State news

What does he favor?

We elect our legislators to, um, legislate. Isn’t that the rule of thumb? Sure it is.

However, when I see U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s name, the junior Republican from Texas usually is telling us what he opposes. The guy cannot affix his name to any constructive legislation, which is why he pulls down that six-figure salary.

Cruz said today that he opposes legislation codifying same-sex marriage. He said it violates Americans’ religious freedom. I’m not sure I get it, but that’s what Cruz said.

Back to my point. Cruz won election to the Senate in 2012. He hasn’t distinguished himself as an author of legislation that benefits American lives. He continues to rail as a gadfly, raising hell and calling Democrats and sons and daughters of Satan.

That’s when he isn’t seeking to get away from doing his job, which is what happened when he sought a vacation in Cancun in February 2021 while Texas were freezing to death in the killer winter freeze.

Ted Cruz just pisses me off.

There. Now I feel better.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news, media news

Getting joy from sad news

Allow me this bit of strange candor, which is that I am deriving a bit of perverse joy in commemorating the life of someone who today left this good Earth, but whose legacy of goodness and strength will live forever.

Queen Elizabeth II died today. We heard that all four of her children many of her grandchildren had been summoned to her bedside in Balmoral Castle. When I heard that I knew immediately that the end was at hand.

Then she was gone. Prince Charles has become King Charles III.

But as I watch the news and the telling of her life story, I am filled with a sort of relief I am getting from the suspension of interest in tempest, turmoil, The Big Lie and its consequence, of insurrection and a special master, of the unsettled political climate in this country.

Instead, I am relishing the reporting of a life well-lived and of the profound difference the world’s most recognizable monarch made on her country and those she touched throughout her 70-year reign as Her Majesty the Queen of England.

We all will return in due course to the twists and turns of contemporary life. It’s a hell of a ride we’re on, right? For the moment, though, I am going to focus on the life of a monarch who — as near as I can tell — was among those rarest of public officials.

You see, Queen Elizabeth II was held in seemingly universal esteem. All this coverage of her life and the affection she earned throughout the world is giving my frayed nerves a chance to recoup and recover.

How in the world does it get better than that?

I likely won’t wait too long before wading back into the rip tide of madness that occupies so much of our attention these days. For now, though, I am going to relish the tributes pouring in to honor a truly great world figure.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

There are iconic figures … and then The Queen

It sounds so strange at this moment to actually realize that the world in which we live no longer includes Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

The queen died today at 96. She had served for 70 years as head of state of the United Kingdom. Her eldest son, Charles, is now King Charles III.

It is going to require a bit of time to wrap my noodle around this news. Elizabeth served as a towering figure — despite her dimunitive stature — for as long as I can remember. I am now 72, which means that I have known this world only in the context of Queen Elizabeth II.

Now she’s gone.

What no one has said in the immediate aftermath of the queen’s death is that the UK in the span of one week has seen a change in the head of government — with Liz Truss taking over from Boris Johnson as prime minister — and now a change in the head of state.

Queen Elizabeth II enjoyed a standing few world leaders ever achieve, which appeared — at least to me — to be of universal admiration. As I look back on her many decades as the UK’s monarch, I am trying to recall a single derogatory remark uttered in public against her. I keep coming up empty.

King Charles won’t enjoy that standing, given his own personal history. But if the Brits can embrace him, who among the rest of us is qualified to pass judgment?

Talk about the end of an era.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, political news, State news

Way to go, Sen. Seliger!

I am going to say something good about a friend of mine who happens to be serving his final term as a Texas state senator.

Kel Seliger, an Amarillo Republican, has just endorsed a Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, sticking his finger in the eye of the incumbent Republican who — as has been reported many times — has earned Seliger’s scorn.

This news gives me hope that there might be more Republicans ready to toss aside the Texas Senate’s presiding officer in favor of an individual who can do a better job of working across the aisle than Patrick has been able to do.

Texas Lieutenant Governor’s race: Republicans Kel Seliger and Glen Whitley endorse Democrat Mike Collier for November’s election – ABC13 Houston

The Democratic candidate is Mike Collier, who ran against Patrick four years ago. This past weekend, Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley, who also is not seeking re-election this year, declared he is going to support Collier over Patrick.

Hey, I don’t begrudge either of these fellows for waiting until they became lame ducks before tossing Patrick under the proverbial bus.

Seliger detests Patrick. The feeling is mutual. Seliger also detests the founders of Empower Texans, the right-wing political action committee that backs Patrick. Seliger detests Seliger because the Amarillo lawmaker hasn’t been sufficiently loyal to Patrick’s archconservative legislative agenda.

