Tag Archives: Barack Obama

legal news, national news, political news

Oh, and then there’s Merrick Garland

garlandmerrick_031716hj3

Merrick Garland has kind of slipped off the media radar.

You’ll recall this fellow. He is the chief judge of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals who’s been nominated to a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. President Obama selected him to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

I’ve got an idea for the probable next president of the United States to consider: In case the U.S. Senate continues to obstruct Garland’s appointment, don’t toss his nomination over once you take the oath of office.

I’m talking to you, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Garland’s nomination ran into a buzzsaw when Obama selected him. Senate Republicans, led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, declared within hours of Scalia’s death that no Obama appointment would get confirmed. They wanted to wait for the next president to take office.

They accused the president — and this just slays me — of “playing politics” with the appointment by demanding a Senate hearing and a vote on Garland’s nomination.

Kettle, meet pot.

Garland is an eminently qualified jurist. He’s been left — to borrow a phrase — to “twist in the wind” while the Senate dawdles and blocks the president from fulfilling his constitutional duties.

I’m going to suggest that Clinton will win the presidency when the votes are tallied this fall.

If that’s the case, then the Senate GOP leadership might yell “Uncle!” and have the hearing and vote it should have had all along.

But if not, then it would seem appropriate for the president-elect to carry this nomination forward. By everyone’s reckoning, Garland is a judicial moderate, a thoughtful man who was confirmed to the lower court with overwhelming Republican support.

Sure, the next president has the chance to pick someone of her choosing.

But if the Democratic candidate for the highest office is going to talk about fair and humane treatment of people, it would seem quite fair and humane to move Merrick Garland’s nomination forward for the next Senate to consider.

legal news, local news, national news, political news, Uncategorized

Seeing some symmetry between SCOTUS and APD chief picks

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Am I hallucinating, or do I see a certain symmetry between two appointments: one at the highest level of government, the other right here at home on the High Plains of Texas?

One of them deserves the opportunity to do his duties as an elected public official. The other one also has earned the right to perform his duty as an appointed one.

Amarillo interim City Manager Terry Childers has selected Ed Drain to be the city’s interim chief of police; Drain is set to succeed retiring Police Chief Robert Taylor on July 1.

There might be a point of contention, though. You see, Childers won’t be city manager for very long. The City Council already has begun looking for a permanent city manager and Childers has declared his intention to retire completely from public life.

The council, though, has given Childers all the authority that the city manager’s position holds. Childers can hire — and fire — senior city administrators. He also is able to enact municipal policy changes when and where he sees fit. What the heck? He was able to bring changes to the city’s emergency communications center because he misplaced his briefcase at an Amarillo hotel, right?

Now, for the other example.

Caplan-Merrick-Garland2-1200

President Barack Obama has named Merrick Garland to a spot on the U.S. Supreme Court to succeed the late Justice Antonin Scalia. The voters delivered the president all the power he needs to do his duty when they re-elected him to his second and final term in 2012.

Republicans in the U.S. Senate, though, have said: Hold on a minute! The president’s a lame duck. We don’t want him appointing the next justice. We want the next president to do it. They, of course, are hoping that Donald J. Trump takes the oath next January. Good luck with that.

Here’s the question: Should the city manager be allowed to appoint the permanent chief of police, or should the council demand that the decision be left to the permanent city manager?

My own take is this: I’ve railed heavily against the GOP’s obstructing Obama’s ability to do his job. Republicans are wrong to play politics with this process and they are exhibiting a shameless disregard for the authority the president is able to exercise. The president is in the office until next Jan. 20 and he deserves the opportunity to fulfill all of his presidential responsibilities.

Accordingly, the Amarillo city manager will be on the job until the City Council hires someone else and that permanent manager takes over.

Thus, Terry Childers ought to be able to make the call — if the right person emerges quickly — on who should lead the police department … even if he won’t be around to supervise the new chief.

education news

Teacher of the year now going to teach more teachers

shanna

I have this friend — with whom I used to work in a previous life — who this past year received the highest honor someone in her profession can get.

She was named National Teacher of the Year. Shanna Peeples went to the White House, where she was honored by President Barack Obama, who said many wonderful things about her and the dedication she has demonstrated in educating young people.

Peeples, quite naturally, turned the emphasis on her colleagues who also were gathered on the White House lawn. Shanna accepted the teacher of the year award in their honor, she said.

What makes her such a stellar teacher? Her undying love of the children who learn from her. She teaches English … and until just recently she was teaching students at Palo Duro High School in Amarillo.

