Category Archives: national news

Democrats conspiring to nominate Trump?

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U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz might be on to something.

He seems to believe that Democrats are conspiring to ensure that Donald J. Trump is the Republican presidential nominee. Thus, it’s the Democrats who are floating the Cruz-ain’t-eligible-to-run notion . . . allegedly.

Trump’s been making hay of late over the fact that Cruz, R-Texas, was born in Canada. Therefore, the idea goes, he isn’t eligible to run for the presidency, let alone actually occupy the office.

I happen to think Trump’s argument is more basic than that. He’s delusional and, I believe, he’s so much of an entertainer that he’d say anything to get Americans to talk about him.

My own belief is that Cruz’s citizenship was settled the moment he was born to an American mother. End of argument, as far as I’m concerned.

However, pundits keep raising the Cruz citizenship issue simply because it comes from Trump, who for the moment is the GOP frontrunner. Trump’s standing at the top of the polls gives his words a certain gravitas.

As for whether Democrats are working in cahoots with Trump, though, seems to suggest a certain fear of running against, say, Ted Cruz.

I tend to think Democrats would relish the idea of running against Cruz.

Having declared my disbelief in a Democrat-Trump co-conspiracy, absolutely nothing — not a damn thing — would surprise me at this point.

This campaign has taken so many twists and turns I’m getting motion sickness watching it unfold.

 

Conservatives dig in against Obama appointments

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U.S. Senate Republicans had better hope that the nine men and women who comprise the U.S. Supreme Court are still on the job when President Obama checks out of the White House.

Politico is reporting that conservative lawmakers are set to all but block future presidential appointments for the remainder of Obama’s term.

Why am I not surprised?

They’ve been holding up presidential appointments all along, so it doesn’t come as any shock that they’d lay down that marker.

I keep coming back to the highest court in the land.

The president already has selected two members of that court — Justices Sonya Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. It still has a narrow conservative majority, but some of the conservatives on the court — as well as some of the liberals — are getting a bit long in the tooth. Don’t misunderstand me here. I do not wish ill on any of them.

But suppose the president must make an appointment . . .

That’s just a single example of how the legislative branch can gum up the process that allows the president to make these critical selections.

I totally understand that the Constitution gives the Senate the power to “consent” to such appointments. I honor that provision. However, as one who long has stood behind the principle of presidential prerogative, I believe the “advise and consent” constitutional clause can be abused.

If Senate conservatives are merely intending to stick it in the president’s ear just because they can, well, that’s not in keeping with the concept of good government . . .  in my humble view.

Tanya Couch becomes face of parental dysfunction

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Ethan Couch needs to be punished the fullest extent of Texas law.

The problem, though, lies with the law itself. The so-called “affluenza” teen likely won’t spend much time behind bars for violating the conditions of his parole when he fled to Mexico after taking part in a drinking game.

Couch, you’ll recall, is the teenager convicted of killing four people in that hideous drunken-driving wreck in Tarrant County. HIs defense team threw out a defense that his ritzy lifestyle — and his wealthy parents — were responsible for his failing to understand right from wrong.

He should have spent time in juvenile detention, as he was 16 when he committed the crime.

Two years later he’s an adult.

But . . . what about Mommy Couch, Tanya?

She’s more of a villain than that goofball son of hers. She enabled his escape to Mexico and, in fact, fled with him.

Is there a better example than this of parental dysfunction that what Tanya Couch has provided? I’m hard-pressed to find one.

She’s out of jail now, but is confined to her residence; she’s wearing an ankle monitor to track her whereabouts.

Mommy Couch needs to do some serious jail time, although I don’t really know what the maximum sentence is for the crime for which she is likely to be charged with committing.

Whatever it is, she deserves it.

While we’re at it, let’s take a look at the role Daddy Couch might have played in this ridiculous drama.

 

El Chapo interview continues to provoke debate

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I heard a media analyst make an astonishing comparison this afternoon on National Public Radio.

The discussion on NPR was about actor Sean Penn’s interview — published in Rolling Stone — with Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the despicable drug lord who was on the lam from his escape from a Mexican prison.

