Category: Uncategorized

Trustworthy Scout

I turned eighteen September of 1974; a new college freshman at Denison University.  But I was politically “aware” long before my enrollment in the Political Science Department up “on the hill” in Granville.  I grew up in an aware household (maybe what we’d now call “woke”). In 1968 Dad ran a television station in Dayton, one sister was in college at Miami University, the other in high school in suburban Kettering.  And Mom was always politically involved. The Civil Rights movement was powerful in racially-divided Dayton, and the Vietnam War was close to home.  Both sisters had friends bound for the War, and both actively opposed US involvement.

I learned, and listened, and tried to understand how our government could be committing such a tragic mistake.  In 1968 I was an eleven year-old Boy Scout, with all of the patriotism Scouting imbued.  It took a while for me to make sense of how the Johnson administration, directly descended from John Kennedy, could be so wrong. One of my remaining heroes from Kennedy’s era was his brother, Bobby, the Senator from New York.  Bobby was against the Vietnam War (though late coming to the view).  He represented “transition” for me – the way I could oppose the Johnson War, and still be a “Trustworthy, Loyal” Scout.

Political Immersion

There are memories that are seared in your mind – car wrecks, natural disasters, major surgeries.  One memory of my eleventh year was waking up in my room to the radio alarm clock.  It clicked onto the 7:00 am news – Bobby Kennedy was shot. He was attacked in Los Angeles after his primary win cleared the way to the Democratic nomination.  I remember: lying in bed, my face in the pillow; another disaster after the death of Martin Luther King, another chink in the armor of America’s invulnerability, another hero lost.

The next few days were ceremonies, speeches and the long train procession.  In the end Johnson’s man earned the nomination, and lost the Presidency by a whisker in November.  I remember the announcement at Van Buren Junior High on Wednesday morning after the election, the raucous cheers throughout the school that Nixon was the next President of the United States.  I felt like one of the very few with my head down on my desk.  In Kettering, I was.

Over the next six years I became fascinated with politics.  I studied a lot, I worked on political campaigns, I was an “activist” within the system.  And the two years of the “Watergate Era” I was immersed in the hearings, and the Court proceedings, and the day-to-day lies.  Vietnam got all tangled with Nixon’s politics and his ruthless determination to keep the White House.   From Junior High in Kettering through High School in Wyoming near Cincinnati, I knew all about it.  I suffered through Nixon’s second victory, then demanded accountability for his breaking the law.

A few weeks before I left for Denison, Nixon resigned.  I won’t lie; I hoisted a glass of champagne, even as a seventeen year-old.  My friends joined me in celebration.

Pardon the “King”

Then, only a few weeks later, Nixon was pardoned for “any and all offenses committed” during his Presidency.  The newly ascended Gerald Ford proclaimed, “…Our long national nightmare is over”.  I was angry, storming at my 1962 black and white “portable” TV.  Justice denied.   But over the decades after, I “mellowed” in my view.  Maybe Ford was right, maybe the nation needed to move on from the Watergate debacle.  Maybe the vision of a former President of the United States at the defense table was more than Americans should bear.  

In 2001, the Kennedy Library Foundation, run by the family, gave Gerald Ford their “Profile in Courage” award.  They lauded Ford for his political courage. He pardoned Nixon, an action that might well have cost him reelection in 1976.  (The Award was also given to John L Lewis in the same year.) In 2001 that might have made sense.  But now, in 2022, it’s clear that precedent shouldn’t apply.

Roger Stone

It is no coincidence that Trump’s oldest political advisor is Roger Stone, just a young political operative when he got caught up in the Watergate prosecutions.  Stone believed that whatever Nixon did, it was OK.  The ends – keeping Nixon in office – were worth any means, illegal or not.  Or as Nixon himself said a few years after resigning office, “If the President does it, that means that it’s not illegal”.  Ford (unintentionally) allowed Stone, and others like him, to believe that Nixon leaving office was all “political”, with nothing to do with “right or wrong” or the sanctity of the law. 

And so they brought that attitude to Donald Trump, who already had no problem skirting the law.  It began as soon as Trump came down the golden escalator, and it continued throughout his Presidency.  It should be no surprise that a man with that view was impeached twice, and now faces at least four criminal investigations.

And it wasn’t just Trump and Stone.  It was Manafort, another Nixon acolyte, and Steve Bannon whose whole political raison d’etre is his ends justify any means.  And there was Seven Miller who brought his own natural hatred from his upbringing to the table, and all of the others drawn to the no-holds-barred Trump positions.  Their precedent – winners are never accountable.  And if the win is the Presidency, then the protection is forever – look at Nixon. 

Vulnerability

America made the mistake once.  We gave a former President invulnerability.  And the price we paid, that we are paying, is that forty-two years later an elected President had no reason to believe he could ever be held accountable.

Trump is a long national nightmare, much longer than the two short years of Watergate.  We are now starting the  seventh year as almost every newscast starts with “Trump”.  I would like nothing better than to be done with him.  But this is not the time to say, “There’s nothing to see here, move along, move along”.  We have suffered through the nightmare, now we must see to it that our future, the next election or the next generation, has to learn the same damn lesson again.

Donald Trump must be tried – for election fraud, for insurrection, for flaunting our national secrets.  The clear case must be laid before the jury and the American people; so that we all see what he did, and what was wrong.  Hopefully he will be found guilty to “seal the deal”; but either way, he needs to be “in the dock”.  Otherwise the lesson taught puts our Nation in mortal danger.  Our democracy is vulnerable. If there is no accountability then the Bannon’s and Stone’s of the world are right. They almost succeeded on January 6th. And the next time their operatives might end our Constitution.

Golden Door

There are thousands of migrants, from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and other countries; waiting in Mexico directly outside the United States.  They are waiting to cross to make their claim for asylum.  They are not US citizens, but they do have “rights”. One of those rights, confirmed both in US law and international treaties, is to enter to claim asylum.  Whether US Immigration Courts accept those claims or not isn’t really the issue.  The issue is that they have the right to be:  “…(T)he homeless, tempest-tost to me.  I lift my lamp beside the golden door” (New Colossus).  They have the ”right” to enter the “golden door”.

Child Separation

President Trump’s administration allowed migrants to cross outside of the “legal” crossing points and then arrested them.  They implemented the infamous “child-separation” program. Children crossing with their parents were taken away, based on the “theory” that anyone crossing the border illegally was committing a crime and therefore “unfit” to keep their children.  Crossing the border is legally a misdemeanor offense, but it was treated like a “major” felony.

Kids were taken away, and parents imprisoned.  It took far too long, but public outrage at the child separation program became deafening. Trump was forced to end it.  As many as 2000 children were separated when the program was stopped.  Today, years later, 150 kids remain unable to reunite with their loved ones (The Hill).

After the child-separation program ended, the Trump Administration looked for a different way to keep migrants across the border.  They took on the Sisyphean task of sealing the border physically to force migrants to only come through legal entry points.  They built walls and fences.  But as the phrase goes, all it takes to get over a sixteen foot wall is a seventeen foot ladder.  And the migrants kept coming.

Title 42

But, since 2020 those migrants who wish to enter legally are blocked.  What would be a violation of law and treaty, is allowed under  “Title 42”.  That’s not an immigration law, or something new passed by Congress.  It’s a public health regulation, placed in effect during the pandemic.  It closed the borders to prevent the spread of Covid.  And while much of the United States, and particularly the anti-vaccine set, are far “over” Covid, many are still in favor of keeping the migrants out.  Even though “out” tens of thousands wait across a narrow band of normally fordable water called the Rio Grande River, which makes up much of the US Southern border. (Current Covid death rates in the US, remain at almost 400 per day).

And for those who crossed illegally, instead of being processed, they were simply put on buses and sent back across the border. Title 42 allows the suspension of their due process rights .

The Biden Administration isn’t totally blameless.  When Trump imposed “Title 42”, thousands of migrants were stacked up in the border cities across from the US.  And while they waited, many more thousands found their way to those same border towns.   The inevitable result is that the pressure on the border towns is enormous.  Conditions are deteriorating, violence and crime is increasing, and the US has done little to prepare for the “surge” guaranteed when normal border crossings resume.  The Administration did try to end Title 42 restrictions, but Republican Governors battled in the Courts to keep the rule in place.  Meanwhile the pressure on the border just grows greater.

What Do We Stand For?

The rule was supposed to be lifted yesterday, but Chief Justice John Roberts issued a stay keeping Title 42 rule in place.  On the South side of the border, migrants are growing increasingly restless, with rumors of the change in rules stirring everyone up.  Should the Supreme Court allow the President to end the health restrictions, no one knows how many thousands will surge through both legal and illegal entry points.  And while that surge is completely foreseeable, little has been done to prepare. The cork will be out of the bottle, and no way to clean up the mess.

Even today, migrants who do cross are sleeping on the streets of El Paso and other border towns, because there is nowhere for them to go.  Private agencies are completely full, and existing public facilities are packed as well.  Just now, FEMA and other Federal agencies are moving in to prepare for the onslaught. Better late than never, but late non-the-less.

And once they arrive, and housing is arranged to keep families together, there is still the question: we are a nation conceived in immigration, built by immigrants, and searching for an increase in the labor force. Will we allow the “homeless and tempest-tost” inside the Golden Door, or will we send them back to the teeming streets of Ciudad Juarez, Tijuana and Matamoros?

Will we simply “refill” the bottle?

Gut Decisions

“I know it when I see it”.  That quote is from Supreme Court Justice and former Cincinnati City Council member Potter Stewart. He was talking about pornography.  The Supreme Court itself ruled if individual films were pornographic, and therefore not an exercise of First Amendment free speech.  The Justices gathered once a month in the basement movie theatre of the Court Building, to watch films and make individual judgments.  It was also a popular day among the almost all male young staffers of the Court. 

Stewart was unable to reach a strict “definition” of pornography, but he could make a “gut decision” about it.  Ultimately, the Court got out of the “critic” business in 1973 with the Miller decision.  That established a three step process to determine if a film should be banned because it had “…no redeeming social value”.   That finally ended the monthly shows.

There is a technical definition of “Insurrection”, but like pornography, we know it when we see it.  We saw it on January 6^th, 2021, when the followers of Donald Trump attempted to seize the Capitol Building and change the outcome of the 2020 Presidential Election.  We saw it when the ex-President himself pressured state and local election officials to alter election results in his favor.  And we saw it in the elaborate scam of fake Electoral College votes.

Legal Insurrection

 “Insurrection” is now dramatically important in our law.  Not only is insurrection criminal, subject to long prison terms and fines, but it carries a ban on holding further office in the United States.  

“Insurrection” has already been bandied about.  In North Carolina, opponents of Congressman Madison Cawthorn brought a serious legal charge against his candidacy, based on his participation in Insurrection.  They not only cited the US Code (Federal Law), but also the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, Section 3.  That states that anyone who first took an oath to support the Constitution, and then acted against it in insurrection, is banned from office.

The North Carolina Courts determined that while Cawthorn might have committed Insurrection in the “know it when I see it” sense, he never was convicted of it.  Cawthorn’s name was allowed on the ballot, but he failed to win the primary.  The same argument was made against Marjorie Taylor Green in Georgia, with the same legal outcome.  She won re-election and now stands as a powerful member of the Republican House of Representatives.

