Tag Archives: Vox

national news

Why, indeed, did POTUS fire Comey?

Matthew Yglesias asks a perfectly legitimate question in his article posted online by Vox.com: Why did Donald J. Trump fire James Comey as head of the FBI?

We haven’t heard anything specific about why in May 2017 the president tweeted his decision to fire Comey, which the FBI boss heard about as he was preparing to deliver remarks in California to a group of federal agents.

Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has said that Trump is under no obligation to explain himself, that he can fire anyone he wants whenever he wants for whatever reason he wants.

But as Yglesias points out in his article, Trump is no longer just a CEO of a business empire, he’s an “elected president of the United States” who is answerable — according to the U.S. Constitution he took an oath to uphold — to the people of this country.

Trump indeed is obligated to explain his actions with regard to Comey.

The Vox article points out that in its 80-plus years of existence, the FBI has had eight directors. Only one other director, William Sessions, was fired. Sessions got canned after a thorough ethics investigation into allegations of spending irregularities; he had been appointed by President George H.W. Bush, but President Clinton gave Sessions the boot when he took office in 1993. The president was clear at the time, in the moment, about why he let Sessions go.

Therefore, the current president needs to explain to the people in a voice loud enough for special counsel Robert Mueller to hear him why he decided James Comey no longer was doing the job he signed on to do. Was it the “Russia thing,” or was it something else?

If it was based on the investigation into whether Russians meddled in our 2016 election, well, then we need to hear it. Yes? Yes!

If it’s something else, then tell us what spurred the sudden dismissal, Mr. President. Millions of your bosses out here want to know.

Talk to us. Now!

political news

VP Biden suffers another shattering loss

Joe Biden’s standing among Americans has had its ups and downs.

The vice president is known as a garrulous guy, seemingly without a care in the world.

The reality, which was driven home yet again this weekend, is that he has suffered more heartache than most of us.

Vice President Biden’s son, Beau, died of a brain tumor. He was 46 years of age. He is survived by his wife and two children.

And a grieving father.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/joe-bidens-2012-advice-to-grieving-families-is-all-the-more-poignant-now/ar-BBkrnXo

As the essay by Ezra Klein notes, Joe Biden’s own political career almost ended before it really took off. In December, before he took office in the U.S. Senate, to which he was elected, the senator-elect’s wife and daughter died in an auto accident. His two sons, Beau and Hunter, suffered serious injury. Sen.-elect Biden was just 29 at the time he was elected and would celebrate his 30th birthday before being sworn in, making him constitutionally qualified to serve in the Senate.

He wanted to quit. His friends talked him into staying the course. He took his oath next to his son Beau’s hospital bed.

Sen. Biden would marry again. Jill Biden became his children’s new “mom,” and the couple brought more children into the world together.

Klein’s essay recalls a startling speech Biden made in 2012, in which he said how he came to understand why someone would want to take their own life. They’d been “to the mountain top,” he said,  and they knew they wouldn’t ever get there again.

The vice president has been to several mountain tops in his most eventful life. As of today, though, he is suffering the level of grief that isn’t supposed to happen. He’s having to bury a child — yet again.

Oh, the strength that lies within some of us.

As Klein noted in that remarkable 2012 speech: “There will come a day – I promise you, and your parents as well – when the thought of your son or daughter, or your husband or wife, brings a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eye,” Biden says. “It will happen.”

national news, political news

Al Gore for president?

Ezra Klein is a bright young man. He’s a frequent TV news talk show guest and once contributed essays to the Washington Post.

He now writes for Vox — and he’s put forward a patently absurd, but still interesting idea: Al Gore should run for president of the United States.

Yeah, that Al Gore. The former two-term vice president who collected more popular votes than Texas Gov. George W. Bush in 2000, only to lose the presidency when the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to stop counting the ballots in Florida, which went to Bush and gave him the presidency.

http://www.vox.com/2015/3/16/8220537/al-gore-president-2016

What commends Gore to make the race? According to Klein, he has more unique ideas on how to govern than any of the other so-called alternatives to Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Klein agrees with Gore that climate change is an international concern. He thinks Gore is credible on the issue and can make the case eloquently using the White House as his bully pulpit.

Does he have drawbacks? Oh sure.

Klein writes: “The problem with a Gore candidacy, to be blunt, is Gore. He can be a wooden candidate. His relationship with the press is challenging, to say the least. He is an aging politician in a country that loves new faces. His finances are complicated, and he made an insane sum of money by selling his cable network to Al Jazeera. His divorce from Tipper Gore means his personal life isn’t the storybook it once was. He is loathed by conservatives, who find his environmentalism to be rank hypocrisy from a jet-setting, Davos-attending mansion dweller — as politically polarized as concern over climate change already is, Gore could polarize it yet further.”

Klein’s essay attached to this blog post is worth your time.

I’m hoping Al Gore reads it and gives the notion Klein puts forth some thought.