Seliger also had the bad form of uttering a snarky comment about a key Patrick aide. Patrick got his revenge by stripping Seliger of his committee chairmanships and relegating his committee assignments to back-row panels about which few of us know.

I am going to hope that Sen. Seliger — a fellow I have known since the moment I set foot on the Caprock in early 1995 — can find the time to campaign for Collier and speak from the gut about the nastiness that Dan Patrick embodies.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Joe Biden, national news, political news

Love the tradition

You at this moment are reading the words of a sucker for pageantry, ceremony and even a little bit of pomp. It was with that bias that I was able to watch the return of a longstanding White House ceremony laced with good humor, good tidings and gratitude.

President and Mrs. Biden invited former President and Mrs. Obama back to the White House today to unveil portraits of the Obamas that will hang in the people’s house alongside — as President Obama noted — “George and Martha.”

OK, this isn’t normally the stuff that would fill a blog such as mine. Except for the proverbial elephant that one could almost hear trudging through the White House room where they unveiled the Obamas’ portraits.

That was the memory of the single term of the man who served as president between the terms of Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Donald J. Trump could have had a ceremony honoring the Obamas. He chose to throw that tradition aside, alongside other traditions that Trump chose to ignore.

No one mentioned Trump’s name in their remarks to the nation as the pictures were unveiled. There was no need. The Obamas and the Bidens all referred to the “tradition” they were honoring, just as the Obamas did when they unveiled portraits of President and Mrs. Bush, and just as the Bushes did when they welcomed back President and Mrs. Clinton for precisely the same ceremony.

I should point out that in both those instances, presidents of one party honored his predecessor from the opposing party, setting aside partisan differences and disagreements over policy to honor their service to the country.

So, now for The Big Question: Would there be such a ceremony in which Donald and Melania Trump come back to the White House for a portrait unveiling? I almost laughed out loud when I typed those words.

Given all the hatred and the violence that preceded the transition from Donald Trump to Joe Biden’s administration … do not hold your breath waiting for the Trumps to return to the White House.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, military news, national news, political news

Equal justice? Hah!

Donald J. Trump is supposed to be subject to the same standards as every U.S. citizen now that he no longer is president of the United States.

Isn’t that the rule? Isn’t that what Attorney General Merrick Garland has implied all along while stipulating that “no one is above the law”?

Former Defense Secretary William Cohen, though, has a different take on it. Cohen, who served as defense boss during the Clinton administration, said today that had he taken the documents now believed to have been found among the cache of papers in Trump’s home that he would have been arrested on the spot and taken into custody.

Which begs the question: If Donald Trump now is just an ordinary citizen of this country and has been found to have taken highly classified documents home with him as he left the White House for keeps, why hasn’t he been arrested and charged with, oh, violating the Presidential Records Act or the Espionage Act?

Former Secretary of Defense walks through what would happen to him if he took the documents Trump did (msn.com)

I am acutely aware that all of that would take us down a path on which we have never walked. However, it does appear to be more than just scuttlebutt that Trump had in his possession documents containing — gulp! — nuclear secrets.

What in the name of MADness was Trump going to do with this stuff?

This brings me to another question: Is Donald Trump ever going to be treated like any schmuck who takes official documents illegally?

Allow me to borrow this phrase: Lock him up!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, local news, State news

‘Uvalde’ takes on added weight

Forgive me if I am overstating what appears to be occurring, but it seems to me that the very name “Uvalde” is taking on a significance given to few communities struck by the kind of tragedy that befell that small South Texas town.

It’s as if the very name of the town is becoming a rallying cry, kind of like “Remember the Alamo!” has become part of Texas lore. The Uvalde reference, though, reaches far beyond the state borders. It touches the entire nation, if not the world.

Uvalde no longer is just Oscar-winning actor Matthew McConaughey’s hometown, which very well could have been enough to sustain it during another era.

It was the place where a madman opened fire in an elementary school and slaughtered 19 precious children and two teachers who fought to protect them. It was the place where combined law enforcement, in the words of Texas Department of Public Safety director Stephen McCraw, delivered an “abject failure” to protect those innocent victims.

Uvalde has become the symbol of the call for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to call a special legislative session to enact laws that make it just a little bit tougher for individuals to purchase the kind of weapon the shooter used at Robb Elementary School.

And Uvalde has become the catalyst for school systems throughout the state and the nation to rethink their security protocols and to do whatever it takes to protect the lives of the children and those who are assigned to care for and to teach them.