Charging the ex-President

The January 6^th Committee issued their final report yesterday.  They recommended that the Justice Department charge ex-President Donald Trump on (at least) four counts.  The Committee recommended charges:

•  obstruction of an official proceeding of the United States government,
•  conspiring to defraud the U.S., 
•  making false statements to the federal government, and 
•  inciting or engaging in an insurrection. (Forbes).

The “top charge” is Insurrection.  We knew it when we saw it.  And the January 6^th Committee has gone a long way to demonstrate that Trump committed the crime.  The Committee acted like a Congressional “grand jury”, examining the evidence and recommending charges.

Good Guys

But in one sense, Democrats (and the Republicans on the Committee) are hamstrung.  While Trump/Republicans could ignore subpoenas, violate norms, and skirt the laws; Democrats have placed themselves on the side of – wait for it – Law and Order.  By taking that side, they are constantly restrained by the fairness of the Law itself, that “awful” legal term, due process.  (We will see how Democrats continue to be the “good guys” of law and order when the Republican “revenge committees” start up in January.  Will Democrats ignore Jim Jordan’s subpoenas as Jim Jordan ignored theirs?)

Merrick Garland was appointed Attorney General to change the Department of Justice.   Trump used the Department as a political cudgel against his enemies.  Trump’s Attorney General Bill Barr misinterpreted the results of the Mueller investigation, and stood as a block to other inquiries into his Presidency.  President Biden specifically appointed Chief Appellate Judge Merrick Garland to the head the Department and make Justice as apolitical as possible.

Justice 

Garland is already investigating Trump.  There are two “known” Federal investigations; one directly involving January 6^th, and the other Trump’s removal of secured documents.  Justice has their own grand juries, looking at the same evidence that the January 6^th committee found or developed.  Those juries, Garland’s handpicked leader of the investigation Jack Smith, and Garland himself will determine what charges (if any) will be brought against Trump.  They will be sure to make due process, fairness, the highest priority.  That’s what “law and order” is supposed to be all about.

Many suggested that the January 6^th Committee was developed like a serial television show.  They created a series of presentations, each with compelling video evidence, and each ending with a “cliffhanger” for the next “show”.  Like any good, “Sorkin-like” series, the last show must have a satisfying end.  It couldn’t be just a re-hash of the series.  And so this Committee that acted as “America’s Grand Jury” offered its final bombshell.  They called for the trial of the ex-President of the United States on the highest charge possible.  If convicted, he would be banned from office for life.

Trump, like any American citizen, deserves due process.  But I hope that Merrick Garland realizes that the American people, who suffered the Insurrection and the threat to their Democracy, deserve the same.

Techie

Thanks, twice impeached, ex-President of the United States Donald Trump.  I’m kind of an old school guy.  I’ve done my best to try to keep up with the technological changes in our world.  I’m typing this essay on a two year-old MacBook Pro, and there’s an IPhone 13 sitting on the table beside me.  I’ve figured out how to “cut the cable” with my TV’s (though that isn’t saving the money it used to) and I can “stream”, “tweet” and “Facetime”.  And while I only text with one finger – I am desperately show – I still hold my own there too.

But one tech aspect I really never got was “NFT’s”.  In fact, for a long time I thought the letters “NFT” were some kind of new professional sports league – NFL, NBA, MLB and the rest.  And when some of the “younger” folks I know talked about investing in Bitcoin, it all seemed like some kind of scam, like buying “lakefront property in Florida” or the Brooklyn Bridge.

This only got reinforced with the arrest of Sam Bankman-Fried in the Bahamas last week.  He was the “golden boy” of crypto-currency (is that currency found in a pyramid along with the crypt of some Pharoah?), someone who looked like the guy who lived at the end of the hall in my college dorm: really smart, except for the drugs he was inhaling.  “SBF” (more initials) was a multi-billionaire genius; and a genius grifter.

Crypto

But, to be honest, I never really understood what all of this was about until Trump made it “stupid-simple” to understand. 

NFT – non-fungible transactions, sounds like something that went bad in the refrigerator.  But it’s not.  It investing your money, real money, cash kind of money, into something that doesn’t exist.  You trade your cash for “tokens”, which are really just data-points on some giant spreadsheet.  And just like the spreadsheets on this MacBook Pro, sometimes those data points get corrupted, or the formula becomes too complex, and they just “go away”.  And so does your money.

All of this just sounded like financial gobble-de-gook, until the twice-impeached ex-President jumped into the “NFT” game.  And that made it all clear to me.

For $99 you can buy a Trump “trading card”, just like the Pokémon cards the kid next store is so excited about.  And, like those Pokémon cards, the Trump trading card has a “value” all its own, not determined by the $99 you paid for it, but for what it can bring on the market.   And if no one wants Donald Trump as a cowboy, or race car driver, or astronaut; then you $99 investment is worth – nothing.  The “trading card” is a “crypto” currency, a hidden form of Trump produced “money”.  My wife Jenn has it right – it’s Monopoly money gone real, without having to buy the game.

Two Chickens 

In history class we talked a lot about the development of trade.  It all started with barter:  two chickens for a bushel of grain.  But those same two chickens could be used to pay for a day of labor, or a ride on a wagon to town.  The chickens had “real” value, they could lay eggs, or serve as tomorrow night’s dinner. 

But it was a pain to carry around a lot of chickens, so “symbolic” currency (fungible currency) was developed to make things easier.  Here’s a coin, made of some metal we find valuable.  This coin is worth two chickens at the chicken market.  So instead of hauling chickens around, we had bits of metal that represented the ability to purchase chickens, or the equivalent bushel of grain, day of labor, or ride to town.  And so money began.

But money had drawbacks too.  As it was easier to carry, but it was easier to lose, or steal.  And since money was symbolic, even as a valuable metal, it could gain or lose value.  What if the “two chicken” coin was all of a sudden only worth one chicken because of a chicken shortage?  So we developed other forms of currency, even more symbolic than the coins.  I have an “old school” book of checks in my desk drawer.  I can “create money” simply by writing a sum onto the check, and getting someone to accept my check for a more “fungible” form of currency.  And we have laws that punish us if we create money that we really don’t have.

Tokens

So Trump’s cards are like taking a check that doesn’t have a value written on it.  It might be a great investment, but it also might be a complete loss.  But one thing’s for sure:  Donald Trump got his $99 in real cash for a single card.  He got his “fungible” from these Non-Fungible Transactions.  And once he’s sold it, he is no longer responsible for its value, unlike my “bad” check.

There’s an ad on TV right now from the Liberty Mint.  You can buy a silver half-dollar, minted privately by Liberty, for $12.52.  It’s supposed to sound like a great deal – a “pure silver coin” for only $12.52 (supplies are limited).  But what are they really asking you to do?  They want you to pay $12.52 for a coin with the face value of – fifty cents.  Just like Trump cards, they want you to invest in something that is a “token” with limited face value.  Maybe someday it will be worth the $12.52 (or $99) you paid for it – or maybe not.  

But they got their fungible cash.  And now you own a Brooklyn Bridge.

Twitter

I was a latecomer to Twitter.  While I created a Twitter “handle” nine years ago (in fact, two; @martydahlman and @demintrumpworld) I really didn’t “participate” in Twitter.  I posted essays to @martydahlman, and I occasionally cruised through an evening’s newsfeed.  It was only in the last couple of years that I started seriously looking through my Twitter feed, especially since the January 6^th Insurrection.  

So I didn’t pay a lot of attention when Elon Musk, the Tesla owning, space exploring, richest man in the world, took over.  I heard all of the “bad news”; that Musk would wreck Twitter.  But up until yesterday, it didn’t really change what I saw.  But now one of the authors on my Twitter feed, Aaron Ruper, is banned.  After all of this time, Musk finally impacted me.

I’m a little sad.  I feel like I missed the heyday of Twitter,  and came in at the end when things are getting bitter.  And I don’t know what to do – open a “Mastodon” account, or go to “Post.News”; or what.  Twitter was addicting.  You could watch the experts on TV, folks like Neil Katyal, former acting Solicitor General of the United States, or Laurence Tribe, Harvard Law Professor.  And then you could get what they really thought on Twitter, the story behind the more formal MSNBC or CNN presentation.  You got the “inside scoop” – and now it looks like that’s gone.

Left and Right United

I’ve heard a lot of whining about Twitter, first from the right and now from the left.  One of the most annoying “whines” is that somehow Twitter did, or is, or would, violate users First Amendment rights.  It’s annoying because it’s wrong.  Twitter can do anything, muzzle members, suspend accounts, or allow some folks to say a thing and others not.  But none of that has a damn thing to do with the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

“AHHHH – but what about Freedom of Speech!!  That’s guaranteed to every American, in the Constitution, in the First Amendment.  You can’t take that away!!”

Here’s what the First Amendment actually says:

“Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press” – First Amendment to the US Constitution.

It states that Congress, and by extension, the government of the United States, cannot make a law taking away the ability to freely express your views, in speech or in the press.  And that “extension” is further stretched to include state and local governments by the 14^th Amendment, through the due process and equal protection clause.

So if the US, or Ohio, or Pataskala (my little town’s) government wrote a law that tried to prevent me from expressing my opinion here in “Our America”, that would violate the First Amendment.   If the local police came and told me that “Biden for President” signs (or those damn F**k Biden flags down the street) aren’t allowed here in Pataskala, that would be a violation too.  

Online Main Street

But Twitter is not the government, and Elon Musk, as rich as he is, isn’t either.  Twitter is a private company, a social media platform provided as a money-making “service” that we can choose to use or not.  And if we don’t like the rules – then we should take our “business” somewhere else.  Because Twitter (and Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, and even Truth Social) are just stores on an online Main Street.  We can go in, we can buy their product, or we can walk on by.  The laws that apply to the government, don’t necessarily apply to them.

What about Tik-Tok?  Just yesterday a bill was introduced in the US Congress to actually ban the Tik-Tok app in the United States.  Isn’t that violating Tik-Tok’s First Amendment rights?  The short answer is yes – but.  Yes, if Tik-Tok is a private company then it has First Amendment freedom of speech rights.  The Supreme Court ruled those were protected in Citizen’s United, the case about corporations giving campaign donations to politicians.  

Take His Ball

But if Tik-Tok is really just an exciting lure, a “stalking horse” to gather information for the Chinese government, it raises a whole different issue.  Other governments aren’t guaranteed First Amendment rights.  So if Tik Tok is just an extension of Chinese Intelligence, it can be banned, much to the dismay of every social media user under twenty-five.  

I don’t like the way Elon Musk is running Twitter.  And I’m not so sure that I like the way Zuckerberg runs Facebook.  I may have to go onto virtual Main Street and find other platforms to use.  Then I can say whatever I want about those two billionaires.  But if I say it on their platforms, say it on the Twitter that Musk paid $40 billion for; why should I be surprised that he takes “his ball” and goes home?  

He paid for it. Twitter’s his, not mine.  