Now, though, she’s being promoted.

The Amarillo Independent School District has decided to put her teaching skills to work at a higher level. As Peeples writes about her new assignment: ” … I’ve been trusted with the task that my friend, Jennifer Wilkerson has done so well for our district: Core Curriculum Specialist, ELAR 6-12. For my non-Ed-jargon friends: that’s the responsibility for growing teachers and shaping literacy learning in middle and high school.”

Are we clear? She’s going to teach the teachers how to do their jobs better. At least that’s what I read in what she wrote.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/shanna-peeples/you-cant-burn-the-suit/10209664555035203?utm_content=buffer7daf4&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

The next thing I want to say might be taken the wrong way. I do not intend at all to sound like a Negative Norm. There’s a certain irony, it seems to me, in taking a teacher who’s just been told she’s the best in the nation at what she does and then assigning her to do something different.

Shanna Peeples certainly doesn’t dismiss the new task she’s been given at Amarillo ISD. Nor do I. Her many friends throughout the Texas Panhandle are proud of her and proud of what she has accomplished in the classroom.

Her emphasis now will be on helping other classroom teachers become the best they can be, which then will enable them to pass on the joy of learning to the young people assembled before them.

As Shanna writes: “God help me, I’m a teacher. As I told a radio interviewer: ‘It’s like Peter Parker being bitten by the radioactive spider. You can’t just quit being a teacher like I say, quit being a deejay or a short order cook at the bowling alley. You’re a teacher for life.’

“Trust me, I’ll have plenty of assignments for other people. This work is big, important work. And it won’t ever be even partway done before I die. But that’s what makes it worth giving my heart to. And my heart is with teachers as much as it is with students. Always and always and always.”
Well said. As always.
national news

Lower the flags, fella!

flag

Tucker Dorsey needs to have his head examined.

He might be certifiably … well, let’s just say he’s as wrong as he can be.

Dorsey chairs the Baldwin County, Ala., commission. He has refused to order flags on county buildings lowered to half-staff in honor of the 49 people slaughtered this past weekend in Orlando, Fla., per orders from President Obama and Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley.

What passes for Dorsey’s “reasoning” defies logic, common sense and several basic tenets of human decency.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/alabama-county-wont-lower-flags-for-orlando-victims/ar-AAhgaQ1?li=BBnb7Kz

According to CBSNews.com: “Once again I have to copy this post regarding lowering the flags because another follower of Islam decided to shoot up a bunch of innocents in a place where they didn’t have the chance to defend themselves or flee,” Dorsey began a Facebook post explaining the decision. “When are we going to acknowledge the truth? When will we stop the PC and identify the enemy?”

I’m a bit slow on the uptake at times, but someone’s got to explain what political correctness and “identifying the enemy” has to do with honoring the memories of those who died at the hands of a madman.

There’s more. Again, from CBSNews.com:

“When the flag is at half-staff, our country’s head is figuratively held low, and quite frankly, I am not willing to hang my head down because of a terrorist attack against our people and our allies,” Dorsey said. “I am not willing to hang my head down because evil shoots up a church, school, or movie theater. We need more than a gesture as a response. I want us, as Americans, to stand tall, courageously, and fight back against the forces of evil, and let’s fight like we intend to win.”

Good grief, dude. You grieve for the lives lost. Then you resolve to do what you must to eradicate the evil that resulted in this tragedy.

What is so difficult about doing that?

And despite what this guy says, lowering the flags to half-staff to mourn these national tragedies is quite consistent with long-standing tradition.

national news, Uncategorized

Bring your hiking shoes, first family

cave

President and Mrs. Obama are taking their daughters to Carlsbad Caverns, N.M., as part of a commemoration of the National Park Service’s centennial celebration.

The park service turns 100 and the Obamas are going to mark the occasion by touring the caverns, along with Yosemite National Park in California.

Take it from my wife and me, Mr. President and your lovely family: You need to have comfortable shoes if you’re going to go deep into the cavern.

We just went there ourselves.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/06/17/obama-family-to-visit-carlsbad-yosemite-to-highlight-national-parks/

I’ve got some good news and some bad news for the first family.

The good news is that they’ll be amazed at what they see once they start hiking down the path into the cavern. It’s about 750 feet down vertically from the main entrance. Sure, they’ll have plenty of company with them as they make the journey.

The bad news?

The elevator is broken. We heard some park officials say it’s going to take many months, perhaps a year or two, to repair the elevator that’s supposed to haul tourists back to the top if they don’t want to make the hike. Now you have no choice. It’s a haul.

