bannon.”

The NSC is a place where experts share their knowledge about imminent national security threats and make recommendations to the president on how to deal with them.

What in the world does Bannon bring to that discussion? Nothing, as far as I can tell.

legal news, national news, political news

Catfight over Gorsuch? Wait until the next justice leaves the court

“So, are you ready for the catfight that’s going to erupt over this guy Trump has picked for the Supreme Court?”

That was the question posed to me today by a colleague of mine.

The reference, of course, was to Donald Trump’s nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the highest court in the land.

“Catfight? Over this? Naw. The earth is going to open up and quake when the next justice leaves the court,” I said, referring to the possibility that either Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer or Anthony Kennedy might leave the court.

That, I said, will produce the “mother of all catfights.”

Gorsuch’s nomination doesn’t change a thing on the court. The president is seeking to place a judicial conservative on the court to replace another conservative’s seat, that of the late Antonin Scalia, who died in February 2016.

Yes, Senate Democrats are enraged. Not at the selection of Gorsuch, necessarily, but over the treatment that President Obama got when he nominated Merrick Garland this past year to succeed Scalia.

My own thought is that Gorsuch is likely to be as good a choice as Democrats are going to get, given Trump’s insistence on picking a conservative judge.

No, the real donnybrook will occur when one of the liberals or swing justices decides to leave … or is unable to serve.

My own advice to Democrats would be to pick their fights carefully. Sure, they battle Gorsuch’s nomination. They’ll insist on keeping the 60-vote majority required to approve a Supreme Court nomination. Republicans might decide to invoke the “nuclear option” and allow a 51-vote majority.

I have no real clue as to which way this fight will go.

It might serve Democrats better to hold their fire for the next vacancy when — or if — it occurs during Trump’s time in office.

Given the tenuous ideological balance of the court, with its slim conservative majority, I sincerely doubt that Justices Ginsburg and Breyer — both picked by President Clinton in the 1990s — are going to resign amid the political climate that has fallen over Washington.

As for Justice Kennedy, one of President Reagan’s picks, well, that might be another matter.

Whatever happens, the serious political bloodletting is yet to occur.

International news

Obama disagrees with Trump refugee ban? No kidding!

It didn’t take Barack Obama long at all to weigh in against a policy pronouncement by his presidential successor, Donald Trump.

“The President fundamentally disagrees with the notion of discriminating against individuals because of their faith or religion,” said the former president’s spokesman, Kevin Lewis.

I’m going to take another gulp of air now and say this: I wish the former president would have stayed quiet on this one … for two reasons.

First, it should surprise no one that the ex-president opposes Trump’s idiotic refugee ban targeting those coming to the United States from Muslim-majority nations. President Obama made that point abundantly clear during his two terms in office, that the United States must not discriminate against anyone because of their religion as we fight this war against international terrorism.

The second reason is that I continue to endorse the George W./George H.W. Bush view of former presidents criticizing their successors. Bush 43 was essentially quiet during the Obama presidency; Bush 41 also kept quiet during the two terms of Bill Clinton’s presidency. They both adhered to the same principle: We had our time in the arena; that time is up and the men who followed them are entitled to conduct foreign and domestic policy without being sniped at by their predecessor.

Indeed, I was critical former Vice President Dick Cheney’s continual carping about Obama’s conduct of the office.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2014/05/button-it-up-mr-vp/

Don’t misunderstand me. I endorse Barack Obama’s opinion of Trump’s ban on refugees. It was poorly conceived and even more poorly executed. Several state attorneys general have filed lawsuits challenging its constitutionality.

However, Barack Obama need tell us what we already know about what he thinks about a particular Trump policy.

legal news, national news, political news

Principle pushes against politics

I just hate it when principle runs smack head-on into real-time politics.

The nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court has created just such a conundrum — at least for me.

