legal news, national news, political news

Legislating from the bench? Maybe so

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I’m usually not one to comment on judges being accused of becoming black-robed “legislators.” Must be my liberal bias.

An Ohio judge, though, just might fit the bill of a jurist who has taken a step or two too far.

Franklin County Common Pleas Court Judge Richard Frye has ruled that Ohio voters who are 17 years of age today can vote in the Tuesday primary if they’ll be of legal voting age — that’s 18 years of age — by November.

My first reaction is: huh?

It makes no sense.

Let me see if this adds up. Someone who’s not yet old enough to vote will be able to vote in the primary anyway. On what grounds does this make sense?

Frye’s ruling is seen as a potentially big win for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, one of two Democrats running for president. Sanders has been getting a lot of young voters’ support and this could open up a large trove of votes; I guess pledges of free college tuition are resonating with the young voters.

“This is a huge victory for 17-year-olds across Ohio. Their votes for presidential nominees will now count when they vote on either Tuesday or over the weekend in early voting,” Sanders campaign counsel Brad Deutch said in a statement.

But, but … how does that compute? How does someone get to vote prior to being of legal voting age?

Ohio’s Republican secretary of state, Jon Husted, is incensed over the ruling. He vows to appeal it. I think he’s got a case for judicial overreach.

I’m a simple fellow. It just seems to me that pre-dating someone’s voting eligibility smacks of manipulation that the law shouldn’t allow.

To be honest, this kind of reminds me of something I witnessed in Jefferson County, Texas, many years when two judges whose courts had criminal jurisdiction were slapped hard by the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct for back-dating prison sentences. The judges would sentence defendants to prison terms that began before the crimes actually took place. The state’s court watchdog organization took a dim view of it.

Judge Frye, by my way of thinking, is playing a similar game by giving Ohio teens the right to vote before they are actually legally entitled to do so.

 

national news, political news, religious news

Which religious liberties have we lost?

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My wife and I are going to start our day tomorrow the way we usually start every Sunday.

We’ll get up. Have our morning coffee. We’ll eat a light breakfast. Read the newspaper. We’ll get cleaned up. Get dressed. Then we’ll go to church … more than likely.

We’ll pray. Sing a few hymns. Listen to the preacher deliver his message from Scripture. Pray some more. Then we’ll leave the church and go through the rest of our day.

I keep wondering in the context of this hyper-heated presidential campaign: Which religious liberties have my wife and I — as red-blooded, taxpaying, patriotic Americans — lost?

One of the remaining Republican candidates for president keeps insisting that our “religious liberties” are being peeled away.

Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz keeps harping on the notion that “we are one liberal justice away from having our religious liberties” stripped away. That’s what he says. The crowds to whom he speaks eat it up. He says he won’t “compromise away our religious liberties.”

Thanks, Ted. From where I sit, young man, we’re still quite free in this country to worship as we see fit. Or not worship. The Constitution that Cruz and others say they revere spells it out quite clearly: Government shall make no law that establishes a state religion. That means, as most of us understand it, that we are free to adhere to any deity of our choice.

You want a real threat to religious liberty? How about banning individuals from entering this country solely because they happen to be Muslims? Yes, I know that Cruz opposes the idea put forward by his fellow Republican candidate for president, Donald J. Trump. But if he’s going to raise hell from the campaign stump, he ought to take his best shot at that patently idiotic and unconstitutional idea.

My family has made our religious choice. We did so all on our own. Our religious liberties are quite intact and I am quite certain they are as strong as they’ve ever been.

I thank God every day for those liberties.

So let’s quit dangling those dubious threats, Sen. Cruz, to the liberties that our Constitution’s very First Amendment guarantees for all of us.

Cruz and others suffering from some form of political paranoia might perceive those threats to be real.

I don’t.

national news, political news

Anger is feeding on itself at rallies

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Talking heads all over the political spectrum seem to be speaking with one voice on critical point.

Donald J. Trump’s frontrunning bid to be the next president of the United States has been fueled by angry Americans. He leads the Republican field of primary contenders because, they say, he has tapped into that anger.

As the fellow who delivers my mail every day told me this week: “Trump is saying what everyone is thinking.”

Yeah, whatever.

The anger is presenting itself at these rallies. Protestors are showing up to disrupt the Trump events, which by itself isn’t anything new. I’ve been to more than few political rallies in my lifetime — dating back to 1972 — to understand that fundamental American demonstration of political expression.

What’s different this time has been the behavior of the candidate, who from the podium is fomenting aggressive resistance to what the protestors are seeking to express.

Now the candidate — Trump — has laid blame on a Democratic candidate for fomenting the protests. He says the noise is coming from those supporting U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. Sanders, quite understandably, has denied such an accusation.

I am not going to take sides on who’s starting these disruptive events.

Instead, I want to focus for a moment on how Trump has handled himself when these outbursts occur.

It’s the strange behavior from the podium that has me most troubled. Never in my entire life have I watched and listened to a supposedly mainstream American political figure actually egg on his supporters to punch protestors “in the face.” One of those Trumpsters seemed to take that exhortation quite literally when he sucker-punched a protestor who was being escorted from a rally venue in North Carolina.

How can we tamp down this visceral anger?

One place to start would be for the candidate to change the tone of his campaign rhetoric. Do we need to keep hearing the same one-note samba about how “stupid” we’ve become, or how “we don’t win anymore” or whether we’ve succumbed to weakness displayed by “political correctness”?

I’m prepared to hear some constructive solutions.

Enough of the condemnation and recrimination.

national news, political news

Trump needs to start acting like a ‘unifier’

A supporter of Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump scuffles with a protestor during a rally in Richmond, Va., Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2015. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

Donald J. Trump today postponed a campaign rally because of the threat of violence.

Hmm. Where do I begin?

The Republican presidential campaign frontrunner has been the focus of some unseemly and potentially dangerous confrontations of late. Protestors have shown up at his campaign events; they’ve been shouted down by Trumpsters seeking to silence the anti-Trump voices; fights have broken out; one man has been arrested for assault after he sucker-punched a protestor being escorted out of a rally location in North Carolina.

Trump’s reaction to all of this? Well, it’s been — shall we say — a bit muted. Except, of course, when he’s exhorted his supporters to punch protestors in the face or exhibit some other form of forceful retaliation.

I listened to some commentary this evening after the postponement of a Trump rally in Chicago. An interesting thought came from David Gergen, a CNN political analyst and a former official in several presidential administrations: Nixon, Ford, Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Clinton.

Gergen’s advice to Trump: If you’re going to proclaim yourself to be a unifier, then you need to do a lot more to tamp down the anger upon which you’ve built your (so far) successful campaign for president.

Gergen said tonight previous campaigns have drawn hu-u-u-u-u-ge crowds.

He mentioned Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign and John F. Kennedy’s 1960 campaign.

None of them fostered the violence we’ve seen at these Trump rallies, Gergen noted. Why? “They were positive,” he said. All three men promoted positive agendas for change and they all sought to appeal to the voters’ better angels.

Gergen noted he disliked including Trump with Reagan because, he said, “It does a disservice to President Reagan.” Indeed, it does. Trump, though, needs to heed the words of this bipartisan wise man.

The violence has to stop. One individual has it within his power to restore order, civility and decorum to the important task of delivering a campaign message.

That would be the candidate who is seeking the votes of Americans across the land.

Tone down the angry talk, Donald Trump.

local news

Will there be a big change in city voting plan?

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For most of my time as an Amarillo resident — it now totals more than 21 years — I’ve been a fairly staunch advocate of the city’s at-large municipal voting plan.

All five members of the City Council represent the entire city. They all answer to the same constituent base. All four council members have as much political stroke as the mayor.

Then my attitude began to change. I posted a blog in 2013 declaring my change of heart and my belief that the time may have arrived to enact a hybrid single-member-district voting plan for the city.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2013/12/re-thinking-single-member-districts/

The city’s population is about to exceed 200,000 residents and perhaps it will be time to consider a serious change.

Then again, the city is embarking on a comprehensive neighborhood revitalization project that city leaders hope will bring some infrastructure equality to a few of the city’s more depressed neighborhoods.

I understand that the North Heights neighborhood is going to get the first infusion of interest, and perhaps some much-needed money, to help improve its appearance.

This is part of a sweeping set of goals the city has set for itself.

The Barrio is likely to be next. Then the city will turn its sights on the San Jacinto neighborhood. Perhaps after that it could be The Boulevard.

Will the city stop seeking to improve its southwest quadrant? No. That work will continue.

The upshot of this might be to stem any possible momentum that could build in the short-term future to change the manner in which voters elect their City Council.

The three new fellows who got elected in 2015 all vowed to be agents of change at City Hall. I’ve commented before about the pros and cons of some of the change they brought.

Will there be a profound change proposed by one of the new guys that deals with the city’s voting plan? Or will the city’s neighborhood improvement plans be enough to forestall a new voting plan?

Time will tell if leaders deliver on their pledge to pay careful attention — and deliver much-needed resources — to all corners of the city.

 

media news, national news, political news

Why not endorse in this GOP contest?

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Rosemary Goudreau O’Hara is a first-class journalist working for a first-class newspaper, the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

She and I also are acquainted. I got to know Rosemary while traveling with her and several other journalists in 2004 through Thailand, Cambodia and India on a trip that explored the impact of HIV/AIDS in Asia.

So, I say this with great trepidation: O’Hara and the paper where she works erred in declining to make an endorsement in the Republican Party presidential primary election coming up next week in Florida.

The Sun-Sentinel has backed Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary. It has declined to make a call in the GOP primary — even though O’Hara has said that one of the Republicans, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, is actually qualified to be the next president of the United States.

The other three aren’t, O’Hara — the Sun-Sentinel’s editorial page editor — has said in numerous interviews with TV cable news networks. She’s made the rounds on CNN, Fox and MSNBC. I’ve listened to what she’s said. Frankly, I’m baffled.

O’Hara says quite emphatically that Donald J. Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio all lack the temperament, judgment, record and the experience to become president. I happen to agree with her wholeheartedly … and then some!

Why not back Kasich? O’Hara says the Ohio governor — and a former member of Congress — is the longest of the long shots; he hasn’t built a significant campaign presence in Florida; he is not going to be the nominee. If I heard her correctly, she’s saying, in effect, that Floridians shouldn’t waste their vote on someone who’s not going to win.

Man, I disagree with that outlook.

The way I see it, if you have a field of candidates and one of them is at least marginally qualified — and Kasich is more than marginal — then you go with the individual who is the best of the bunch.

I suppose you could couch an endorsement with some language that acknowledges the individual’s slim chance of winning. But then you offer your reason for why the individual has earned your nod and why you think your constituents — your readers — should heed your recommendation.

I hope if Rosemary sees this post she won’t think ill of me. I hope we’ll still be friends. I make this comment with great respect for her.

It’s just that a major Florida newspaper has seen all four of these fellows up close. The editors there know them well. They’ve determined one of them — John Kasich — is qualified to be president.

From where I sit way out yonder, he’s earned the paper’s nod.

 

 

 

military news, national news

Wounded warriors deserve much better than this

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You hear about scandals occasionally involving high-profile charities.

They usually involve extravagance. Such is the case with the Wounded Warriors Project.

For the life of me I’m having trouble mustering the right words to convey the outrage I’m feeling at what’s been reported.

CEO Steven Nardizzi and chief operating officer Al Giordano have been fired by the WWP board, which said an “independent study” confirmed some grotesque “irregularities” in the way the organization was spending money donated to help care for heroes wounded in battle.

The outrage should sweep the nation. Politicians keep telling us how we must treat our wounded veterans with all the care and compassion we can deliver. People give to organizations expecting their money to go toward that care. Sure, there are “administrative costs” to be paid.

The WWP, though, reportedly was funneling roughly half of the money it gets to far more than paying salaries and buying stationery.

There were reports of extravagant parties at posh resorts. Nardizzi reportedly rappelled down the side of a hotel to make a grand entrance.

One report revealed that in 2014 alone, the organization spent $26 million on parties. Twenty-six million dollars!

I don’t know if there will be any criminal prosecutions involved with the two individuals who’ve been canned by the board. A part of me wishes they would just vanish from the face of the planet. Another part of me thinks there ought to be an examination into possible criminal malfeasance.

The Wounded Warriors Project is supposed to help the 50,000 or so vets who’ve been injured in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. People give money to this group expecting the money to do good for those who need the help.

We’ve come a huge distance from the Vietnam War era when our veterans were virtually scorned by the country that sent them into battle.

This hideous story must not dampen our resolve to continue to help our wounded veterans.

Indeed, it should cause us to redouble that effort.

 

national news, political news

Hey, these guys got along, too!

1 Comment

newt

The politics of the moment has this way of inflicting a case of selective amnesia among politicians.

Take last night’s 12th — and possibly final — Republican Party presidential debate with Donald J. Trump, Rafael Edward Cruz, Marco Rubio and John Kasich as providing an example of that peculiar malady.

One of them (I can’t remember who) brought up President Reagan’s famous buddy-buddy relationship with House Speaker Tip O’Neill. The two men — one Republican, one Democrat — worked well together.

Sure they did. I honor them for that cooperation.

So did a couple of other well-known pols. Democratic President Bill Clinton and Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich also managed to find common ground when the need arose. And it did, particularly as it regarded the need to balance the federal budget.

None of these current GOP candidates, though, mentions that political partnership.

We all know why that is the case, of course.

It’s because the president’s wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, wants to ascend to the office her husband once occupied.

Why, we just can’t give Bill Clinton any props for doing what the current president and the current congressional leadership seem unable — or perhaps unwilling — to do.

I’m the first to acknowledge that the Clinton-Gingrich relationship never evolved into the personal public friendship that Reagan and O’Neill developed.

The Gipper and the Tipper would share some spirits once they were off the clock, setting politics aside; it’s been reported widely how they would swap stories between them and laugh at the foolishness of the day.

I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of similar moments of non-political fellowship involving Bill and Newtie.

However, they certainly did form a valuable political partnership during the time Gingrich was speaker. It’s understandable, I suppose, that the Republicans running for president would choose to ignore it.

I’ll just have to rely on Hillary Clinton to remind the rest of us how bipartisan cooperation can work.

She was there, too.

 

 

International news, national news, political news, religious news

No, Mr. Trump, ‘Islam’ doesn’t hate us

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Islam hates America?

That’s what Republican Party presidential campaign frontrunner Donald J. Trump has asserted in his latest broadside against nearly 2 billion of the world’s residents.

No sir. You are wrong!

Trump’s assertion goes far afield from what we know.

It is that a radical portion of the Islamic religion has perverted the doctrine espoused by a great religion. They are not true Muslims. They are cultists. They are murderers. They are religious perverts.

The men who flew the airplanes into the World Trade Center and into the Pentagon on 9/11 were not God-fearing Muslims. They were murderers, pure and simple.

Sure, these individuals hate Americans. They also hate Europeans. Moreover, they also hate fellow Muslims.

Let us realize that the largest number of casualties who’ve been injured and killed by terror attacks around the world are Muslims.

Trump’s false assertion became a brief talking point tonight at the Republican debate in Miami. Sen. Marco Rubio challenged Trump by suggesting that the reality TV celebrity is wrong to suggest that hatred for America is somehow codified in the Quran.

It’s not.

Donald Trump cannot be allowed to get away with this continued fear- and hate-mongering along the presidential campaign trail.

 

business news, local news

Councilman puts on his booster hat … and it fits!

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Elisha Demerson spoke today about how “great it is to be in Amarillo” these days.

He mentioned a couple of things that deserve attention.

One thing the freshman Amarillo City Council member told the Rotary Club of Amarillo is that downtown Amarillo is progressing nicely. He took particular note of the convention hotel and parking garage that are under construction.

Downtown is being reshaped, reconfigured and revitalized.

The other thing Demerson said is quite instructive. He said the city has the “second-lowest tax rate” of any city in Texas. It’s less than 40 cents per $100 in property valuation.

What does that mean?

It means to me that the city’s intense push toward public-private partnerships is paying off.

I’ve noted before how so much of downtown’s progress in recent years has come with the help of private investment. Banks have spent their own capital to expand operations downtown; the historic Fisk Building was converted into a hotel, again with private money. Storefronts that once were dark now are full of life.

Is there more work to do? Certainly. That’s why the progress we’ve seen shouldn’t be derailed.

It makes me wonder yet again: What was all that anger during the 2015 municipal election campaign all about?

The city retains a ridiculously low municipal tax rate while its downtown business district is showing palpable, tangible, observable signs of progress.

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