legal news

It’s the ‘rule of law’

The “rule of law” has nearly become a cliche, given the frequency of its use by politicians on both sides of the great divide.

It is much more than that, of course. The rule of law needs to apply to every single citizen of this great country, even former presidents of the United States.

Thus, it is critical to view the indictment of Donald Trump on 34 counts relating to his hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels as a victory for the rule of law.

Trump’s allies on the right wing of the Republican Party say that an ex-POTUS is above being prosecuted, that the Manhattan district attorney overstepped his authority by persuading the grand jury to indict Trump.

The translation of that, naturally, is that the rule of law doesn’t apply to an ex-POTUS.

Baloney! It damn sure does apply. Indeed, it must apply if the judicial system is going to work as the founders designed it. Either we cherish the system or we toss it aside.

I am going to cherish it with the hope that the rule of law will run its complete course.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

‘Shoe Tree’ is gone

BEND, Ore. — Well, gang, I have made the turn and am heading for the house in North Texas.

And along the way I suffered a semi-serious disappointment. I was told about a tree on the east side of U.S. Highway 97 a bit north of Bend that I needed to see. It was called colloquially the “Shoe Tree.”

My cousin and his wife told me it was a tree that had died some years ago, but motorists would pass by and hurl shoes onto the branches. It stood apparently for years along the highway.

I guess its time ran out, as in someone must’ve lost patience with seeing it there, collecting old shoes.

Me? I would have loved to see the Shoe Tree. That’s the kind of thing that makes outstanding roadside attractions. Heck, the folks nearby could spring for a concession stand, they could sell artifacts such as bumper stickers, ball caps, t-shirts.

Hey, that’s what they have done along Interstate 40 west of Amarillo, where motorists gather to spray paint graffiti on the cars that comprise Cadillac Ranch!

Well, unless I missed it as I whizzed by, the Shoe Tree appears to have gone on to tree heaven.

An opportunity lost. Would’ve made a great picture to go with this post.

It’s on to the next stop.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

We’re going to survive

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”

How many of us who have brought children into this world, reared them and guided them toward adulthood have shared those thoughts are something like them along the way? My hunch is that we all have.

The quotation I have posted here is attributed to Socrates, the Greek philosopher who lived from 470 until 399 … B.C. That’s more than four centuries before the birth of Jesus Christ!

I want to offer this quotation as my brief statement of faith in the future of our world. I believe that humankind is going to get through all the things that seem to trouble us today.

I mean if Socrates can express these misgivings about the youth of his day and the world can survive as it has done in the two millennia since the great man’s time, who are we to worry about the future of our species going forward?

I continue to think well of our young people. They have answered the call to arms. They are continuing to behave like good citizens. Our great nation and humanity will survive … even as old folks far into the distant future will bitch about young people.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Come clean, Mr. Justice … or else!

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas should be in a world of hurt right now, but he isn’t. Not by a long shot.

Why? Because the court on which he has served since 1991 has no rules governing its members’ conduct.

Oh, my … that needs to change!

It has been revealed that Thomas accepted ritzy travel gifts from a rich Republican donor, Harlan Crow of Texas, without reporting them to authorities. Thomas  now says he was advised by others that he didn’t need to do such a thing and, of course, accepting such extravagant gifts did nothing to influence his rulings on political matters.

Democrats are outraged over these findings. They have good reason to be angry. They also are a bit dispirited because they have few legislative options in Congress available to them.

Thomas is a walking case of judicial hypocrisy. The high court demands that lower courts set strict ethical standards and requires them to enforce them strictly. The SCOTUS, though, is immune from such protection. Justices are free to flout the rules whenever they please. Clarence Thomas is the worst of the bunch.

He needs to be impeached by Congress and put on trial for his ethical transgressions. Will it happen? Hah! Hardly.

The man is a disgrace to the court and to the nation.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Now for the return

MONITOR, Wash. — I am getting ready to make the turn and head for the house.

My return to North Texas will commence in a couple of days, after I visit with a couple of family members and we get caught up on what’s happening in our lives.

They know my story, as I have been chronicling it on this blog.

To be candid, I am ready to start the return to familiar haunts … not that those I have seen already aren’t plenty familiar to these 73-year-old eyes.

The constant rain that has fallen during my entire stay in the Pacific Northwest is maddeningly familiar to be sure. I grew up in Portland, where it seemingly drizzles forever and then some. Yes, I also saw old friends, five high school classmates, plenty of family, my godmother (who also is family, according to Orthodox Church tradition) and some old haunts.

But it’s time to make the trek back to Collin County. I’ll take a different route than the one that brought me to this place on the eastern slope of the Cascade Range.

What’s more, I am going to travel along some highways that I’ve never seen before. I trust that my late bride, Kathy Anne, will smile in approval as Toby the Puppy and I wind our way back to the house.

More family will greet us in the Texas Hill Country and some friends await us in West Texas.

This journey was intended for me to simply get away from the nearness of the event that broke my heart in early February. I will miss Kathy Anne forever and then some.

But I am ready to start assembling my life for the still-unknown journey that awaits.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

This ain’t Wal-Mart, Mr. Justice

Clarence Thomas once declared he is favors RVs and Wal-Mart parking lots over luxury vacation retreats.

He said he comes from “simple stock.”

Oh, really, Mr. Supreme Court Justice? How does he explain the luxurious vacations he and his wife, Ginni, took on the dime of a wealthy Republican donor? Well, he isn’t talking because the Supreme Court doesn’t have any ethics rules for justices to follow.

Justice Thomas is a hypocrite of the lowest order. He needs to be resign from the court. The House ought to impeach him. The Senate ought to try him and he ought to be removed from the court.

Recall, too, how Justice Thomas voted against rules sanctioning the 45th POTUS after it was revealed that Ginni Thomas is a vocal supporter of The Big Lie about the 2020 election, which she contends was “strolen” from the ex-POTUS.

Good grief! This baloney has got to stop.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

How am I doing? Umm … OK

PORTLAND — The question is inevitable as I make my way across the western United States and begin thinking about the return trip to my home in North Texas.

“How are you doing?” my friends and family members ask with the look of those who know the pain I am feeling.

My answer is truthful. “Oh … I’m OK.” They know I’m not really OK, but they understand the reason the shrug I give them and the look in my eyes.

But in truth, I actually am doing a bit better than just OK. It’s not a lot better, but it’s a little bit so.

I embarked on this venture to clear my head after my wife passed away suddenly in early February after getting a cancer diagnosis that knocked me for a loop … but which seemed in the moment to have been something Kathy Anne might have expected.

She was stoic and steadfast in her response to the doctor: “Let’s just get it out of there.”

I had to leave the house. So, I did. I am very close to the halfway point. Soon I’ll be turning my pickup around and heading toward the house.

My sense is that I’ll be able to walk into my Princeton home feeling a bit of emotional relief as a result of the time I have taken away.

To be sure, there are likely to be more of these ventures in my near and medium-term future. This one, though, has been fairly successful in that I have been able to accomplish much of what I intended when Toby the Puppy and I hit the road nearly two weeks ago.

I’ll get more of the “How are you doing?” questions along the way. Those who ask it will get the same answer I’ve been giving. I trust they’ll understand.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Blog = journal

LA CENTER, Wash. — I have made a command decision on whether I am going to write a “journal” chronicling my progress out of the darkness after my bride’s tragic passing two months ago.

It is that I am writing it already. I have been doing so on this blog. I am doing so at this very moment.

My heart is still broken. It might be irreparably damaged. However, if the docs who treated Kathy Anne for the cancer that claimed her were unable to “control” the tumor, perhaps I can control the pain that tears at my ticker. I will seek to do that with this blog, although I assure you, I won’t write forever about this tragic event in my life.

For as long as I have something to offer, though, I will do so and High Plains Blogger will serve as a journal of sorts for me.

It’s helping me along the way as Toby the Puppy and I continue our lengthy journey.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Uncategorized

Friendships are forever

LAKE OSWEGO, Ore. — Jack and I chowed down a couple of burgers in a diner in this community’s downtown district.

It hit me as we chatted about the old days, mutual friends of ours and the good time we had as kids: these friendships last forever. Maybe in longer … if that’s possible.

I have known Jack since our days together in junior high school at the other end of the Portland metro area. Our lives took different paths after we graduated from Parkrose High School in 1967. Jack enlisted in the Marine Corps and went to Vietnam. The Army drafted me and sent me there, too.

We discovered today that we served in close proximity in ‘Nam for a time.

We returned home, met the girls of our dreams, married them and embarked on radically different careers, unbeknownst to each other. He sold real estate; I ventured into journalism.

Many years would pass before our paths would cross again. They did some time ago. I am delighted they did.

Today, we picked up as if that time gap didn’t exist. It was a wonderful, albeit brief, encounter today at the burger joint.

It just reminds me that friendships — those we create and then nurture — are worth the test of time. Ours has endured through that test.

It has helped validate my decision to venture back to where I came into the world. Yes, it has contributed to a bit of healing.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

No, RFK Jr., don’t do it!

Never in a zillion years would I have believed I would declare my intention to oppose the political aspirations of one of the late Robert Kennedy’s children.

But … Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s intention to run for president of the U.S.A. in 2024 as a Democrat has me mighty steamed.

RFK Jr. is an anti-COVID vaccine advocate, which means policies such as his would have resulted in many more deaths than we already have suffered since the pandemic swept into the country in late 2019.

I hate saying this about one of the heirs to my first political hero, but RFK Jr. is a kook, a nut, a goofball. He has filed paperwork declaring his intention to run for president.

According to BBC: In March, Mr Kennedy shared on Twitter that he was considering a run for president.

At the time, he said: “If I run, my top priority will be to end the corrupt merger between state and corporate power that has ruined our economy, shattered the middle class, polluted our landscapes and waters, poisoned our children, and robbed us of our values and freedoms.”

Kennedy heir to challenge Biden for White House (msn.com)

Memo to Bobby Jr.:  The economy ain’t “ruined.” The middle class isn’t “shattered.” And I have not been robbed of a single “value” or “freedom.”

I’m going to stick with President Biden, thank you very much. Stay out of the race, RFK Jr. Anti-vaccine policies such as his are the true danger to us all.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

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