I fear for the community’s sake that whenever any of its 15,000 residents travel and someone asks them, “Where are you from?” that they’ll receive a sad, but perhaps heartwarming response from those who pose the question.

The love that might come back to Uvalde is worth retaining. The sadness? At some level I hope it dissipates … but that it doesn’t disappear completely.

Society needs reminders, I regret to say, of the tragedy that can erupt in any community within this great country.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, legal news, national news, political news

Hillary is right about Trump

Say whatever you want about Hillary Rodham Clinton, who grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory in the 2016 presidential election … but she is correct in asserting that the man who defeated her then is a criminal.

Donald Trump, said 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Clinton, has committed an act of “seditious conspiracy” against the federal government. She is convinced of the evidence that has been gathered and she wants him prosecuted.

So do I and so do millions of other Americans.

Clinton told CBS News what many of us already know, that she was unhappy that she collected 3 million more votes than Trump but lost the Electoral College vote, which is the count that matters in electing presidents.

“Did I consider for a nanosecond” an effort to overturn the results of that election? Clinton asked. “No!” she answered with stunning emphasis.

Clinton lost the 2016 election in one of the most bizarre political flukes in U.S. history. Trump pilfered states that by all rights should have ended up in Clinton’s column. She lost them and I, for one, am not going to dispute that Trump was elected president in 2016. Thus, he benefited from a peaceful power transition that he denied the man to whom he lost four years later.

And in denying that peaceful transition to an opponent, Joe Biden, who defeated him decisively, Trump committed a criminal act of “seditious conspiracy.”

The record is now chock full of evidence presented to a select House committee. Just think: this is just one of at least three probes into criminal activity involving the twice-impeached former president of the United States of America.

The beat, as they say, just goes on.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, legal news, national news, State news

Lame-duck courage: overrated

One would think that a politician who declares his or her intention to walk away from a public office would be infused with all manner of courage to say things about which he or she would normally remain quiet.

It is not so.

How do I know that? Because I know many politicians in this era of hyper-division who have announced their intention to bow out of the public arena but who don’t go public with how they really feel about other pols and public policy issues.

Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley over the weekend, for instance, said out loud that he would vote for Democratic lieutenant governor candidate Mike Collier over incumbent Republican Dan Patrick. Big deal? Yeah, it is. Whitley is a stellar, stalwart mainstream Republican politician who told WFAA-TV that he won’t back arguably the state’s most power GOP politician.

Why does Whitley stand out? Why aren’t there many more politicians willing to say what Whitley said. It doesn’t take a whole lot of courage for a lame-duck pol to speak from his or her gut when they no longer face a political campaign.

Yet, for reasons that escape me too few of them step up and speak their minds.

Might it be that they don’t want to face their next-door neighbor who would challenge their intelligence? Or the guy in the grocery story who would recognize them? Or perhaps the husband and wife who sit next to them in the house of worship on Sunday?

What does take courage is for a politician who continues to run for re-election to challenge the party’s leadership. I give you Rep. Liz Cheney, the Wyoming Republican who has condemned Donald Trump in the strongest terms possible … only to lose huge in the recent GOP primary in her state.

We’re seeing a large number of Congress members retiring this year. However, we are seeing a surprisingly limited number of them speaking from their gut about the future of their party … or the nation.

That frustrates me.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, legal news, national news, national security

Is she a ‘Trump judge’?

Donald J. Trump’s past blathering about “Obama judges” and “Clinton judges” ruling against him in various legal battles gives me pause as I try to weigh the legal significance of a federal judge who has ruled in the ex-president’s favor in his fight with the FBI over those classified documents he squirreled away at his Florida estate.

Legal and constitutional scholars have been quick to condemn Trump’s assertion that those decisions with which he disagrees are the result of the political leanings of the judges who delivered them. They have said that judges take solemn oaths to be faithful to the Constitution and that’s what they have done in issuing their rulings.

Now we have a Trump-appointed federal judge — Aileen Cannon — deciding that it’s OK to appoint a special master to pore through the documents seized by the FBI in its search for possible criminal evidence.

The Justice Department argued against the appointment of such a special master. It well could appeal the decision by Judge Cannon.

But I am left to ponder something. If the ex-POTUS is going to rant and rail against judges who happen to occupy their seat on the bench because they are appointed by political rivals of his, is it OK for others to do the same thing when a Trump-appointed judge issues a key ruling in the former president’s favor?

Just askin’, man.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience