Tag Archives: US Constitution

local news, political news, State news

Election denial: Issue No. 1

Whether your candidate for public office takes the correct stand on abortion or gun violence might not matter if the wrong candidates win contests that would allow them to control future elections.

I refer to election deniers and their presence on many state ballots in the 2022 midterm election.

These are the dipsh**s who need to be stopped.

In Texas, we have an election denier running for re-election as attorney general. Yes, that’s Republican Ken Paxton, the idiot who has filed lawsuits seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Some of these cretins are running for other powerful public offices. Republican nominee for the Texas’s Third Congressional District, which represents my wife and me in Congress, is one of them: I refer to former Collin County Judge Keith Self, who is as hard-core a MAGA-loving conservative as they come. Spoiler alert: He won’t get my vote.

The nation’s once-revered election system is under siege by those candidates who have swallowed the swill offered by Donald J. Trump and his cadre of cultists who insist the 2020 election was stolen. They have offered not a single shred of proof of “widespread voter fraud” that would have decided the latest presidential election.

Yet the gullible among the masses have signed on to their lying, deceit and outright treasonous assertions about vote fraud. They stand ready to cast their votes for those candidates who endorse their political perversion.

I have spoken before of my eternal optimism about the future of our country and the strength of our Constitution. I will have to rely on my belief that the founders crafted a governing document that will withstand this all-out assault on our government.

I also must extend my hope to the wisdom of voters who — I hope — recognize evil intent when they see it.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news, religious news

Protecting all civil liberties

“Well, the radical left believes that the freedom of religion is the freedom from religion. But it’s nothing the American founders ever thought of or generations of Americans fought to defend.”

The comment here is attributed to former Vice President Mike Pence, as if that’s any surprise.

I want to take a brief moment to challenge the ex-VPOTUS’s assertion.

When I took my oath upon being inducted into the U.S. Army in 1968, I presumed in the moment that I was going to protect the U.S. Constitution. That means all of the civil liberties enshrined in the document. One of those liberties includes the First Amendment’s protection against the government imposing a state religion.

Pence to revisit religious freedom act – High Plains Blogger (wordpress.com)

The amendment does in fact guarantee citizens the right to avoid religion if that is their choice. It isn’t mine, but I have no right to presume that every American should follow my lead. They are free to worship whatever or not worship any religious deity.

Are we clear? Good!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news, religious news

We are free from religion!

I want to express my outrage at politicians who continue to insist that the United States is a Christian nation and that the U.S. Constitution does not guarantee that we are guaranteed to free ourselves from religion of any stripe.

There. I just did express my intense anger.

Too many pols keep insisting that their Christian devotion is good enough for everyone. Therefore, they advocate foisting Christian beliefs on students in public schools.

There can be no greater perversion of what the Constitution lays out there than the idiocy being pitched by the likes of, oh, U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado.

She recently declared that this country is a Christian nation. It is nothing of the sort. The First Amendment to the Constitution spells out in clear, concise language that “Congress shall make no law” that establishes a state religion. As I have noted already on this blog, I cannot find a single mention of the words “Christian,” “Christianity” or “Jesus Christ.”

Boebert’s congressional wing woman, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, called herself a “Christian nationalist.” Thus, she is proud to foist her religious beliefs on every other American simply because she was elected to Congress.

The Constitution makes it abundantly clear — and the courts have affirmed it — that Americans are free to rely on the faith of their choice and that they also are free to be religion free.

It is not illegal in this country to be an atheist, or an agnostic.

Politicians who imply that it is illegal are as un-American as anyone in public life … and they should be tossed out of office.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news, political news, religious news

Prayer in school? Save it for church

You hear the refrain all the time, that society went to hell when the U.S. Supreme Court took prayer away from teachers and students in our public schools.

To which I say: nonsense!

For starters, I do not believe society has gone to hell. For critics of modern life, though, to assign blame for such an idiotic notion to a single court decision simply fails to look through a wide enough lens.

The SCOTUS ruled in the early 1960s that reciting prayers in public schools violated the First Amendment clause that prohibits the establishment of a “state religion.” Let’s be candid and clear about something: The prayers we all talk about are Christian prayers, which always end with a phrase that references “Jesus’s name.”

As I’ve tried to note, the Constitution doesn’t allow for Christian prayers, or Jewish prayers, or Muslim prayers in public schools. If we accept that public schools are products of local government — and I most certainly do — then public school systems are not exempt from the constitutional prohibitions laid out.

I also understand the “religious freedom” and “religious liberty” arguments that come from those who want to restore prayer in public schools. I happen to view those terms in broad terms. “Religious freedom and liberty” can be interpreted to mean that one is “free from religion” and is “liberated” from it, too.

Invariably I fall back on the notion to which I have subscribed my entire adult life. I am all for religion. I am a practicing Christian. I just want to save my prayer time for my own private moments … and for Sunday, when I’m sitting in church.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Is Trump … guilty?

Let’s see if we can sort out what Donald Trump once said about those who invoke the Fifth Amendment, shall we?

While campaigning for the presidency in 2016, Trump said that only those with something to hide would cower behind the amendment that protects Americans against self-incrimination. If they’re guilty of something, they take the Fifth, he said.

The slathering faithful to whom he was speaking in ’16 would whoop, holler and applaud and start chanting “Lock her up!” while referring to his political opponent back then, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

We fast-forward to this week and Trump gets summoned to the New York attorney general’s office. What does the former Crook in Chief do? He invokes the Fifth Amendment more than 400 times!

Media reported he answered precisely one question: What is your full name?

Attorney General Leticia James is looking into allegations that Trump falsified his net worth to obtain favorable loans and to head off legal action taken against him. He exaggerated his worth for the former and low-balled his assets for the latter … allegedly!

Which is it? Is The Donald guilty of something? Does he have something to hide?

And to think that there are a substantial number of Americans out there would want to see the former Charlatan in Chief given access to the nation’s nuclear codes once again.

Go figure.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

No church-state separation? Ridiculous!

For the life of me I cannot understand how anyone with half a noodle in their noggin and with a poker face can question what the nation’s founders intended when they separated “the church” from “the state.”

The argument rages on and on. To my way of thinking, there is no argument to be made against the idea that the First Amendment separates the two.

I once had a colleague at the Amarillo Globe-News who would declare — stupidly, I should add — that the Constitution doesn’t declare in so many words that there is a “church-state separation.” Well, no, it doesn’t. Nor does it declare straight out that we shouldn’t murder other human beings.

The founders created a secular government run by a document that expressly forbids any mention of any specific religion. There’s no mention of Christianity, or of Judaism, or Islam, or Shinto,, or Buddha. Nothing, man!

All it says rests in the First Amendment, where it stipulates in plain English that “Congress shall make no law” that establishes a state religion.

Period. Full stop.

Now we have individuals, such as the distinguished Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, referring to the “so-called separation of … church and state.” There are members of Congress, the law-writing body, saying that church-state separation is a “myth.” It’s a “hoax.” That this is a Christian nation.

These nimrods make me want to scream from the depth of my lungs.

It is true that the founders argued among themselves over whether there should be a religious clause written into the Constitution. Ultimately, though, they decided against it. They believed that government must not be hidebound to theology in writing and enforcing the laws of the land.

And yet we have rubbish being spewed by the likes of Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., who said, “I’m tired of the separation of church and state junk that’s not in the Constitution. It was in a stinking letter, and it means nothing like what they say it does.”

Actually, young lady, you are wrong on this, as you are wrong on most things. Read my lips: Church-state separation most certainly is in the Constitution.

One final point. The founders were so intent on keeping religion out of our government, they wrote in Article VI: ” … no religious Test ever shall be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” 

Are we clear? Good! So, let’s quit having his idiotic debate.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

religious news

Christian nationalism? Ugh!

Christian nationalism is clawing its way back onto the political stage. If you’ll pardon my seeming hysteria, but … this notion frightens me.

Why? Well, the United States of America — despite the lies put forward by Christian nationalists — is not a Christian nation.

I have looked everywhere throughout the U.S. Constitution for the words “Jesus Christ,” or “Christian,” or “Chistianity.” I’ll be deep-friend and slathered in butter, but I cannot find any of those terms. Nowhere. The Constitution does not mention any of them. Not one time!

Why do you suppose that’s the case? It is because the nation’s founders were descended directly from those in Europe who fled religious persecution. They also fled governments that demanded that they worship a certain way.

Let’s also stipulate for the umpteenth time that the First Amendment to the Constitution declares that “Congress shall make no law” that establishes a state religion. Got it? Good!

Not everyone gets it, though. Take the recent blathering of the QAnon queen herself, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who said that she is a “nationalist” and also a “Christian.” Therefore, she said, “I am a Christian nationalist.”

She’s also stupidly misrepresenting the oath she took when she entered Congress in January 2021. The oath does not specify allegiance to a deity, let alone a Christian deity.

We must keep a watchful eye on Christian nationalists. They are a frightening bunch.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

religious news

Church and state are separate … period!

Lauren Boebert must believe she knows something that’s lost on practically every American alive today, given that the nation’s founders created a government more than two centuries ago, long before any of us were around.

The Colorado Republican congresswoman made a patently preposterous assertion recently. She said: “The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church. That is not how our Founding Fathers intended it. I am tired of this separation-of-church-and-state junk.”

Well …

She made the comment at a church service. Imagine that, eh?

Let me spell out what I believe the founders intended. They intended to create a secular governing document, one that does not answer to the dictates of spiritual teaching. The First Amendment, for example, contains several civil liberties the government protects. The first one mentioned — and this is important — deals with religion.

The amendment declares that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof … ” I want to call attention to the fact that the founders thought enough of that clause to make it the first one mentioned in the First Amendment to the nation’s government document.

Boebert’s ignorant statement about “separation-of-church-and-state junk” reminds me of a mantra a former Amarillo Globe-News colleague of mine used to recite. He kept insisting that since the Constitution doesn’t mention church-state separation specifically that it doesn’t really exist. I had to remind him that the courts have held over the course of two centuries that the First Amendment’s meaning intends to keep the church out of government’s business. Just because the Constitution doesn’t declare in so many words that the church cannot mingle in state business doesn’t make it less true.

So it is with nimrods such as Lauren Boebert, who in her brief time in Congress has managed to stand out as a spokeswoman for some truly wacky notions.

I tend to interpret the Constitution the same way I interpret my Bible, in that I am inclined to take a broad, expansive view of what both documents mean.

It’s my right to do so. The Constitution speaks clearly to it in that First Amendment.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

The Fifth implies guilt

You know what? I am going to agree with an assertion that Donald J. Trump made on the 2016 presidential campaign trail.

The Republican Party nominee for president declared that those who use the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination usually have something to hide; they imply their own guilt by pleading the Fifth to the U.S. Constitution.

Of course, all of that changes when it’s your friends and supporters taking the Fifth, which Trump hasn’t spoken about in recent weeks while the House select committee examines the 1/6 insurrection against the government.

Former short-term national security adviser Michael Flynn, for instance, hid behind the Fifth more than 100 times when he faced questions from the committee. His response, for example, to a question from Rep. Liz Cheney about whether he believes in the “peaceful transition of presidential power”? He said: “Fifth.”

We’re going to hear a lot more of that kind of gamesmanship from Trumpkins summoned to testify before the panel. The cultists can avoid being indicted for contempt of Congress by showing up and then refusing to answer direct questions by hiding behind one of the founders’ civil liberties … which they are entitled to do.

However, none of it passes the smell test.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Eternal optimism gets test

Yes, it is time to acknowledge the obvious about today’s political climate: These times test even the most optimistic among us … and you count me as one of those folks.

My eternal optimism over the strength of democracy is suffering from serious stress.

The U.S. Supreme Court has punched the hot buttons that create my anxiety. The ruling on concealed carry permits for handguns in New York got me started. Then came the decision that tossed aside Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that legalized abortion.

Political figures are being hectored, harangued and harassed because they insist on following the rule of law. They and their families are being threatened with bodily injury … and worse!

A president who lost re-election in Novembe 2020 threatens to overturn the results of that election in an unprecedented attack on our governmental process. His cult followers insist he is right, and the rest of the country is wrong.

I am not alone in wanting our U.S. Constitution to hold together. I believe it will. I also believe it will hold the nation together.

My family and friends are likely to tell you — if you ask them directly — that I tend to see the good in people. The recent former POTUS, though, makes me think only the worst in him. Thus, my eternal optimism is being put to a test I did not foresee occurring … even when the former POTUS was elected to the presidency in 2016.

It’s a struggle. The news I watch for much of most days depresses me, pushing my emotions to a level with which I am mostly unfamiliar. Look, I dislike feeling this way. It’s against my nature. I am not an ebullient fellow normally, but I long have maintained an innate faith that our system of government — cobbled together by our nation’s founders — is built to absorb punishment.

My inherent faith in our system of government — as imperfect and occasionally rickety as it is — will keep me going even as I fight off the depression that threatens to put me asunder.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com