I get that the president and first lady are quite fit. Mrs. Obama has made nutrition and exercise a hallmark of her first ladyship. She has a chance now to show she practices what she has preached.

As for Malia and Sasha, well, they’re young. Enjoy  yourselves, girls.

If a couple of older folks can make the invigorating climb out of the cavern, so can you.

 

national news, political news

With a ‘friend’ like this …

mccain

I am acutely aware that politicians toss the word “friend” far too loosely.

It’s abundantly true on Capitol Hill or perhaps in state capitols across the land, where politicians debate each other on the legislative floors, referring occasionally to their “friends on the other side of the aisle.”

Have you heard Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Leader Harry Reid refer to each other as “my friend”? C’mon, dudes. Give me a break!

Well, the “friend” reference comes up now with Sen. John McCain backtracking on a statement about his former Senate “friend,” Barack H. Obama. He said that the president was “directly responsible” for the slaughter this past weekend in Orlando, Fla. He took that initial statement back — sort of — by saying it is the president’s decision to pull combat troops out of Iraq that gave rise to the Islamic State, to which the gunman reportedly pledged allegiance before opening fire in the nightclub.

I truly had thought in my heart of hearts that McCain and Obama actually were friends before they ended up running against each other for the presidency in 2008.

Do you remember the incident at a McCain town hall forum that year when an audience member questioned whether Sen. Obama was actually an “American,” and whether he was constitutionally qualified to run for president? McCain cut her off, defending his “friend” as a “fine American” and a “patriot”?

These “friendships” — if that’s what they are — seem so tenuous and fragile in the heat of political battle, which makes me wonder why these pols use the term so loosely in the first place.

You want transparency? Most of us can see right through such declarations of friendship.

 

International news, national news, political news

‘Stuff’ now rolls uphill, not down

I’ve always thought that “s*** rolls downhill.”

I learned it in the Army a few decades ago. When things went badly — which they did on occasion — the brass would make the rest of us down the line pay for the mistakes they might have made.

U.S. Sen. John McCain, though, sees it differently … I reckon.

He’s now blaming President Obama’s policies for the terror attack in Orlando, Fla., although his initial statement on that matter seemed to suggest that the president was even more directly responsible than that.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mccain-says-obama-is-directly-responsible-for-the-orlando-massacre_us_5762f78be4b0df4d586f9275?section

Sen. McCain more or less backed away from the statement, saying that the president’s “direct” responsibility is more a function of his decision to pull U.S. combat troops out of Iraq.

The absence of U.S. forces in Iraq, McCain said, brought about the birth of the Islamic State, which then spread to Syria and which has spread even farther into the Middle East — and which is now capable of striking the United States.

My head is spinning over this assertion.

McCain now says he “misspoke.” He didn’t take any of it back, though.

Look, the monster who slaughtered those 49 people in Orlando did it on his own. He reportedly was “inspired” by ISIS propaganda, but the American-born individual acted on his own in a fit of rage over something that has yet to be determined fully.

The blame game is getting tiresome. Sure, Democrats have taken no small amount of pleasure in ascribing blame to President Bush for all manner of things — including the Iraq War and its aftermath. It’s wrong to keep trying to pass the blame around to someone else.

The Huffington Post, though, reported this tidbit: “In 2010, McCain actually referred to it as a ‘victory’ when Obama pulled troops out of Iraq, though he said President George W. Bush deserved credit for the moment, too.”

Let’s get real here. Let’s also deal in the present day with these crises as they arise.

Laying blame on presidents of the other party — be they Democrat or Republican — only makes for snappy patter.

Oh … the politics of it all.

 

national news, political news

Speaker: ‘That’s not my plan’ to pull endorsement … yet?

How many times have you heard a politician say he or she has “no intention” to seek higher office? Or that he or she has “no plan” to do this or that, only to change his or her mind and do what was disavowed earlier?

That’s more or less what I’m hearing House Speaker Paul Ryan say as he is peppered with questions about his endorsement of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump.

“That’s not my plan,” Ryan said to questions about whether he would rescind the endorsement.

Meanwhile, Trump continues to hurtle out of control all along the campaign trail. He recently accused President Obama — and this is utterly outrageous — of seeming to favor the terrorists over the protection of American lives.

Ryan keeps condemning Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the country. He said he’d never heard of a presidential candidate pulling press credentials for a major media outlet, which Trump did to the Washington Post.

Now comes Trump’s campaign’s assertion that congressional GOP leaders need to support him all the way or “be quiet.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/paul-ryan-still-endorses-trump-224439

Is there a breaking point? Is there a line that Trump can cross that would cause the speaker to take it all back?

I’m betting it’s out there. It also might not be as far in the distance as the speaker would have us believe.

Plans, after all, do have a way of changing.

national news, political news

Trump faces rare intraparty resistance

trump

History will tell us, I believe, that Barack Obama’s presidency will be deemed a success.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of that well might be that the president’s successful two terms in office will come without Obama ever developing the kind of relationship he needed with members of Congress within his own party.

He’s seemed to have operated as a Lone Ranger.

Not only that, but he has faced open hostility from members of the opposing party, the Republicans on Capitol Hill. Sen. Mitch McConnell once declared famously — or infamously — that his first priority during Obama’s first term was to make him a “one-term president.”

McConnell failed in accomplishing his first priority.

The president’s second term is drawing to a close.

One of the people seeking to succeed him is Republican Donald J. Trump. From my perch, Trump’s potential presidency is looking more remote all the time.

However, just suppose that the sun will rise in the west and Trump manages to win the fall election.

How in the name of reaching across the aisle is Trump going to get anything done?

I ask not just because Democrats are going to fight him every step of the way. He’s going to get plenty of resistance from within his own party. Yes, Republicans in Congress are likely to battle with their own guy in the White House … presuming he ever were to get there.

The resistance Trump continues to get from within the Republican Party simply astounds me. Leading GOP lawmakers, such as McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, issue condemnations of Trump’s statements. They call him a racist over his remarks regarding federal Judge Gonzalo Curiel; they contend his anti-Muslim views are “un-American”; they wonder out loud whether he has any governing principles, let alone principles that comport with anything resembling standard Republican orthodoxy.

Trump keeps telling us he’ll have “great relations” with this or that demographic group — those he has insulted. He tells us Republicans will fall in line because, by golly, he’s the president and they’ll march to the cadence he’ll be calling.

His lack of understanding of government shows itself. You see, he doesn’t get that the presidency is just one “co-equal” branch of government. Trump would call whatever cadence he wishes and his “friends” in Congress would do what they damn well please.

I suspect strongly that the resistance he would encounter would make Barack Obama’s battles look almost quaint.

 

International news, national news, political news

Mr. President, it’s ‘radical Islamic terrorism’

2 Comments

obama

The debate has flared anew.

Why doesn’t President Obama use terminology that many Americans — most notably his critics — wish he’d use to describe the evil acts of a certain brand of terrorists?

I’ve been thinking about this over the course of the past good bit of time and have concluded that the president is making a mistake by refusing to refer to these acts — committed by those who pervert a great religion — as “radical Islamic terrorists.”

I say this as a supporter of the president, as one who voted twice for his election and as someone who bristles outwardly at the criticism of those who allege that Barack Obama harbors some sick “sympathy” toward those who commit these evil deeds.

Omar Mateen decided over the weekend to open fire at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla. He was as American as you and me, man. His parents came here from Afghanistan. Then he decided to call the 9-1-1 dispatch center in Orlando and proclaimed that he had pledged fealty to the Islamic State.

Mateen went about his dastardly deed before being killed by police. Before the cops killed him, Mateen managed to commit the worst massacre in U.S. history.

I understand that the president doesn’t want to use language that suggests we are “at war with Islam.” President Bush made that very same case in the days immediately after 9/11 and he was faithful to that notion during the two terms he served in the White House.

Indeed, President Obama’s refusal to recognize openly what the rest of the country already realizes suggests, as conservative thinker John Podhoretz has written, a certain disconnect from reality.

As Podhoretz writes in the New York Post: “He called it ‘terror,’ which it is. But using the word “terror” without a limiting and defining adjective is like a doctor calling a disease ‘cancer’ without making note of the affected area of the body — because if he doesn’t know where the cancer is and what form it takes, he cannot attack it effectively and seek to extirpate it.”

Here’s the entire essay:

http://nypost.com/2016/06/12/obama-says-we-are-to-blame-not-islamic-terrorism-for-orlando-massacre/

I do not intend to belabor the point. I do want to suggest that the definition of “radical Islam” immediately exempts Muslims who do not commit these acts, who live their lives just like every other decent human being, who are peaceful and only want the best for their families and their communities.

There. I’ve made my case the best way I know how.

I continue to support Barack Obama’s efforts to fight these perverted villains.

However, Mr. President, call them what they are: radical Islamic terrorists.