legal news, national news, political news

‘American people’ have spoken, Mr. Leader

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U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is really starting to tick me off.

He keeps harping on this idiotic notion that “the American people” deserve to have a voice in determining who the president should nominate to a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Their voice has been heard, Sen. McConnell. It was heard four years ago when the country re-elected President Obama.

Thus, he greeted today’s nomination of an eminently qualified jurist — Merrick Garland — with his vow to block it out of hand. Judge Garland will get no hearing; Republican senators won’t meet with him; there will be no vote.

The Senate won’t do its job. It won’t follow through on President Obama’s nomination. Why? Because, according to McConnell, Barack Obama’s time as president is about up and the next president should make the appointment.

So, with that, the majority leader of the Senate has decided that Barack Obama’s second term will be cut short by nearly a year. No need to consider an appointment that the incumbent president sends to the Senate, because the legislative body’s upper chamber won’t do anything about it.

This is an outrage of the first order.

Merrick Garland is a first-class jurist. Senators thought so when they confirmed his nomination to the D.C. Circuit Court in 1997. Republicans joined Democrats in praising Garland’s credentials.

Now, though, it’s different. McConnell said today it’s not “personal.” Of course it is! He and Senate Republicans don’t want Garland to fill a court vacancy created by the untimely death of the court’s leading conservative ideologue, Justice Antonin Scalia.

Garland is not a flaming liberal. His judicial record is the model of judicial moderation. Indeed, leftists today expressed disappointment with the president over his selection of someone who is not a favorite of the Democratic Party’s liberal base.

American citizens have spoken already, Mr. Leader, about who should sit on the Supreme Court. They spoke clearly in the November 2012 general election.

Five million more Americans voted for Barack Obama than voted for Mitt Romney. Case closed.

For the Republican leader of the Senate to suggest that the president’s pick should be stalled because GOP senators don’t want him to do his job is an outrage.

 

national news, political news

Who will join Cruz in stopping Trump?

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Ted Cruz has a problem.

He wants to become the “anti-Trump” candidate for president of the United States. He’s seeking a way to get Ohio Gov. John Kasich to bow out. He believes he can coalesce enough “true conservatives” behind him to derail Donald J. Trump’s march to the Republican Party presidential nomination.

The junior U.S. senator from Texas, though, needs some help from his colleagues in the Senate. But as Politico reports, he is nearly universally detested by his fellow senators. And that’s just the Republicans with whom he serves.

Cruz needs to build some relationships. I don’t mean “rebuild.” He’s got to start from scratch.

He’s been in the Senate for slightly more than three years. He’s halfway through his very first term in the very first elected public office he’s ever held.

As Politico reports: “Cruz’s relationship with his colleagues is now a central paradox of his campaign: He’s openly arguing for the party to rally behind him, but Republican senators are plainly wary of going anywhere near him. Those who feel burned by Cruz in the past say he’ll come to them only if he decides it’s in his self-interest. ”

The man who leads the Senate — the body’s top Republican — once was on the receiving end of a barrage that Cruz leveled at him. Remember when the Cruz Missile called Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a “liar” in a speech on the floor of the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body?

How does McConnell put that epithet behind him? How does McConnell gather the forces to help one of their own take down this “interloper” named Trump.

Moreover, Sen. John McCain — the GOP’s 2008 presidential nominee — has taken Cruz to task in public for his intemperate remarks about a couple of fellow Vietnam War combat veterans, John Kerry and Chuck Hagel.

Finally, he’s been campaigning against the very “Washington establishment” where he works these days. He’s an “outsider,” he says.

Something tells me Cruz’s efforts to put distance between himself and his Senate colleagues ain’t going well with the ladies and gents with whom he serves.

 

national news, political news, State news

‘Rampant’ voter fraud in Texas? Not even close

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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott describes the instances of voter fraud in this state as “rampant.”

The state, he said, has sought to curb the epidemic of voter fraud by requiring voters to produce photo ID — driver’s licenses, passports, etc. — when they go to the polling place.

The Texas Tribune’s Ross Ramsey, though, has shot down the governor’s assertion with an interesting analysis of Abbott’s challenge to a President Obama’s critique of Texas’ historically poor voter turnout.

The evidence of fraud is “scant,” according to Ramsey.

Here’s part of what Ramsey writes: “A study done by News21, an investigative journalism project at Arizona State University, looked at open records from Texas and other states for the years 2000-2011 and found 104 cases of voter fraud had been alleged in Texas over that decade.

“Chew on this: If you only count the Texans who voted in November general elections — skipping Democratic and Republican primaries and also special and constitutional elections — 35.8 million people voted during the period covered by the ASU study.

“They found 104 cases of voter fraud among 35.8 million votes cast. That’s fewer than three glitches per 1 million votes.”

Does that fit the description of “rampant” voter fraud?

Not exactly.

Obama made the point at a fundraiser the other evening that Texas remains one of the nation’s poorest-turnout states. I am not going to blame the voter ID push for driving down the turnout. Suffice to say, though, that Texas can — and should — do more to promote greater turnout.

I’ve lived in Texas for 32 years. I have been watching, reporting and commenting on the political process here for that entire time. I have no recollection ever of the state — from the governor’s office on down — launching a concerted effort to drive up voter participation.

There has seemed over all that time to be a sense of complacency, that the state puts little emphasis on greater turnout.

“The folks who are governing the good state of Texas aren’t interested in having more people participate,” the president told The Texas Tribune’s Evan Smith at South by Southwest Interactive.

Abbott’s response? He trotted out the allegation of “rampant” voter fraud. The numbers don’t add up.

 

legal news, national news, political news

Garland gets nod; let’s act on it, senators

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I’ve written already about why I believe President Obama deserves to have his Supreme Court appointment considered by the U.S. Senate.

It’s his prerogative to appoint someone; it’s the Senate’s prerogative to approve or reject it. The Constitution lays it out there. I understand the idea of “advise and consent.”

If senators object, then they should say so on the record. The idea of obstructing a nomination by refusing to consider it is offensive on its face … at least in my view.

The president today nominated D.C. Circuit Court chief judge Merrick Garland to the high court, replacing the late Antonin Scalia.

The politics of this fight overshadows everything else. It overshadows Garland’s impeccable credentials, his immense standing among legal scholars, his compelling personal story.

Scalia was the court’s leading conservative voice. He was an ideologue. Garland is a moderate. He’s known to be a non-ideologue, but according to conservatives, well, that makes him a flaming liberal.

The court’s balance would shift with Garland joining the court.

And that’s why the Senate Republican leadership is vowing to block the nomination by refusing even to consider it. The GOP won’t even allow a hearing. Hell, GOP senators say they won’t even meet with Garland.

The Republican leadership that says it wants the next president to make the appointment.

What happens, though, if the next president happens to be, oh, Hillary Rodham Clinton? Are they then willing to put this selection in the hands of a president who could appoint a true-life flaming liberal? Or should they give Merrick Garland the hearing he deserves and cut their losses?

Garland’s intelligence and legal knowledge are beyond reproach. Even Republicans said as much when they approved his nomination to the D.C. Circuit Court. If he’s as smart and scholarly now as he was then, it makes sense — or so it seems — that he’d be a fitting choice for the Supreme Court.

The fight has been joined.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the people should have a say in filling this court seat. Mr. Leader, the people have spoken on it — by re-electing Barack Obama as president of the United States.

 

local news

Let’s get busy with city manager search

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Amarillo interim City Manager Terry Childers has made it official.

He doesn’t want the permanent job. He doesn’t want to be considered for it. He wants to go home when the city finds a permanent replacement. Mayor Paul Harpole made the announcement Tuesday.

So, let’s get busy, gentlemen of the Amarillo City Council.

The city charter empowers the council to make precisely one hiring decision. This is it.

It hires the city’s chief executive officer and entrusts that individual to manage a payroll of several thousand individuals and oversee a budget of something in the neighborhood of $200 million a year.

Someone mishandled the appointment of Childers. The headhunting firm the council hired, Strategic Government Resources, failed to provide a large pile of documentation supporting its recommendation that the city hire Childers as the interim manager.

The city has decided to retain SGR to look for the permanent manager.

OK. So can the firm get it right this time?

Childers’ rocky start as the interim doesn’t mean he should be pushed out the door quickly. The city has time to consider who it wants to run the government machinery. It should be thorough, but shouldn’t dawdle.

