legal news

Why the ‘faith’ question?

Ketanji Brown Jackson felt compelled Tuesday to remind Lindsey Graham that Article VI of the US Constitution prohibits any “religious test” for anyone seeking public office, to which Graham responded that he agreed and that he wouldn’t apply any test.

Why, then, did the South Carolina Republican ask Judge Jackson about her “faith,” and why did he ask her how often she attends church? Jackson, nominated by President Biden to the Supreme Court, chose to avoid answering the question about her worship frequency.

I am puzzled and concerned, though, by the direction and the tone of the question that Graham asked of the SCOTUS nominee. If he intends to apply no religious test, then what in the name of holy Scripture is the reason for the questioning about the Judge Jackson’s faith?

It was a concerning line of inquiry and one that I hope no one follows down some judicial blind alley.

That kind of question had no place during the Senate committee confirmation hearing.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

‘No religious test’

Lindsey Graham today asked what in another era would have been considered a question worthy of scorn and instant rebuke. The Republican U.S. senator asked a nominee for the Supreme Court, “What is your faith?”

Ketanji Brown Jackson answered “Protestant.”

OK, why should Sen. Graham have been slapped down? Because of Article VI in the U.S. Constitution, which reads, in part: ” … no religious test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

I watched Graham ask the question today in real time. I was troubled at the moment I heard it. Then it dawned on me. The Constitution disallows any sort of religious test for “any Office or public Trust.”

That includes the United States Supreme Court!

We witnessed today a remarkably ignorant performance by a member of the U.S. Senate who, had he understood the Constitution he took an oath to “protect and defend,” never would have asked a Supreme Court nominee a question that clearly violates the rules set down by the nation’s governing document.

Despicable.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Hearing previews 2024 campaign

Ladies and gentlemen, I am prepared to declare that we are witnessing with the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on whether Ketanji Brown Jackson should join the Supreme Court a preview of the 2024 Republican Party presidential primary.

It’s an unattractive spectacle and I detest the notion that a respected jurist is being used as a political football by senators who might seek their party’s presidential nomination in 2024.

I’m talking about Ted Cruz of Texas, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Josh Hawley of Missouri.

They are trying to push hot-button issues dealing with race and abortion and trying to appease the nut-job “base” of the GOP voting bloc while they grill Judge Jackson.

To the nominee’s great credit, she is holding up well under the onslaught.

President Biden promised to present a highly qualified nominee to succeed Justice Stephen Breyer. He delivered when he nominated Judge Jackson.

I continue to salute Jackson’s former role as a public defender. The Supreme Court hasn’t yet welcomed a jurist with that kind of background. Jackson has talked about understanding a defendant’s mindset and the value that understanding has brought to her experience for the past decade as a judge. That aspect of her background alone would bring remarkable and laudatory diversity to the nation’s highest court.

That, of course, won’t stop the GOP presidential hopefuls from parsing her past comments and seeking to damage her reputation by suggesting things about Judge Jackson that do not exist.

From my vantage point, they are embarrassing themselves and have been unable to lay a hand on the nominee’s stellar standing.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

Putin: ‘war criminal’

Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin are not going to exchange Christmas cards this year, or probably for as long as either of them is alive.

The president of the United States has accused the Russian thug/strongman/despot/dictator of being a “war criminal” on the basis of his armed forces’ indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine.

Yep. Vladimir Putin fits the description that President Biden has hung around his neck.

The man has committed crimes against humanity. He has killed children in his effort to pummel Ukraine into submission. Putin’s artillery and air force have bombed schools, a maternity hospital, churches, shopping malls, apartment complexes. These all are places where children hide to get away from the carnage that is befallen them.

Donald Trump once proclaimed his desire to make nice with Putin and with Russia. The Russians led by Putin have destroyed any possible warming of relations with the United States, not to mention with the rest of the world through their unprovoked and brutal invasion of Ukraine, a sovereign nation.

For his part, Joe Biden is punishing Putin with economic sanctions that threaten to relegate Russia to Third World status. Keep applying the pressure, Mr. President.

Oh, and be sure you take Vladimir Putin off your Christmas card list.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

environmental news, local news

Weather changes … rapidly!

You know how it goes if you live in Texas; if you don’t like the weather, just wait a few minutes … it’ll change.

Man, oh man. Did it ever change Monday!

We had been battling dry wind. Well, last night the dry wind turned wet and really violent! Twisters destroyed schools in Jacksboro and homes there and in Bowie. The rain pummeled us in Collin County and in all points throughout the Metroplex.

We are hearing this morning about stricken communities digging themselves out of the rubble and lending a hand to help those in trouble. That became an old story long ago around here, but it’s always one worth re-telling.

Spring arrived this past weekend and it got here with a vengeance.

We are counting our blessings today and we are wishing, hoping and praying for all the very best for our stricken neighbors.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Will judge stand up to pols? Umm, yep!

One of the more fascinating aspects of congressional confirmation hearings is listening to politicians quiz nominees on issues of which the nominee is an expert but which the politician knows next to nothing.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is now set to face what I have called an “inquisition” from members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. It comprises individuals who have a passing knowledge of what it takes to be a top-drawer jurist. Judge Jackson, though, is the real deal. Which is my way of supposing that she knows much more about the law and how judges are supposed to interpret the law than the individuals who will sit in judgment of her qualifications.

President Biden made history when he nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court; she is the first African American woman ever nominated to the nation’s highest court. This blog post, though, isn’t about the color of her skin; it is about her knowledge of the law. From what I have been able to determine, Judge Jackson’s legal skill is beyond reproach.

She possesses an Ivy League education. She comes from a stellar family of educators and law enforcement officers. Judge Jackson clerked for the man she hopes to succeed on the court, Justice Stephen Breyer.

And yet …

Politicians on the Senate judiciary panel are going to presume to be experts on how a judge is supposed to administer justice. Some of them are going to twist the nominee’s prior rulings and turn them into unrecognizable facsimiles of what went down.

It’s part of the process. I get that.

Still, it infuriates me to see pols pretend to be experts on matters on which they have only a passing acquaintance.

With that, I am going to wish Ketanji Brown Jackson all the very best as she seeks to tell these pols that she’s the expert and they … are not.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Guns do have their place … really

As much as I have railed and ranted over many years about gun violence and the nutty notion that says that “more guns make us safer,” I want to acknowledge one positive element concerning laws that allow people to carry concealed handguns.

It’s really about the only positive thing I can say about this, so here goes.

I am a more polite driver, more circumspect at others who cut me off, or who nearly back into me in parking lots, or who otherwise drive recklessly, putting me and others at risk of serious physical harm.

Why? It’s simple. I do not want to antagonize a motorist who might be packing a pistol in his glove compartment, or under his seat, or who might be wearing a holster containing a six-shooter.

The problem with that niceness, though, is that I am reluctant to tell the driver in some fashion that he or she is putting me in danger. I am unaware of a way to do so while sitting in a motor vehicle yelling at someone else without pi**ing the other person off enough to do something foolish … such as shoot me!

OK, so I called this a “positive” aspect of gun ownership. On reflection of what I have just written, perhaps I should walk some of that back just a little. It’s not entirely positive, but it does create possibly a slightly more polite driving public.

To be clear, I am still frightened by the prospect of more guns on the streets, with more people being allowed to carry guns openly without having to take a rudimentary class to prove they know how to handle them.

I also accept that concealed-carry laws in Texas haven’t resulted in commonplace shootouts in the streets.

If these firearms make us a bit more reticent and polite, then that’s not a bad thing.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Now, for the inquisition

Ketanji Brown Jackson promised to “uphold and defend the Constitution” if she is confirmed to a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Of course, that’s what they all say.

In her case, I believe her. I believe that President Biden’s nominee to replace the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer is a woman of her word. She oozes integrity and decorum.

However, none of this is likely to curb the criticism of her record that is sure to come from Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans who will look for any reason — even made-up reasons — to oppose her confirmation to the nation’s highest court.

Judge Jackson, who has appeared before the Senate panel already while being confirmed to lower court posts, is a history-making jurist. She is the first African American woman ever nominated to the high court; Biden pledged to find a highly qualified Black woman to sit on the court. He delivered big time!

I believe she will be confirmed. It will be a bloodbath, more than likely. Then again, that’s become the norm for virtually every Supreme Court nominee since the early 2000s.