This analyst seemed to make a direct comparison between El Chapo and Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and Moammar Gadhafi, all of whom were interviewed by the media before they met their deaths.

Hmmm. There’s something of a difference here.

Hussein and Gadhafi were heads of state; bin Laden hadn’t been convicted of anything, even though the entire world knew of his involvement in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Guzman was an escapee from a maximum-security prison. Mexican authorities had been scouring the country looking for him since his escape six months ago.

Penn’s access to this individual — whose drug activities have produced so much death and misery — was a function of his own celebrity status as an Oscar-winning film actor.

I keep coming back to what I believe is a central question: Doesn’t an American citizen such as Penn have an obligation to assist authorities in their search for a notorious drug dealer?

Sen. Marco Rubio was asked over the weekend to comment on the interview. The Republican presidential candidate said Penn is entitled to his First Amendment rights, but then he used a term with which I agree.

He called the interview “grotesque.”

 

What we might expect from a winning ticket?

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OK, I’m about to offer a not-so-bold prediction.

One day, maybe soon, someone — or some people — is going to win the Powerball prize that totals more than $1 billion.

That’s a billion bucks, man.

The prediction? The place where the winning ticket was purchased will become the target of suckers seeking to win the next big payoff.

It happens whenever they give out a lot of money.

I recall it happening in Amarillo not many years ago when someone here won a Texas Lottery payoff; I think it totaled a paltry $100 million, or something like that.

The convenience store — the location escapes me — where the guy bought the ticket became flooded with customers looking to buy the next winning ticket.

It’s an amazing aspect of human nature, I suppose. Those who like the play these games of chance are drawn to where the winning ticket is sold.

They apparently forget that the chances of the same outlet selling a winning ticket twice in a row are infinitely more remote than the outlet selling a winning ticket in the first place.

Whatever . . .

This Powerball mania is getting serious, folks.

I hope the winner — or winners — are ready to fend off the overtures from their millions of new best friends.

 

SOTU won’t fill us with warm, fuzzy feelings

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It never really had to be this way.

Barack H. Obama took office in January 2009 as the 44th president of the United States after an election that many had hoped would be a “transformational” political event for a country that had just elected its first African-American president.

Not long afterward, then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that his top priority would be to make Obama a one-term president. Yes, that’s right. McConnell said that defeating the president’s re-election effort would be his No. 1 priority.

That set the tone — right off the top — for the kind of relationship that the White House would have with Congress.

It hasn’t gotten any better, even as President Obama prepares to deliver his final State of the Union speech to a joint congressional session.

Ugly relationship coming to an end

To be blunt, the president didn’t do his part to develop a good working relationship with Congress. I’ve lamented before how the young president never learned how to build upon those relations with his congressional friends. To be honest, the president arguably served too little time in the Senate to have crafted a lot of friendships and political alliances among his fellow legislators.

I had hoped the president could have followed the Lyndon Johnson model of transferring his Senate experience into effective legislative accomplishment.

He didn’t.

However, Congress made it clear that it had no intention of giving any quarter to the president.

So, the president’s final State of the Union speech — which the White House says will be an “unconventional” presentation — isn’t expected to produce any bright lights of hope for a smooth and successful final year of the Obama presidency.

Republicans almost unanimously say that next to nothing will get done in this final full year of Barack Obama’s administration.

Perhaps, then, it will be left to the president simply to declare victory on the accomplishments that his presidency has delivered.

I’m wondering now if the president is going to remind us that Sen. McConnell’s top priority never came to pass.

 

The culling of the fields is about to begin

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The American presidential nominating process is a grueling exercise.

It’s also a useful one.

The Iowa caucuses are about to begin in three weeks. Right after we’ll witness the New Hampshire primary elections.

The usefulness comes in the form of the culling of the fields that’s about to commence.

The candidates at the back of the Republican and Democratic packs have been able to retain their campaign viability by insisting that “no votes have been cast.” That argument ends in Iowa.

Who’ll pack it in?

Martin O’Malley will exit the Democratic Party race, leaving the field to just Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

On the Republican side, the outcome is a bit murkier.

It has become a battle for third place. The top two spots will go to Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. Third? It’ll be either Marco Rubio, Chris Christie or maybe Jeb Bush. After that, the rest of ’em ought to bail out.

Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, John Kasich, Rand Paul and Jim Gilmore (yes, the former Virginia governor’s still in the hunt) all need to exit the stage.

Of the also-rans, my biggest disappointment would be Ohio Gov. Kasich. He’s got a tremendous substantive argument to make: that he, as House Budget Committee chairman in the late 1990s, helped produce a balanced federal budget by working with President Bill Clinton.

That hasn’t worked with the GOP base, which lusts for the red meat being fed to it by the likes of Trump and Cruz.

The process, though, does produce winners. It’s often not pretty to watch. This year has been ugly, to be sure.

However, the process has worked every four years for as long as most of us can remember.

The serious winnowing of both parties’ fields will commence soon.

Let’s all stay tuned.

 

What? Discrepancies in Trump’s background?

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Karma can be a bitch.

Donald J. Trump’s account of his years at a military academy is now being challenged.

The Republican presidential candidate has portrayed his years at the academy as sufficient preparation for making him commander in chief. Now come reports that Trump’s years in the New York military school weren’t nearly as rosy as he has portrayed them.

Trump had received medical and student deferments that kept him from serving in the military during the Vietnam War. Trump, though, has portrayed his enrollment at New York Military Academy as being the next best thing to serving in the military.

Some former classmates now say that Trump wasn’t nearly as attentive to the students under his command as he should have been . . .  and as he has portrayed himself as being.

Turnabout is fair play, yes? Trump and others have asked questions about Barack H. Obama’s past. His academic records at Columbia University; his birth records.

Now the proverbial shoe is on the proverbial other foot.

How will Trump answer these questions?

Others and I are waiting.

 

Rubio makes sense on immigration

Senator Marco Rubio of Florida speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at National Harbor, Maryland March 14, 2013. Two senators seen as possible candidates for the 2016 presidential election will address a conservative conference where Republicans will try to regroup on Thursday after their bruising election loss last year. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque (UNITED STATES - Tags: POLITICS) - RTR3EZQO

Lo and behold . . . I heard Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio make sense on one element of immigration policy.

When the young U.S. senator was serving in the Florida legislature, he backed a provision that would allow the children of illegal immigrants to be granted in-state tuition privileges.

Rubio today reaffirmed that view in an interview with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos.

You go, Marco!

He was careful — naturally, given the nature of the GOP voter base — to say he doesn’t favor “amnesty” for those who are here illegally. He did say, though, that children who were brought here when they were young, say 5 years of age, and who grew up speaking English and whose only outward loyalty is to the United States of America deserve to be pay in-state tuition at public colleges and universities.

Does that sound familiar? It should. Two former Texas governors — Republicans George W. Bush and Rick Perry — stood tall on the same principle. Perry, though, was pilloried during the 2012 GOP primary campaign for standing on that notion; the TEA Party wing of the Republican Party would have none of it.

I’m no fan of young Marco. However, I was heartened this morning to hear him speak with a sense of humanity and compassion that has been lacking among many in the still-large field of GOP presidential candidates.

Donald J. Trump gets high-fives and hosannas from the base over his plan to round up all 11 million illegal immigrants and toss ’em out of the country.

Meanwhile, at least one of his Republican presidential candidate colleagues demonstrates that the Grand Old Party isn’t speaking with one voice on a critical national issue.

 

Trump gives ‘credit’ where it isn’t due

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World leaders of all stripes have said essentially the same thing about North Korean dictator/madman/goofball Kim Jong Un.

He’s nuts, unpredictable, dangerous.

Now comes Donald J. Trump, the leading Republican candidate for president of the United States, to give Kim “credit” for the ruthless manner in which he disposes of his political enemies.

Does the GOP White House hopeful include the way Kim had his uncle executed? There were reports that he fed his uncle to starving dogs, which then, well . . .  you know.

I’ll repeat once again: Being the leader of the world’s greatest nation requires a certain understanding of diplomatic nuance. Trump keeps revealing that he has no concept — none, zero — of that notion.

He wants to “make America great again”? How is he going to do that? By offering ill-timed words of encouragement to dangerous despots like Kim Jong Un?