The principle involves whether to fill the ninth seat on the nation’s highest court, an argument I made when President Barack Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland to fill the vacancy created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

It wasn’t to be for the Garland and the president; Senate Republicans threw up their roadblock and obstructed the nomination by refusing even to consider it.

They were wrong!

Now a new president has nominated Gorsuch to Scalia’s vacant seat. Senate Democrats are threatening to do all they can to obstruct it, to block Donald Trump’s nominee from taking his seat on the bench.

I’m swallowing real hard as I write this, but it is just as wrong for Democrats to obstruct this nominee as it was for Republicans to obstruct Merrick Garland.

The principle of presidential prerogative stands firm in my view.

So does the need for the Supreme Court to be whole. It needs nine seats occupied to avoid tie votes that in effect send important cases back to lower-court rulings.

At one level, I sympathize with Democrats’ rage at the way their GOP “friends” played raw politics with Garland’s nomination. The GOP leadership took a huge gamble on the hope that a Republican would be elected president. The odds of that gamble paying off seemed to lengthen considerably when Donald Trump won the GOP presidential nomination this past summer.

Trump fooled a lot of us by defeating Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Now it’s Donald Trump’s turn to nominate people to become justices on the highest court in America.

By all accounts, Gorsuch is qualified. He’s not my ideal justice candidate. To be candid, given Trump’s seeming lack of ideological conviction, I’m not at all certain he even fits whatever core values inform the president’s thinking.

The fundamental point, though, is whether it is right for Democrats to threaten to keep the seat vacant for another year — or perhaps for the entire length of time a Republican president is recommending potential justices.

It is not right!

Judge Gorsuch deserves a Senate committee hearing and a full vote in the Senate — just as Judge Garland did.

Principle ought to matter more than politics — even when one’s political sensibilities are being trampled.

legal news

GOP’s amnesia surely must be cured

I cannot believe a Republican U.S. senator from Pennsylvania actually said this. But he did.

“We did not inflict this kind of obstructionism on President Obama.”

That came from Patrick Toomey.

It takes my breath away. I might need some smelling salts before I get done with this blog post.

Oh … yes you did, senator!

I get that Donald Trump’s selection of Neil Gorsuch as the next Supreme Court justice has angered Democrats. I also get that the president is entitled to nominate someone of his choosing.

What I do not get is the crass, brassy and classless argument from Senate Republicans — namely Sen. Toomey — that they didn’t obstruct President Barack Obama’s efforts to govern.

Good grief, dude! You made it your top priority!

The hands-down example of obstruction occurred after Antonin Scalia died suddenly while vacationing nearly a year ago in Texas. The Supreme Court justice’s corpse was still warm when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared that the Senate GOP would block anyone selected by the then-president to succeed Scalia.

President Obama unveiled Merrick Garland as his nominee to the Supreme Court. McConnell held firm on his pledge. He blocked the nomination. He obstructed the president from fulfilling his constitutional duty to nominate a candidate for a federal judgeship.

Then, as if he had forgotten what he had done, McConnell accused the president and Senate Democrats of “playing politics.”

Are you bleeping kidding me, Mr. Majority Leader?

So here we are. Another president has picked another judge to the highest court. Democrats are furious at the treatment an earlier nominee got from their Republican colleagues.

And Republicans now are saying out loud — and apparently without a hint of shame — that, by golly, they didn’t obstruct a president from the opposing party.

They need treatment for their selective amnesia.

legal news, national news, political news

Hold on! Court balance won’t change

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All this hyperventilating over Donald Trump’s choice for the U.S. Supreme Court is making me dizzy.

The president tonight brought out Neil Gorsuch, a judge on the 10th Circuit of Appeals, as his nominee for the nation’s highest court.

He’s a conservative, just as Trump promised. He is a “strict constitutional constructionist,” again as Trump vowed. He’s also a disciple of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, as Trump pledged.

