Tag Archives: US Constitution

national news

Peaceful transition is part of democracy

When I hear former presidents of the United States discuss the value of turning over the keys to the White House to successors in a “peaceful transition of power,” It is absolutely impossible to avoid bringing to mind what happened on Jan. 6, 2021.

Barack Obama famously spoke of the temporary nature of his family’s residency in the White House. As did George W. Bush before him and Bill Clinton before Bush’s election in 2000. I listen to these men’s comments occasionally on social media platforms that continue to carry those remarks.

When I do, I am drawn immediately to Donald Trump’s refusal to acknowledge defeat in 2020 and the assault he allowed to occur on Jan. 6 on the Capitol as Congress met to ratify the result of the free, fair and legal election of Joe Biden as president.

Presidents must acknowledge as these recent occupants of the White House have done that they are there for a short time. Obama said that “we are renters here.”

All that happened on Jan. 6 only serves to remind me of what could occur post-2028 election if a candidate from the Democratic Party manages to defeat whoever the Republicans present as a candidate for the presidency.

It’s also why I am going to stake my country’s future on the ability of our Constitution to do the job our founders intended when they created this government. The Constitution is strong and it will endure.

local news, religious news

Sharia law? It won’t happen!

I am hearing a rumbling or two from a community over yonder here in Collin County about what some folks assert is a growing Muslim influence.

It’s in Sachse, a city that staddles the Collin-Dallas County line. Sitting in a city council meeting the other evening, a woman rose to sound an alarm bell about Muslims, and about Islam. She said she is concerned that the community’s Muslim community is going to foist the teaching of “Sharia law” in our public school system.

Oops. Can’t happen. Sharia law is a strict Islamic interpretation of the Quran, the Islamic holy book.

As I read the U.S. Constitution, the First Amendment prohibits any law that imposes religious teachings. This is a secular nation, according to the founders’ view. It is not lost on me that they would list the imposition of state religion first as the rights protected under the First Amendment.

So, when someone complains about “Muslim influence” in our community, they should disabuse themselves of any notion that Sharia law is going to be part of any public school curriculum.

It is not going to happen! Period! Moreover, if such a matter were imposed and it ended up before the U.S. Supreme Court, hell would freeze over before this court in particular would approve of such a stunning reversal of the First Amendment.

national news

Our evolution continues

Americans live in an evolving nation, which compels them to strive toward achieving the “more perfect Union” our founders envisioned in the late 18th century.

Our evolution produced the greatest military and economic power in world history. It was our military power that is the subject of this post today, as it speaks directly to the wrong turn Americans took during its evolutionary journey.

You see, there became a time when Americans had become pampered by news of victory in warfare against enemies abroad. We became so pampered, in fact, that we simply couldn’t — or wouldn’t — tolerate the notion that we could suffer defeat.

The Vietnam War disabused us of our invincibility. We became intolerant not just of the men who set the war policy in Washington, D.C., but of the young men and women they ordered to carry out those policies in the name of the nation they were serving. Americans stopped respecting the men and women who bore that responsibility. Even to the point of disrespecting those who had fallen in battle.

I know that because I was a member of the generation of Americans who went to war during that time. No one spat on me. No one disrespected me. All I had to do was look around and see what was happening to others with whom I served. They were disrespected merely for following lawful orders.

Memorial Day has descended on us this year and we are going to honor the fallen in ways we always should honor them. We will pray for their souls and for the loved ones who still grieve their loss. We will thank surviving veterans for their service in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan. We will listen to the high praise offered by those on what constitutes today’s political left — those who 50 years ago wouldn’t dare speak so kindly of our military personnel as they do today.

Our national evolution is continuing. We are back to honoring the men and women who serve. And on this holiday, we are expressing our eternal gratitude for the sacrifice that more than a million Americans have paid to keep us free and to make us the great nation we always have been.

We’re heading toward becoming a “more perfect Union.” Our nation’s founders would be proud.

 

media news

Obama: What if I did this?

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Barack Hussein Obama, speaking to a crowd of college students the other day, raised a fascinating subject out loud.

The 44th president of the United States wondered, “What if I did any of this?” He explained himself. “What if I had banned Fox News” from the White House briefing room? The outcry from the right, he said, would be vociferous.

He is correct. What’s more, the right would have been justified in expressing anger at a president banning a media organization from access it was giving to other such media outlets.

Then he went on. He noted how Donald Trump has banned some news outlets that have been critical of his policies from access to White House sources. “It’s not a partisan issue,” President Obama said. “It’s about who we are as a culture,” he added.

Indeed, the very people who would be angry as hell at a Democratic president doing such an outrageous thing have grown silent as their guy, Trump, seeks to silence The Associated Press, CNN and MSNBC as they seek to cover the events dictated by the current president.

Obama also noted that “a good many of my predecessors” would be aghast at what is transpiring these days within the White House now run by Trump, the MAGA morons who back him and Elon Musk, the richest man on Earth.

Trump has declared his desire to see MSNBC taken apart. By whom or what, he doesn’t say. The implication, though, is clear. He wants to sic the government on the left-leaning network. Trump, who is astonishingly ignorant of the Constitution, seemingly doesn’t know that the First Amendment declares that a “free press” must be kept free of any government interference.

President Obama was spot on in delivering his rhetorical question. He is right to question aloud where we are as a culture that allows people to accept as normal the machinations of a wildly out-of-control chief executive who exhibits every sign imaginable of wanting to run this country as a dictator.

political news

Trump needs serious reality check

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Earth to Donald Trump: The nation’s founders, the men who crafted the government you were elected to lead, gave you limited power for a reason.

They didn’t want an imperial presidency in the United States of America.

Thus, Trump needs to comprehend that he cannot declare something to be and then expect it to occur.

He says he wants to take back the Panama Canal from Panama. He wants to purchase Greenland from Denmark. He wants Canada to become the 51st state of the United States.

The simple and undeniable fact is that Trump cannot possibly make any of that happen simply because he is the POTUS. Yet, he keeps blathering on with statements that defy all logic. They are utter nonsense. He has no authority anywhere to make any of it happen.

He declares media criticism of his antics to be “illegal.” He calls for the closing down of media outlets that present opinions with which he disagrees. He calls for the impeachment of federal judges … only to be scolded by the chief justice of the Supreme Court that impeachment is not an option for removal of judges who issue opinions at variance with Trump’s.

The dude is out of control. He is a maniac. He acts, talks and behaves with sheer stupdity.

However, Americans managed to elect this nimrod to the highest office in the land. Go … figure.

legal news

Judiciary under attack

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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 news

Legal scholars got this one right

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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.

national news

Newest MAGA moron steps up

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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.

national news

Birthright citizenship must stay

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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.

national news

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.