If Not Impeachment, How About Censure?

What can we take away from Trump’s pending impeachment acquittal by the U.S. Senate next Wednesday? That it was a foregone conclusion given the Republican majority? For sure. That it was a flawed indictment by Democrats? Perhaps. That politics—the raw calculus of survival—has overtaken allegiance to the Constitution? Woe to us all, FOR SURE!

How ironic that on a Friday, the last day of creation according to the Bible the Republican Party forever touts as a seminal element of the Founding Fathers’ thinking, Republican Senators voted to kill our constitutional republic. The so called “greatest deliberative body of the world” was too cowed and cowardly to hear what witnesses might reveal about their demigod Trump. Too much revelation to deliberate. 

Acquittal was never really in doubt. We live in too polarized a political climate to have expected anything else given the number required (67) to convict. But to reject the plea to hear relevant witnesses, especially former national security advisor John Bolton who alleges Trump told him aid to Ukraine was tied to its investigation of Joe Biden and his son Hunter, the Republican controlled Senate enabled Americans and the rest of the world to witness the total capitulation of a once-proud political party to the whims and sleaziness of its leader. Truly astonishing.

And shameful. We are not a banana republic. We are much worse, for Republicans will still claim we are a vibrant democracy, even as Trump skewers congressional oversight by disposing checks and balances into the waste basket of history. 

Trump has a history of ruining reputations. From Sean Spicer to Gary Cohen to generals Kelly, McMaster and Mattis, working for Trump has been a sure-fire way to get a reduction in rank for respect. 

Republican senators have gone AWOL on their ethics and conscience. I’ll leave it to Susan B. Glasser of The New Yorker to pronounce judgment on their charade of objectivity, particularly by Lamar Alexander of Tennessee: https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/trump-impeachment-trial-the-senate-can-stop-pretending-now?utm_source=onsite-share&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=onsite-share&utm_brand=the-new-yorker.

Now, some may say talk of the fall of democracy is hyperbole. After all, we have an election in November. The people will get their chance to vote on Trump’s legitimacy and continuation as president.

Really? After we have witnessed Trump openly work to undermine our elections by soliciting foreign government interference, after he questioned the validity of the 2016 results before and after he won, after he has repeatedly lied on small and large matters, after his cult followers in the House and Senate have failed to hold him to the same standards of truth and transparency they demanded of his predecessors, after he has whipsawed any and all critics? An acquitted Trump will have no fear, no boundaries in his pursuit of a second term, or longer.

Time and again Republican senators Friday acknowledged Trump had been “inappropriate” in asking Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate his political rival Joe Biden. But inappropriateness does not rise to the level of an impeachable offense, they argued.

How about the next best option, then? Will the Senate vote to censure Trump? That would be a face-saving vote for any senator looking to salvage his or her legacy. But don’t bet on it, as Trump, no doubt, would tar and feather any Republican who voted for censure. 

A Voting Choice for Patriots: Live Under Authoritarian Rule or Constitutional Law

(Editor’s note: Some articles can be written days, weeks, months before an actual event occurs. This is one of them.)

And so, after years of investigation by an independent counsel, impeachment by a Democratic controlled House of Representatives and acquittal by a Republican controlled Senate, Donald Trump’s future, nay America’s future, will finally be decided November 3 by the people. John Q. and Jane Public finally will be given the opportunity to express their values over and above what they registered in the 2018 congressional elections.

Will they vote for the founding principles of the greatest land on earth, or will they choose to reward an egotistical autocracy because the economy jumpstarted by Barack Obama continued to surge under Trump? Equally important, will they vote at all, or will they take their freedoms for granted even as they are slowly but inexorably whittled away? 

There is no denying more people are working (though the type of jobs they have often are not the high wage ones that instill financial security); the stock market flirts with record after record highs (though the benefit accrued from such heady heights is limited to the already well-off); corporations have reported top flight earnings (though they did not reward their employees with higher pay and they did not widely invest in capital expansion).

It is also true that the national debt has soared, tax revenue has shrunk, air and water quality has deteriorated because of reduced or eliminated environmental safeguards, and consumer protections have been watered down.

The gap between the haves and have-nots has widened.

The gap between truth and falsehoods is now a chasm dug deeper every day by a huckster-president and his sycophantic followers.

Will the public at large acquiesce to Mitch McConnell’s transformation of the Senate from “the world’s greatest deliberative body” into a “chamber of death” where forward-thinking legislation passed in the House dies upon arrival, without even the courtesy of debate?