Now we’re hearing talk about the “nuclear option” that Senate Democrats might employ to stop Gorsuch’s confirmation. They’ll oppose this fellow, seemingly as payback for the shabby treatment Senate Republicans leveled against President Obama’s choice to succeed Obama. Remember that? Senate GOPers said within hours of Scalia’s death that they would block anyone the president nominated. Obama selected Merrick Garland and the Senate didn’t even give him a hearing and a vote.

Let’s take a deep breath here.

I want to make a couple of points.

One, I detest the notion of Donald Trump nominating anyone to the court. But he won the presidency without my vote. He won enough electoral votes to take the oath of office. Thus, he earned the right to choose anyone he wants.

Gorsuch isn’t my kind of justice. But someone else is the president.

Two, the ideological balance of the U.S. Supreme Court is not going to change when — or if — Gorsuch is confirmed. Scalia was a conservative icon. He was a heroic figure among political conservatives. Placing another judicial conservative on the high court restores the court’s narrow 5-4 conservative bent.

I feel compelled to note that the court — with that narrow conservative majority — made two decisions that riled conservatives, um, bigly. It upheld the Affordable Care Act and it declared same-sex marriage to be legal under the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

Would a Justice Gorsuch change that equation? I don’t see it. A nominee to succeed, say, one of the liberals on the court would most assuredly prompt a titanic political battle … as it should.

None of this will matter, of course, to Senate Democrats who are enraged at the president over many — seemingly countless — issues. His behavior in the first 10 days of his presidency, culminating with his firing of an acting attorney general over her refusal to defend Trump’s paranoid refugee ban, has angered Democrats to their core.

Thus, the fight is on.

It pains me to acknowledge it, but I must. Donald Trump vowed to nominate someone from a list of 20 or so jurists he revealed during his campaign. He has delivered on his pledge.

Judge Gorsuch isn’t to my liking. Moreover, my candidate lost. The other guy won. As they say, elections do have consequences.

International news

Is this an anti-Muslim rule … or not?

Donald J. Trump swears up and down, left and right — puts his hand on a stack of Bibles and says “Scout’s honor” for all I know — that his ban against refugees is not an “anti-Muslim” initiative.

The president, though, has delivered to our enemies a prime-time, gold-and-silver-plated recruitment tool.

He calls our enemies “radical Islamic terrorists.” Yes, they are.

They also are experts at distorting people’s intentions, even their very words, twisting them into propaganda fodder.

What the president has done is create a climate for terrorists such as the Islamic State and al-Qaeda to target American Muslims to join their fight against the “infidels.” He also has delivered to a much wider audience the very message that his two immediate predecessors — Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Barack H. Obama — fought like hell to avoid delivering. Presidents Bush and Obama said clearly: We are not at war with Islam! The enemies are the monstrous murderers who have perverted a great religion.

Now we have the potential for the precise opposite message being delivered to those who might be inclined to join a radical militant movement, to take up arms and to join the fight against the rest of the civilized world.

The president of the United States is expected to speak with absolute clarity and precision. When we’re dealing with the complexities of the current world geopolitical climate, any misstep or clumsy language can produce dire consequences.

The president’s refugee ban has roiled members of the president’s own party, created a firestorm within the legal community over its very constitutionality, and it has possibly enraged Muslims around the world — and in the United States — to the point of causing grievous harm.

International news, national news

Muslim ban plays straight into the terrorists’ hands

Now he’s done it.

The president of the United States has just ordered a ban on all immigrants this country from certain Muslim-majority countries. His fear is that immigrants from those countries might be terrorists intent on blowing us all up.

Donald J. Trump has just demonstrated — as if anyone really needed an explanation — how little he understands about the very nature of the nation he was elected to lead.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/trump-immigration-order-democrats-234312

Not only has the order enraged Democrats across the nation, it has split Republicans as well. It has once again cast a serious chaotic spin on the activities associated with the president who’s been in office a week and one day.

Just think, Dear Reader, we’ve got four whole years of this.

U.S. Sen Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican, said he understands Trump’s desire to protect us against terrorists but a “blanket ban” on immigrants from Muslim countries demonizes those who practice a certain religion unfairly. The president, Flake said, needs a “clear-eyed view” that doesn’t ascribe “radical Islamic terrorist views to all Muslims.”

That, however, is what Trump has just done.

Moreover, as Sen. Susan Collins (pictured), a Maine Republican, has noted, such a blanket ban will create problems immediately for the president.

Donald Trump has just ratcheted up the fight that appears to imply that, by golly, we are at war with Islam — a principle rejected categorically by his two immediate predecessors, Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Barack H. Obama.

national news, political news

You mean we have four whole years of this?

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Donald John Trump is making me crazy.

Yes, I am about to go nuts watching the evening news as it regards the 45th president of the United States.

He’s been in office for seven whole days and it seems like he’s been there … um, forever!

He signs an executive order starting to repeal the Affordable Care Act; he accuses millions of illegal immigrants of voting for Hillary Clinton, then announces a “major investigation” into the matter; he starts a trade war with Mexico over that country’s refusal to pay for the “beautiful wall” he wants to build; he continues to cozy up to Vladimir Putin; then several key State Department staffers quit, leaving him with some senior advisers in that key Cabinet agency.

He’s at war with the media. Chaos reins.

Good grief, folks! I cannot stand this.

Honest to goodness, I can’t quite put my finger on which development startles me the most.

No Drama Obama sought to run the country in a more even-handed manner. Did it work? Well, yes. It did. The nation is better off than it was when Barack Obama took office. He turned it all over to “Smart Person” Trump.

My eternal optimism is being tested like hardly ever before. Why? Because the president of the United States — who took office without a single solitary moment of public service experience — is seeking to chart a new course through some unknown territory.

I don’t want to wish my life away, but … is it 2020 yet?

local news, national news

Trump creates a ‘word game’ for some of us

Word games. We all play them. OK, some of us do. Maybe even most of us do.

I have concocted a word game of my own. It involves the 45th president of the United States and it goes like this: I refuse, early in the presidency of Donald J. Trump, to type the words “President” and “Trump” consecutively. (Please note I didn’t do so just now.)

I am using High Plains Blogger as my insignificant form of protest over Trump’s election this past November.

Please do not misconstrue my intent. Nor should  you ascribe anything other than one voter’s displeasure at the outcome. I do not intend to launch any kind of public demonstration. I won’t carry a sign on the courthouse square or shout down a Trumpkin whenever I encounter one — and believe me, living here in the Texas Panhandle, they’re everywhere.

Moreover, my refusal to type those two key words consecutively does not mean I refuse to accept the fact that Trump is the duly elected president of the United States. I know how the U.S. Constitution works. Trump won the election. He got enough Electoral College votes to qualify him as president. He is a “legitimate president.” And as near as I can tell, he was born in the United States of America, too!

There. I’ve just repeated something I’ve stated already. So, those of you who are inclined to put words in my mouth, you are welcome to resist doing so now.

Back to my point.

It is quite possible I will grow weary of playing this word game. Given that I tire occasionally of playing games of any kind, I have given you some advance notice of what might transpire. I cannot predict when that will occur. I cannot predict when I’ll succumb to the temptation to attach the presidential title directly in front of Donald Trump’s name.

It might occur when the president does something that I can support with a full-throated cheer. I don’t know what that would be. It could occur if he declares that Vladimir Putin is a really bad guy and that he’ll add more anti-Russia sanctions on top of what his predecessor enacted; he might deliver a soaring State of the Union speech that hits many of the hot-button issues near and dear to my heart; he could nominate someone to the U.S. Supreme Court who isn’t a right-wing ideologue but instead is a mainstream centrist in the mold of, say, Merrick Garland — who got stiffed by Republicans when he was nominated by Barack Obama.

I don’t know. I’m waiting for the moment when my pique will pass.

In the meantime, I’ll keep playing my word game. Humor me.