Tag Archives: Constitution

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Impeachment: good for nation

If the midterm election produces the result many millions of us want, I am quite sure we are going to get a needed boost to our constitutional democracy … which has taken a battering for the past year under the heavy hand of Donald J. Trump.

The boost well could come in the form of an impeachment of Trump. Yes, it is going to produce plenty of vicious anger. But I am OK with it. Why? Because we are going to have what I hope is an open debate on the usurping of power we have witnessed in real time since Trump took office in January 2025.

That power grab is in itself grounds for impeaching a president who, in my view, has violated the oath he took when he returned to the Oval Office for a second time.

He wants to censure a sitting U.S. senator for speaking the truth about following — or not following — unlawful orders. Trump wants the Justice Department to investigate the Fed chairman on the pretext that he oversaw cost overruns on remodeling the Federal Reserve Board. Trump has sent military personnel into harm’s way against Venezuela without seeking congressional approval. Trump appointed a U.S. attorney unlawfully to launch investigations into a former FBI director and the attorney general for the state of New York.

And this just happened in 2025, the year that has just passed into history’s dust bin.

Democrats appear poised to regain control of the House. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that Senate control could flip, too, when they count the votes for the midterm election.

The debate over the charges that could come forth will be spirited. Probably angry. Maybe even vicious and personal. The Constitution will see us through the pending rough ride.

Our founders built a government that is resilient enough to bend a great deal … without breaking. It is strong enough to endure a presidential impeachment while allowing Congress to do the rest of the work to which the Constitution empowers it.

legal news

Constitution is showing its mettle

All right, boys and girls, this might be wishful thinking on my part, but I damn sure hope it’s for real because it feels like the real thing to me.

I am beginning to believe that our Constitution is beginning to flex its considerable muscle just in time to put the brakes on Donald Trump’s headlong dash toward establishing an autorcracy where the nation’s founders set forth a democratic republic.

The federal judiciary is leading the way, just as the founders sought when they created a three-branch government in which the courts serve as co-equally along side the legislative and executive branches of government.

Trump surely has left us gasping for breath from the moment he took office on Jan. 20. It was his second time around the presidential pea patch. The good news? There will be no third go-round. The Constitution’s 22nd Amendment limits presidents to two elected terms. Period. Full stop.

The courts keep issuing rulings that are giving Trump fits. To which I say, good on ’em! We see even judges nominated for the federal bench by Trump himself issuing decisions that are stripping away legal options bit by bit.

If the president were ever to read the Constitution, he would understand that the founders sought an independent judiciary that is relatively free of political pressure. Yes, Trump has three justices on the Supreme Court who have joined a six-justice conservative super majority. However, they are not following Trump in lockstep over the proverbial cliff.

Thus, the Constitution works … just as President Ford said in the moments after he took office at the end of our “long national nightmare.”

media news

No Kings message is spreading

It turns out the No Kings protest movement is growing some legs, as the many thousands of legs that carried protesters up and down streets of our great communities protesting the power grab underway in the Donald Trump administration.

You know what? That movement has spread to cities and towns favorable to notions that come from Trump and his MAGA cultists. KERA, the Dallas public TV station, reports that crowds gathered all over Collin County, a Dallas suburban county known as a bastion of Republican politics. Well, for at least one day, it was far from a pro-Trump reservoir of support.

Republicans labeled the No Kings rally a “hate America” event. It wasn’t. These individuals love our country as much as the Trumpkins. They are alarmed at the manner in which Trump is gathering power for the executive branch of government. They turned out Saturday to express their concern, just as it is provided in the Constitution’s First Amendment.

You would expect big crowds in pro-Democratic regions, such as Travis County, Texas, San Francisco and Los Angeles, the multi-state Great Lakes, and the Northeast region of the country. Crowds showed up to protest. We also saw Red States rally against the administration. This is a national phenomenon.

I wil not and cannot predict where this will lead. My fond hope is that the anger over Trump’s unconstitutional power grab remains white-hot and sustains enough voters to get off their duffs and repel the enablers in Congress who breathe life into this movement.

 

national news

The Age of Political Perversion

Welcome to a new age that I will call the Age of Political Perversion, where perverts hijack the tenets of our democratic republic for their own nefarious aims.

The perverts say they love the flag, but a few hundred of them used Old Glory to assault police offices in the nation’s Capitol on 1/6, inflicting serious bodily harm in the process.

They claim to be evangelical Christians, yet they throw their support behind a man who has admitted to cheating on his wives, admitted to groping women in their private areas and has been found liable for the sexual assault on a woman who accused him of raping her.

They say they cherish family values but now support efforts to separate children from their parents over alleged illegal entry into the United States.

They call themselves “strict constructionists” of the Constitution, but then challenge a free and fair presidential election and seek to overturn its result.

We’re going to celebrate our nation’s birth. It’s been more than two centuries since we tossed aside the ham-fisted rule of the British monarchy. Our nation’s founders established a secular government devoid of any reference to a specific religion. Yet many of our founders’ descendants contend this is a “Christian nation” founded on the principles espoused in the New Testament. The founders were men of faith but they kept their faith to themselves and purposely established that there “shall be no law” establishing a state religion.

I love the flag. I salute Old Glory whenever possible. I am going to fly it in front of my home tomorrow. Let us remember, though, that the flag is a symbol of freedom and liberty. It isn’t a sacred piece of merchandise. Its sacred qualities lie in the liberty it represents.

So, when the president of the USA decides to hug and kiss Old Glory — which the current guy did a few years ago — he only furthers the perversion of the movement that follows his every lying word.

Happy birthday, America. Many of us still love you.

Uncategorized

Founders were right about secularism

Our nation’s founders were by and large brilliant men who gathered to craft a government from scratch at the end of our revolution.

They didn’t craft a perfect document, as it made white men the only inhabitants of a new republic with full rights of citizenship. We would amend our nation’s Constitution later to fix many of those shortcomings.

However, the founders got it exactly right on this point: They wanted to create a secular government that would not be governed by a particular religious belief. I wrote a blog item recently about concerns expressed in one North Texas community that Muslims in that city might want to legalize teaching of Sharia law in public school classrooms. That cannot happen. Why? Because the founders ensured the secular nature of our government.

You won’t see the word “Christian” anywhere in the Constitution. You won’t see “Muslim” there, either. Or “Judaism” or “Hindu” or “Buddhist.” The First Amendment to our Bill of Rights states clearly that “Congress shall make no law” that establishes a state religion or prohibits “the free excercise” of it.

The founders were direct descendants of those who fled European religious tyranny. They came across the ocean to start a new country that would be allow people to worship God as they chose, but did not mandate which god they would worship. They also left the door open for those who chose not to worship any deity.

So, when I caution against getting too worked up over the imposition of Sharia law in our public school classrooms, I also want to wave the ol’ red flag against placing Bibles in classrooms, which is what governors in many states want to do.

The founders weren’t perfect. No human being is. However, they got it spot-on correct when they said the government of the nation they created would be free of religious dictates.

Let’s just leave religion where it belongs … in houses of worship.

Uncategorized

You serve to protect rights you surrender

Dakota Meyer is a Medal of Honor recipient who earned the medal in 2009 for saving his fellow warriors from Taliban fire in Afghanistan.

President Obama presented the medal to the U.S. Marine Corps sergeant in a White House ceremony. Meyer then left the Marine Corps for 15 years.

Now, though, he is returning to the Corps as a reservist. He had become highly critical of President Biden’s decision to withdraw our forces from Afghanistan. He was married for a time to the daughter of former Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin. He says now he will return to service, but plans to “stay out of politics.”

Good call. It’s also a prudent decision on his part. Why? Because even though he is serving to protect the rights of all Americans to speak their minds, men and women in uniform actually surrender that very right the moment they don the uniform.

The First Amendment guarantees the right of Americans to seek “redress of grievances.” Except that those on duty in the military cannot criticize the commander in chief, who is their commanding officer, so to speak. If the president issues a lawful order, then those under his command are obligated to follow those orders without bitching out loud about it.

There can be “redress of grievances” for those in the military, be they active duty, or reservists.

A member of my family retired from the Army not long ago after serving for 20 years on active duty. He served tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. He also was highly critical of President Biden. He sought a promotion in rank, but was routinely passed over. My belief? His commanding officer knew of his social media rants aganst the commander in chief and nixed his promotion.

I am delighted Sgt. Meyer has decided to return to the Marine Corps. I am equally delighted he understands the folly of bellowing out loud his discontent over political matters made by those who serve far above his pay grade.

 

legal news

Would he dare seek a third term?

A member of my family, a fellow I consider to be a smart fellow, says he is concerned that Donald J. Trump will be able to finagle his way into a third term as POTUS.

He knows the Constitution’s 22nd Amendment limits the president to two elected terms. He knows that Trump has been elected twice.

I reminded my relative that Trump cannot do anything single-handedly. He needs Congress to amend the 22nd Amendment. Then he would need three-quarters of the 50 states to ratify it.

“It won’t happen,” I beseeched him. “Ohhhh, I don’t know,” came his reply.

The nation’s founders didn’t write a perfect governing document. It has been amended 27 times since its ratificationn in 1789. The founders, though, did set the bar quite high for those who want to change the framework of our democratic republic. They set strict legislative requirements and set a high standard for the number of state legislators needed to ratify an amendment.

Donald Trump, it seems to many of us, would like to be able to seek a third term as POTUS. But, he’ll be 83 years of age when his current term ends. The founders made it clear that to change the Constitutiion, pro-amendment fanatics need to jump through a lot of hoops to make it happen.

Trump and his moronic MAGA minions might think they hold all the cards to change the Constitution. They don’t. The founders made damn sure of the document’s strength by building in “checks and balances” to keep presidents in check.

It has worked so far. It will continue to do its job.

national news

Stop the Musk train wreck!

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Elon Musk must be stopped cold, ending the charade he is leading as some sort of federal budgetary guru advising Donald J. Trump on what to cut from the government.

The man is out of fu**ing control! Period!

Musk is a zillionaire who is spawning movements across the country to remind our gutless wonders in Congress that Americans did not elect this foreign-born high-tech mogul to the nation’s highest office. Americans elected Trump to a second term. Trump has willfully handed the reins of budgetary power to Musk, who once shared that duty with Vivek Ramaswamy, who has mysteriously disappeared.

Musk now is on his own, pitching budget slashes that would leave millions of Americans helpless against forces they cannot fight without the federal government.

I never thought I would say this, but here goes: I am beginning to wish Trump would jerk this clown into place, reminding him that he hasn’t been elected to anything. Trump needs to remind Elon Musk that he — Trump! — is the elected politician who’s in charge and that Musk needs to play second fiddle to the man who holds the title of president of the United States of America.

Pundits already have projected a tenuous relationship between Trump and Musk. Some of them have predicted that Musk won’t last a year as head of that thing called the Department of Government Efficiency. Now it’s called DOGE.

DOGE doesn’t have any constitutional authority to act as its daddy, Elon Musk, is trying to do. Budgetary responsibility rests with Congress, which disposes of ideas that the president proposes.

Elon Musk is a pretender who needs to be stopped!

national news

Will senators grow some courage?

Matt Gaetz is gone from Donald Trump’s newborn Cabinet, as he was toast from the moment the new POTUS announced him as attorney general.

Trump, though, still is far from finding his way into the clear.

He’s got Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, Robert Kennedy Jr. as head of health and human services, Pete Hegseth as defense secretary and maybe a half-dozen others with skeletons in their closets.

Senators have the right to confirm these picks. Trump, though, also has the right to grant recess appointments if the Senate is adjourned. It’s fair to ask: Will the Senate allow Trump to launch a political flea-flicker by denying them the right under the Constitution to debate and then vote on these nominees?

Something is whispering in my ear that senators won’t take kindly to being denied that right by a president who just might try some razzle-dazzle, particularly with the remaining troublesome appointees whose names are still under discussion.

That’s my hope, anyway. The other option would be for them to roll over and allow Trump to flatten them on his way to the Oval Office.

We’ll see what our senators are up to doing … and whether they have stiffened their spines.

national news

POTUS 45 wants a ‘third term’?

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POTUS No. 45 says he would like to hold the presidency for three terms. He said that? Oh, wait. He must’ve been “sarcastic.”

That cannot happen without amending the U.S. Constitution.

The 22nd Amendment limits presidents to two elected terms. The former Liar in Chief won election in 2016. He got defeated in 2020. He could — God forbid! — win it again this year.

That’s two terms, dude. You’re out after that.

I suppose he wants a third term. Maybe even a fourth.

C’mon.

The 22nd Amendment was ratified in 1951 after President Franklin D. Roosevelt won election to four terms; FDR died about a month after taking office for his fourth term in April 1945. Congressional Republicans had become alarmed at what they feared might become an “imperial presidency.” So, the GOP pushed the 22nd Amendment through.

Most of us know these days about the grandeur that No. 45 seeks, what with declarations about becoming a “dictator” for one day. He expresses admiration for dictators around the world. He wants to be one of them, I reckon.

However, our Constitution prohibits such nonsense from actually occurring. No., 45 needs to read the document. Oh, wait! He doesn’t read anything!