The Democratic standard bearer (regardless of who it will be) surely is not the favorite of many party faithful. But if we have learned anything from past elections, when Democrats splintered their votes to whimsical third party candidates or simply chose not to vote at all, it is that every ballot counts. Democrats must bury the hatchet in Trump, not in their own party’s back. Trump became president because he won three key states—Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania—by less than 80,000 votes. His claim of a mandate was hyperbole, but it still allowed him to appoint two conservative Supreme Court judges while packing lower federal courts with equally regressive jurists.

It is often said voting is everyone’s patriotic duty. A patriot puts the country’s interests above their own. A patriot looks beyond personal financial gain, focusing instead on the government’s capacity to lift the downtrodden from educational and fiscal poverty. A patriot invests in the industry and defense of the nation while recognizing the obligation of America to act fairly as part of the family of nations. A patriot cherishes the values enshrined in our Constitution and does not accept the notion that a president can be above the law, that a president becomes our sovereign. A patriot believes in a viable, legitimate checks and balances system of executive, legislative and judicial bodies of government.

We have already witnessed the abandonment of principles by party poobahs cowed by fear or enraptured by allegiance to a false messiah. Trump’s coterie in Washington and capitals across the land is based on their lust for power and the monetary bounty that can be reaped from political office.

To what end has he corrupted the values of America’s citizenry? Will they recall the civics lessons of their youth on the choices made by our Founding Fathers to reject authoritarian rule in favor of living under a nation of laws equally applied, even to our highest official?

A patriot votes. Here’s hoping patriots come out in droves November 3.

Speaking Factually and with a Little Perspective

I am no less guilty than anyone else, but I detect our collective ability to speak or write correctly—and by that I mean factually even more so than grammatically—has eroded to the point where we make casual mistakes that can shift the public dialogue. Take, for example, a comment from Monday night’s The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

While discussing the assault on the Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs last week, Noah said, “If I had to imagine the type of person who would shoot up an abortion clinic …” 

Noah fell into the all-too-common trap of calling Planned Parenthood “an abortion clinic” instead of recognizing it as a women’s health clinic that provides reproductive health services including abortions. 

Robert L. Dear Jr.’s murder of three last week was an example of domestic terrorism, yet too few in the media have recognized it as such. 

Speaking of terrorism, and the threat thereof, is it not disingenuous of Republicans to want to prevent Syrian refugees from entering the country because they fear one or more of them may attack us while they stubbornly refuse to limit alleged security risks on the government’s No Fly List from legally obtaining firearms? They claim it would undermine Second Amendment rights even though it is far more likely those already deemed possible terrorists would kill Americans than the refugees seeking a peaceful life within our borders.

The debate on Syrian refugees has mostly focused on the quality and extensiveness of the vetting process. Here’s a link to an article written by Scott Hicks,  a longtime immigration lawyer, detailing the process: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/cosmostheinlost/2015/11/19/exclusive-longtime-immigration-lawyer-pastor-explains-the-refugee-process/

Founding Fathers and Other Disreputables: How to explain the Donald Trump phenomena and how long it might last—The Washington Post tried in a Thursday article which contained the following illuminating paragraphs:

“Trump is a loud­-mouthed person, yes, and he does sometimes just say things to women to hurt their feelings,” an Indiana woman said during a late-October focus group of GOP primary voters conducted by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.

“But I’m going to stick with my belief saying that he’s going to try his best to get the country back the way our Founding Fathers had it at one time” (http://wapo.st/1Sk2Glw). 

The scary part of this seemingly blind support for a racist, a bigot, a dissembler, a sexist, a nativist, an ignoramus when it comes to history and other topics, is that too many Americans share those beliefs. It only validates my belief that we are a nation with too many idiots.

Let’s consider her desire to get back to the way our Founding Fathers had it at one time. Does that mean she condones slavery? That Afro-Americans are to be considered three-fifths of a person? Is she okay with the idea that women were not entitled to vote? For that matter, many white men were not eligible either—in most states you had to be a landowner to earn the right to cast a ballot. Does she favor state legislatures picking U.S. senators rather than direct elections by voters? And should we vote separately for the vice president? 

The Founding Fathers got lots of things right. But they also left out lots of stuff. Do we want to abandon our national parks, for example? Or social security? Or the protections afforded by the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Drug Administration, the FBI and other agencies that protect us from enemies within and outside our borders?

Trump is not alone in his depiction of foreigners—Syrians and Mexicans, to name two groups—as being unfit for residence within the United States. Yet, the provenance of their remarks can be traced back to the 19th century. In her book Team of Rivals, The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Doris Kearns Goodwin quotes U.S. Senator Stephen Douglas (D-IL) during one of the famous Lincoln-Douglas senatorial campaign debates of 1858: 

“The signers of the Declaration of Independence,” said Douglas, “had no reference to negroes at all when they declared that all men are created equal. They did not mean negro, nor the savage Indians, nor the Fejee Islanders, nor any other barbarous race. They were speaking of white men. … I hold that this government was established for white men and their posterity forever, and should be administered by white men, and none others.” 

Apparently, even a president considered one of our greatest, Woodrow Wilson, shared some of Douglas’ beliefs and prejudices. In the words of a New York Times editorial, “He was an unapologetic racist whose administration rolled back the gains that African-Americans achieved just after the Civil War, purged black workers from influential jobs and transformed the government into an instrument of white supremacy” (http://nyti.ms/1OfBkxV). Our commander-in-chief turned out to be a discriminator-in-chief. It’s no wonder Princeton University students want Wilson’s name expunged from the school he was president of before being president of the United States. 

Discrimination against Native Americans, along with disregard for a Supreme Court ruling, stained Andrew Jackson’s presidency, though it is doubtful many of his contemporaries thought so. Jackson forced the Cherokee Nation off of its land in the Southeast and relocated it in the “Trail of Tears” to Oklahoma. In doing so Jackson refused to uphold a ruling by the Supreme Court that “made the Indian Removal Act invalid, illegal, unconstitutional and against treaties previously made by the United States.” 

Little wonder then that advocates of placing a woman’s face on one of our currency bills favor removing Andrew Jackson’s visage from the $20 bill and not Alexander Hamilton’s from the $10 bill. It also doesn’t hurt their argument that Hamilton was the architect of our national financial system while Jackson fought against the national bank.

Speaking of nefarious characters within and without, the U.S. and the world is obsessed with ISIS, and who can blame them given the Islamic terrorist organization’s beastly activities in the name of religion, at least as its adherents see it. The barbaric actions of ISIS and other jihadists come roughly 1,400 years after Muhammad founded Islam. 

For the sake of comparison, let’s see what was happening some 1,400 years after Jesus? Oh yes, the Spanish Inquisition, which followed on the heels of various Crusades which attacked Moslems, Cathars and Jews in the Holy Land and Europe. Looks like 1,400 years is not a happy time for those who don’t scrupulously adhere to organized religions. 

(By the way, if we assume the formal Jewish religion started around the time of Moses, estimated to be around 1200 BCE, 1,400 years later would be just after the Jews twice lost rebellions against Roman rule in Judea.)

In the U.S., Man's Law Outweighs God's Law

Are we free to choose which man-made laws we will or will not follow?

Yes, as long as we accept the consequences of non compliance (the same may be said for God-given laws, assuming one believes in an Almighty).

As all of you probably do, I have been known to drive faster than the posted speed limit. I do so with the hope I won’t be caught by a policeman; if I am, I further hope he would be kind and lenient and not ticket me. But if he does, I must be prepared to pay a fine even if a judge reduces the violation to a charge less than speeding.

Few people like paying income taxes. But most pay what the government says they owe. Those who choose not to pay do so at the risk of prosecution even if their inaction is based on a conscientious dissent. Quakers, for example, cannot withhold taxes based on their objection to war and the government’s funding of armed conflict around the world, be it a just war or not.

Public servants like Kim Davis, the county clerk of Rowan County, KY, who has chosen jail over issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, are in unique positions. They may have to act in opposition to their personal beliefs. Policemen, for example, must honor the civil rights of protesters even if their first instinct is to bash some heads with a billie club. If they succumb to instinct they run the risk of prosecution and loss of their job.

Federal Judge David Bunning had to subsume personal beliefs on gay marriage to uphold the law as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court.

No one is permitted to inject their beliefs in deciding which laws may be followed without accepting the consequences of their refusal to accept laws duly upheld by the courts.

It has been argued that Kim Davis was adhering to an authority higher than the Supreme Court. She was following God’s laws. I would, at this juncture, usually cite the relevant biblical text. The Bible lists many prohibited unions in Leviticus, such as a man marrying his sister, but is silent on same-sex marriage other than to say it is an abomination for men to lie together as a man would with a woman. 

But what about a platonic relationship? If we accept that a man and woman could join in marriage without sex being a part of it, as would happen if one were paralyzed or impotent because of age or other medical condition, why could we not accept that two men or two women want to live together in a legal union without the necessity of intercourse. 

Marriage does not require a sexual act. It is a human construct that marriage must be consummated by intercourse. First night blood-on-the-marriage-bed was not decreed by God. 