Granted, Amarillo’s city government staff has virtually zero institutional knowledge in conducting a national search for a city manager. The last three managers all came from within the staff. This time it appears that the next manager will be someone who wants to come to Amarillo and oversee a city in transition.

And that transition is huge: downtown is undergoing a major makeover, street and highway construction is disrupting traffic flow, the city is embarking on a plan to revive neighborhoods.

It falls, then, on the council to make the most critical single decision it will make in deciding which individual is the best fit for the city.

This decision is big, fellows. Let’s get it right.

local news

Another blemish surfaces in the city manager saga

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Let’s see, how are we supposed to sort this out?

Amarillo hired a search firm to help locate an interim city manager after Jarrett Atkinson resigned his post this past year. It contracted with the firm, Strategic Government Resources, to provide detailed documentation of all the candidates it would present to City Hall for consideration.

Now we hear that the SGR didn’t do that with the man selected as the interim manager, Terry Childers.

We have learned that the city doesn’t even have a resume for Childers on file.

The city apparently relied on an oral report from the headhunter.

So, based on that report, it hired Childers, who — it turned out — managed to flub a 911 call to the Amarillo emergency call center when he misplaced a briefcase at a local hotel. He called the dispatch center and bullied the dispatcher while she followed the protocol she was instructed to follow.

Now the city has embarked on a search for a permanent city manager. Is it going to retain SGR to scour the nation for the right person?

According to City Councilman Brian Eades — who’s leaving the council this summer — his confidence in SGR has been “undermined in a way.”

Do you think?

The way I see it, when the city signs a contract with a headhunter that requires it to provide the requisite documentation on candidates who want to become the city’s chief executive officer — the individual who oversees a $200 million annual budget — the search had damn well better do what it pledges to do.

It seems that SGR dropped the ball in the city’s search for an interim manager.

Mayor Paul Harpole said the search for the permanent city manager will be different.

It had better.

 

national news, political news

Good news, bad news in GOP primary fight

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The good news for me tonight occurred in Ohio, where my favorite Republican presidential candidate, Gov. John Kasich, scored a home-state victory in the GOP primary.

The bad news is that my second-favorite Republican candidate, Sen. Marco Rubio, dropped out of the race because he couldn’t win his home state of Florida.

I’m sad to suggest that the bad news outweighs the good news.

Why? Because I don’t know where Kasich goes from here.

He doesn’t appear ready to win more state primaries as the field of three GOP contenders marches on down the primary trail. Sure, he’s going to proclaim a huge victory tonight.

Donald J. Trump, though, won most of the rest of the state battles. His delegate lead has grown a bit over the other scary GOP candidate, Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.

At least, though, the remaining grown-up, the guy with an actual record of accomplishment in government, the fellow who speaks of compassion and constructive outlooks, the guy who said business owners should “pray” for customers with whom they might have spiritual difference is still in the race.

If only I could look a lot farther down the GOP campaign road to see him staying in the hunt for the presidency.

I can’t.

As for Rubio, well, he had emerged as my clear second pick among the Republicans. Yes, despite his childish counterattack against Trump in that debate, I believe young Marco — hey, he’s about the age of my older son, so I feel free to refer to him by his first name — came back strong in the Miami event with Trump, Cruz and Kasich.

It was for naught. He got smoked tonight in his home state by a charlatan masquerading as a serious candidate for the nation’s most glorious office.

So now we’re down to three candidates for the Republican presidential nomination. As I see it, we’ve got one adult left in the hunt competing against a know-nothing narcissist (Trump) and a fire-breathing demagogue (Cruz).

If only the adult had a chance to compete in this crazy, wacked-out GOP primary campaign season.

 

national news, political news

Trump saw it on Internet, which makes it true?

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Ezra Klein has hit on a matter that ought to send chills up the spines of even the most ardent of Donald J. Trump’s supporters.

Writing on Vox.com, the bright young journalist/researcher writes about something Trump said this past Sunday on “Meet the Press.”

Trump said the guy who rushed the stage in Dayton, Ohio, where he was speaking was a follower of the Islamic State. How did he know that? He saw something on the Internet, Trump said, which meant it just had to be true.

Is Trump too gullible to be president? That’s the question Klein seeks to answer. He seems to believe Trump’s gullibility disqualifies him categorically for the presidency.

As if he hasn’t disqualified himself already with all the countless earlier idiotic pronouncements he’s made.

The Internet is a valuable source for information. It’s also a source for nonsense.

For more years than I care to remember — perhaps ever since the Internet came on the scene — I’ve adhered to a certain policy: It is to believe the tiniest fraction of 1 percent of anything I read on the Internet. You cannot take seemingly anything at face value if you read it “on the Internet.”

I actually have spoken with people who submitted letters and essays to the newspaper where I worked with information that looked patently absurd, but who swore to me that it was true “because I saw it on the Internet.”

Trump’s assertion on national television Sunday morning that the stage rusher was an ISIS supporter based on Internet chatter demonstrates way beyond the shadow of any doubt of Trump’s unfitness for the office he is seeking.

The guy who rushed the stage? He’s an Italian-American named Thomas DiMassimo, a Christian … who denied immediately any ISIS allegiance. He said he was was just trying to make a scene.

Mission accomplished, dude.

 

local news

Hallmark takes himself out of WT running? Not so fast

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Rats!

I just read in the paper this morning that James Hallmark, recently selected by the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents to be West Texas A&M’s interim president is a member of the search committee looking for a permanent WT president.

The search team will seek to replace J. Patrick O’Brien who announced his retirement effective at the end of the current academic year, which is when Hallmark takes over the helm on an interim basis.

Thus, the story said, Hallmark won’t be a candidate for the permanent post.

That would seem to shoot down a theory I posted yesterday that regents had found their WT head man when they selected Hallmark as the interim. It means Hallmark will return to WT — where he served previously as provost/vice president for academic affairs before becoming vice chancellor for the A&M System.

See earlier post here.

But let’s hold on a moment.

I’ll take you back now about 16 years to the time when a certain Texas governor was about to sew up the Republican nomination for president of the United States.

George W. Bush called on his good friend — Dallas businessman Dick Cheney, the former defense secretary in Bush 41’s administration — to look for a vice presidential running mate.

Cheney and his search team looked high and low — supposedly — for the right candidate to run with W in the fall campaign against Vice President Albert Gore Jr.

Then, by golly something weird happened.

Gov. Bush chose Cheney! They went on to win the election and, as they say, the rest is, uhh, history.

So, you see, recent precedent has been set right here in Texas.

Is Hallmark, a man perfectly suited to lead the WT campus, really and truly out of the picture as the permanent president of the Canyon school?

I’m not taking that bait … just yet.

 

national news, political news

Please, no conspiracy theories about rally violence

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Donald J. Trump says Bernie Sanders has planted protesters at rallies to stir things up and provoke violence.

Sanders denies it categorically.

Now a Florida congressman — a Trump supporter — says Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign is guilty of prodding the Trumpsters into striking back at the protesters.

No word yet from the Clinton campaign; I’m quite sure there’ll be a categorical denial there, too.

Conspiracy theories have this way of never dying. JFK assassination? Area 51 cover-up? 9/11?

It might be that long after this campaign has ended, we’ll hear conspiracy theories kicked around about who started the violence at the Trump rallies as the candidate stumps for the Republican Party presidential nomination.

Here’s my theory.

Trump started it by inflaming his crowds from the podium.

Punch people in the face? Beat the “crap” out of someone? Offer to pay legal fees for those charged with crimes?

The candidate is inciting the violence and that — all by itself — is what gives this story its staying power.

I get that violence has occurred over many decades. The 1968 Democratic National Convention provoked a full-scale series of street riots in Chicago. Police vs. Protesters turned into the stuff of hideous, actual “reality TV” for those of us who watched it unfold.

It spilled onto the convention floor. Security personnel beat up delegates and media reporters.

Do you recall hearing pols exhorting protesters from the stage? Neither do I.

Yes, this campaign is vastly different.

It has brought the level of political campaigning to a level not seen by anyone, near as I can tell.

It’s also prompted the goofballs among us to suggest that it’s all being orchestrated by mysterious evil political opponents.

It’s not so complicated. The violence is a result of a candidate fomenting the anger expressed by those who support his bid for the presidency, which has dared those who oppose him to respond with protests.

Why in the name of sanity — and decency — can’t Donald J. Trump start delivering a positive message of change?

I hope it isn’t too late.

 

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