Tag Archives: US Constitution

Judiciary under attack

Our nation’s founders had this notion that today seems rather quaint that lifetime appointments to the federal judiciary would shield judges from the kind of political pressure that dogs members of the legislative and executive branches of the federal government.

The concept worked quite well. Then came the MAGA movement, Donald Trump and now the actual threat of impeachment of federal judges who rule against the Trumpian view of the world.

Holy crap!

A federal judge in Rhode Island has ruled that Trump must unfreeze federal money appropriated by Congress. His actions to stop payments violate the U.S. Constitution, said the judge. The MAGA response? Well, we’ll just see about that, they say. MAGA morons are reportedly lobbying their allies in Congress to impeach the judge because he had the stones to speak truth to the morons who think they can ignore the Constitution at will.

The first three articles in the Constitution dealt, in order, with legislative power, executive power and judicial power. The founders seemingly believed that Congress deserved top billing, thus delineating its authority in Article I. Therefore, when Congress authorizes the expenditure of public money, that authority cannot be challenged by tinhorn politicians.

Trump is seeking to rewrite the Constitution by flouting the authority it grants to Congress … and to the courts. The Rhode Island judge noted specifically that Trump has ignored earlier court rulings and said point-blank that he must be found in contempt of the court. Indeed, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts noted in his year-end review of the court said that any effort to defy the courts must be stopped.

You want a constitutional crisis? I believe we might have them on several fronts, each of which would make Watergate and the Trump-incited insurrection look like a game of horseshoes.

Legal scholars got this one right

A federal judge in Washington state has become the latest Man in the Moment by issuing a temporary halt to Donald Trump’s order ending birthright citizenship for anyone born in the United States of America.

I agree with U.S. District Judge John Coughenour, appointed to the federal bench by President Reagan. He called Trump’s order “blatantly unconstititutional.”

But hold on! He’s getting plenty of push back from conservative legal experts who are backing Trump’s decision.

One of them is Hans Von Spakovsky, who works for the Heritage Foundation. He said: “The 14th Amendment has two key clauses in it. One, you have to be born in the United States, but you also have to be subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. All those who push birthright citizenship just point to that first phrase and ignore the second,” he said. “I’ve done a lot of research on this. I’ve looked at the original passage of the 14th Amendment and what that phrase meant subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. According to the original sponsors of the 14th Amendment in Congress was that you owed your political allegiance to the United States and not a foreign government.” 

I just want to take note, however, of one key ommission in the amendment. It makes no mention of allegiance to a foreign power. It just lays it out there in plain English: If you’re born or are naturalized in this country, you are a U.S. citizen.

Conservatives ought to stand on historical precedent. This proposal to end birthright citizenship is a notion intended to attack the intentions of illegal residents, which has nsothing to do with the children they bring into this world.

Newest MAGA moron steps up

Step right up, Andy Ogles, and take your place as the latest MAGA moron to exhibit his colors as a blind loyalist to the MAGA man in chief, Donald Trump.

Ogles is a Tennessee Republican House member who has introduced a bill to allow Trump to run for a third presidential term when his current term runs out in January 2029. Ogles, of course, wants to rewrite the Constitution, which bans anyone from being elected president more than twice.

This is the product of a MAGA dipshit who believes Trump is the savior for a nation that, truth be told and heard, is in quite good shape. Ogles’ amendment would limit a third-term president to those who serve non-consecutive terms. That means, quite naturally, that former presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are out, given that they were elected to two consecutive terms.

Let it be understood that the 22nd Amendment was crafted in the late 1940s by Republicans who didn’t want an “imperial presidency,” which they feared when Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt got elected to four terms. It has worked out all right since its ratification in 1951.

I am quite sure that when Trump’s current term is up that Americans will have decided they have had enough of the carnival barker masquerading as a serious politician.

As if one term wouldn’t have sufficed.

Birthright citizenship must stay

The first sentence of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says this: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State where they reside.”

Donald J. Trump wants to get rid of that right of those born in this country. Birthright citizenship, he said, must be repealed. Trump said also that he’s the man who’ll do it.

Whoa! Let’s hold on a minute, shall we?

Amending the Constitution requires a whole lot more than merely a presidential declaration. Repealing birthright citizenship would require a super-majority of both houses of Congress to approve it, Then it would require a super-majority of the 50 state legislatures in the United States of America to approve it.

This action goes far beyond a president’s ability — or authority — to make it happen.

This is part of Trump’s anti-immigrant view, which is articulated by many senior advisers within the administration he has created. He wants to stem what he calls the “invasion” of immigrants across our southern border. Many of those immigrants — chiefly the undocumented among them — are bring unborn children with them. Therefore, he reckons that this country cannot afford to have children born to those who are here illegally, but who become U.S. citizens the moment they draw breath.

The amendment was ratified in July 1868 and has served as a beacon for those seeking opportunity in the “land of opportunity.” Trump’s desire to shoo away those seeking a better life in this great nation ignores one of our great land’s basic tenets … which is to welcome everyone born within our borders.

Electoral certification? Nothing to it … this time!

Just as some of us had predicted, Jan. 6 came and went today without a hitch. Congress met to certify the results of the 2024 presidential election and the vice president … who came out on the losing end of it, declared it official.

The deal was done, just as the U.S. Constitution prescribes it.

A point of context is in order, of course. Four years, another Congress and another vice president gathered in the Capitol to do that very thing. The nimrod who lost the election, Donald Trump, had other ideas. He said the result was rigged. He sent the mob to the Capitol to stop the process.

The attack on our government has relegated Jan. 6, 2021, to a list of infamous dates: Dec. 7, 1941, and Sept. 11, 2001, come immediately to mind. We now just refer to the latter date as “9/11” and we know what it means.

When you say “Jan. 6” these days, we know what you mean there as well.

It’s not supposed to be remembered in that fashion. It’s a routine event, conducted peacefully, orderly and in keeping with what the founders envisioned. It is the hallmark of our democratic republic.

Vice President Kamala Harris made me proud today when she declared that Donald Trump had been duly elected president. Not that Trump had won by defeating Harris, but that she did her constitutional duty without fear of an uprising.

It is how our government is supposed to work.

No, Steve, he can’t run again

Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s go-to firebreather, now says the future president can seek a third term in 2028.

Hmm. Well, let’s see what the U.S. Constitution says about that. I looked up the 22nd Amendment in my handy-dandy pocket edition of the nation’s government document. It says, in part:

“No person shall be elected to the office of President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two hears of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.” 

Bannon’s reason for Trump standing for election in 2028 is that his two terms are non-consecutive. Therefore, the former federal prisoner says, Trump is eligible to seek a third term.

I did not see any reference to consecutive terms or non-consecutive terms in the Constitution’s 22nd Amendment.

Trump has won the office twice. After this term is finished, he’s done. Gone. Finished. And not a moment too soon.

Trump at war with experts

Donald J. Trump has declared war … not against an enemy of the nation he was elected to lead, but against anyone who has a lick of knowledge of the myriad issues that need government’s attention.

Consider these choices for key Cabinet posts: Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence; Pete Hegseth as defense secretary; Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services secretary; John Ratcliffe as CIA director; Matt Gaetz as attorney general.

These are some of the serious clunkers Trump has chosen to lead these agencies. He’s tapped some folks with considerable promise. I like Marco Rubio as secretary of state, provided he holds the line on the illegal Ukraine war.

Trump, though, is managing to slap the crap out of all the mid- and lower-level professionals who do the work in the trenches. These folks get their fingernails dirty carrying out public policy. They are not political appointees.

I do not believe Gaetz or Gabbard will pass the confirmation gauntlet in the U.S. Senate. RFK Jr. also looks to be too badly damaged to lead HHS. Hegseth’s claim to fame is as a Fox Propaganda Channel weekend talk-show co-host.

Imagine you’re a highly trained defense analyst. You spend your days crunching numbers and trying to determine the most efficient ways to spend billions of taxpayer dollars to protect Americans from our enemies. Then you have a defense secretary — Pete Hegseth — who has spent much of his career advancing partisan political matters and who has no earthly idea what is happening deep in the bowels of the Pentagon.

Similar analogies can apply to many of the agencies that might be led by an assortment of fruitcakes, blowhards and know-nothings. They all have a single element in common. They are blindly loyal to a president … and not to the Constitution they took an oath to uphold.

What does the VP do?

Critics of Kamala Harris continue to knock me out, bowl me over and simply slay me with their line of criticism.

It goes something like this: What has she done in the nearly four years she has served as VP in the Biden administration?

They contend that she’s been little more than a potted plant in Cabinet meetings, in the Situation Room, or any Oval Office conference led by President Biden.

Biden, of course, says she has been a vital member of his inner circle.

Here’s something we all need to ponder: The US Constitution purposely created the vice presidency with no actual power. All the VP can do under the law is break tie votes in the US Senate, where the VP serves as presiding officer. Vice President Harris has been called upon to break those tie votes when a sharply divided, even-steven Senate cannot find a majority vote to enact legislation.

President Obama has said many times over the years that Vice President Biden often was the last person to leave a Cabinet meeting and Biden often would tell Obama where he disagreed with a policy decision. Obama said he valued that disagreement, as it helped him maintain some level of perspective.

Biden has said much the same thing about Harris.

Biden has asked Harris to be his point person on reproductive rights and on border security issues. As near as I can tell, she has done well on both matters.

Does she have any real authority? No more than any of the men who preceded her. I will say, though, that the office is far more than what that crusty Texan, Vice President John Nance Garner, described of the office he held under FDR.

It is far more worthwhile than a “bucket of warm piss.”

And it has prepared Kamala Harris for the next — and final — step toward the pinnacle of power.

Political violence ‘has no place’

Politicians of every imaginable stripe and conviction are saying the same thing tonight in the wake of an incident at a Donald Trump campaign rally in Butler, Pa.

Political violence “has no place” in our system of government and politicking, they have said.

Trump spoke today at an outdoor rally. Then he flinched, grabbed at his right ear and sank to the ground. The Secret Service detail assigned to protect the former president were on him in an instant, shielding him from further harm.

Medical personnel rushed Trump to a center where he was treated for what looked like minor injuries to his ear and possibly the right side of his face. The Secret Service issued a statement declaring the former POTUS to be “safe” and “doing fine.”

For that we all should be relieved.

A shooter reportedly is dead. Eyewitnesses reported hearing several noises that sounded like gunshots. The district attorney then announced the authorities are treating this incident as an “assassination attempt.”

Now comes the difficult part of this commentary. How do we stop the kind of hateful rhetoric we’ve been hearing on the campaign trail? Too many speakers have spoken of doing violence to political protesters. They have lamented the presence of protests, even though the Constitution protects such activity as legitimate free speech.

I would advise Donald Trump himself to take stock of what he has said on the stump and wish for all I can that he cease the kind of rhetoric he has bellowed.

This incident, I fear, is a consequence of the deep divisions that have fractured this great nation.

Most important … ever!

My active involvement in presidential elections goes back a while, to 1972, when I cast my first vote for president.

And just as surely as the sun rises in the morning, every election cycle has contained the phrase “the most important election in our lifetime.”

I believe the 2024 election fits the bill. It’s the real thing. It appears to be the most important election in our nation’s storied history.

The candidates for president aren’t the best we can offer. The consequence of electing one of these men is what gives the result the heft it deserves.

Where do we stand? The Democratic Party nominee appears to be the incumbent, Joe Biden. Then again …

The president had that debate a few days ago and everything seems to have changed. The party of which he has been a faithful member might be turning on him. Or it might stand firm. He looked and sounded like a doddering old man in that debate and the party faithful is full of doubting members who are concerned about whether he’s up to the job.

The Republican Party nominee? Oh, brother. He is a former POTUS who got impeached twice while in office. He’s now a convicted felon. There might be more convictions on the way. Donald Trump has vowed to sic the Justice Department on his political foes. He well could end our support for Ukraine, which is fighting the Russian invaders. He vows to reverse virtually every law that Biden has signed. Trump has threatened to toss the U.S. Constitution into the shi**er on the first day of his administration.

Consequential election? The most important in US history?

It damn sure looks that way to me.

Are we really and truly ready to throw the very foundation of our government — the one other nations use as their model for freedom and liberty — away because a newly elected president wants to make friends with killers, despots and tyrants?

If we are then … God help us!