Marriage, according to Isaac Klein in A Guide to Jewish Religious Practice, also is “a contract between two parties of equal legal capacity, creating mutual rights and duties that terminate either with the death of one of the parties, by mutual consent, or at the insistence of one of the parties following the breach by the other of one of the warranties or fundamental conditions of the contract.” 

Gays just want the same rights accorded to straight people.

Elsewhere in Leviticus, God commanded his adherents not to eat pork. Pagans could, but not God’s followers. As a practicing Jew, Jesus would not have eaten pork. 

Seems to me lots of pork is eaten in this country. How is that? Why don’t Christians follow these words of God and other commandments, such as tithing, or leaving fields fallow every seven years, or returning property to its original owner every jubilee year, the original income redistribution plan sanctioned by God? Because men, in their infinite wisdom, chose to amend them. Or ignore them. Or reasoned they no longer applied. Or needed more modern interpretations in keeping with the values and mores of the times.

The West decries fundamentalist Islam and its Sharia law as outdated. Cut off a man’s hand for stealing? How repulsive! Stone an adulterer? How barbaric! Blow up a pagan antiquity because it blasphemes one’s idea of religion? God forbid the intolerance!!!

Which brings us to the Founding Fathers and the brilliance of their work. They devised a system wherein freedom of religion was paramount to an individual’s rights but the practice of one’s religion was never intended to infringe on the rights of others. There would be no state-sanctioned religion, no bias for or against one’s beliefs. 

Elected officials swear an oath to uphold the Constitution. They aren’t given the choice of which laws they may enforce or circumvent. They aren’t given the choice of selective adherence to the decisions of the Supreme Court. 

They can disagree. They can dissent. But they cannot reject by their actions the consequences of those decisions. So Kim Davis and all who agree with her can only bite their lips and follow the law, unless they can mount a successful constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. 

Casting a Political Line to 2016

Let’s cast our political line a little deeper than November of this year, all the way to the Republican nominating convention of 2016.

(For the record, I’m assuming Republicans reluctantly will embrace Mitt Romney as their standard bearer this year. The rest of the country will not see the wisdom of the choice. Barack Obama will be re-elected.)

After another grueling primary battle in 2016, Republicans will pick...Rick Santorum, first because their hard core members will turn even more right wing following Obama’s presidency, and second, it has been Republican practice, for better and worse, to place the mantle of leadership on the next in line. They did it with Reagan after Ford, Bush 1 after Reagan, Dole after Bush 1, McCain after Bush 2 and now Romney after McCain. Unless they break the mold, the GOP will anoint this year’s runner-up, Santorum, as the favored son four years from now.

During these next four years, rather than soften his rhetoric, Santorum will stiffen his resolve to remake America into a Christian nation in law as well as custom. He will seek to reduce personal privilege when it conflicts with his dogma, in areas such as gay rights, contraception and abortion rights. It’s been widely reported the former Pennsylvania senator said he almost puked when recently reading the text of John F. Kennedy’s famous 1960 speech outlining the separation of church and state that he, Kennedy, would follow if elected president. Though Santorum apologized for his graphic, insulting language, he did not recant his distaste for the doctrine Kennedy espoused.

It is interesting to note conservatives often cite the Founding Fathers when they look for foundational support for their beliefs. Yet when the Founders offer contrary evidence, they ignore them. So it is with Santorum’s failure to embrace Thomas Jefferson’s clear call in 1802 for a “wall of separation between church and state.” Perhaps Jefferson wasn’t of sufficient Founding Father status for Santorum to abide by his words.

Let’s be clear—no one is suggesting clergy of any faith cannot voice their opinions on issues confronting the country. Indeed, we have a long history of involved, though not always wise, clerics speaking out. In the 1930s, Father Coughlin spewed anti-Semitism from the airwaves; Reverend Falwell rallied a moral majority 40 years ago; the Berrigan Brother priests protested the Vietnam War, to name a few examples of religious leader involvement in the national dialogue.

A line must be drawn, however, when a religious leader seeks to impose his or her values on the rest of the nation. While polls show 98% of American Catholic women use some form of contraceptives, how disingenuous is it for the Catholic hierarchy, and Santorum, to want to curtail their use and to demean those who want to practice responsible family planning?

Many are quick to demonize Islamic countries for basing their laws on the Koran. How different would we be if we adhered to civil and criminal codes locked into the teachings of religious leaders instead of the rule of law we have followed since the inception of the republic?

Yes, it will be an interesting four years. Rick Santorum is only 53 years old (he’ll turn 54 May 10). He’s going to be with us a long time. He’s not going away.