Month: December 2019

I’m taking the next two weeks to fully enjoy the holidays with family and friends. Take some time to read or reread some of my past posts. Enjoy the holidays and stay safe and healthy. Thanks for supporting me in 2019 by reading, commenting on, and perhaps even sharing my posts with others. More to come in 2020.

In my estimation, the most dangerous man in America is not Donald Trump, but Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell.  Not only is he preventing a vote on most of the legislative bills that Congress passed, including those designed to protect our elections and reasonable gun control, but he is fast filling the federal courts with conservative judges.  And now, he is working with the White House to orchestrate the Senate impeachment hearings in favor of the president.  What the hell?

On what planet is it okay for a judge to work with the accused to mount a defense?  Essentially, the Senate sits in judgement as to whether a president’s alleged behavior against the interest of our democracy and the Constitution warrants that president’s removal from office.  The protection of our nation is why we have three co-equal branches of government.  For such a time as this is the reason the Framers of our Constitution gave Congress oversight of the Executive branch. Mitch has already announced on Fox News that he will definitely ensure that the president is acquitted.  There is not even a hint of trying to appear to give the facts of the case a fair hearing.

And that is the danger of Mitch McConnell.  He doesn’t even try to play fair.  He blocked the federal judges Obama put forth and he also blocked the appointment of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Count.  But with a grin, he announced that in this election year he would readily approve a new nominee to the Supreme Court should an opening become available.  The hypocrisy is stunning!  But more than that, McConnell’s behavior will have real world consequences for Americans.

By stacking the federal courts and the Supreme Court with conservative judges, the hope of real gun control, the preservation of women’s control over their bodies, the civil rights of the LGBTQ community, the preservation of voting rights, welcoming immigration laws, environmental protections, access to health care, and so many other issues that provide protections to minorities and women will be challenged in court and lost.  The majority of Americans do not want these things to happen and sadly most do not even realize the consequences of McConnell’s actions. 

It is past time to flip the Senate.  The only way to get rid of McConnell is to take over the majority of Senate seats.  Although I would love for Kentucky to ditch Mitch, without a majority of Democratic Senate seats, even if he lost, another unethical Republican leader would take over.  The 2020 election is not just about dumping Trump, it is also about the Senate who protects a corrupt president and stacks our courts with far too conservative judges.

If we are to rid ourselves of the most dangerous American in the country, we must awaken our friends, family, neighbors, students, and anyone with a vote to the reality of the danger we are in.  We will get the America we are willing to fight and vote for.

I thought the Constitutional law professors who testified before the House Judicial committee last week were going to be boring. But they were anything but boring. The four of them were passionate, articulate, and informative in their explanation of the Framers reasons for including provisions for impeachment in the Constitution. Three of the four argued that the President’s actions warrant impeachment while the forth argued that he hasn’t yet seen enough to draw that conclusion. But he hasn’t seen enough because Republicans are hiding all the evidence they can from half of the country who watch Fox News. I think they are cowards.

A coward is someone who lacks bravery. And bravery is only called for when one is under threat. A brave person summons up the mental and moral courage to do the right thing in the face of danger. We can all see clearly that we have a bully in the White House who has surrounded himself with a news outlet and enough people who support his lawlessness to publicly humiliate any Republican lawmaker who goes against him.  And so, what they continue to do is skirt the issue of his bribery in Ukraine and his continuing corruption and obstruction of legitimate Congressional oversight.  It’s rather pathetic to watch.

In normal times, these same lawmakers would have defended the Constitution, the rule of law, morality, ethics, and the American people.  But they want so much to remain in office that they have become shameful cowards. As an American, I decided to use my freedom of speech to call them out publicly.

I reopened a Twitter account when the hearings began and followed the main Republicans like Devin Nunes and Keven McCarthy and Doug Collins and Matt Gaetz and I respond to their absurd attacks on process and even more ridiculous attempts to deflect from the president’s actual misdeeds.  I’m calling them out on their cowardice.  I remind them that they took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, not a lawless President. Their inaction threatens our democracy.

In my book, these cowardly lawmakers need to be held accountable for their behavior during this important time and they should be publicly berated and then thrown out of office when they come up for re-election.  That is our duty as brave and patriotic Americans.

Thanksgiving in my early adulthood was spent in pleasant debate with my brothers over every issue imaginable. While others might have watched these Thanksgiving scenes in horror, we were actually having a great time interrogating each other’s arguments, sometimes loudly, but always in good humor. Those days have been replaced by something decidedly different. For starters, now I’m the cook and usually only a minor player in the dinner discussions. But not this year.

Instead of lively debate which my son and son-in-law might have engaged in had my son been able to come for Thanksgiving, I became the push back to my son-in-law’s musings about democracy, free markets, over-regulation, privacy rights, and government intrusion on our freedoms. I’m in the enviable position of loving not only my children, but their spouses as well. As a result, I greatly value these discussions and am grateful to have a small role in helping to shape attitudes or at least challenge existing attitudes and to have my own attitudes challenged in the process. As a naturalized citizen, my son-in-law is passionate about the United States and freedom.

My greatest take away from our discussion is that none of us can become complacent with corruption in our society. Corruption is the dishonest abuse of the public trust for personal gain. We can’t afford to become so cynical as to believe that all of Washingtion is so corrupt that we should simply ignor what is going on. The reality is that we will have the government we are willing to demand and fight for. If we fail to hold politicians accountable for their corrupt actions then we will completely lose a government that works on behalf of people and instead we will have a government that serves only the rich and well connected.

Now is not the time to turn a blind eye to the corruption of this president and his administration. It is time to uphold the rule of law. Is what Donald Trump did: withholding public funds for the defense needs of an ally until that ally did him a personal favor an impeachable and removable offense? Hell yes! If we look the other way and do nothing, then the United States will become no different from the corrupt country my son-in-law fled.

This Thankksgiving I’m thankful for family, real discussion over good food, and for a country that might just uphold the rule of law. I’ll be watching the new set of hearings this week. It is our collective democracy to keep. Happy Thanksgiving.