Horseshoes

Democrats may be pleased with the election results of 2022, but there is one incontrovertible failure.  The Dems failed to maintain a majority in the House.  They lost by a little, instead of the expected a lot, but they still lost.  What’s the old line:  “Almost only matter in horseshoes and hand grenades.”  Elections are neither horseshoes nor hand grenades,  and Republicans gained nine seats for a 222 total.  Democrats lost those nine seats, and have 213 seats.  It takes 218 to have a majority, so, by five seats, it’s a Republican House.

What does that mean?  The majority gets to “organize” the House.  Not only do they have a majority of the “whole” House, but they give themselves a majority on every Committee of the House as well.  In every decision making position, Republicans are appointed.  They control all of the Chairmanships, and determine almost all of the legislation that gets a vote of the entire chamber.  It’s not just that Democrats can’t win a straight Party vote; they can’t even get their legislation to the “floor” to be debated and lose.  

The majority Party controls the “calendar”, legislation that comes from Committees, and what gets to the whole body.  And all of that “control” is controlled by the leader of the majority Party, the Speaker of the House.  

Kevin’s Dream

For the past decade, Republican Kevin McCarthy dreamed of being Speaker.  He was so close back in 2014, when Ohioan John Boehner was driven from the gavel by the right-wing Freedom Caucus.  Boehner was unable to juggle the far-right with the more moderate right Republican members, and left to smoke his cigarettes, drink his wine, and become a spokesperson for legal marijuana.  

And with Boehner leaving, McCarthy thought his time had come.  Sure there was a more moderate Congressman from Wisconsin, Paul Ryan, former Vice Presidential candidate in 2012.  But McCarthy had more “friends” on the right.  He was closer to the Freedom Caucus members than Ryan, and hoped to parlay that into his “dream” job.

But then he opened his mouth, and the  truth poured out.  McCarthy publicly explained that the reason for the multiple committees and $7 million investigation of Benghazi was to discredit Hillary Clinton.  And he said it on Fox, on the Sean Hannity show, to the American people.

What you’re going to see is a conservative speaker, that takes a conservative Congress, that puts a strategy to fight and win. And let me give you one example. Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?

But we put together a Benghazi special committee. A select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known that any of that had happened had we not fought to make that happen.

With that, his shot at the Speakership was over.  He withdrew his candidacy, and Paul Ryan became Speaker until 2018, when Democrats won back the majority.

Less Than 1%

McCarthy then became the Republican Minority Leader, the “Speaker in Waiting” for four years.  And now, with his narrow majority, he is not “…going to throw away his shot”.  But he does have a significant problem.

Republicans won the majority by winning very narrow victories in New York State.  For example, Sean Patrick Maloney, the Democratic Congressman and head of the Congressional Campaign Committee, lost the 17^thDistrict by less than 1% of the total vote.  And there were three other marginal Districts that Democrats lost by 1% or less.  These are not “Freedom Caucus”, right-wing Districts, these are moderate Districts where independent voters determine the outcome.

So McCarthy ought to look at those results, and try to bring his Republican membership towards moderation to maintain the majority for more than just one two-year term.  But he cannot.

Deal with MTG

McCarthy made his deal with the far-right of the Freedom Caucus Republicans, the members of Congress who have made their mark as “crazies”.  McCarthy only needs 112 votes in the Republican caucus to be nominated for Speaker, but he can only lose five Republican votes when his nomination is voted on by the entire House.  Any five Republicans can refuse McCarthy and drop his vote total below 218. And then he’s stuck.

So he’s cut a deal with Marjory Taylor Green, the crazy woman from Georgia, to support him on the right. The deal includes empowering Green with a Committee Chairmanship, and refusing to allow Democrats Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff to serve on the House Intelligence Committee.  McCarthy figures it this way:  deal with the right, and the right-moderate wing of the Republicans will have nowhere else to go.

But he is vulnerable, not just for the upcoming votes for Speaker, but every day he serves in the job.  Any five Republicans can decide it’s time for him to go, and he’ll be faced with the same choice John Boehner confronted.  He can be Speaker, but he won’t be able to govern.  Boehner cried, walked away, and joined the “dope” coalition.  

McCarthy may want to do the same. 

What’s Left

Abraham Lincoln was a “life-long” member of the Whig Political Party.  In 1848, he campaigned for his party’s Presidential candidate, General Zachary Taylor.  The Democrat running against Taylor was General Lewis Cass, and Lincoln derided his candidacy.

“A fellow once advertised that he had made a discovery by which he could make a new man out of an old one, and have enough of the stuff left to make a little yellow dog. Just such a discovery has Gen. Jackson’s popularity been to you [Democrats]. You not only twice made President of him out of it, but you have had enough of the stuff left to make Presidents of several comparatively small men since; and it is your chief reliance now to make still another.”

This may not have been the first time Democrats were derided as “yellow dogs”, but it certainly wasn’t the last.  The phrase came to mean anyone who voted a straight Democratic ticket, regardless of who was running for office.  They became known as “Yellow Dog Democrats”.  They’d choose a Yellow Dog rather than voting for a Republican.

The Whig Party broke apart in 1854 over slavery.  Many of the Northern Whigs joined the new anti-slavery party, the Republican Party, including Lincoln.

Georgia’s Choice

Raphael Warnock won re-election to the US Senate in the Georgia runoff last week.  What looked like a “squeaker” all evening turned out to be a relatively comfortable win, as Warnock defeated his Republican opponent Herschel Walker by almost 100,000 votes, a bit more than Warnock’s margin over Kelly Loefler in 2020.  After four state-wide campaigns in two years and almost $400 million, Senator Warnock will finally get to serve a full six-year term.

Warnock is the pastor of the famous Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.  As a Senator, he proved instrumental in passing several pieces of legislation, and was surprisingly bi-partisan.  As he tells it, he’s the 18^th most bipartisan out of the one hundred Senators.  

His Republican opponent Herschel Walker was a tremendous athlete.  His exploits on the football field in the early 1980’s for the University of Georgia are legendary.  Walker then went onto a professional career, playing first in the USFL, then in the NFL for over a decade.  After he retired from football, he took on mixed martial arts, and even earned a place on the US Olympic Bob-Sled team in the 1992.

Walker was an outstanding athlete, but a questionable candidate.  He’d left Georgia decades ago to live in Texas, and only returned thirteen months before this election . Walker also has a history of mental illness and domestic violence.  When the campaign first began, his staff did an “opposition research” of their own candidate.  In a week, it was over five hundred pages long.  They were NOT allowed to talk to Walker’s former girlfriends.   It turned out that he had several illegitimate children, some he acknowledged, and some were “discovered” during the course of the campaign.

And Walker had a difficult time articulating his views about the issues of the day.  It made it easy for Democrats to ridicule him in ads on television and social media.

Party over Candidate

But the Georgia election was more about who supported which political party, rather than the individual candidates.  The nation agreed:  more money was spent in Georgia in the past two years than by any nationwide Presidential campaign up through 2012.  There were not enough “Yellow Dog” Republicans to pull Walker over the top, even in a state where the Republican Governor won by almost 200,000 votes.  Walker was that bad of a candidate – which raises the question:  what were the over 1.7 million voters (out of 3.8 million) thinking when they marked “Walker” for their Senator?

Ohio is much the same way.  In the 2022 election, the Democrat Tim Ryan was the “model” candidate in the nation.  The Republican candidate, JD Vance was nowhere near as “bad” Walker, but was noted as one of the laziest Republican candidates in the country.  Yet Vance still won, by over 150,000 votes (out of almost 4 million).  The “quality” of the candidate didn’t matter here in Ohio, Republicans voted for their “Yellow Dog”.

Ohio’s Failing

What’s the difference between Georgia and Ohio?  Certainly a lazy Vance was better than Walker talking about werewolves and vampires.  But there is a more important consideration.  The Democrats of Georgia, led by Stacy Abrams, have a voter turnout that is second to none.  The Democratic Party of Georgia still can’t break the Republican grip on state offices, but they are closing the gap, in spite of the Republican legislature’s attempts to suppress Democratic voters.  (Need proof of that – the Republicans tried to stop Saturday voting on the weekend after Thanksgiving, citing a Georgia law that bans voting the day after a holiday.  The holiday wasn’t Thursday’s Thanksgiving. It was Friday’s Robert E. Lee’s birthday). 

Here in Ohio, the Democratic Party is, “…(O)ut-gunned, out-manned, out-numbered and out-planned,” (thanks “Hamilton”, I saw the Cleveland production last week – still awesome!!!). We are lacking infrastructure, financing, and most important, candidates.  Tim Ryan was great, and Sherrod Brown is the exception that proves the point.  But in general, we haven’t run a serious ticket for statewide office in a decade  (A well-funded Nan Whaley might have made a difference). 

Where is our Ohio’s “Stacy Abrams”?  Who will lead the Democrats, almost two million of us, out of the wilderness of gerrymandered impotence?   Ohio Dems will all vote for a Yellow Dog over a Republican, but we’ve got to get beyond the kennel to win.  

A Trade

It was like a scene from the Cold War.  A business jet from the US pulled onto one side of the tarmac.  A similar jet from Russia landed and pulled up several yards away.  The doors open, at the same time, and two huddled groups emerge from the planes and approach each other.  One person from each group steps to the other, and the groups head back to their planes.  The US and Russia exchanged prisoners on the runway in Abu Dhabi.

Thursday the United States of America freed a Russian arms dealer, Viktor Bout.  He is a friend of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, and was serving his eleventh year of a twenty-five year prison sentence at the US Federal prison in Marion, Illinois.  He was traded for Brittney Griner, the Women’s National Basketball Association superstar, born in Texas and two-time American Olympic Gold Medalist.  Griner was arrested in Moscow Airport last February, accused of bringing in marijuana oil vape cartridges, legal in the US but not in Russia.

Griner was sentenced to nine years in a Russian Penal Colony, and was just beginning to serve her sentence.  

Celebrate

It’s a moment of some celebration.  An American, unjustly held and dramatically over sentenced, is out of a Russian Penal Colony and back safely in Texas.  It’s also a moment of concern.  “The Merchant of Death”, Viktor Bout, is free to resume his life of arms sales to the highest bidder, even to both sides of the same conflict, to gain more profit.

And Paul Whelan, an American (and British, Irish and Canadian – he has passports for all four countries),  a former US Marine and businessman, is still in Russian prison; four years into a fifteen year sentence for espionage.   The American negotiators hoped that they could create an “equivalence” between Bout and Whelan, a “my Bishop for your Bishop” kind of trade, then add Griner in.  But the Russians regarded Whelan is far more than the equivalence of Bout.  So Griner was the best the US team could do.

There are a few things to point out about all of this.  

The Dance

First, it takes two to tango.  The US might think their deal for Griner and Whalen was great, but unless the Russian’s had the will to get Bout back, they were just dancing by themselves.  Regardless of Bout’s “Merchant of Death” label and his close ties to Vladimir Putin; he obviously wasn’t of great enough value to spring for the “two for one” deal.  The Russians went to a great deal of trouble to charge Whelan with espionage, of being a spy.  They want a spy back for him.

According to sources, the United States doesn’t have a Russian spy to trade.  There are Americans who spied for Russia in the US, but they aren’t likely trade fodder.  There is someone the Russians want:  Vadim Krasikov, a Colonel in Russian Intelligence convicted of murder in Germany.  But the US doesn’t have him:  the Germans do, and aren’t interested in trading for him for an American.

Reaction

So the deal was Griner for Bout, a superstar basketball player who may have had vape cartridges (or may have been set up), for a heinous arms dealer responsible for many deaths.  The American right-wing was brutal in their criticism.  The deal, they said, showed Biden’s weakness; willing to trade away a bishop to get what they consider a pawn.  Brittany Griner is gay, a Black woman, who kneeled during the National Anthem in protest of the murder of George Floyd at  WNBA games. So she made an easy target for the right-wing media.

The Biden administration was deeply sympathetic to the Whalen family’s disappointment, and vowed to continue to work to find a way to bring him home.  But Secretary of State Antony Blinken also made it clear: there was never a deal that would include Whalen, even in a one for one for Bout.  Whalen was never “on the table”.  

It takes two to tango.  And the Russians aren’t dancing for Whalen.

First Year

I didn’t get far in law school.  After three years of teaching at Watkins Memorial High School, I returned to my “life plan” and entered the University of Cincinnati.  But as the first semester of law school ended, I made a life-changing discovery.   I really wanted to teach and coach.  That was a “calling” that I didn’t anticipate when I made my life plan back in my freshman year at Denison University. 

 But there I was, watching a high school cross country team training in Burnet Woods right by campus. I lost my entire train of thought about contract law.  So when a job offer from my old Principal Pete Nix came right in the middle of final exams, I said yes.  I finished the semester, and prepared to embark on thirty-three more years in public education.  Other than disappointing my father and Judge Art Spiegel, I have no regrets.

I did learn a lot in that semester at UC.  One thing was that a lot of my law school classmates judged a person on their apparel.  I was going to law school by day, and running a Cincinnati City Council campaign by night.  As the campaign manager, I was often in a suit and tie.  I saw no reason, after studying from four in the morning, to go to a class of over two hundred dressed up. So I spent a lot of my day in old Watkins Track sweats. 

Note Cards 

In my law school days there was something called  “the dreaded note cards”.  The professor had a stack of note cards with our names on it.  If your name came up, you were on the spot for interrogation. It wasn’t just for one question. You might spend  the entire hour on your feet, as the professor tested your knowledge about the case, the precedents, and the dreaded “what ifs”.  You never knew when your card would come up. But once you were “up”, you could relax a little. Unless the professor dropped the stack; then there was instant panic in the class.  

So it was in contract class in mid-October.  I’d been out late at a campaign rally, and up at four am with the books scattered across my apartment. But I was ready.  My classmates looked at the “dude in sweats”, and expected a sub-par performance.  But when the professor intoned “Mr. Dahlman, what’s your take on Fiege v Beam,” I stood up prepared for my turn in the barrel.  I handled the case, the precedents, and a full twenty minutes of “what ifs”.  And I taught the class a lesson about judging from appearances.

The law is based on precedent, and the operative word in law school is “what if”.  What if we change this fact in a case – does that change the outcome?  What case in the past would apply to this set of facts?  Is there one set of facts that would change the entire outcome and legal precedent?

Cause of Action

Monday, the United States Supreme Court heard a Colorado case, 303 Creative v Elenis.  

303 Creative is a web design company run by Lorie Smith.  Colorado has a state law that requires businesses to not discriminate based on race, religion, or gender status.  Ms. Smith wanted to post a message on her web site, saying that she will not design wedding webpages for same sex couples. She believes marriage is only between a man and a woman.

Before we go forward, there is a huge break in precedent already.  The Supreme Court almost never takes a case without a “cause of action”.  That is, there has to be a real case, with real clients and real damages, to get in front of the Supreme Court, at least, that’s the precedent.  In fact, many cases fail to get to the Supreme Court, because the plaintiff cannot show damages.  A precedent:  in 2020, Texas sued Georgia, Arizona, and Pennsylvania saying that those states didn’t follow their own election laws. The Court denied Texas’s claim because they couldn’t show how the other states actions damaged Texas.  The Lone Star State didn’t have a cause of action to bring suit.

No Message, No Case

Lorie Smith was never asked to build a website for a gay couple.  Her whole case was based on the fact that when she asked the state of Colorado whether she could put the message on her website the state said no, that would be against the law.  She never put the message up.  Colorado never launched a legal proceeding against her.  She sued based on the fact that she could be taken to Court by Colorado, not that she actually was.

So precedent would have the Court deny a hearing (deny certiorari) based on standing.  Nothing actually happened, and no one was damaged.  But the Court did not. They took the case.

Lorie Smith could have made a First Amendment case based on “religion”, saying that to require her to make a gay couple website would violate her religious beliefs.  That would match the precedent established in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case in 2018. In that case, the Court ruled that a baker could not be required to make a wedding cake for a gay marriage if it violated his own religious beliefs.  That ruling was narrowed to ONLY apply to that baker, not other bakers or wedding photographers or planners, or caterers or even website builders.  But the precedent could be expanded by future rulings. 

Free Speech

But Lorie Smith’s attorneys did not make religious arguments.  Instead, they based their case on the “Free Speech” clause of the First Amendment,. The claimed that Ms. Smith has the “free speech” right to post her message for gay couples.  

No one doubts the right of someone to be against gay marriages.  The question is can someone engaged in public commerce deny their business to folks that they are against.  

There is a logic in Smith’s argument.  It’s her “art”, her effort that creates the website, just like it was the baker’s “art” that created the cake.  It’s not like she’s renting them tables, or providing the deviled eggs.  If she is forced to take on a gay couple’s website, then she is required to use her creative talents to make  them “look good”, something that she doesn’t believe.  

And let’s get past the fact that she was never asked, and in fact, there is no damage done in this case.  The Supreme Court has accepted a “hypothetical” case.  But it also opened the door to a whole series of other hypotheticals, of “what ifs”.

What if she didn’t agree with biracial couples or Jewish couples, or Roman Catholic couples.  Should she have the “right” to not serve them?  What if, as came up in the Court, she was a photographer at the Mall, taking pictures of kids talking to Santa Claus.  What if she didn’t think black children should speak to a white Santa Claus, or vice versa.  Should she have the right to deny them?  And what if she opened a restaurant, and her “art” was the food.  Does she have the right to refuse service to gays, or to Jews, or to Blacks?

Jim Crow Redux

Listening to the Justices question the opposing counsel, much like the “notecard” professor back in Law School, it was clear that the conservative justices are very willing to rule in Smith’s favor, expanding the right to “not serve” based on “free speech” as well as “religious freedom”.  And what door does that open?

In 1896 the Supreme Court ruled for Jim Crow Laws that allowed separation based on race.  The legal “dictum” of that case was as long as the services offered were “equal”, they could be “separated” by race.  The Plessy v Ferguson ruling stood until 1954, when Brown v Board of Education finally overruled it, beginning the end of the Jim Crow era.

But Jim Crow was based on the assertion by bus companies, restaurants, hotels, stores and other public enterprises that they had “the free speech right” to choose which race they wanted to serve.  It doesn’t take a lot of “what ifs” to go from Lorie Smith’s website, to the local restaurant, to the Holiday Hotel down the street – or from gay couples to racial segregation.

This original essay was originally published in July. The US Supreme Court will hear the case on Wednesday, December 7th, and it’s worth looking at again. IF the Supreme Court agrees with this radical theory, it could change the outcome of elections for years to come.

Back to Class

There is a bomb set to blow up the entire election of 2024. It could make the Presidential votes of the citizens of the United States unimportant. The gerrymandered state legislatures could decide the election, without referring to the popular vote count. And it would all be “legal”. The fuse is already lit.

To understand that panicked warning, there’s a lot of explaining to do. So I need to take you back to class, to that early morning American Government (or POD) class, coffee cup in hand, with a chalk board and books instead of Smart Boards and computers.

The “School House Rock” version of our government is pretty simple.  There are three branches: the legislative, the executive, and the judicial.  The legislative writes the laws and the executive takes those laws and enforces them.  The Judiciary makes sure that those laws “fit” with other laws and the US Constitution, in a process called judicial review.  

If I was your teacher, you might remember a candle in a dark classroom, as President John Adams signed the documents creating the “midnight judges”.  That action started the sequence of events ending in the Supreme Court case Marbury v Madison. In that decision, the Supreme Court took the ability to determine whether Congressional actions are Constitutional, judicial review.

But it doesn’t “have” to be that way.

Gerrymandering on Steroids

The process of drawing legislative districts so that one party is specifically advantaged is “Gerrymandering”.  It was named after Elbridge Gerry, the Governor of Massachusetts in 1812. He signed a bill creating a district that looked like a salamander to guarantee a Democratic/Republican victory (that’s the Party that evolved into today’s Democrats).  The newspapers called it “Gerrymandering”, and it has been an American political tradition ever since.

Gerrymandering went on steroids with the development of advanced computing. It’s no longer a matter of this section trends to one party or the other. Computer modeling creates absolutely specific maps to maximize advantage, down to the street level or even specific addresses. Want to dilute the other party’s power? Make sure that their supporters are divided into multiple districts. Want to strengthen your own power? Draw districts to guarantee your base is “in charge”. Need to see an example – check out the map of Ohio’s Fourth Congressional District in 2020, represented by Jim Jordan.

After the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed by Congress, the US Supreme Court ruled that while districts could be Gerrymandered for political gain, they couldn’t be drawn to prevent racial minority candidates from winning elections. That was 1995 in Miller v Johnson. So the rule was pretty simple: when Ohio Republicans drew the Fourth District, it held up to Court scrutiny because it wasn’t “racially” based. But when it was demonstrated that North Carolina specifically divided black communities to weaken their voting power, it was unconstitutional, at least until 2019.

Saved in Court

In that year the Supreme Court majority, led by Chief Justice Roberts, stated that Federal Courts would no longer rule about Gerrymandering. He “kicked that” to State Court jurisdiction for judicial review. They would have final say over the actions of the state legislatures in drawing maps, and in making other election decisions.

After the 2020 election, both the state and federal courts confirmed the popular vote. The desperate Trump campaign went to them first. In more than sixty cases, “Stop the Steal” was debunked and dismissed. Even judges appointed by President Trump, including on the US Supreme Court, dismissed Trump’s claims against the valid election results. After Trump lost there, he went to the other tactics we heard about in the January 6th Committee hearings. One was to place extreme pressure on election officials to change results. Another was to convince state legislatures to ignore the popular vote and replace Biden electors with Trump’s. That all lead to the Insurrection of January 6^th.

The Eastman Plan

In that final push to overturn the election, lawyer John Eastman (of the “Green Bay Sweep” fame) put forward a radical theory of the American Constitution, called the “Independent State Legislature” (ISL).  It stated that the US Constitution gave state legislatures the exclusive power to determine how federal elections are conducted.  He based this concept on Article I, Section 4:

The times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing Senators.

Eastman theorized that the language was specific, and that the state courts or constitutions had no place in ruling on how the legislatures exercised that power. The argument is simple: if a state legislature, say Georgia, said that Donald Trump won, regardless of what the popular vote in the state was, then neither the Georgia state courts nor the Georgia state constitution could be used to overturn that decision.

(If you think a state legislature can’t ignore the state Supreme Court or the state Constitution – remember the DeRolph school funding decision in Ohio? The Court ruled the funding process unconstitutional- but the legislature refused to change it. That was twenty-five years ago, and the process still hasn’t changed).

School House Rock

Back to “School House Rock” for just a second. Eastman states that the Courts have no power of judicial review over elections, because the US Constitution doesn’t give them the specific power in Article I, Section 4 to review federal election decisions. So the three co-equal branches, aren’t; and the legislature is unchecked when it comes to those decisions.

The “ISL” theory flies in the face of traditional American government, and the precedent established by Marbury v Madison at the very beginnings of our Federal system.  It requires a restricted view of the US Constitution, only viewing the actual text in that specific section without looking at the rest of the document, or the history that followed it.  In any other time in our history, going all the way back to the Marshall Supreme Court in 1801, it would have been laughed out of the courtroom.

The Bomb

But we aren’t in any other time.  Today’s US Supreme Court is in the hands of “textualists” who are sympathetic to the “black and white” arguments that lawyers better than Eastman are making.  On Wednesday they will hear Moore v Harper, arguing that the North Carolina Courts have no place in deciding the legality of Gerrymandered districts in North Carolina.  They have no place, because, according to ISL, the legislature has the exclusive power to determine election decisions.

The decision will be published sometime in 2023.  It’s about Gerrymandering, but the ramifications would apply to election laws in every state.  And, as we now know, the current Supreme Court majority isn’t afraid of overturning precedent, or taking radical historic stands.  

What if those sixty courts didn’t have a chance to rule on “Stop the Steal”?  What if those few election officials who stood up against changing the results, didn’t have court backing?  The Trump/Republican Party tried to pack state legislatures and election offices with “Stop the Steal” believers in the 2022 elections.  Some of them will be the legislators “in charge” in 2024.  They will decide if the election results are “wrong”, and send their own slate of electors for President, this time with legislative approval, to be counted in the House of Representatives.

Moore v Harper is the fuse.  If the Court rules for ISL, the bomb will go off in 2024.  By then, it will be far too late to avoid the blast.

“If this be treason, make the most of it!” – Patrick Henry

Treason

Treason is a simple concept that most Americans understand.  It’s “to go against your country”.  That sounds simple enough.  We think of Americans who took the enemy’s side in war from Benedict Arnold to Tokyo Rose.  Some might even think of the Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who helped give the plans for an atomic bomb to the Soviet Union at the end of World War II.

And we all know the maximum penalty for treason, death.  It’s been that way literally from the beginning of written history, though for centuries there were even greater penalties.  “Corruption of Blood” is when a traitor’s family is held responsible for the treason. That is specifically banned in the US Constitution.  And, of course, for those who remember the end of the movie Braveheart, the English had an exquisite way of exacting the death penalty – drawing and quartering.  Without ruining anyone’s breakfast, it wasn’t pretty.  The US Constitution banned that as well, in the Eighth Amendment.

Treason is closely defined in the Constitution, Article III, §3, Clause 1:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

The Courts have defined that a treasonous person must “adhere” to “enemies” and give them aid and comfort.  So someone who is simply against the government of the United States, an anarchist for example, isn’t a traitor.  And neither is an insurrectionist.

Insurrection

So when we look at the events of January 6^th, 2021, we can’t look at them through the lens of treason.  Yes, there clearly were overt acts, and the entire world bore witness as they attacked the Capitol.  But while we might considering them as “levying war”; it’s difficult to define what they did as “war”. 

In the US Civil War, the leaders of the South were levying war, raising armies against the government, and even negotiating for foreign aid.  In fact, Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederacy, was charged with treason.  That was never prosecuted:  while US President Andrew Johnson wasn’t a Confederate, he did want the country to “get back to normal” and end Reconstruction as quickly as possible.  A Davis treason trial would prolong the Reconstruction, and reopen the wounds of war.  No one has been tried for treason in the United States since 1952, when an American citizen was convicted of aiding the Japanese in World War II. 

Sedition

The “Oath Keepers” did not commit treason in the Insurrection.  They did organize to attack the US Capitol, and they were prepared to wage an armed conflict (the weapons were “stashed” in hotels in Virginia).  And, they did launch military-style operations to find Vice President Pence and Speaker Pelosi.  That failed.  They were “insurrectionists”, but not traitors.  They committed a different crime under US law, a more complicated concept in law.  So they were seditionists.  

Sedition might be considering “treason-lite”.  It is not defined in the Constitution, but is simply part of the US Code of laws.  18 U.S. Code § 2384 states:

If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

Oath Keepers

The charge of sedition has not been used lightly by the Department of Justice.  Prior to the Insurrection, the last sedition trial was 2012 in Michigan (for MSNBC fans, the US Attorney who tried the case was analyst Barbara McQuade).  The judge threw the case out in mid-trial.  The problem was:  there is a thin line between a failed conspiracy the meets the definition of sedition, and “free speech” under the First Amendment.  The Judge ruled that the “evidence” the Government brought to show conspiracy was actually expression of “free speech”. 

So sedition, while easier to convict than treason, is still a very difficult charge to prosecute.  That makes the Oath Keepers trial result this week even more significant.  Five members of the so-called militia were tried for various crimes, all including seditious conspiracy.  Two leaders of the group, Stewart Rhodes and Kelly Meggs, were found guilty of sedition.  The other three were convicted of lesser charges.

Dealing Up

The prosecutors proved to the jury that there was a conspiracy among two or more people to; “…prevent, hinder or delay the execution” of Congressional certification of the Presidential election of 2020.  Rhodes and Meggs are going to Federal prison for years.  Out of the almost one thousand charged for the Insurrection, less than ten are held for sedition or conspiracy (Insider).  More significantly, all of those charged so far were outside of “Trump World”.  None of the financiers of the demonstrations on the Mall, or with direct connection to the Trump campaign, has been charged.

And it’s that “next step” that we await.  We know that Stewart Rhodes was in communication with Roger Stone.  Roger Stone was in the Willard Hotel “war room” with Steve Bannon, and  Bannon was in direct communication with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.  And, of course, the Chief of Staff communicated with his boss, the President of the United States.  

Rhodes and Meggs face long prison terms. The others charged now feel the same pressure before trial.  Will one or more of them “cut a deal” with Justice, and bring Stone, Bannon and Meadows directly in line for charges?  And who, then, comes next?

Warrior Burgers

As many of my former students can tell you – I am NOT a soccer guy.  I coached track and field, and wrestling, and cross country.  I was a sprinter, a wrestler, a swimmer and a tennis player.  But, except for brief excursions in England where I tried to learn the game from my cousins (I did better with cricket), soccer was not my sport.

In fact, soccer became even worse for me when I was part of the high school administration.  The sport for me was Tuesday and Thursday night duty at the soccer games, keeping the students in the stands, and worse, the parents, in control.  I didn’t learn much about soccer during those games, but I did find all sorts of creative ways of saying, “You can’t yell THAT at the (refs, coaches, other team, your kid).”  The saving grace; there was always a “Warrior Burger” out by the pine trees at the half, thanks to the Athletic Boosters.

Don’t get me wrong – I have incredible respect for the athleticism and talent soccer players bring to the field (pitch).  The conditioning required for ninety minutes and more of continual movement, marked by explosive sprints, deft turns, and physical blows, is incredible.  Add that to the learned talent of manipulating a ball with your feet, body, and head; sending it to the right place at the right time, make good soccer players amazing to watch.  It’s not just a place to scout for sprinters, jumpers and half-milers (though that works too). 

Late to the Game

So it’s surprising that I got caught in the US soccer team’s run at the World Cup.  I was late to that as well, drawn in by the match between the young US squad and venerable England.  Everyone expected an English blow-out.  Instead, the shocking Americans earned a 0-0 draw, putting themselves in contention to make the final, sixteen team “knock-out” round.

But the US needed to beat Iran, a win not a tie, to earn the right to the final rounds.  

The World Cup this year is in Qatar, a “modern” nation that still practices Islamic Sharia law.  An early controversy was when, at the last minute, the government banned alcohol from the soccer stadiums. Budweiser, who paid $75 million for the sales rights, was not pleased.  But more importantly, Sharia law views homosexuality as an abomination, possibly punishable by death.  In a modern sports world, being a gay athlete has become as readily accepted as being of a different culture or race.  Several national teams had some form of protest of Qatar’s actions. The German team removed their rainbow armbands, but took their team picture with hands covering their mouths.

And the Iranian team comes from a nation in crisis where women are demanding freedom from an even more restrictive version of the same Sharia Law.  Symbolically the protests focus on chadors, the religious head scarves that the “Morality Police” require women to wear.  But it goes far beyond that.  Thousands have been protesting in the streets for months.  Hundreds have been killed by police, hundreds more arrested, with some facing the death penalty.

Our Captain

The Iranian soccer team has had success.  All they needed was a draw with the US to reach the final sixteen.  And while the team publicly refused to sing the Iranian national anthem at their opening match, the state security apparatus put them “back in line”.  The players were threatened with imprisonment for themselves and their families still in Iran if they made any further protest.  As a coach, I don’t think those kind threats improve play.  Look at Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi team, where losing team members were physically tortured by the secret police.  The promise of torture didn’t make them better, just desperate.

Meanwhile the Iranian press took an opportunity to attack the young American team captain, 23 year-old Tyler Adams.  A reporter took Adams to task for “mispronouncing” Iran (‘eye-ran’ rather than ‘ear-rahn’), then asked, “… (A)re you okay to be representing a country that has so much discrimination against black people in its own borders?” Rather than respond in kind, Adams quietly apologized for the pronunciation, then said:

“There’s discrimination everywhere you go. In the U.S., we’re continuing to make progress every single day…through education, I think it’s super important. Like you just educated me now on the pronunciation of your country. It’s a process. As long as you see progress, that’s the most important thing.”

The Game – and Next

He was thoughtful and clear.  And the next day, the US team took it to the Iranians in a hard fought match.  The US took the lead with a dramatic score near the end of the first half, with twenty-four year old Christian Pulisic colliding with the Iranian goalie after his shot went in.  Pulisic suffered a “pelvic contusion” in the collision (a knee to the groin), and left the match for the hospital at the end of the half.  

The US was able to protect their lead through the second half, in spite of the more than desperate Iranian efforts.  After the seemingly unending “added-time” (time added onto the regulation match) the US team moved onto the round of sixteen.  Meanwhile, fireworks went off an Iran – the protestors celebrating a win by rivals that support their efforts.  And for the Iranian players – they laid on the field, avoiding for a few more minutes their fate.

Politics has always been a part of world sport.  Jesse Owens faced down Nazism in their home stadium in 1936.  Tommie Smith and  John Carlos endured the wrath of the US Olympic Committee for silently making their views clear in 1968. And Tyler Adams, quietly made his point as well – both in the press conference, then on the field.  

The US team plays the Netherlands on Saturday at 10am.  I’ll have to check that out.  I guess American soccer doesn’t like the Dutch either.

55 to 45

Forty-five percent of Ohioans vote for Democrats, but you sure can’t see it in State Government.  Every single executive state-wide office but one is held by a Republican.  The Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, Treasurer, Attorney General are all elected Republicans.  Even the State Supreme Court is controlled by the GOP, with four Republican Justices and three Democrats.  

Both Houses of the state legislature have “super-majorities” of Republicans, capable of not only passing legislation without the minority Democratic support, but even able to override the Republican Governor’s veto if needed.  In the state Senate, there are only eight Democrats to thirty-three Republicans, less than 20%.  In fact, there is only one statewide Democrat executive left in Ohio, US Senator Sherrod Brown.  He’s up for re-election in 2024.

Blue Wall

This is a state that voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.  Ohio was once part of the “Blue Wall” that collapsed in 2016 to give Trump the Presidential win.  Now national Democrats see Ohio, like Florida, as a pipe-dream and a waste of national campaign money.  2022 Democratic Senate candidate Tim Ryan is acknowledged to have run the “best” campaign in the nation – and lost to “Hillbilly Elegy” author JD Vance, 47% to 53%.  

Ohio is smug about the “efficiency” of its election process.  The highly gerrymandered districts consistently return their Republican representatives to the State House, where they consistently push the state farther to the right of the political spectrum.  When the Republican State Supreme Court ruled skewed maps unconstitutional, the rest of the state government simply stalled until there was no choice but to use them.  The mapping issue will be back in 2024, but Republicans needn’t worry.  The one vote (a Republican) on the Court that stood against their extremes will retire at the end of this year.  They should have a clear four vote majority now.

Loyal Opposition

What happens when there is no “loyal opposition”?  Sure, Ohio has unlimited “open carry” weapons laws.  There’s no need to have a permit, go get your gun.  Sure, Ohio led the way in abortion restrictions after the Dodds decision.  But all of that isn’t enough for the Republican “super-majority”.  To make sure that doctors “get it”, the President of Ohio Right-to-Life, an attorney and politician, was appointed to the state Medical Board.  

And when the citizens of Ohio surprisingly elected a Democratic majority to the State Board of Education, the State Legislature immediately moved to strip most of the Board’s power over public school policy.  

In fact, it really doesn’t matter what the citizens of Ohio want.  Like many states, Ohio has a “referendum” option.  Citizens can gather signatures and place proposed amendments to the State Constitution up for general vote.  That’s why there was even a question about the highly skewed political maps. But Republicans now in power find that too threatening. The new proposal – amend the Constitution to require a 60% super-majority for any voter-initiated Amendment instead of a simple majority.  

What are they worried about?  That citizens will place an abortion amendment on the ballot like Kansas and Michigan.  The Secretary of State is leading this campaign, and claims that it will protect the “people” from special interests.  What it will really do is maintain the power of the legislature from any possible check or balance.

Capital of Corruption

And Ohio has the dubious honor of being named one of the most corrupt states in the nation.  First Energy Corporation admitted paying a $61 million bribe to the former Speaker of the House, Republican Larry Householder.  He is still awaiting trial.   The  money was used to pay for Republican campaigns all over the state, and reaches to the Governor himself.  

The private education lobby spent millions of dollars to convince legislators to remove most financial controls from private, online schools.  The largest donor ran an online charter school, the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow. They falsified attendance records to maintain public funding.  The now failed operation still owes the state over $100 million dollars.

Nail the Door Shut

And in case Democrats decide to take a stab at regaining some ground, state election officials are taking further steps to make voting harder in the state – all in the name of “election security”.  They aren’t “closing the barn door after the horses got out”.  That door was never open, and the horses never left.  Voter fraud isn’t an issue in Ohio (or in the rest of the US).  Instead, they are nailing it shut tighter, so that fewer voters can make their voice heard.

It’s hard to imagine what it would take for Democrats to regain some influence in the Buckeye State.  Former State Democratic Chairman David Pepper is calling for a grass roots effort to rebuild a party that has only won the four-year Governor’s seat once in the past thirty years.  It sounds next to impossible, but there is one ray of hope – there really are 45% of Ohioans who already are willing to vote Democratic.  A ten percent swing, and the entire state could change.

At least, that’s the pipe-dream.

Classroom – 2050

It’s 2050.  A high school Advanced American History class is studying the “Trump Era” (historians lost the “label” battle – they wanted to call it the “Era of Insurrection”).  Classes still meet in a school building, by the way.  Educators discovered during the 2020 pandemic; “remote computer” education wasn’t the answer to everything that the early 2000’s thought it could be.  Somehow, human direct interaction:  seeing, feeling, hearing and sensing each other in a group, improves educational outcomes. 

But schools still use all sorts of technology.  While the fundamental truth of education is that it works best face to face, technology continues to improve the experience.  This history class is assembled, circling a holographic image of a ninety-four year old man in a straight-backed chair.  He’s a “local”, a retired teacher from bygone days when classes had chalkboards and kids had pencils.  The old man is very much alive, interacting with the class from his home.  At ninety-four, it’s more convenient to use technology than make the great physical effort of getting to the school and into the actual classroom.

Primary Sources

And why is this old teacher talking with the students?  In the “Trump Era” (2015–2030) he already was retired from teaching.  But during that time he wrote thousands of essays about what was going on.  The essays had no pretense of impartiality, the old teacher was clearly against the most controversial figure in American History.  Now some of his essays are used as “primary documents”. The students analyze, criticize, and evaluate them from the distance of twenty years after Trump finally left the scene.  The old man likened it to talking about McCarthyism when he was in high school.

Why Trump

The most significant question the students asked was how did so many Americans seem to blindly follow a man with so few qualifications to be the leader of the “free world”?  The slightly shimmering holograph had a complicated answer.  First, he said, they needed to understand what Americans looked like in 2015.  We were on the cusp of becoming the multi-cultural society we are in 2050, with no one race or religion a majority.  We even elected a Black man as President of the United States in 2008, a result that few thought was possible even two years before.  

And that made a lot of Americans, particularly male, white, Christian Americans, scared.  If a Black man could be President, what other societal changes might impact their lives?  Issues like gays serving in the military or getting married (the military policy was the infamous “Don’t ask – Don’t tell” and marriage was set by individual states), or transgendered folks being accepted into society, or the growing Hispanic population gaining political power; all threatened the cultural, religious and political status quo.

Add to that the growing economic inequality in America.  In 1989, the top 10% of income earners held 61% of the total household wealth, while the bottom 50% held 3.7%.  By 2016, the top 10% held 69%, the bottom 50% only 1.3%.  The phrase “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer” was truer than ever, creating a general feeling of frustration.  The economic upheaval of the Great Recession of 2008, when millions of lower income Americans lost their homes, savings, and retirement investments; only made things worse (Wiki).

Insecure Future

So many Americans saw a rapidly changing future and were unsure where their place would be.  They felt insecure financially, morally, and politically.   Add to that a massive change in information sharing.  Until the mid 2000’s, Americans had two mass information platforms:  broadcast and print media.  But with the growth in internet information sources, and the ability to access information individually on a pocket phone, America changed.  

Any and all messages could be seen on the internet.  There were few controls on how things were said, who told the truth and who lied, and what audience was targeted.  Social media found that creating and inflaming controversy generated income.   The billionaire owners like Zuckerberg at Facebook and Instagram and Musk at Twitter, where all about making more money.

History Rhymes 

So three factors:  changing demographics, economic uncertainty, and unlimited access to propaganda led many Americans to seek a mythical earlier time “…when things were better and simpler”.   The holograph smiled, and said “Remember your history.  America was there before.  As Mark Twain might have said, ‘History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.’”  

The hologram talked about the American South after Reconstruction ended, when most of the hard won rights of the newly free people were taken away by Jim Crow Laws, or the post-World War I era with dramatic media changes (Birth of a Nation), tens of thousands marching in the robes of the Ku Klux Klan, and America solving its social problems with Prohibition.  The racism and cultural unrest of the 1920’s continued throughout the Great Depression.

After all of the social changes of the early 2000’s, and all of the economic upheaval, many Americans were insecure and looking for stability.  In 2015 Donald Trump glided down a literal golden escalator, a mythical billionaire who had “all the answers”.  As Trump himself said, “I alone can fix this”.  And many Americans believed him.

The classroom teacher stepped in: “We are out of time for today, but Mr. Dahlman will be back tomorrow. Meanwhile, your homework assignment is to look up the following American political characters:  Woodrow Wilson, Charles Coughlin, and Joe McCarthy.  Briefly explain how they hoped to change America.”

The holograph carefully raised his coffee cup in farewell – and shimmered away.  He’d have said it looked like a Star Trek transporter – but none of the kids would understand.  Star Trek was eighty-five years ago.

This is a “Sunday Story” – even though it’s Black Friday. There are no politics here – just a tale of finding a position to get some sleep!!!!

Old Injuries

I spent a lot of my life as an athlete.   I started baseball at six, swimming at ten, then track and field and wrestling in Junior High.  But it wasn’t a sports injury when I tore cartilage in my knee.  I was in sixth grade, and in a fight  (about what I don’t remember anymore – but I’m sure I was right!), I was on top of a kid, I think the term is “pummeling” him.  His buddy toppled me off, and my knee got trapped under my original opponent.  I just remember all three of us realizing that my body rotated, but my right lower leg did not.  They both backed away – and I waited that second before the pain arrived.

Back then, it was six weeks on crutches and wear an ace bandage.  Then you were “healed”.  I actually didn’t finally get my right knee “repaired” until I was sixty, when my friendly Orthopedic cleaned out the damage.

Athlete/Coach

In high school wrestling there was a knee to the face, putting my nose up against my right cheek.  It was early in the season, and I thought I could “live” with it until wrestling was over.  Maybe I could, but my Mom sure couldn’t.  She screamed when I walked in the door, and we were in a late-hours Ear, Nose and Throat office that night.  Two days later – my nose was fixed.  My clearest memory was laying in the pre-op room, listening to the orderlies talk about the unconscious older man on the next gurney.  They were concerned – he needed several teeth removed, and they pulled them – then realized they pulled the “good” teeth. Only the “bad” teeth were left in his mouth.  At the time I thought – “I’m glad I only have one nose!”

After college track, I started coaching.  As a coach I was always keeping in shape, working out with my track athletes in the off-season, teaching middle schoolers how to wrestle (there was another broken nose) and running with the distance gang in the summer.  So I was pretty much an athlete throughout my forty year coaching career.  There were always some injuries, that damn knee, a couple of “sports” hernias, and an on and off back problem.  But no big deals.

The Odd Shoulder

So when I foolishly managed to roll a lawn tractor on top of myself, I didn’t think much of the odd feeling in my shoulder.  We flipped the tractor back over and went to work.  It wasn’t until a couple of days later that my arm didn’t work right.  When I reached up, all I felt was grinding and pain. Soon I wasn’t reaching up much anymore.  I went back to my Orthopedic, and after some discussion and an MRI, he put his hand on my good shoulder and said, “You won’t be satisfied unless we fix that thing”.  I trust Rod Comisar, and three weeks later I showed up for surgery.

When they said six weeks in a sling, then another five months of rehab, I really didn’t think a lot about it.  The sling was a pain, it’s my left shoulder and I’m left handed.  I couldn’t even type, my preferred means of expression these days.  But I did my twice-daily therapy, looking forward to the words “no sling” and “weight bearing”.  

Here I am, just eight weeks out.  The sling – well I don’t wear it at all in the daytime.  But, oddly, it’s an almost instant pain-killer at night, and I’m still trying to “wean” myself out of its nocturnal comforts.  

More Pain

And about pain:  I didn’t realize shoulder surgery is ALL about pain.  The knee you could isolate and ice, the nose was a couple of day headache, the hernias were a couple of weeks then back in action.  But there is no way around a shoulder.  Every move, every cough, every change of position impacts both shoulders.  So it’s been a pain from the beginning – especially when trying to sleep.  I spent six weeks in a recliner, unable to even lay flat comfortably in bed.  And now, a couple of weeks later, I’m learning how to sleep again, sometimes with the sling and sometimes without.  But there’s always that movement.  I instinctively put my hands behind my head as a sleep – it’s a lousy way to wake up.  No wonder one of the first questions Dr. Comisar asks is “…are you sleeping?”  The answer often is not so much.

Physical therapy takes me back to my weight room days, conditioning and competing with the kids. The battle cry of weights in the 1980’s and 90’s was “NO PAIN, NO GAIN” (and NO steroids).  All of my current physical therapists must have trained in the same rooms.  Pain is NOT  guide to my therapy exercise. Pain, in fact, may mean I’m doing things right.  But who’d have thought:  here I am, lifting a can of corn (one pound) overhead and back for two sets of ten – and not only hurting but finding my arm shaking with exhaustion!! If I’m at one pound now – four more months doesn’t seem long enough to get back to anything that I consider normal.

Turkey Weight 

And Thanksgiving was a true threat to my wellbeing.  If my “weight bearing” is one pound, then how do I get a fifteen pound turkey in and out of the smoker?  (I managed to use my right to get it in, and my son Joe helped get it out.  It was delicious by the way, hickory smoked for six hours and so juicy and tender – even the white meat!!!).  But there was that pan of cheesy potatoes; I didn’t think much about that until my re-attached bicep suggested that I was past my limits.  I quickly switched position, no damage done.  But the day was definitely a workout.

More pain, more gain – that’s the battle cry now.  I depend on the awesome team of physical therapists to set the limits.  And I AM listening to them.  I just want to get back to normal:  lifting up the “Chewy” pet food boxes on the front porch, sleeping on my stomach with my hands under my head, reaching for the top shelf without getting up on my toes (OK, I am short, so that happens anyway).  

There’s a barbell set waiting for me to get to five pounds.  And the stretchy  tubular bands are arriving today (got to be the right age – “and Tubular Bells!!” of Exorcist fame).  And there’s good occupational therapy coming up as well – the outdoor Christmas decorations need to go up!!!!  

Maybe I’ll sleep better tonight.

Pizzagate

It seemed like a bad joke gone wrong.  Back in 2016, when the nation was already shocked by the ascendancy of Donald Trump, Edgar Welch walked into Ping Pong Pizza in Washington, DC with an AR-15.  He fired the gun at a door at the back of the restaurant, blasting open the lock of a closet.  Welch was searching for the stairs to the basement, where he was certain children were being held for trafficking.  There is no basement to the Ping Pong Pizza building.

“Pizzagate” was a joke to most of the nation, a man so steeped in the craziness of the back alleys of the internet, that he truly believed that Hillary Clinton, the nominee for President, led a Democratic cabal of pedophile child traffickers, some hidden in the basement of Ping Pong Pizza.  Part of the “proof” of the conspiracy was “coded” into the Russian hacked emails of Clinton campaign manager John Podesta.  In its most extreme version, the Democrats actually drank the blood of those children to maintain some form of immortality, as well as more “regular” pedophilia.  It was “nuts”, just beyond crazy.  But there was Welch, with an actual AR-15, firing off shots and looking for the basement.

QAnon

A lot of this craziness amalgamated into the QAnon conspiracy theories.  Most normal American citizens shook their head at the lunacy:  John Kennedy Jr. returning from a faked death to lead the nation, the American “secret police” ready to swoop in and return Donald Trump to his rightful place as President.  But Trump, and some of the politicians who aspire to be “Trump 2.0”, continue to “dabble” in QAnon.  You can see it at a Trump rally, the “Q” apparel in the audience, the QAnon “theme song”played in the background, the “Q” salute by many in the crowd.  

There’s a line from QAnon to the current Republican talking points.  And it runs straight through Trump, and right to the shootings at the Q Night Club in Colorado Springs. 

Indoctrination Centers 

I taught in the public schools for thirty-five (and a half) years.  I am a “true believer” that teachers can’t “indoctrinate” kids.  If we could, then schools wouldn’t need my last job, the “discipline guy” at a high school, the Dean of Students.  If we really had that kind of influence, kids would do their homework, and pay attention in class, and not sell drugs in the bathroom or make love on the floor of the auditorium.  But they do.

But some Republican candidates have found a way to energize voters by creating a view of public schools as “Democrat indoctrination centers”.  Good schools look at their students, some of whom are gay, or transgendered, or even “furries” (students who dress like animals).  They try to find a way to reach those students, to make them part of their school community.  But somehow that makes schools “Democrat”.  And since, according to QAnon, Democrats are pedophiles, it all fits a certain crazy sense.  “They are trying to indoctrinate our kids”.  

Energizing the Crazies

Think that’s not real?  Millions of dollars are going into school board candidates throughout the country, from groups like the 1776 project.  Part of their goal is to control curriculum, to end the mythical “Critical Race Theory” they think is taught in schools.  But another part is to attack schools that try to normalize gay and transgendered children.  That “normalization” fits right into the QAnon theories, though those groups would deny any connection.

Still not convinced?  Mike Pompeo, former Secretary of State and a potential Republican candidate for President in 2024 just announced: 

“Who’s the most dangerous person in the world?  Is it Chairman Kim, is it Xi Jinping?  The most dangerous person in the world is Randi Weingarten (President of the American Federation of Teachers).  It’s not a close call. Who’s the most likely to take this republic down?  It would be the teacher’s unions, and the filth that they’re teaching our kids…”

Schools are teaching “acceptance” of those that are different.  But accepting the LGBTQ community flies in the face of  significant portion of the Republican base, who are co-opted by QAnon conspiracy theories.  So if schools accept the LGBTQ, then, like Weingarten, they must be indoctrinating children into being Democrats.

Disaster

Pompeo knows better.  But he’s willing to “dabble”, just as Trump is, in order to reach that part of the Republican base who will vote in the Republican primary.  And that “dabbling” means advocating, “in camera”, for the craziness.

If the LGBTQ community is such a threat to American culture, how hard is it for those on the fringes of our society, already mentally unstable and with ready and easy access to weapons and ammunition, to take “control” of the situation.  Whether it was Welch storming the Ping Pong Pizza store in 2016, or Anderson Lee Aldrich at the Q Night Club last week, they are “getting the message”.  It’s not just from the dark corners of the internet anymore.  It’s from some of the highest office holders in the nation.  

Poll Watcher

I used to be a “poll watcher”.  I knew all of the ins and outs of finding the most recent polls for any specific race.  And I was a poll “believer”.  I thought I had a good understanding of how pollsters reached their conclusions.  But the last few years, and particular the last few weeks, show how wrong I was.

Polls are based on “pre-conceptions” of what the voting public will do.  If the pre-conceptions are wrong, then so are the polling results.  It happened in 2020 (Biden was over-estimated, the rest of the Republican ticket under-estimated) and now again in 2022 (national “models” didn’t work).  So I’m letting go.  I’m not checking the polling “pulse” at Real Clear Politics and 538 anymore.  I trust my own intuition more than a trust theirs.

Bad Leader

I spent the morning listening to “other Republicans” (not Trump) speaking to the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas from last weekend.  It was an early look at the Republican 2024 Presidential slate:  DeSantis, Christie, Pompeo, and Pence among then.  And all of them pointed out that Donald Trump wasn’t good for the Republican Party.  They highlighted the poor quality of candidates that Trump foisted on the Party in 2022; folks like Dr. Oz and Herschel Walker.  They never – never said anything about Trump being a threat to the American democracy or the Constitution. He was just a “bad leader” who picked losers. 

And that’s the rub.  My intuition, backed by the polling I no longer trust, says that about 30% of Americans are committed to the personhood of Donald Trump.  That same intuition tells me that about 35% of Americans would vote for the proverbial “Yellow Dog” rather than vote for Trump.  And that leaves the remaining 35% of Americans that I just don’t understand.

The Threat

To me, Donald Trump is an existential threat to America.  He is the man who led an insurrection, one that came perilously close to overthrowing our Constitutional system.  He did that in full public view, exhorting his millions of social media followers to come to Washington, then openly sending them to the Capitol to force the Congress to throw out the confirmed Electoral votes.  There’s a lengthy list of things that Trump did in his Presidency that I disagree with.  Many of them are unforgiveable “mortal sins” in my mind.  But to threaten the Constitution itself should be a “mortal sin” to everyone – and the fact that it’s not makes me crazy.

I hear all of those Republican leaders tell their Party that they should turn from this “bad leader” and electoral “loser”, and chose them (of course).  But there is still the what-if question.  What-if Trump still wins the Party’s nomination?  They all say, from Mitch McConnell and Bill Barr on down, that faced with the choice of a Democrat who supports the Constitution, and a former President who demonstrably does not:  they will vote for the former President.

That raises the question:  what is the existential threat posed by the Democrats, so dangerous that it somehow over-shadows the danger posed by a second Trump Presidency?  Joe Biden is a moderate Democratic President, and it’s likely that if he wasn’t the nominee (he will be), that the next generation of Democrats will moderate as well.  But, to those other Republican leaders, that moderation must be worse than direct, fundamental threats to the Constitution.  

Winning

Or is this something else?  Perhaps “winning, power, money” is more important than our Constitution itself.  Or, to be charitable, perhaps the Pompeo’s and McConnell’s believe that our Constitution is so strong, so based, that it can survive another Trump.  And meanwhile, they can take their power and money literally, “to the bank”. 

I don’t share their faith that our National structure can survive another run of Trumpism.  We were on a knife edge on January 6^th.  Had the mob found Pence or Pelosi or Schumer or the others, the results would have been very different.  Trump would have had the crisis he hoped for, and would have declared a national emergency.  It’s hard to say what would have come from that.

But Republican leadership, and a significant percentage of the undecided 35%, are willing to risk that.  I just don’t get it.

Screaming Foul

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a “Special Counsel” yesterday.  Jack Smith is coming home from prosecuting war crimes at the International Court at the Hague, to take on the biggest issue in the United States, the “elephant in the room” of American politics.  Jack Smith will determine whether the twice impeached former President of the United States, running for the office again, will be charged with crimes.

There’s an old political saying:  if both sides are screaming foul, you must be doing something right.  The right-wing media is howling – how dare the Justice Department even think of prosecuting the former President.  The left-wing media is screaming too – why isn’t Trump already in handcuffs, “perp-walked” through a Federal Court.   

Undodgeable Bullet

And there are those who say that “Old Granny” Merrick Garland is trying to “dodge the bullet”.  By appointing a Special Counsel, he is somehow trying to avoid making the decision of whether a former President of the United States will be tried for crimes.  But, as we learned so clearly in Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation, in the end, it is the Attorney General, the head of the Justice Department, who makes the final decision.  As Harry Truman would say, “The buck stops there”.  This is an undodgeable missile.  Charge or “no bill”, it will ultimately be Garland’s decision.

Disingenuous

I think both right and left are being disingenuous.  Even the most “right” of commentators, the diehard Trump supporters, cannot be “OK” with all of those classified documents scattered around Mar-A-Lago like leaves in the wind.  These are the same people who wanted the death penalty for Edward Snowden, and cried treason when President Obama commuted Chelsea Manning’s sentence.  Trump had compartmentalized intelligence files, more secret than “Top Secret”, stuffed in the desk drawers at his private supper club next to his will and testament.  Everyone, even his most ardent supporters, deep down must be shocked.

The left-wing commentators, my guys, are smugly saying that the Department of Justice prosecutes politicians all the time.  They cite the case of Senator Bob Menendez and Congressmen Chris Collins, William Jefferson and Rick Renzi, all of whom were indicted while in office.  “Justice didn’t need a ‘special counsel’ for them,” they say – “why should Trump be treated any differently”.  

But that’s just foolish.  Donald Trump is not just some Congressman with money in his freezer from New Orleans, or even a Senator with a rich dentist friend in New Jersey.  The United States has been prosecuting politicians since the nation began.   Even a former Vice President, Aaron Burr, was charged with treason in 1807 for trying to break off the Midwest from the United States and form a separate nation.  But today’s situation is, like it or not, different.

A President

The disgraced former President, who received 74 million votes in the last election, the second most ever in US history, is running for the office again.  To somehow think he’s like Menendez, or Collins, or even Aaron Burr, is just stupid.  Much as “my guys” would like to see an orange man in an orange jump suit, there are other considerations.   In fact the only real precedent was established in 1974 by President Gerald Ford.  Richard Nixon, Ford’s predecessor, resigned to avoid impeachment, but faced a myriad of criminal charges.  Ford pardoned him for everything, ending the Watergate Era and “…our long national nightmare”.  So the fact the Garland is even proceeding with criminal investigations against Trump is new ground.

Don’t get me wrong.  Nixon was charged with a lot of “personal” crimes:  tax evasion, covering up a felony, bribing other government officials to lie. Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski had the charges all lined up.  Looking back with fifty years of hindsight, maybe he should have been tried.  “All citizens are equal before the law”, was what I cried then.  Maybe, if Nixon was put “in the dock”, it might have set a better precedent.

But Nixon was already disgraced.  We didn’t really need a trial or Nixon in handcuffs to know what he did.  So moving the nation on, past Watergate, was at least a legitimate goal.

Core of Democracy

The issue with Donald Trump is that he struck at the very core of our Constitutional Democracy.  He not only used the Presidency to enrich himself, but he attempted to overthrow the legitimate voice of the people.  He led an insurrection.  What happened on January 6^th is unparalleled in American history, and more important even than the hubris of keeping classified documents on a desktop in a supper club.  Nixon was a crook.  Trump was, and is, a threat to our Democracy.

And for that reason, Americans need to have a “full airing” of what took place.  The only way to achieve that airing, is to have Donald J. Trump on trial.  Let the prosecution lay out its case to the jury, and the American people.  Let the defense make their best effort to show that it wasn’t Trump’s fault, nor his responsibility.  Every effort should be made to ensure due process, and the whole case must be made to the jury, judge and America.

Screaming-frustrated or screaming-resentful:  every step must follow “the form” of fairness – due process.  And that’s why Merrick Garland is right to appoint a Special Counsel to determine whether to bring charges. Then let the courts determine whether a former President of the United States broke the law.  And if he’s found guilty, then let the current President of the United States determine whether we want the spectacle of that former President in jail.

Kitchen Table

Some Republican candidates in the mid-terms had it right.  They weren’t talking about the 2020 election, or the Insurrection, or supposed FBI over-reach.  They made “kitchen table” arguments.  Inflation is too high, it’s eating up gains in income and making living harder.  Urban crime is increasing. In fact, homicides and rapes are down, but armed robberies and assaults are up (USA).  But those facts aren’t the “feelings” of suburban voters, who worry about going “into” the city, or having the city come “out” to them.  

Those were the more successful Republican candidates in the last election.  The election-denying, QAnon echoing candidates were the ones who lost.  And while Democrats might feel good about retaining control of the Senate and several state governorships, in the final result, Republicans eked out control of the House of Representatives.  Speaker Pelosi will have to pass the gavel to, probably, Kevin McCarthy, and take her place as a “back-bench” Democratic member.  

With two years to prove their worth as a governing faction, you’d think House Republicans would be talking about their plans to reduce inflation and crime.  Their “first impression” as a governing Party  should be about the issues that got them elected to office in the first place.  That is the “quid-pro-quo” that voters expect:  you gain the vote by your promises of action, now act.

But that’s not what’s happening.

About Hunter

“Keep it about Hunter Biden.  This is kind of a big deal we think.  If we can keep it about Hunter Biden, that would be great.”  – James Comer (R) of Kentucky (press conference, 11/17/22).

Republican Congressmen Jim Jordan and James Comer held a press conference yesterday.  Jordan expects to be Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Comer Chairman of the House Oversight Committee.   Comer made it clear: the first priority of “his” Committee will be the investigation of Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden.  And Jordan also set his priority:  supposed FBI “overreach” in investigating the twice-impeached former President and the January 6^th rioters.

The Republican priorities are crystal clear.  

In 2012, Republicans also controlled the House of Representatives.  They used their committee chairmanships to lead six different investigations into the death of US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in an attack on the US embassy in Benghazi, Libya.  The investigations cost Americans more than $6.5 million over the next four years (WAPO).  

The Benghazi hearings were used as a cudgel to beat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  And while Secretary Clinton ultimately testified to the committee for eleven hours straight, responding to every question;  an off-shoot of the investigation found that she had a private e-mail server for part of her electronic correspondence.  That became a huge campaign issue in 2016, and the FBI investigation of it undoubtedly cost her the election, and cost America the four year Presidency of Donald Trump.

So while Americans might wish that the Republicans “in charge” would deal with the serious problems of the country; it’s more likely we will be fed a steady diet of Hunter Biden, Anthony Fauci, and “how bad” the FBI is.  None of that will “Make America Great (Again)”, but what it will do is further polarize the nation, in hopes that Trump, or one of his indistinguishable substitutes, can get elected President in 2024.  

Democratic Response

What can Democrats do?  They can hope that instead of repeating the history of 2016, Biden and Congressional leadership can replicate the history of 1996.  In 1994 Republicans took over the House of Representatives, and their actions gave Democrats a perfect “foil” to build Bill Clinton’s position to retain the Presidency against Kansas Senator Robert Dole.  Clinton focused on making the House, and particularly Speaker Newt Gingrich, the “bad guy” in the government.   He was able to successfully do that, particularly when Gingrich took credit for shutting the government down for three weeks over a budget issue.

You can be sure that Democrats will be talking about abortion rights and Medicare and Social Security and even budget issues; as Republicans desperately search through Hunter Biden’s laptop for scandal and crime.  It will be up to the American people to determine which is more important.

Winners 

While control of the House of Representatives is still unclear, there are clear winners and losers from the mid-term elections of 2022.  The big winner is Joe Biden, who managed to dodge what all the commentators and pollsters saw as a looming “Red Wave”.   “Sleepy Joe” Biden out-foxed them all, placing democracy and personal rights at the head of the Democratic agenda.  All of the commentators “in the know” knew the election was all about inflation, crime and the border, the Republican talking points.  But they didn’t “know” as much as they thought they did.

Those commentators were  misogynistic and lacked belief in the American people.  The “all knowing ones” thought that women, with new voter registration in record numbers, would forget all about the Dodds abortion decision and instead vote solely on inflation.  And they thought that Americans in general were so short-memoried, that the Insurrection of January 6^th wouldn’t matter. As it turned out, both those issues did.

Losers

The biggest loser of the day was Donald Trump, the twice impeached and disgraced former President of the United States.  With a few exceptions (sadly, one here in Ohio) Trump anointed candidates fell flat.  In Michigan and Arizona, where the full slate of Republican statewide candidates were election deniers, the Trumpers were completely turned away.  

Trump announced his third run for the Presidency last night.  Two weeks ago that probably made some “Trump” sense (if Trump ever makes sense).  Anticipating a “Red Wave” election with his chosen candidates doing well, Trump could strike quickly to retain the leadership of the Republican Party, and demand loyalty in another bid for power.  All of the air would be out of the political room, and other Republican Presidential hopefuls, most notably Ron DeSantis of Florida, would immediately be on the defensive.

But Trump now announced at his point of greatest weakness.  That, of course, still makes “Trump Sense”.  When you’re losing, there’s nothing better than acting like a winner.  He’s creating a whole tale, where he is the “only One” the people trust.  “Only He” can fix the nation’s so-called problems. We’ve heard this song before.  To make the point, he’ll say that as the election results show, there’s no one else that can fill his shoes.

Other Reasons

But Trump has two more pressing reasons to begin a Presidential campaign, right now.  The first is money.  The disgraced former President is facing enormous legal fees, defending against two Federal investigations, two state investigations, and several civil suits.  The Republican National Committee is finally refusing to pay for Trump’s legal bills, and he needs a ready source of money to defend himself.  There’s no easier way to raise money than to offer to his assembled masses the opportunity to “Make America Great Again” by contributing to the Trump Legal Defense Fund, the Trump 2024 Campaign Fund.

Department of Justice

And by declaring for President now, Trump puts added pressure on the Department of Justice.  No American President has ever been indicted for a crime after he left office.  Nixon was set for indictment, but his successor President Ford pardoned him before charges could be brought.  And while some considered indicting George W Bush for allowing torturing of captured terrorists, President Obama nixed that idea.  

Attorney General Merrick Garland is a man of precedent.  He would have made a solid “middle” in the US Supreme Court, a “leftier” John Roberts (but Mitch McConnell never let him be considered).   There is no precedent for indicting a former President.  So it will take a mountain of evidence, an irresistible force of material, to push Garland to indict Trump.  

By declaring for President now, Trump will add more friction to that decision.  Garland is loath to interfere in domestic politics.  Department of Justice policy discourages bringing charges within sixty days of an election, and even though the 2024 election is more like sixty hundred and fifty days away; Garland will have to consider that factor as well – and Trump knows it.

Cover Their Base

Meanwhile other Republican leaders are busy “covering their bases”.  Potential candidate Ted Cruz suggests other candidates, including himself, before Trump.  But he would support Trump if nominated, and John Cornyn says the same.  Lindsay Graham is already singing the praises of Trump’s dark message of American carnage.

And speaking out for the first time is former Vice President Mike Pence.  In an interview with ABC news, he made it clear that he blames Trump for putting him and his family at risk on January 6^th.  He hasn’t been willing to tell his story in the almost two years since the insurrection.  Now, after the mid-term election results are clear, Pence grew the – courage – to tell the American people the truth of the Insurrection.   We can view that as his opening “bid” in the Republican Presidential primary.

When Gerald Ford replaced Richard Nixon as President in 1974, he told America that “…our long national nightmare is over.”  The nightmare of Donald Trump truly began in November of 2016.  We hoped it was finally over on Election Day of 2020.  But like Napoleon Bonaparte, or the Terminator, Trump seems to keep coming back again and again.  And like those two figures, we can’t count Trump out.