Yes, Judge Jackson will uphold and defend the Constitution. She knows the lines she cannot cross.

The judge will make a stellar SCOTUS justice.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

media news

Lamenting newspapers’ demise

This is the Gospel truth, so help me: I detest writing critical items on this blog about newspapers that provided me with great joy and satisfaction as I pursued a craft I loved so very much.

Still, it pains me terribly to watch the demise of what used to be a mainstay in people’s homes. Daily newspapers everywhere in this great land are withering up and dying before our eyes.

It’s a slow and painful death to be sure.

I have commented on the end of Saturday publication of the Amarillo Globe-News, the last stop on my daily journalism career. The newspaper ceased the Saturday edition this weekend. Amarillo, Texas, is far from the only community watching this happen to their newspapers.

Cities far larger than Amarillo (population, 200,000) are seeing the same thing happen. The city of my birth, Portland, once was where The Oregonian published 400,000 copies every Sunday; daily circulation was around 250,000. Today? It’s a fraction of those amounts. The newspaper doesn’t even deliver to every subscriber seven days a week, although it does publish papers every day, but sells most of them from news racks.

Newspapers used to be what we called “cash cows” for their owners. They operated with enormous profit margins, exceeding 30 or 40%. They did so while paying huge amounts of overhead to salaries employees. Publishing a newspaper was labor-intensive to be sure, but the owners made tons of dough while publishing them.

Those days are long gone.

I am proud of the craft I pursued. I did so in good faith as a reporter and then as an editorial writer, and then as an editorial page editor. No one ever called me the “enemy of the American people.” Indeed, those with whom I toiled to publish newspapers all felt as I did, that we sought to tell our communities’ stories with honesty and fairness.

I believe we succeeded.

I remained saddened by the demise of daily print journalism as I remember it when I took up this craft.

I came of age in journalism about the time that Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward were telling the world about the 1972-74 Watergate scandal. Their reporting for the Washington Post sought to hold those in power accountable for their actions. They exposed some monumental corruption.

Sitting on my bookshelf at home is a first-edition copy of “All the President’s Men,” the story that the two journalists told of the scandal that brought down a U.S. president and sent many of his top aides to prison.

A publisher gave me this book as a Christmas gift and wrote on the first page of what he called his “favorite book.” He continued: “This is really where it all began for great journalism!” I aspired to make a difference in the world the way these men did. I didn’t get there, but I managed to carve out a modestly successful career that made me proud of the path I took.

I just am saddened to see newspapers dying before my eyes.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

media news

Retrenchment continues

A newspaper that employed me for nearly 18 years and which served as the dominant source of information for the Texas Panhandle and three nearby states has taken quite possibly a step closer to oblivion.

It saddens me greatly.

The Amarillo Globe-News has suspended one day of publication; it no longer publishes a Saturday edition. The end of the Saturday newspaper was effective yesterday. The paper announced it was “combining” Friday and Saturday editions into a Friday newspaper, which is a kinder/gentler way of telling readers that they no longer will receive a Saturday edition of a once-solid newspaper.

Oh … sigh.

I practiced my craft at the Globe-News for nearly 18 years. Then I walked away in August 2012. I haven’t looked back too often. When I have, though, I see things that distress me. The newspaper has changed corporate ownership twice since I departed. Morris Communications sold its entire newspaper holdings to GateHouse Media, which then merged with Gannett Corp.

The retrenchment has commenced in the Panhandle just as it is in communities across the country.

I don’t like what I fear is going to happen eventually to a newspaper that in 1961 earned a Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service but which is now devolving into a shadow not just of what it was during those great days but also of what it has become just in the past few years.

The newspaper that once covered communities throughout every county in the Panhandle, into eastern New Mexico, the Oklahoma Panhandle and even a sliver of southwestern Kansas now barely covers events inside the city of Amarillo. It now employs a tiny fraction of the staff it once boasted. Advertising revenue has plummeted, along with paid newspaper circulation.

Hey, it’s not unique to that region. It’s just that it hurts me, your friendly blogger, to watch it happen in a place that brought me great joy during the final stage of my print journalism career.

I am not looking forward to what I believe lies ahead for the Amarillo Globe-News.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience