national news

Eternal optimism gets test

Yes, it is time to acknowledge the obvious about today’s political climate: These times test even the most optimistic among us … and you count me as one of those folks.

My eternal optimism over the strength of democracy is suffering from serious stress.

The U.S. Supreme Court has punched the hot buttons that create my anxiety. The ruling on concealed carry permits for handguns in New York got me started. Then came the decision that tossed aside Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that legalized abortion.

Political figures are being hectored, harangued and harassed because they insist on following the rule of law. They and their families are being threatened with bodily injury … and worse!

A president who lost re-election in Novembe 2020 threatens to overturn the results of that election in an unprecedented attack on our governmental process. His cult followers insist he is right, and the rest of the country is wrong.

I am not alone in wanting our U.S. Constitution to hold together. I believe it will. I also believe it will hold the nation together.

My family and friends are likely to tell you — if you ask them directly — that I tend to see the good in people. The recent former POTUS, though, makes me think only the worst in him. Thus, my eternal optimism is being put to a test I did not foresee occurring … even when the former POTUS was elected to the presidency in 2016.

It’s a struggle. The news I watch for much of most days depresses me, pushing my emotions to a level with which I am mostly unfamiliar. Look, I dislike feeling this way. It’s against my nature. I am not an ebullient fellow normally, but I long have maintained an innate faith that our system of government — cobbled together by our nation’s founders — is built to absorb punishment.

My inherent faith in our system of government — as imperfect and occasionally rickety as it is — will keep me going even as I fight off the depression that threatens to put me asunder.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

SCOTUS has changed, not Roe

Leave it to a lame-duck U.S. Supreme Court justice to put a monumental ruling in fascinating perspective.

Stephen Breyer is about to retire from the nation’s top court. He cast a dissenting vote in the decision to toss aside 50 years of “settled law” by overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that made abortion legal.

Previous Supreme Court decisions had upheld Roe v. Wade in earlier challenges. The court would rule that the law was established and that, by golly, the Constitution did guarantee a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy.

Not this court. Not this time.

It was Justice Breyer who noted in his dissent that Roe had withstood challenges because it remained the same. The only thing that changed, he wrote, “is this court.”

So it is that Supreme Court, with his conservative supermajority, has decided to enact an activist agenda by ruling that a half-century of “settled law” had been decided wrongly.

Pitiful.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

SCOTUS credibility at issue

The U.S. Supreme Court has a credibility problem. It’s serious, I’m telling you.

It ruled in just the span of a few days that New York does not have the authority as a state to govern concealed handgun carry and then decided that states must decide whether women can obtain a legal abortion.

Two justices — Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — reportedly told Sen. Susan Collins that Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion ruling that the court has just tossed aside, was “settled law” and that they wouldn’t trifle with it. Well, they damn sure did.

“This decision is inconsistent with what Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh said in their testimony and their meetings with me, where they both were insistent on the importance of supporting long-standing precedents,” Collins wrote.

This calls into question whether the court is as independent and impartial as the founders envisioned when they created the federal judiciary.

Having said all this, I stand by my refusal to endorse the notion of expanding the court’s number from nine to whatever progressives want to install.

What has to happen is that American voters need to decide whether the Supreme Court’s current makeup is reason to vote for members of Congress and for presidents who will honor the rule of the majority.

Donald Trump vowed to nominate justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade. He made the pledge while running for president in 2016. Yes, he established the proverbial “litmus test” for judicial candidates to pass. He said so reportedly knowing that most Americans favored keeping Roe on the books. They, too, understood the meaning of “settled law” and wanted to give women the right to choose whether to take a pregnancy to full term.

The high court has thrown all of that aside with its Roe ruling. Moreover, it has spoken out of both sides of its collective mouth by declaring that states could decide whether to allow abortion but that they had no authority to decide how to govern firearm ownership.

Credibility? It’s missing from the Supreme Court.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

Why seek pardons?

Let’s call ’em the Six Musketeers. What do they have in common, other than being Republican members of Congress?

They asked their one-time cult leader/guru/top-shelf liar in chief for a blanket pardon before he left office.

This begs a serious question. Why would a member of Congress seek a presidential pardon if they were damn sure they were innocent of any crimes related to the 1/6 insurrection that occurred two weeks before Donald Trump vacated the White House?

Hmm. Well, you know their names. Here they are anyway.

Louis Gohmert, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Mo Brooks, Andy Biggs, Scott Perry. 

Their names surfaced during this past week’s televised hearing of the 1/6 House select committee that is examining the issues that led to the attack on our nation’s Capitol Building … when Congress was convened to count Electoral College votes and then certify the election of President Biden.

These six clowns — two of whom, Gohmert of Texas and Brooks of Alabama, are leaving Congress at the end of the year — all allegedly engaged in some of the law-breaking committed by The Donald in his quest to remain in power. Except they deny doing anything wrong. Really?

My favorite among them is Greene, who had just been elected to her Georgia congressional seat in November 2020. My goodness, she had just taken her oath of office three days before the insurrection. So it took her no time at all to sink herself up to her armpits in the sleaze being peddled by Trump and the rest of his Corps of Cultists … allegedly.

This is the clown show that the cult followers insist we return to power in Washington, D.C. It is instead an act that needs to be run out of town.

The House select committee is going to resume its hearings soon after doing some more sleuthing around for more evidence to deliver us in a final report. Maybe it can uncover some more crooks who sought pre-emptive pardons for crimes they say they didn’t commit.

What a load of crap!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

SCOTUS shows its consequence

There can be no greater example of electoral consequence than the decision delivered this week by the U.S. Supreme Court that overturns Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that legalized abortion in the United States.

Ponder this for a moment:

Justice Clarence Thomas is the court’s senior member, serving on the high court since 1991; the man who selected him, President George H.W. Bush, left office in 1993. Justice Samuel Alito joined the court in 2006; the president who nominated him, George W. Bush, left office in 2009. Chief Justice John Roberts took his post in 2005 after being nominated by President George W. Bush.

Those three conservative justices have stayed far beyond the terms of their political sponsors. The same likely will hold true for three more judicial conservatives, Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, all of whom were nominated by Donald J. Trump.

Remember, too, that Trump declared while running for office in 2016 that he would find “two or three” justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade. He did … and they did. They, too, are likely to remain in office many decades after Trump leaves the scene.

Justice Stephen Breyer is retiring and will be replaced by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Biden’s lone selection (so far!) to the nation’s highest court.

Yes, elections have consequences. I now shall assert that the next president election must be determined at least partly by how voters want their Supreme Court to function well into the future.

Do we really want a SCOTUS making far-reaching decisions based on justices’ own religious bias?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

How does this law infringe on rights?

Ronny Jackson, the idiot who represents in Congress a region of the country I know well, put out a Twitter teaser that just makes me cringe.

The congressman who represents the Texas Panhandle wrote: Next on the Supreme Court docket, overturn the Democrat’s HORRIBLE gun control legislation! We ARE NOT done!!!

This moron’s idiotic message compels me to ask: How on God’s good Earth does the legislation signed into law by President Biden infringe on a law-abiding American’s access to owning a firearm?

I’ve already asked Jackson directly; I doubt he’ll respond.

The bill cobbled together by a bipartisan group of senators seeks to do a few things to stem gun violence of the type that killed those 19 precious children and two teachers in Uvalde a month ago. I have read the damn thing many times and I cannot for the life of me find a thing in it that prohibits a citizen in good standing from owning a firearm.

So, what the hell is Ronny Jackson suggesting? It ain’t “gun control legislation.” The new law nibbles around the edges. It isn’t perfect, but it’s a start — at least I hope it is — down the road toward curbing gun violence.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Political perversion at its worst

The political perversion that is underway within what passes for the Republican Party cannot be illustrated more plainly than what well might happen to one of the party’s stalwarts in an upcoming GOP primary election.

Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming stands front and center among Republicans in her opposition to the lawlessness demonstrated by Donald J. Trump — particularly during the final weeks of his administration as POTUS.

Because of her fealty to the Constitution and the oath she took to protect and defend it, Cheney is facing the wrath of the Trumpkins who populate her party in Wyoming. She is running for re-election this year and has drawn stiff opposition within her party; Trump has endorsed one of Cheney’s rivals. Why? Because she believes in the rule of law and believes that Trump has violated that tenet by his re-telling of The Big Lie about why he lost the 2020 presidential election.

Cheney is as stalwart a conservative Republican as anyone in the House of Representatives. None of that matters to the Trumpkins who have censured her and effectively declared her to be persona non grata within the Wyoming GOP.

That’s because she refuses to profess her loyalty to Donald Trump.

This is a shameful perversion of principle and of the oath all members of Congress take when they enter the People’s House.

I am not going to predict that Cheney will lose her primary fight when the balloting occurs in Wyoming. I’ve seen the various polls and will admit that it doesn’t look good for her future.

I also must stipulate once more that she is not my favorite Republican serving in Congress. She is too conservative for my taste, which illustrates why these attacks on her anger me so much.

I guess, therefore, the political perversion is complete when a member of Congress with whom I have fundamental philosophical disagreements can win my support on the basis of her rage at a president who embodies all that is wrong with today’s Republican Party.

Go figure.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

economic news

Get a Plan B ready

Here’s a word of advice for you, President Biden: Get a Plan B ready in the apparently likely event that your fuel-tax holiday doesn’t make the grade in Congress.

I reluctantly endorsed your idea of suspending the fuel tax for 90 days, Mr. President, only because I want some immediate relief from these monstrous fuel prices. Hey, I just returned from an errand this morning, stopped to put some diesel fuel into my truck, stopped the pump at $35 … and then saw that I barely moved the fuel-gauge needle.

What would suspending the diesel fuel tax do for me? Not much, Mr. President. But it’s something!

Whatever you have on the back burner, sir, well … I am thinking you’d better dust it off and get it ready to present.

I am among those Americans who continues to seethe that Republicans continue to resist every single idea that comes from the White House, Mr. President.

I know that’s why we pay you the big dough, Mr. President. Still, just a little give from the “loyal opposition” would give me a glimmer of hope that good government is still possible.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

‘Representative democracy’ takes a hit

I need to stipulate something up front that shouldn’t need to be stated, which is that we all live in what we call a “representative democracy.”

What does that mean? To me it means that the men and women who serve in our nation’s public offices need to represent the will of the people they govern.

OK, are we clear on that? Good! Then consider this:

Every reputable public opinion poll taken reveals that a substantial majority of Americans favor maintaining abortion rights for women. Gallup, Harris, Quinnipiac, Roper, Ipsos — all of ’em — tell us that most Americans want women to have the right to govern their own bodies.

The U.S. Supreme Court, though, today said the U.S. Constitution does not guarantee a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy. The ruling comes as the court has struck down the Roe v. Wade landmark ruling that stood as settled law since it was announced in January 1973. Women no longer are able to obtain an abortion.

Most Americans believe in providing abortion rights for women. A minority in Congress and in our legislatures believe something else.

Where I come from, when the minority rules supersede the beliefs of the majority, we call that “governing by tyrannical means.”

Is that what we are becoming?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

SCOTUS might just be getting warmed up

The U.S. Supreme Court is feeling its Wheaties today after handing down a ruling that effectively ends legalized abortion in the United States of America.

It’s a dark day in American juris prudence, at least as I see it.

But … here’s some real bad news: The nation’s highest court now could be feeling so emboldened that it will take dead aim on such constitutional guarantees as the right to marry someone of the same gender as you.

Let’s ponder that for a brief moment.

Texas once had a law on the books that was called colloquially the “anti-sodomy law.” It banned same-sex marriage. I have no need to explain the origin of the “anti-sodomy law” description.

Then the Supreme Court, in a stunning decision just a few years ago, declared that the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment applied to same-sex couples as well as straight couples, that everyone in this country is entitled to “equal protection under the law.” The ruling was hailed as huge step toward recognizing gay marriage as legal.

It has now been established as “settled law.”

Or … is it?

The court might believe it is ready to impose its own form of morality on a nation well could have an entirely different view. The gay marriage ruling has been essentially hailed as a victory for inclusion of all Americans under a constitutional clause that many had believed had excluded them from its protection.

Is the Supreme Court really prepared to walk down that path, just as it has decided that Roe v. Wade, the decision that had been settled law for 50 years, now no longer is valid?

Folks, we well might have a U.S. Supreme Court that is preparing to run amok.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

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