Category: Uncategorized

Stockholm Syndrome

 …Stockholm syndrome, in which hostages begin to develop positive feelings toward their captors, an effect thought to occur when victims’ initially frightening experiences with their kidnappers are later countered with acts of compassion or camaraderie by those same individuals.

The Stockholm Syndrome:  when a person taken hostage develops positive feelings towards their captor.  While this psychological state was named in 1973 after a bank robbery turned hostage situation in Sweden, Americans know it best from the Patty Hearst kidnapping.

In 1974, the nineteen year old heir to the Hearst newspaper fortune Patty Hearst was kidnapped by leftist radicals who called themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army.  They held her for nineteen months, demanding that her parents donate millions to feed the poor.  Her father donated $2 million to a San Francisco food distribution group.   Two months after her captivity,  now calling herself Tania, she joined her kidnappers in a bank robbery, holding an M-1 Rifle on the customers.  She recorded an audiotape for the public, stating that she had become a member of the SLA.

For the next several months, she crisscrossed the nation with her fellow SLA members, participating in multiple crimes.  While the majority of the group were killed in a shoot out with police, Hearst and a few others survived and tried to revive the SLA.  After participating in a bank robbery where a customer was murdered, Hearst was finally captured in in a San Francisco apartment.  On getting booked into jail, she gave her occupation as an “urban guerilla.”

Hearst was ultimately convicted of bank robbery and sentenced to thirty-five years.  She served less than two:  her sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter, and ultimately she was pardoned by Bill Clinton.  

As a “Democrat/Resistancer” I watch the leaders of the Republican Party and wonder, have they become victims of the Stockholm Syndrome?  There certainly are true believers, the Lewandowskis, Millers and Sanders.  And there are those who have found Mr. Trump as someone “clearing the road” for them to lead a similar political life: Jim Justice, the governor of West Virginia, a multi-millionaire who refuses to even live in the capital of the State, is a great example of that.

But what of the “regular” Republican leadership, what happened to them?  Mitch McConnell is following his singular course of packing the Federal judiciary with his ideological view, and obviously is willing to pay almost any other price to achieve that goal.  But what about the Republicans that seemed “normal”:  Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, Thom Tillis, and all of the rest who have taken an almost sycophantic position to Mr. Trump?

Christie, Graham and Paul all ran against Trump in 2016.  They all were pounded mercilessly by Trump criticism, tweet, and insult.  Like Patty Hearst when she was first kidnapped, they were faced with political death.  Don’t believe me – check the further career of Jeb Bush.   So they have made the choice, or maybe they in fact fell into the Stockholm Syndrome. If you listen to those politicians today, agreeing with every political move, justifying every outlandish tweet, and becoming “the President’s Men,” they aren’t pretending to agree with Trump. They are true believers, members of the cult.

Even the much-maligned Jeff Sessions still longs to be part of the “Trump Army,” spouting the Trump rhetoric even after his political neutering by the President.   

These “men of the Senate” are willing to give away the power and prerogatives of that body, allowing the President to set precedents that they would never accept from a Democrat.  They have allowed Mr. Trump’s perceived political influence to threaten them so much, that they have abandoned long cherished principles, and friends like John McCain, to kowtow to him.  Their incredible one-hundred eighty degree turnabout on tariffs is only the latest example.

Anticipation of political death must be so terrifying, that men of power are willing to give up, give in, and join the “SLA” to keep their careers.   They need to give up their names:  Lindsey, Thom, Marco, Rand, Chris, Jeff:  they can all be “Tania” now.

There is a 1990’s movie, made before the Clinton scandals and the extreme polarization of today’s political world.  “Dave” with Sigourney Weaver and Kevin Kline, was a story of a President who has a stroke, and his lookalike, Dave, is put in his place.  Dave ran a temporary job service in “real life,” and brought that perspective to his illegitimate Presidency.

In the climatic scene – Dave as President speaks to the Congress, and says: 

See, there are certain things you should expect from a President.  I ought to care more about you than I do about me… I ought to care more about what’s right than I do about what’s popular… I ought to be willing to give this whole thing up for something I believe in… (Dave “the whole truth”)

It’s an old movie, but it’s a message that the “Tania’s” in the Senate ought to hear. It might remind them why they were elected, and what their duty to America should be.

The Noose

Every junior high kid has a “talent,” something they can do that other kids can’t.  Some can cross their eyes, some wiggle their ears, some are double jointed and can pull their shoulders together.  I had a couple: I could “roll” my tongue like a wave, and I could tie a “legal” noose.

A “legal” noose is one with thirteen wraps.  It was something I must have looked up; in all of my Boy Scout training in knots and lashings, I don’t ever remember the “noose” class. But somehow I learned how to tie one, along with a bowline-on-a-bite and a diagonal hitch.  In junior high you could usually tell what classrooms I was in; the drawstrings for the blinds would often have one of my knots tied into the ends.  A noose was part of the repertoire.

In 1969 in Kettering, Ohio outside of Dayton, I never thought of the “noose” as a racist symbol. I thought of it as a cool knot with a symbolic history in the American West; that’s where the horse thieves and the murderers would find themselves, literally, at the end. And I could make a “legal” one.

Kettering was a very, very, white community in the late 1960’s.  It was a residential suburb of Dayton, a town that was booming with Delco, National Cash Register, Frigidaire, and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.  In my junior high there was one black family, my two friends from Scouts, but no one else.  I don’t know what they thought of nooses, or whether they knew they were mine. 

It’s a different world today, fifty years later.  We have a much greater understanding of the symbolism in racism, from calling someone a “boy” or worse, to “driving while black,” and to the “noose.”  We now know, and should have realized even back in 1969, that a noose is the symbol of lynching, of enforcing racist standards by torture and murder.  While in 1969 I didn’t have any idea of that, in 2019 one would have to be willfully ignorant not to make the connection. I wish that someone had told me of the racial significance then, I would have stopped in a second.  I didn’t believe that message then, or now, and I wouldn’t have wanted to send it.

This week in an elementary school in Palmdale, teachers found a noose tied into a length of rope. Palmdale is a community in Southern California.  Diversity is a big part of Palmdale, with 24.5% of the population white-Hispanic, 24.5% non-Hispanic white, and 15% black.  In 2019, finding a noose in a length of rope, even in an elementary school, sends a message. The teachers should have read it.

Instead, they took a group picture, four elementary teachers, smiling, pointing at the noose held up by one of them.  The photographer was their principal.   And like all such pictures, taken as a “joke” for the inner circle of teacher-friends, it got out.  The local TV station picked up the story (CBS 9) and the whole community blew up.

The community is right. Even though these are veteran and respected teachers, they have, at the least, revealed an ignorance and insensitivity to racism.  At the worst, they are in fact insensitive racists.  Either way, they have brought into question their twenty-year careers, and shaken the confidence of the community in their classes, and their school system.

As for the Principal behind the camera, she was applying to become Superintendent.  Now she, and her four staff members, are on paid administrative leave.  Whether they keep their jobs or not, they have displayed incredibly poor judgment, and lost the trust of the parents in Palmdale.

It wasn’t right for a thirteen year old back in 1969, even though there was no “intent.”  For five seasoned educators in 2019 California, or anywhere else in the United States, it is unacceptable.   We all need to get the message.

This is Our Solution?

Kids shooting other kids at school:  it seems that since the 1990’s we have been struggling with how to deal with this. We have tried lockdowns, run aways, and throwing rocks, balls, and soup cans.  The police went from waiting outside to negotiate, to charging in to take down the shooter.  

But the drumbeat of shootings goes on and on and on.  In the last two weeks we have had two school shootings, one in Charlotte, North Carolina, and one in suburban Denver.  And while we adults have come up with all sorts of ideas and training to prepare our students for what seems like the inevitable attack, nothing has worked.

So the students have found their own way.  Someone; some heroic kid, attacks the shooter.  They are likely to be killed in the attempt, but as long as the shooter doesn’t have an assault rifle, there’s a reasonable chance that the first attacker will slow up the carnage.  Then, others will have time to run, or to mass and overwhelm the “gun.”

Riley Howell:  he was a soccer goalie in high school, and now was studying environmental science.  When a shooter entered his classroom at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Riley Howell chose to attack rather than hide.  He knocked the shooter down, pinning him until the police arrived.  Riley died from gunshot wounds.  

Kendrick Castillo: four days from his graduation at the STEM School at Highland Ranch, he wanted to become a Marine.  He was a four-year member of the STEM School robotics club. When the shooter came through his classroom door, he charged rather than hide under a desk.  He took the shots, but knocked the shooter down.  His classmates then controlled the shooter until the police arrived.  Kendrick died from gunshot wounds. 

We need to celebrate their heroism.  We need to say their names, rather than the names of the shooters.  We need to be proud of their sacrifice, and we need to recognize the sorrow of their parents and friends.  These were obviously two very special men.

But Riley and Kendrick also represent an absolute failure of our society to deal with our problem.  We have given the students nothing:  no solution, no way to avoid what seems to be a more and more frequent tragedy.  We have said:  we can’t fix this, do it yourself.

We have allowed our political divisiveness to handcuff our actions.  Politicians; those elected officials to whom we have entrusted the honor of finding solutions to our problems, are so afraid of offending radicalized gun owners, that they do nothing.  Nothing, that is, besides sending their thoughts and prayers to the parents of Riley and Kendrick.

There are lots of solutions that might take the guns out of the hands of the shooters.  But we are so paralyzed by political fear that we can’t even agree to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill, much less kids at the door of the classroom.  We have checked our courage at that door, and allowed these young adults, and the ones who have been marching since Parkland, to carry it for us.

We, adults in the United States, are making a choice.  We are ALLOWING this to go on.  We are making the political choice to do what is easy, nothing; rather than what is hard. By not reaching a solution, coming up with a plan better than sacrificing the best or throwing soup cans; we are failing the future, our children.

Other nations do it. Whether you like the solution or not, New Zealand took less than two weeks to react to a white nationalist attack, and ban assault weapons.  Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and most of the rest of the industrial world has found a way to protect their kids.  

We need to overcome our impotence.  We need to stop asking our best to sacrifice themselves to protect their classmates. We need to act as adults and find real solutions. It’s what our kids expect us to do.

No Taxation Without Representation

The “Sons of Liberty” were some of the “up and coming” men of Boston.  They were merchants and craftsmen, journalists and lawyers, and plenty of common workers.  They believed that they were English citizens, with the right to representation in the legislature.  But they had none, and resented taxes that were levied on them by the far-away British Parliament.

The most noxious tax for them, was the “tea tax,” a charge of ten percent on tea imported into Boston, and the rest of the American colonies.  Like coffee in America today, tea was the drink of choice for most Americans in the 1700’s. This tax wasn’t charged directly to the consumer, but to the colonial merchants who received the tea on consignment from the British East India Company, the primary tea exporter.

But the merchants then, like merchants today, didn’t “absorb” the cost of the tax.  They passed it onto the consumer.

In protest, the Sons of Liberty gathered at the Old South Meeting House on the night of December 16, 1773, and dressed in costumes resembling the Mohawk tribe.  They went down to the harbor, boarded three ships, and dumped 342 chests of tea into the sea.

The current President of the United States has said he will impose $200 billion in tariff (tax) increases on Chinese goods starting on Friday. Best Buy, Apple, and Wal-Mart are not likely to “absorb” the cost, just as the merchants of 1773 didn’t absorb the tea tax.  Like days of yore, the $200 billion will not be a tax on the Chinese, in the sense that they will be the ones who pay.  If the tariffs are enacted, then it will be the American consumer that will pay the increased costs. 

In the current Administration’s defense, China has been a unfaithful trading partner.  They underpay their workers and subsidize their businesses with government funds.   They also boldly steal intellectual property; ignoring American copyrights and patents by simply taking the plans and products, reverse engineering the processes, and make the goods themselves.  They are not fair partners.

There are few in the business world who defend the Chinese trading practices.  It is clearly time to “reset” the relationship.  But Americans be warned:  the “reset” is going to require Americans to suffer.  The $200 billion will not come from Chinese coffers; it will come from our bank accounts.

In the long term, it might encourage Americans to purchase American made products rather than “made in China.”  The problem: the vast majority of computer chips, electronic goods, and machinery come from China and are not made in the “good ol’ USA.”  So if you want an IPhone, or a Sony television (components),  you’re going to pay more.

And like any good trade war, don’t expect that China is going to accept their “punishment” without consequences.  China will retaliate on US imports:  aircraft (though they could probably get a good price on Boeing’s 737 Max’s right now,) optical and medical instruments, and agricultural goods.  China buys $9.3 billion in American farm goods.  They have already raised taxes on some. And China has gone shopping, getting products from other places and simply not buying from US farms. 

So Americans will be left baring the burden of this tariff fight, particularly the American farmer.  

Ross Perot was a wealthy businessman who ran as an Independent for President in 1992.  Perot advocated Americans “bite the bullet,” pay off the Federal debt, and reset our trade positions with the rest of the world. He let America know that his plan would hurt, causing financial difficulty for many, but was necessary in the long run.  He received almost 19% of the popular vote.

President Trump always ran as a “tariff” guy.  But he is about to “rip the bandage off” of America’s trade policy, and it will be the American people, and particularly the American farmer, that will feel the pain. He needs to make it clear that the $200 billion tariff increase on China is really a $200 billion tax increase on Americans.

Or perhaps modern day Sons of Liberty will go to the Port of Los Angeles, and dump IPhones into the Pacific.

No Collusion

Collusion – “a deceitful agreement or compact between two or more persons, for the one party to bring an action against the other for some evil purpose, as to defraud a third party of his right.” – Blacks Law Dictionary

Looking at the Black’s Law Dictionary definition of Collusion – it sounds bad, and it definitely sounds like it ought to be illegal.  To participate in “collusion” means having a “compact for evil purpose” and to “defraud.”  But as we have heard over and over again from the many attorneys that have peppered the media for the past two years, there is no US law against collusion.

Some of the Trump Campaign actions that are called “collusion” describe behaviors that might well fall under the definition of conspiracy against the United States under Federal Law (18 US Code §371):

If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

It is not a “legal mistake” that the President, his attorneys, the Attorney General, and the Republican Congressmen and Senators who are defending him keep chanting the same mantra:  NO COLLUSION, NO COLLUSION, NO COLLUSION.  Since the term doesn’t have legal meaning, it’s a safe thing to say.   No one is going to drag, for example, William Barr the Attorney General into court to determine whether he “lied” about collusion.  There is no legal definition to lie about.

All of them should have read the Mueller Report (though Mr. Barr, hearing his answers to the Senate, doesn’t seem to have done so, and Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham admits he hasn’t completed the 448 page task.)   I have; and while Mr. Mueller does not believe he uncovered enough evidence to satisfy filing charges under 18 US Code §371, there are lots of incidents of contact with Russia; with meetings, shared information, and joint benefits and goals.  That’s evidence of conspiracy violating Federal law. That Mr. Mueller does not believe he has a case rising to the criminal standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt” is quite different than the NO COLLUSION battle cry.

But Bill Barr’s actions in misrepresenting the report, leaving his interpretation as the only available information for almost a month, has solidified the Trump talking point – NO COLLUSION.  And what the President, his supporters in Congress, and the Attorney General are now doing is simply buying time.  The longer that their “narrative” is unchallenged by the actual testimony of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, or White House Counsel Don McGahn, or the multiple other possible witnesses; the longer the NO COLLUSION false conclusion will set into stone.  

I heard an estimate today that only three percent of Americans have read the Mueller Report.  I get that: even though it’s important, 448 pages of legal document with enumerated footnotes is a lot to get through, along with work and life.  So for many Americans, the only way to find out about the Mueller Report will be to hear it from Mr. Mueller himself, and the witnesses that he included.

We know the strength of spoken testimony.  In the past few years we heard Hillary Clinton testify for eleven hours, James Comey testify to investigating the President, and Michael Cohen call his former boss a crook and a racist. There is a tremendous impact from hearing the spoken word.  We heard them, and we will eventually hear Mueller, McGahn, and the others.  It’s how America will learn, just as we learned about Watergate from Nixon’s White House Counsel John Dean and the man who revealed the tapes, Alexander Butterfield.

For the Trump forces it’s all about time.  The longer they can stave off the investigation, the more firmly their false narrative becomes established, and the closer the election of 2020 will come. When we get within view of the Presidential election, we will hear the same false reasoning that Mitch McConnell used to stop President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court:  “…we are within a year of the election, we should let the American people ‘weigh-in’ at the voting booth.”  It’s the rationale that Mr. Trump has used to justify not releasing his taxes, and paying hush money to porn stars, and assaulting women: the people voted for me, so it’s over.

Literally, time will tell. The Courts are likely to rule in favor of the Congress in their fight for information, but it will take time, time that benefits Mr. Trump.  That’s why it’s important for Democrats to campaign on more than just Trump in 2020.  This issue may well be decided at the ballot box; for the sake of the nation, Democrats need to be in the right. 

Addendum: Secretary of Treasury Mnuchin has just denied the Congressional demand for Mr. Trump’s tax returns.  He is defying clear law (26 US Code § 6103 (f) (1)) but it just another part of the strategy – stall-stall-stall.

To read more on the House Ways and Means Committee and the President’s taxes  Click this link.

Stolen History

I have Facebook “friends” from all sides of the political spectrum.  We look for lost dogs, discuss repairs on the local roads, and share birthdays and funeral announcements.  We also confront each other’s politics from time to time, but no matter how opposed we are in political beliefs, we try to respect our differing views in order to maintain our friendship.

But sometimes I am dismayed by what they post.  Yesterday while perusing Facebook I found a repost on a friend’s site, that claimed the following:

“Thomas Jefferson founded the Marine Corps, and used it to attack Muslims (in the form of the Barbary Pirates),” and, “…the orders of the Marines were to confront Muslim pirates in battleand follow them back to their villages and kill every man, woman, and child they found.”

The post goes onto state that Jefferson himself spoke out against “Radical Islam.”  It claims:

 “…The Quran (Koran) – the Muslim holy book not only condoned but mandated – violence against non-believers of Islam and that was totally unacceptable to Jefferson.  (His) greatest fear upon leaving office was that someday radical Islamist (sic) would return.  He believed Muslims would pose more threats on the United States and its citizens as time went on.”

In our time of polarization, many search history to find justification for their current political stands.  A Google Search can find almost any information to back any political view.  But just because it’s on the INTERNET doesn’t make it true, and in this case my friend has chosen to absolutely distort history to support his current bias.

I was a history and government teacher for thirty-six years. While I haven’t done an in-depth study of Jefferson and Islam, it seemed to me that a Muslim massacre by the United States Marines would have quickly come to mind. It’s not that massacres of different people would be so incredibly unusual in US History; the record of US treatment of Native Americans demonstrates that the orders of “…kill every man woman and child found,”was not uncommon.

And Jefferson, our brilliant Enlightenment founding father, was certainly capable of holding incredibly contradictory positions.  The author of the Declaration of Independence, he wrote this:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

But he owned hundreds of slaves who made up such a big part of his economic fortune that he could not and would not allow them to have freedom.  He kept one slave as his “consort” (a great classical word) even though she was taken by him when she was fifteen.

Americans are full of contradictions, even from our Founding moments.  And the founding ideologue, Jefferson, was more apparent than most in his inconsistency.  

But you can’t make up your own history.

To start with, Jefferson didn’t “found the Marines.” The Marines were founded in 1775, when Jefferson was a delegate to the Continental Congress from Virginia. And when Jefferson did send those Marines to “…the shores of Tripoli” to contest the Barbary Pirates, it wasn’t about “Radical Islam.” It was about extortion: the pirates operating out of modern day Libya would force ships to pay tribute or be captured, and the new United States decided to flex its foreign policy “might” against them.

The US Navy and Marines were able to defeat the “pirates” in the First Barbary War in 1805 (there was a second War in 1815), paid a ransom for held American prisoners, and no longer paid the tribute. Neither of these conflicts had anything to do with “Radical Islam;” it was about respect for the US Flag vessels on the high seas.  And there was no massacre of women and children. 

Jefferson in the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, stated:“…that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion…”

In his unfinished autobiography, Jefferson further stated that he intended the Statute to protect:“the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.”In the language of the 1820’s, a “Mahometan” was a Muslim.  Jefferson’s own copy of the Koran became a part of the Library of Congress.

We all have our political differences and opinions. But as Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan so famously said: “You are entitled to your own opinions, but not you are not entitled to your own facts.”

Particularly when you try to warp American History to make it fit your own political views.

American Expectations

Harry Truman was known as the “Senator from Pendergast.”  Tom Pendergast was the leader of the Democratic political machine of Kansas City.  He controlled the patronage – the political jobs – for Western Missouri.  One of the politicians that Pendergast sponsored was Harry Truman, elected Judge (commissioner) of Jackson County.  

During the Great Depression, Truman moved from Judge to Missouri’s Director for the Federal Reemployment Program, a patronage job from the Roosevelt Administration.  Truman wanted to move onto Washington, DC, but he wasn’t Pendergast’s first choice for the US Senate in 1934 (actually he was the fifth.)  Pendergast eventually changed his mind, and Truman was able to win the Democratic nomination and the election.

Truman did solid work in the Senate, leading a sub-committee investigation of price gouging and abuses in military appropriations in the months before World War II.  As a middle-of-the-road, middle-of-the-country Democrat, he was the perfect “middle” choice in 1944 when the Party decided to drop the more liberal Henry Wallace as Roosevelt’s Vice President.

There weren’t many expectations for Truman as Vice President.  He was politically the right man; but Roosevelt did little to bring him into the critical decisions of 1945:  the end of World War II, the development of the United Nations, the atomic bomb.  Truman managed to get in some trouble with the press, allowing Lauren Bacall to pose on the piano while he played in the Press Club, and attending the now disgraced (tax evasion) Pendergast’s funeral.

Then Franklin Roosevelt died.  Truman rushed to the White House, asking Eleanor Roosevelt if there was anything he could do. The First Lady responded, “is there anything we can do for you, for you are the one in trouble now.”  Truman told the press later the next day:

“Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. I don’t know if you fellas ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me what happened yesterday, I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.”

There is an American traditional belief that the “man” will rise to the Presidency, regardless of his background or previous service.  Harry Truman has always been the greatest example of that story; the machine politician who through political happenstance fell into the Presidency at one of the United State’s, and the world’s, most critical times. 

It was Truman who decided to use the atomic bomb, develop the Marshall Plan and NATO, and encourage the United Nations.  It was also Truman who faced the economic impacts of the post-war America, as the wage and price controls of the Great Depression and war economy were released.  Prices went up, workers demanded higher wages, and the Democratic President found himself in direct conflict with the railroad unions.

And it was Truman who got the last laugh ay all of the polls that predicted he would lose to Republican Tom Dewey of New York in 1948.  The famous picture of a smiling Truman holding up the Chicago Tribune with the headline “Dewey Defeats Truman” opened his second term as President.

Like Truman or not, he was a President who steered America through the beginning of the Cold War.  And while he left the Eisenhower Administration with the twin concerns of Korea and McCarthyism, he is generally acknowledged as a man who “rose above himself” in his Presidential service.

Other American Presidents have risen to the office as well.  George W. Bush gained stature during 9-11, and a corporate lawyer and one term Congressman from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, became arguably our greatest President during the Civil War.

But, with the Trump Administration, we now know that it’s not “magic.”  Not everyone who enters the Oval Office emerges in greatness, and not every elected President gains the “gravitas” of the Presidency.  Certainly Donald Trump is the exception to prove that point.

And now there are even greater concerns that Donald Trump, the candidate who pointedly refused to accept the legitimacy of the 2016 election in advance, might not accept defeat in 2020.  

Another American tradition is recognition of the will of the voters.  It started in one of the roughest elections in American history, where the governing party was faced with a diametrically opposed political force.  It was an election where the press attacked both sides, even accusing one candidate of having an affair with an under aged “employee.”  It was the election of 1800, and Federalist John Adams did everything he could to hang onto the Presidency against Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson. 

On inauguration day, Adams packed up and left the White House early. He didn’t stay to participate in Jefferson’s swearing in ceremony.  Adam’s wasn’t a “good sport” about it, but he did acknowledge Jefferson’s victory, establishing the tradition of peaceful transition of power.

Should the election of 2020 turn the Trump’s out, we can only hope he will do the same.  Will the President who created the phrase “fake news” cry foul against an election that went against him?  We know that was his intent if he had lost in 2016, now with the trappings of Presidential power, it is an open question what Trump will do.  

The power of the Presidency only resides in his authority to direct the government.  Regardless of who Trump appoints, we know that those leaders have sworn an oath:

“I, (name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same…”

It is an oath to the United States and to the Constitution; not to any individual leader.  If that tradition were to be lost, then we truly have lost America.  

Stay Small

My town, Pataskala, has a gun range.  It is a popular place where folks can shoot, buy weapons, and socialize.  Guns are a reason they get together, discussing, evaluating, and comparing.  It’s become a very successful business here in town.

The range has been around for a few years, but this year they opened an outdoor shooting area.  It’s two miles from my house, and I don’t really think we hear them on Sunday afternoons, though we occasionally hear shots. There’s enough farm fields and woods nearby, the sound may be coming from there.  But there are folks who live much closer to the range, and one of them had the temerity to complain about the noise on Facebook.

The town rose en masse to defend the range. There were over eight hundred comments, with very few defending the complainant. And, unfortunately, many seemed to personally attack the person who spoke out against hearing gunshots half a mile away.

“…you’re not a man if you don’t own a gun”

That was one of the comments on the post.  Here in Ohio, some young men in their twenties and thirties, walk around openly carrying pistols on their belts, even at kids birthday parties.  During the Renaissance, nobles wore a “codpiece” as part of their apparel.  The codpiece was an article of clothing worn over the groin of various shapes and sizes, implying, the size of the male equipment underneath.  To some today, the openly carried pistol seems to serve that same purpose.

But to others it is a sign of the fear that permeates many in our time.  Fear of the unknown:  of crime in the city, usually associated with people “different” than them, and with the threat of “brown people” from the border, or as columnist Mike Barnacle puts it, “…fear of the other.”  Many are afraid of “the other” who will come to hurt them or steal from them, and that “codpiece” on their belt is a visual demonstration of that fear.

Fear of the government coming to take something away:  that’s why some claim to need military type weapons.  That’s for some, but not all.  Many want assault weapons not for protection or defense, but because they are fun to fire. And that’s another part of the problem: there is a distinction between fear that demands a loaded weapon always close at hand, and firing weapons for fun and socializing.  

Perhaps the mass reaction wasn’t about the range, or the guns, but about the fear.  We live in an era where fear is “purveyed;” sold on television, by politicians, and in our social media.  The old newsroom saw, “if it bleeds, it leads,” has been around for a century, but today it seems even more prevalent.  On the Fox News webpage this morning:  murder in the Caribbean, bridge collapse, police kicked and kneed, eagles poisoned, Obama feels like mobster, Everest covered in bodies and trash, child abuser found hanged in cell, hospital drops newborn; that’s the scary and disturbing list of headlines.

We are being told to be afraid.  And we are being told to “Stay Small;” to keep a low profile, not stand up, not put yourself  “out” in the world.  Maybe that started after 9-11, when we all worried about where the next terror attack might be.  The caution still is apparent:  metal detectors to go the hockey game or Broadway plays, lockdown drills in schools, armed guards in the malls and at the games.  These are very real symbols of fear, symbols that keep people trapped in their familiar communities, afraid to “venture” into the city or the world. 

The person complaining about noise at the gun range, wasn’t demanding that the Second Amendment be repealed.  She wasn’t inviting a political discussion, nor was she asking for more than just a cessation of disturbing noise from a neighbor.  But it tapped into a wellspring of fear in the community; and challenged a lot of folks at a very core level.  It challenged the way they dealt with fear.

Don’t get in between people and their guns. They need to “Stay Small”:  not allow themselves to become a target, nor get in unfamiliar places or positions.  And if they have to go there, then bring a gun to balance the scales.

The Sullying of Bill Barr

Ask not what your country can do for you, but rather what you can do for your country – John F Kennedy Inaugural Address – 1961

The New Moral Compass: not what is best for the country, but what is best for Donald Trump – former CIA Director John Brennan 5/1/19

The Attorney General of the United States said under oath yesterday that the President of the United States is above the law – former Senator Claire McCaskill, 5/2/19

William Barr, sixty-eight years old, is the Attorney General of the United States.  He is a product of New York City, with Bachelors and Masters degrees from Columbia University, and a law degree with highest honors from George Washington in Washington, DC.  He served in the CIA, as a clerk in the US Court of Appeals, and on the policy staff of President Ronald Reagan.  

He then moved to the Department of Justice, serving as Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, Deputy Attorney General, and in 1991was appointed Attorney General of the United States under President George HW Bush.

During his first term of service, he was instrumental in gaining Presidential pardons for six members of the Reagan executive branch who were convicted or charged in the Iran/Contra Affair.  The scandal involved selling surplus US military weapons to Iran, and spending the resulting profits to support insurgents in Nicaragua, both violating US law. Casper Weinberger, former Secretary of Defense, was the highest profile pardon recipient. The pardons effectively ended the investigation into the Affair, and Lawrence Walsh, the independent counsel prosecuting the case, stated:

“[The] pardon of Caspar Weinberger and other Iran-contra defendants undermines the principle that no man is above the law. It demonstrates that powerful people with powerful allies can commit serious crimes in high office—deliberately abusing the public trust without consequence. Weinberger, who faced four felony charges, deserved to be tried by a jury of citizens.”

With the election of Democrat Bill Clinton as President, Barr went into the private sector.  He was executive vice president and general counsel to GTE (now Verizon) then went into private practice as a consulting corporate attorney.  During that time Barr was also active in conservative Republican politics, including the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation. 

In the beginning of the Trump Administration, Barr was secure as an elder statesman of conservative attorneys.  He weighed in on several issues, supporting further investigation of Hillary Clinton, and surprisingly sent a nineteen-page unsolicited memo to both the White House and the Department of Justice, questioning the legal underpinnings of the Mueller Investigation.   It was that memo that brought him to the attention of the White House. They were looking for a long-term replacement for Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who fell out of favor with the President by recusing himself from any Trump related issues.

When Barr’s name was first mentioned, many Republicans and more moderate Democrats looked at him as a Department of Justice “institutionalist,” who would protect the reputation and traditions of the Department as a quasi-independent executive agency.  He was seen as a safe pick who would bring balance to a Department still rocked by the Comey firing, the revelation of the Strozk texts, and under attack from the radical right led by Congressmen Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan, and the President himself.  Barr would be the “adult” at the head of the Department.

But Barr’s actions in the Iran/Contra Affair, and his nineteen page memo to the White House should have been the “tell.” Democratic Senators in the Judiciary Committee tried to make that point in questioning Barr, but he was adroit in the testifying skills of dodging and obfuscating.  And many depended on Barr’s friendship with Mueller, reminiscent of Watergate days when Attorney General Bill Saxbe and Prosecutor Leon Jaworski testified side by side to the Congress.

But whatever that friendship signified, it didn’t apply to “business” when it came to Attorney General Barr.  His mischaracterization of the Mueller Report with a four-page summary that “cleared the President of any wrong-doing” allowed the Trump forces three weeks to press a false narrative of Presidential innocence. Mueller’s own protests, including a letter to the Attorney General that Barr summarized as “snitty,” came out this week, but Barr has consistently defended his own false interpretation of the clear language of the now public Mueller document.

Mueller outlines ten possible lines of obstruction of justice charges against President Trump.  Barr dismisses them all, not on the facts, but on his own interpretation that the President has the right to protect his own innocence, by disrupting any investigation into himself.  Barr seemed completely oblivious to the possibility that a guilty President might protect himself through obstruction.  He places the President beyond the purview of Justice Department inquiry, saying:  “ …the Department of Justice is out…there’s an election in 18 months.” 

In 1992, Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh warned us that Barr believed that some were above the law.  In his statements to the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, Barr made it clear that he absolutely regards the President in that way, subject only to election or presumably Congressional impeachment.  

Bill Barr has returned to public service, not to stabilize the institution of the Department of Justice, but to serve as President Trump’s “protector-in-chief” from legal attack.  He has brought a radical view of Presidential power to the highest law enforcement office in the land, one that prevents any check on Presidential actions.  And now, he is participating in a “stonewalling” operation by the executive branch, refusing to give any information to the Congress.

He is doing the political bidding of the White House and the President.  They have determined that it is to their advantage to force the House of Representatives to openly impeach Donald Trump; their only remaining action that can force the White House to produce information.  Bill Barr, the Attorney General, has chosen to become Donald Trump’s “Roy Cohn.”  That will be his historic legacy.

My Hometown

Thanks for the title Mr. Springsteen – here’s the video – My Hometown

Or – if you into a more “Sublime-like” song – here’s John Reuben, former student turned rapper  – Pataskala

I live in Pataskala, Ohio. When I first came here in 1978, a twenty-one year old teacher at the nearby high school, Pataskala was a town adrift.  Located twenty miles due east of downtown Columbus; it was originally a farm town. The grain elevator still stands “downtown,” though it’s been used for storage for the past fifty years.  At the high school there was a “tractor day” when the Future Farmers of America class would bring their machines to school, and they grew a couple acres of corn behind the building.

But it was changing. The farmers were selling their land; financially there was so much more profit selling a couple hundred acres here for development, then buying double or more the acreage farther away from the city. Suburban housing was springing up, and all of a sudden (or at least over ten years or so) Pataskala went from a rural town, to a suburb.  Soon the high school band got out of school to play at the grand opening of the new McDonald’s on Broad Street, and the hometown grocery store Roseberry’s was bought by Cardinal, then driven out of business when Krogers hit town.

The cities nearer downtown; Reynoldsburg and the city of Columbus, were encroaching on the countryside. A major industrial plant, the clothing giant The Limited,  was built on the western edge of the neighboring township.  It was quickly lost to Reynoldsburg for its tax valuation. It was a sign of things to come, the urbanization of the rural outlying areas.  The village of Pataskala reorganized itself, added Lima Township to the west, and became a CITY, now 15002 strong, as the sign at the city limits says.  Being a city defended the “borders” from poaching, but made it the twelfth largest city in Ohio (out of 280 some) in geography.  The village police department was forced to expand, and the City forced to catch up on road and bridge repairs.

So now Pataskala is a suburban city.  The citizens like the rural heritage, and don’t want it “citified.”  They like to be near fields and woods. But they also want the conveniences of “city life,” with restaurants and activities.  And though they love the “forests and fields,” they’re not so much about the coyotes prowling the margins, and the deer eating their gardens.  

The local newspaper was sold to the Gannett Media Group in the 1990’s, so there isn’t a real local news source anymore.  The closest Pataskala has to a central information source is on Facebook, where the residents voice their concerns.  Sometimes it’s a “hoot:” hundreds of responses when the topic is local taxes (called RITA for Regional Income Tax Authority here in Ohio) or the complicated water bills.  There are two different water/sewer systems in the City, depending on location, with different billing and costs.  Everyone has something to say about that.

It’s definitely “Trump Country”, in 2016 the President won 61% of the City vote; Clinton only gained 34%. And it’s not just support for Trump, in 2018 in the hotly contested 12^thCongressional District race, the Republican candidate gained 58% while the Democrat polled 40%.  My political views are definitely an “outlier” here.

The traffic is getting heavier. You know it’s a working class town; Broad Street is crowded at 5:30 am with folks headed towards Columbus to make the 6 am start. And the evening rush hour at Broad Street and State Route 310 can stop the whole town. What used to be a clear eight mile drive to the Columbus city limits now has ten stoplights; more are on the way. One of the school districts, Licking Heights (there are two in the City) is the fastest growing school in the state.

But there’s still a lot of small town here in Pataskala.  Want to see everyone you know; hang out at Kroger’s for an hour on Friday around five.  Want to just see the retired people, try Tuesday at ten in the morning!  If a dog is lost, Facebook explodes with help, and neighbors go out looking.  It’s a good excuse for “a walk,” but it’s also a community that wants to help.

When snow closes school, the local coaches are urging their teams to grab shovels and help their neighbors, and when five inches of rain fall in an hour, the community is out checking to make sure everyone is OK.  In our little block, we check on the 87 year-old widow across the street.  I must be getting older, they’re starting to check on me now too!

And Pataskala has a great Mayor, Mike Compton.  I imagine we are not on the same side as far as national politics are concerned, but the Mayor always shows that he cares about the community.  He’s constantly willing to explain, and to help, and to stop and be a part of a local fundraising effort.  And he posts lots of pictures:  the sun setting on his back deck, the new police station, the picnic in the park, and, the goats.

The goats have become the running joke in town, hanging out in the field on Mink Street near Broad. Mayor Compton made them famous on Facebook, and when they were taken to winter pastures, he assured us they would return when the spring came.  

They are a good representation of Pataskala:  a remnant of rural life in what is a burgeoning suburban city.   Folks move here for the goats, and the fields, and the woods.  But they stay for the community, working to make life better as we struggle with growth and change.  It’s not that there aren’t differences, but in our era of national discord, Pataskala is a surprise:  a place where people still work together.  

Put on My Foil Hat

WASHINGTON — In the months before the 2016 presidential election, Russia’s military intelligence agency penetrated computer systems in at least one Florida county government and planted malware in systems at a manufacturer of election equipment, the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, said in his office’s final report on Russian interference in the election.  – New York Times – 4/18/19

There are words I’ve only whispered to my closest family.  They sound crazy, like one of the “nut-jobs” you see online at the extremes of the internet.  I keep an aluminum foil crown on my desk just to remind me to not get too off the wall. 

Right after the 2016 election, Mike Farb, author of the “Unhackthevote” website, put volumes of statistical material out about the vote.  It was so much stuff that it was difficult to figure out exactly what he showed, but he ultimately drew the conclusion that either the 2016 election was fixed by Americans, or, it was fixed by the Russians.

I know, my foil hat just began to glow.  

We knew fairly early, say January, 2017, that Russian intelligence was trying to penetrate the American voting process.  We aren’t talking about Facebook ads or Twitter bots, we are talking about hacking into voting rolls and the software that runs the machines that tabulate our votes. At first, we were told that thirty-nine states were attacked, but no attack succeeded.  Then it was narrowed down to twenty-one states, and even later, only nine.  

And the story kind of faded away.  No one, media or government, spoke about what happened when Russians got into the voter registration files in Illinois.  No one explained what happened to the software developer out of Florida, supplier of voting machines for that state and North Carolina.  Not a word, about the multiple counties in Wisconsin using the voting machines controlled from a strip mall storefront in Minnesota.  It was all “OK.”  The National Security Agency two years ago said that they were certain no election computers had been compromised.

This is America.  When we watch the Super Bowl, we have the assurance that while the referees may make mistakes, they aren’t “rigging” the game (yes – not even for the Patriots.)   When we see a sprint in the Olympics, we get to see the “photo-finish” picture, so we can assure ourselves that the results were fair.  And, when some of us watch World Wrestling Entertainment, the WWE, we know that we are watching a show, with a scripted ending. We know it’s rigged, that’s a part of the deal.  We watch the show – without much concern for the results already written in stone.

If we knew that the outcome of the Super Bowl, or the Olympic one hundred meter dash, were pre-ordained, they wouldn’t be very interesting.  And if we found that our voting processes were altered and that our votes didn’t actually count, why would we accept the outcomes of our elections?

This is the great fear. If the Russians hacked our elections, would we ever be told?  Would our government actually let us know that the results of say, 2016, weren’t legitimate; that rather than the President being chosen “by the people,” he was chosen by the GRU (Russian Intelligence?)

Republican Senator Marco Rubio, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee stated in the New York Times this week:

“I don’t believe the specific victims of the intrusion have been notified. The concern was that in a number of counties across the country, there are a couple of people with the attitude of: ‘We’ve got this; we don’t need your help. We don’t think we need to do what you are telling us we need to do.’”

So not only is the national government not telling the public, they aren’t even telling the specific counties that were hacked.  Instead, every county is given general instructions on how to prevent hacking.  This way, no one gets singled out as having “their system” infiltrated, and their vote totals under suspicion.  

Why would it be handled that way?  Because if multiple counties in multiple states were notified that they were hacked and votes altered; that’s information that could not be held secret. It would slip out in local news, and ultimately someone would put a national view together.  It would bring into question the legitimacy of our entire government.

There’s no such thing as a national do-over in electoral politics.  Creating distrust in the American system is clearly one of the goals of Vladimir Putin and his Russian Intelligence apparatus.  Add those together, and it’s not likely that even if there was hacking in key states, we wouldn’t know.

So if we can’t change 2016, what can we demand as voters to protect 2020:

Paper Ballots.

Many states use a paper ballot backup system for their electronic voting.  Here in Licking County, Ohio, each vote is tabulated electronically, and also printed on a paper roll.  That roll is stored for backup purposes; if there were questions about the outcome, the paper roll can be hand counted.

But other jurisdictions don’t, including the entire states of Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, New Jersey and South Carolina.  Other states have some counties with and some without: Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas.  

Senator and Presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar has authored “The Secure Elections Act” calling for paper ballot backup nationwide.  She has bipartisan support in the Senate, and a companion bill in the House.  And yet, the bill has been held up by Republican leadership in the Senate, at the behest of the Trump White House.  The White House says they have all the authority they need to protect the election process, but the basic premise of the Secure Elections Act raises a question that Donald Trump cannot tolerate:  the legitimacy of 2016.

Keep your foil hat on.

The Ultimate Stand

The core values of this nation, our standing in the world, our very democracy, everything that has made America, America, is at stake.   That’s why today I’m announcing my candidacy for President of the United States. Joe Biden, 4/25/19

Joe Biden entered the Democratic Presidential primaries on Thursday.  He did so with a stark statement, that the current President was a direct threat to our system, and to the core values of our nation.  He simply said:

 “…if we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation — who we are — and I cannot stand by and watch that happen.”

Biden, Vice President for eight years and a US Senator for thirty-six, is seventy-six years old.  He speaks of entering this race almost as a duty, a Cincinnatus, called back by circumstance to stand at the gate once more. There has been media criticism of Biden’s statement and his candidacy, but he presents Democrats a stark, bottom line choice: America cannot afford four more years of Donald Trump, and I’m the one candidate who can defeat him.

This week, a nineteen year old went into a synagogue in Southern California with an assault rifle, killing one and injuring more.  He posted a manifesto admiring the Pittsburgh and New Zealand killers.  From current information, a jammed weapon and advancing parishioners chased him away before he could wreak more havoc. Also this week, a man in Northern California drove his car into a crowd of Muslims, praising Jesus as he did so.  Eight people were injured.  Three weeks ago a white man was captured in Louisiana after burning three black churches.

According to the FBI, the rate of hate crimes in the United States has increased by seventeen percent since 2016, equaling the increased divisiveness in our political rhetoric.  

Don’t give Donald Trump too much credit.  His success as a politician is more of a result of the growing divide in our nation, rather than the cause.  He is “riding the wave;” a wave he didn’t create.  But he is certainly augmenting that wave, further fueling the divisiveness and hate among us.  We know: he found “fine people on both sides” at the white nationalist riots in Charlottesville.  He has chosen some of those “fine people” as his advisors, and constantly threatens Americans with an onslaught of “brown people” from the South. 

The Presidency has many powers, but perhaps its greatest is access to the “bully pulpit.”  Trump has shown himself to be a master of communicating from the White House, using his “old fashioned” rallies and “new fashioned” social media to speak to America. He continually reaches and energizes his base, and frustrates and infuriates his opponents.

The new phraseology for Democratic candidates for the nomination describes them as finding “lanes.”  Like highways with multiple lanes, each one is trying to find the open road that will allow them to advance their candidacy.  There are twenty declared candidates and a comprehensive list would be too long, but examples are:  Jay Inslee emphasizes the environment, Bernie Sanders reshaping the American economy, and Eric Swalwell gun control.  

Biden has been criticized for not talking about the core Democratic issues:  healthcare, jobs, education, and the environment.  He will ultimately address all of those issues; and will probably be criticized for taking moderate stands that are out of step with the more Progressive majorities in the Party.  His opponents need to attack him on those stands, because Biden is the only candidate who has an open lane when it comes to speaking to all of us.

Other than President Obama, Joe Biden is the Democrat most qualified to speak for America.  When Biden spoke at John McCain’s funeral, or Congressman John Dingell’s funeral, or his own son’s funeral; he told us about what America means.  His opening sentence from John McCain’s eulogy said it all: “My name is Joe Biden.  I’m a Democrat. And I loved John McCain.”

He constantly speaks of an America where we can cross party lines and where those with differences can still be loved.  That’s Joe Biden’s message.  I don’t know whether he’s the 2020 Democratic candidate, but his “lane” addresses the essential problem of our time:  he’s going to be hard to beat.

It’s Mitch’s Fault

“If I’m still the majority leader of the Senate after next year, none of those things are going to pass the Senate,”  “They won’t even be voted on. So think of me as the Grim Reaper — the guy who is going to make sure that socialism doesn’t land on the president’s desk.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell  – 4/22/19

Before there was Donald Trump, before there was “fake news,” before there was Twitter; there was Mitch. Before there was the Star Wars like “Resistance” to the current Republican Administration (worrisome for Resistance fans, the Rebellion in Star Wars didn’t always turn out OK) there was “McConnell Blocks.” Try “Googling” it, you’ll get over one hundred hits.

Mitch McConnell, the seventy-seven year old senior Senator from Kentucky, started in politics after receiving his medical discharge from the Vietnam War era Army.  He only served thirty-three days, exiting to become an aide to Senator Marlow Cook in 1968.  He has, except for a brief stint in private legal practice, been in politics ever since.  He first ran for office in 1977, elected as Judge/Executive of Jefferson County (Louisville).  He was elected to the US Senate in 1984 and he has been there ever since, thirty-four years.  He became Majority Leader when the Republicans won the majority after the 2014 election.  Through all of that, he has managed to amass a personal wealth of over $20 million. Government work is good.

Before Republican’s gained the majority, McConnell was the Minority Leader for eight years.  Upon the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency, McConnell stated; “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one term President.”  

It isn’t out of the norm for a Republican leader to want to defeat a Democratic President in the next election; in fact, it’s exactly normal.  The difference is the extent that Mr. McConnell was willing to go.  He was willing to completely abandon the values of bipartisan rule in order to do anything and everything to stop President Obama’s legislation. 

 Even when the Obama Administration took a Republican plan, developed by the conservative Heritage Foundation and first implemented by Republican Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, and presented it to Congress as the Affordable Care Act; McConnell did everything he could to stop it, and led Republicans in a total boycott.  It wasn’t just that they voted against the legislation, they refused to participate in any negotiations about it.  When current arguments are made that Democrats shut Republicans out of the Affordable Care Act legislation, the reality was Republicans refused to participate.

In 2015, when Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia suddenly died of a heart attack, McConnell as Majority Leader quickly made it clear that President Obama’s appointee would not get a hearing or a vote.  As McConnell later said; “One of my proudest moments was when I told Obama, ‘You will not fill this Supreme Court vacancy’.”  

The Courts have been a singular focus for Leader McConnell since the election of Donald Trump as President.  In the last two years, McConnell has managed to fill 20% of the Federal Appellate seats in the nation.  As Federal judges are appointed for life, and McConnell has determined to place an emphasis on youth in his appointments; his actions will have a profound influence on US law for the next thirty years.

His coordination with the Federalist Society, a national organization of lawyers dedicated to conservative views on the Constitution, has provided a pipeline of nominees.  While the most famous recent appointees were Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, they join three other Society Justices; Thomas, Roberts and Alito, in changing the Court majority.  

The Federalist Society “court packing” is McConnell’s singular achievement, starting with blocking President Obama’s Merrick Garland appointment.  Whatever may happen to President Trump, either Constitutionally or electorally in the next two years, McConnell can definitely say “mission accomplished” when it comes to the Federal Judiciary.

That power is contingent on a Republican President, and a Republican Senate.  The Presidential election of 2020 is an existential turning point for the United States, but the choice for control of the Senate is almost as critical.  McConnell has made it clear that a Democratic President in 2020 will continue to be hamstrung by a Republican majority.  McConnell will be happy to return to his “grim reaper” role.

Thirty-Seven Percent

Thirty-Seven Percent: that is the current approval rating for President Donald J. Trump.  If it requires somewhere near 48% of the electorate to win (though Trump won in 2016 with 46.4%) it would seem that the President should in some way be working to expand his thirty-seven percent.  But his apparent strategy is to “stick to his guns” and continue to do exactly what he has done to amplify his base, without reaching out to anyone else.

Mr. Trump has good reason to believe that all he needs is his thirty-seven percent.  He simply has to look back at the election of 2016; if he can replicate those conditions, he can be re-elected as a minority President. As a novice politician, it’s the only experience he has, and the complicated math of the Electoral College serves to benefit him.  

It takes 270 electoral votes to win the Presidency, and the electoral math leans Republican. Twenty-five states with 224 electoral votes are likely to vote Republican (including Ohio, Arizona, Georgia and Texas.)  Seventeen states and the District of Columbia are likely to vote Democratic (including Minnesota, Virginia and Colorado) totaling 216 votes. This is despite the fact that those same seventeen states have three million more people in them.  That amount, three million, should be vaguely familiar:  it is the nearly the same number of votes that Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton earned over Republican Trump in 2016. 

That leaves nine “swing states;” 98 electoral votes as the determining factor.  The litany is familiar:  Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and Nevada.  It is in the slim marginal differences in those voters that Donald Trump became President of the United States, and where he again hopes to prevail.

Mr. Trump has determined to ride two issues to his second term:  his contrived border crisis, and his potential impeachment.  Neither of these issues is likely to expand his voter base:  it’s hard to imagine undecided voters jumping onto the “I’m a victim being persecuted by the Democrats” bandwagon, or “lock migrants away and take away their kids.” But those issues will enflame his thirty-seven percent who will run out to vote to demand that the President, and the border, be walled off and protected.

Democrats are scared: afraid of the “Trump bogey man.” They are afraid that somehow that thirty-seven percent will turn into the majority of electoral votes once again, and they will wake up on November 4^th2020, to the nightmare of four more years. They are afraid of shadows:  the polls that don’t count Trump voters because they are embarrassed about their support, the power of the Christian right that supports a demonstrably immoral man, the shadowy Federalist Society that has gripped a majority of the Supreme Court, the cold thumb of Vladimir Putin on the scale of America’s electoral process. 

Democrats aren’t wrong to be afraid.  But as perhaps the most famous Democrat, Franklin Roosevelt said; “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”  Democrats can’t be paralyzed by fear.  The election of 2018 showed that Americans will make other choices rather than follow the Trump drumbeat; the fact that Democrats now control the House of Representatives, despite the decade long effort of Republicans to gerrymander and suppress votes, shows what can be done.   What Democrats can’t do is become a common denominator to Trump.  Democrats can’t just scream that Trump is “cheating” by refusing to honor Congressional subpoenas and fighting every Congressional action in the Courts.  Democrats can’t claim to be “victims;” victimhood is the exclusive venue of Trump and the MAGA boys.

What Democrats can claim is that they are “upholding their duty.”  Democrats have a duty to protect the worker and the immigrant, the child and the senior citizen.  Democrats need to talk about healthcare, and improving wages.  They need to talk about protecting children at the border, but also improving American education.  They need to talk about helping improve lives for senior citizens, and protecting the environment for the future.

And Democrats also have a duty to protect our Democracy.  To do that, Democrats need to defend the Constitution against the incursions of the Trump Administration.  They need to protect the right to vote from state government’s suppression.  The need to protect those that struggle to protect themselves, from the LGBTQIA community to ethnic, racial and religious minorities.

In short, Democrats can travel many roads to the Presidency in 2020.  By “upholding their duty” to America, they can draw a striking contrast to “Trump victimhood.”  By doing their duty, Democrats and those who are undeclared in the middle or unmoored by the excesses of Trump; will come out to vote, inspired by a candidate rather than “holding their nose” to pick the lesser evil of two bad choices.  And if Democrats do this, then it won’t matter that the Electoral College leans red, or that voter suppression continues, or that the Supreme Court may allow the Census to be used as a Republican tool. 

In the end, Americans like heroes, not victims.  Democrats need to be heroic:  the contrast will do the rest.

Not Going Solar Today

Time to take a break from politics and talk about day-to-day decisions and the “Green Revolution.”

As befits a person of my age and political proclivities, I wander through Facebook from time to time. As I was perusing the different posts, checking on friends, calling out ridiculous alt-right claims, cheering the ones that support my view, and making sure the lost dogs find their way home; I noticed a paid ad for solar panels.  

“Set yourself free from the power companies,” they said, “zero money up front.”  

Now I may have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night (with or without solar power.)  I knew that the ad was too good to be true, but I wanted to understand how solar power works on homes and with the existing power grid, and what better way to find out than to reach out for information. And, Jenn and I would like to find a way to be more “green,” becoming a renewable power provider, rather than (here in Ohio) a natural gas and coal user.

The salesman came over, a nice young man from a nearby community, and took us through the process of solar energy.  With enough panels, he said, you can provide energy for one hundred percent of your needs. By producing more than you need during the daytime, putting the excess out on the power grid, you offset the amount used from the power grid at night: make enough in the summer months when the solar heating is at the greatest, and offset the winter months when the sun is lower in the sky and shining on the roof less.

Of course it isn’t cheap, it’s a big capital expense.  But the cost of panels, connections and installation are offset by: “THE END OF ELECTRIC BILLS.”  Here’s the pitch:  trade electric bills for capital cost financing for five to eight years. After that, you have freedom from the electric company.

It’s a fascinating process. The panels are arrayed on the roof section with the most exposure, in our case, a full southern face.  They are linked together to an inverter that translates the DC electric current produced by the panels to the AC current needed by the house.  The AC is run into a special electric meter provided by the power company, measuring both the amount produced by the panels, and the amount used by the house. If there is more power made than used, that power is credited to the house from the electric grid.  Think of running the electric meter backward and forward.

So we were excited when he called back with our “personal home plan.”  Jenn and I did some independent investigation showing that the likely cost of powering the entire electric use for our house would be about $47000 in capital costs. I was fascinated to see what the bottom line would be from my chosen company.

I had a foreshadowing of issues to come from the phone call before the meeting, “I’m bringing my sales manager along with me if that’s OK.”  It was even more shadowy, when the nice young man pulled out the “flip book” with pictures and quizzes, taking us through a full presentation of much of the information we talked about the week before.  I felt like I was no longer “going green;” instead it was the dreaded “window guy” or the kid selling Cutco knives.

But Jenn and I slogged through it with him; maybe the young guy had to impress his equally young boss. We waited an hour for the bottom line, those last few pages that would tell we wanted to know.

The big excitement – after tax credits it was only a $22,000 capital cost.  That was great, we would definitely be interested, even if for a few years we had to pay our “electric bill plus.”  We wanted to be independent, and we were willing to pay for it.

Then the first big disappointment – “.,,our specially designed plan would provide sixty percent of our electric needs for the year.”  Sixty percent – so we aren’t “free” from the electric grid at all, in fact we are still totally dependent.  “Well,” the manager said, “if we look at the potential increases in the cost of electricity projected over the next ten years, this will save you money.” But that was only a small part of our goal:  we wanted to become a renewable power source, not a lesser dirty power consumer.  $22,000 for sixty percent on our little 1800 square foot house with no trees:  that’s not a great deal at all.

The second big disappointment – the capital cost of putting our “sixty percent” system in place, would cost more than our current power bill, and then we would have to pay for the forty percent of additional power we needed.  Twelve years of increased cost, and at the end, still only making sixty percent.

We pressed them for a one hundred percent solution, but they really didn’t want to deal with that.  They said the power company wouldn’t let them do one hundred percent, and skimmed over the cost of ninety-five percent with an additional twenty panels. It must not have been part of their “shtick,” or they guessed that we wouldn’t pay the cost.  They never gave us a chance to find out.  They guessed wrong, it was sixty percent, not the overall cost, that was the problem.

Our young salesman got irritated, and the young boss closed his computer.  They thanked us for saying “no” rather than wasting their time, but it was clear that they felt like we did.

So we aren’t going to get solar energy – at least from the two young men who pitched us today.  But we will keep our “toes” in the solar field, maybe someone else can help us “go green.”

I’ll keep checking on Facebook.  

Twenty Years from Columbine

Last weekend was the twentieth anniversary of the mass shooting of students at Columbine High School, near Denver.  Eleven students and one teacher were killed, many in the school library.  Police officers surrounded the building and tried to negotiate with the killers.  Their efforts were in vain, the killers didn’t want to negotiate, they wanted to kill, and then die.  They were equipped with two 9mm firearms, two twelve-gauge shotguns, a High Point 995 Carbine with thirteen ten round magazines, and a Springfield 67H pump action shot gun.  They also prepared pipe bombs and rigged propane tanks to explode, but they didn’t go off.

The names of the killers are well known, but to respect the Parkland kids, who have demanded that murderers be denied notoriety, I won’t use them.  

It wasn’t the first mass school shooting, but it had a very different tenor than the shootings in Springfield, Oregon and Jonesboro, Arkansas.  The Columbine shooters spent many months developing their assault; practicing, purchasing more weapons, and creating a coordinated plan.  They didn’t walk into the cafeteria and start shooting (Oregon) or pull the fire alarm, then hide in the woods outside of the school (Arkansas.)  They planned, prepared, carried out the agenda, then died.

I was a high school teacher in Ohio during that time.  We desperately tried to learn the lessons of Columbine, frantically trying to figure out how to avoid their fate.  One lesson: the killers at Columbine had been “outliers” in the school, even having a page in the yearbook the previous year as the “Trenchcoat Mafia.”  There were signs to see; for teachers, administrators, other students, and parents. 

We learned that we had to know our kids, all of them, the good, the bad, and the silent.  We had to try to reach every one.  We might reach the potential attackers, or we might reach their friends who had an inkling of what was going on.  When I later became the Dean of Students for the school, it was one of the most important aspects of my job.

In 1999 there was no Facebook, no MySpace, no Twitter or Instagram.  Schools hadn’t begun to deal with those entirely different forms of communications.  But one of the Columbine killers had a private website on America Online, and posted a blog.  He wrote about his anger against society, and specifically against some of his Columbine classmates.  He also included instructions on how to build pipe bombs.  There were some who knew about the blog – but thought he was only “blowing off steam.”

We learned, even then, that we had to be attuned to social media, and as our current addiction to it developed, we had to listen to what kids said, and how they reacted. It wasn’t enough to say we weren’t interested, or try to ban phone use in school.  Besides, if the worst happened and an attack was made, the kid’s phones might be the only warning.

And the police learned. They changed their strategy:  no longer did they wait for hostage demands. The first officers on the scene are now trained to go in, ignore the dead and injured, and find the shooters. Columbine taught the hard lessons of time; we couldn’t give the killers more time to kill.

But what Columbine didn’t teach us is how do we control the weaponry used.  Our national response to the attack twenty years ago was to try to change strategies during the attack, and to try to find potential attackers before they come through the school doors.  But if anything, we have made it easier for them to get the weapons they want. We have rung our hands, sent “thoughts and prayers,” and allowed our laws regulating guns to become even more lax.

New Zealand was faced with their massacre in Christchurch only a few weeks ago.  It took them seven days to institute a nationwide ban on assault weapons.  Australia had their massacre in Port Arthur, Tasmania.  They “bought back” 643,000 semi-automatic firearms.  The United Kingdom had a mass school shooting in 1996. The weapon of choice there were pistols with multiple shot magazines, within a year they were banned.

But in the United States we have allowed ourselves to be hamstrung by the Second Amendment, and the most effective pressure group in history, the National Rifle Association. The NRA claims to be about firearms freedom; but a look at their finances reveals it is about the gun manufacturer’s profits.  

We have tried putting police in the schools.  We have administrators monitoring social media.  We have lockdown drills, and code word actions.  We talk about putting more money into mental health (though we don’t seem to get around to doing it) and we talk about bulletproof backpacks for kids. 

It’s been twenty years since Columbine, and we haven’t got it yet.  We can look to our English-speaking cousins all over the world for the answer, but it isn’t “politically palatable” in our current environment.  So on this terrible anniversary, we send our thoughts and prayers.  It’s all we’ve got. 

The Democratic Path

From my perspective it doesn’t matter how it’s done.  Getting Donald Trump out of the Presidency by the end of 2020 is the goal, how to do it is only the details.  Trump’s Presidency represents an existential threat to the meaning of America.  He has broken not only the laws of the United States, but the norms, values, and traditions that America stands for.  We have gone from a nation striving for grace, inclusion, and opportunity; to a nation of division, segregation, and growing income inequality.  Four more years of Trump will consolidate those changes.  We may not be able to recover.

From a national perspective, former FBI Director James Comey may have it right.  Comey suggests that the only way to begin national healing is to vote Donald Trump out of office.  Any other means, he feels, will simply cement the divisions into our political life; it is only through a national repudiation that the Trump philosophies can be ended.

But rank and file Democrats also have it right:  how can we allow a man who has so abused the power of the Presidency to go unpunished. He has to be held responsible for  his actions, but also because of the precedents he has created.  We not only have to stop him now but we need to re-establish norms for future Presidents; the formerly unwritten rules on how a President should behave in office.  

You will hear both arguments in public debate today, within the Democratic Party and among Democratic Congressmen.  The House leadership, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer, both are calling for investigations but not impeachment.   Others, including the new “left” Congressional Democrats, want a Presidential impeachment, and they want it now.

A technical aside: impeachment is Congress’s way of bringing the indictment that Robert Mueller felt constrained by Department of Justice regulations not to do.  Impeachment is the bringing of charges, and is brought by majority vote of the House. Like an indictment, impeachment calls for a trial, with the trying body being the Senate of the United States. Two-thirds of the Senators are required to convict, with the penalty removal from office. In political terms (and it is a political rather than a legal action) it would require a majority of the House (the House Democrats could do it) then all of the Democratic Senators (even Joe Manchin) and twenty of the Republicans.  Given the current evidence, twenty Republican Senators aren’t likely to cross the “Trump Line.”

Politically, and barring the revelation of some new and horrific Presidential action or crime, Donald Trump will not be removed from office.  He will need to be defeated at the polls, just as Director Comey suggests. So why should the House begin the process, when it cannot be fulfilled?

The House of Representatives can serve an important role, even if the President cannot be removed. The House can serve as a continual reminder of what’s wrong with Mr. Trump’s Presidency, by highlighting the dysfunction, disinformation, and disastrous decision-making process that continues to go on.  They can do this by using the Mueller Report as a basis for impeachment inquiries, revealing the details to the American people through public hearings and witness testimony.  

It is one prong of a multi-layered strategy to win the 2020 election.  The American people need to be reminded of what’s wrong with the Trump Presidency, but they also need to see an alternative to his policies and actions. The House can hold hearing on the President, but they also need to hold hearing on drug costs, rising health care costs, minimum wage reform, and education costs.  In other words, the House needs to show the Democratic view of what America can be, not just hold up a mirror to see the horrors of the Trump Administration.

For the Democratic Presidential candidates:  talk about the issues and make your case for being the President.  We have a wide range of choices, growing almost daily, and we go from the extreme left of Sanders and Warren, to the extreme middle of Klobuchar, Biden, Beto and now Moulton.  These candidates are getting a chance to make their case.  Their statement on impeachment should all be as one: the House should proceed to investigate. 

Let the Chairmen; Nadler, Schiff, Waters, Cummings and Neal do their job showing what this President is. Let the candidates do their job of showing what a Democratic Presidency will offer.  Then let the voters decide, in a free, fair and unfettered election (we still have a lot of work to do there) to make the “revolution” of 2020 possible.  That’s the Democratic Path.

Process Crimes, Ghost Indictments, and Bastard Investigations

… we allow our Political opposition research to function as a basis for a warrant to spy on American citizens…none of the 37 people (Russians indicted by Mueller) will face justice, and God forbid if they show up and try to use our criminal process to try to uncover sources and methods that our intelligence community uses, so those were Ghost Indictments they’re never going to result in any consequence and they confirm what we already know… Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz on CNN – 4/20/19

Despite the fact that the Mueller Report should not have been authorized in the first place & was written as nastily as possible by 13 (18) Angry Democrats who were true Trump Haters, including highly conflicted Bob Mueller himself, the end result is No Collusion, No Obstruction! – Donald J. Trump tweet – 4/20/19 

The Mueller Report has been revealed (albeit a redacted version.) The Congressional Committees; House Judiciary, Intelligence and Oversight, are calling for the entire report to be released to them in a classified version so they can do their jobs. Judiciary needs to determine whether the President committed crimes, Intelligence study how to protect the United States from further Russian incursions into our elections, and Oversight to find a way to avoid failure in our electoral processes.  

The Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Republican Lindsey Graham, sees nothing in the Report they want to talk about.  No surprise there, Graham wants the Report to go away, and wants to try to refocus the American electorate on what he sees as the flaws and failures of the FBI intelligence investigation that led to the appointment of Robert Mueller.

Matt Gaetz, the annoying young Republican Congressman from the Pensacola area, is “doing his duty” for the Trump Administration by raising questions about the Mueller Report.  He echoes the Graham/Trump theme of the illegitimacy of the entire FBI look into the Campaign.  His argument depends on the false premise that the original intelligence investigation was based on the Steele Dossier.   The Dossier was commissioned originally by Republican primary opponents to Trump and then sold to Democrats for the general election.  Michael Steele, a former British Intelligence operative with close sources in Russia, wrote the disturbing report of Trump/Russian contacts and potential “kompromat” of the candidate – blackmail information.

It is a fascinating study.  But it was not the “predicate,” the FBI term of art for the legal basis of the intelligence investigation.  The actual predicate was recurring contacts between four different Trump campaign operatives and Russian intelligence, along with confirmed information that the Trump campaign knew about DNC computer hacking by Russia far before it was known publicly.  Trump foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos had a drunken conversation with the Australian ambassador to the United Kingdom, revealing the hacking knowledge. The Ambassador reported this to US intelligence, making it the final impetus to begin investigating.

Trump, Graham and Gaetz are trying to sell the false narrative that the investigation was illegally based on Steele alone, therefore making it a “bastard” investigation.  Since ultimately the Mueller team evolved from that original mission, if Republicans can delegitimize it from birth, they can argue that the whole Mueller Report is unusable, the “fruit of the poisonous tree.”

The second devaluation of the Report is to discount its results.  Perhaps the most important aspect of the Report is the way, in great detail, it outlines how Russian Intelligence infiltrated and corrupted the US election process:  manipulating social media, hacking into Democratic computers, and attempting to corrupt the election hardware.  To headline each of these, and to put Russia on notice that even their own domestic intelligence operatives aren’t anonymous, Mueller issued US indictments of many individual Russians.  

But to the Trump Team, those charges are “Ghost” indictments, somehow of less value because they cannot currently be prosecuted in court. In fact, Congressman Gaetz attempts to make a potential trial threatening, supposedly risking the revelation of US intelligence assets and methods.  His argument, since you wouldn’t want to try those Russians anyway, they are “sham” or “ghost” indictments.

I’m sure the Congressman would have described the formerly sealed indictment of Julian Assange as a “ghost” as well; with Assange ensconced in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London for seven years there seemed little chance he could be served.  But, a cat, a lack of personal hygiene, and a change in the Ecuadoran government drove him from his shelter, and today he awaits extradition hearings in London to come to the US:  some Ghost.

And finally there’s the supreme “waste of money” that the Trump forces claim Mueller spent, “…a thirty million dollar investigation that only found ‘process’ crimes.”  As almost every former Federal Prosecutor has made clear, process crimes such as perjury and obstruction of justice are just as important as the underlying criminal acts. Process crimes are crimes, if not, then the best liars and cheats would evade all prosecution.  Often it is through “process crimes” that prosecutors gain the leverage to reveal the full criminality below.

And besides, with the Paul Manafort case alone, the Federal government seized assets worth more than forty million dollars.  In that sense, the Mueller investigation was a net financial plus.

But it’s all just smoke.  The Mueller Report has revealed the President as a cheat, a liar, and a man willing to ignore Constitutional strictures and norms.  The Trump team can say what they want, and their base will believe what they are told; but ultimately the Report reveals to the American people what “their President” looks like.  It’s not a pretty sight, and regardless of what the Courts or the Congress are able to do, the electorate will make their evaluation clear in 2020.

Why, Why, Why did they Lie, Lie, Lie

He is the President, he’s staying the President, and he’ll get re-elected President Presidential Senior Advisor Kelly-Ann Conway – 4/19/19

Donald J Trump is a cancer on the Presidency – George Conway, Kelly-Ann’s husband– 4/19/19

This is the end of my Presidency, I’m f**ked! – Donald Trump, 4/17/17, the day Mueller was appointed 

President Trump is a victim. As he said at the release of the Mueller Report, “…no President should have to go through this.”  Attorney General Bill Barr continued this “victim” theme in his pre-release press conference, characterizing the President as: 

“…frustrated and angered by a sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents, and fueled by illegal leaks.”  Barr legally excused the President’s continuing acts of obstructing justice because of this frustration.  Let’s hope that doesn’t become a more general criminal standard: 

Defendant – “I didn’t file my tax returns because I was frustrated, your honor.”

Judge – “Oh, you were frustrated, then you can go home, have a good day!”

And Donald Trump Jr, is ignorant.  I’m not trying to be insulting, I’m simply stating what the Mueller Report said.  Mueller determined that he couldn’t charge Junior with conspiring with the Russians at the June 9^thmeeting, because Donny didn’t know working with the Russians to get stolen material to use against Hillary Clinton was wrong. The legal term is mens rea, “the intention or knowledge of wrongdoing that constitutes part of a crime.”  If he didn’t know it was wrong, he can’t be convicted.  So much for “ignorance of the law is no excuse,” go ahead and run a Presidential campaign, you don’t need to know the law, in fact, knowledge will get you in trouble.

But the overarching theme of the Mueller Report is that the Trump Campaign was in almost constant contact with Russian sources, and that the members of that campaign, led by the President himself, have lied over and over again about what they did.  Which begs the question:  why, why, why did they lie, lie, lie?

If they were truly “victims” as their bedtime story goes, of Federal agents who plotted a “coup” to overthrow the duly elected President: it they were truly “innocent,” then why did (and do) they continue to lie about what happened?  The short answer is “mens rea” once again, they really thought what they did was wrong, whether Mr. Mueller could prove it or not.  They acted guilty because they thought they were guilty, and but for the lying of defendants who anticipate a Presidential pardon, destruction of evidence (where did all the Bannon/Prince texts go) and obstruction of justice, they might well have been charged. 

Michael Cohen said it best as quoted in the report: the Trump campaign was a “branding exercise” that went tragically wrong.  They weren’t supposed to win, winning exposed the Trump organization to the legal scrutiny that the Trumps had spent generations trying to avoid. The Mueller report is just the first step.

The Mueller Report is a road map for other Federal Prosecutors.  It is also a road map for Congressional Impeachment, with the second volume on Presidential obstruction of justice laying out ten separate charges.  Mueller himself felt constrained by Justice Department policies:  he couldn’t indict a sitting President and he felt a “sealed” indictment to be opened after Trump leaves office was “unfair.”  The Special Counsel felt that if you deny a defendant their “speedy trial” and day in court by sealing the indictment for an extended period of time, you deny them justice.  And, as Julian Assange can attest to, sealed indictments don’t always remain sealed.  

But all of the actions of the Trump organization weren’t within the narrow scope of investigation that was Mr. Mueller’s charge. Mueller didn’t look into the loans from Deutsche Bank, and whether the Russians, or the Saudis, or the Qatari’s have an undue influence over the President through the money he owes them. Mueller couldn’t look, but the Congressional committees and the Federal prosecutors in New York can.  The Mueller investigation made over a dozen sealed referrals to other prosecutors; the conclusion of the Muller investigation is not the conclusion of problems for Donald J. Trump.  Maybe that’s why they continue to lie, lie, lie.

The Truth Shall Set You Free

Today we will finally see a part of the Mueller Report.  We don’t know what to expect; how much will be redacted, and what facts and conclusions the Mueller Team reached.  Hopefully that will be revealed – I fully anticipate working through a colorful four hundred-page document in the next twenty-four hours.  I’ve laid in a supply of paper, color printer ink, and copious amounts of coffee for reading, and beer for ruminating.  It’s that serious, I want to know what Mueller learned in his two-year investigation, and I want to draw my own conclusions from his study.

We have been “played” by Attorney General Bill Barr.  So far, he has done the President’s bidding:  allowing a narrative of exoneration to marinate for the past two weeks, even though Barr himself made it clear that Mueller reached no conclusions about obstruction of justice.  We really don’t know what Mueller said about that, or about what Russians did, or about what the Trump campaign did.  All we know for sure is that Mueller was unable to reach a criminal standard for indictment regarding Americans conspiring with Russia.  With the Department of Justice having a policy preventing the President from being indicted, we don’t even know whether that was the sole reason for Mr. Trump being left out.

The Attorney General is an “odd man out” regarding Cabinet appointments. Since the Nixon years, we have expected him or her to take a different role than just a Presidential representative.  Ever since Eliot Richardson resigned as Nixon’s AG rather than fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, we have held the head of the Justice Department to a higher standard than the normal political appointee.  

The Attorney General is the chief law enforcement officer in the United States.  Americans expect their law enforcement to be fair, above board, and unbiased.  We certainly expect that the chief exemplify that role.  From Richardson’s replacement, Ohioan Bill Saxbe, to Clinton’s Janet Reno, to Obama’s Eric Holder; the AG has placed a barrier between the White House, the Presidency and the Department of Justice.  Even Jeff Sessions did his duty, recusing himself from the Trump investigation, and defending his department despite being continually lambasted by the President.

Bill Barr has proven that he sees his role as “the President’s Attorney,” not the attorney for the people of the United States.  We should have realized this, despite all of the original talk of Barr as an “institutionalist.”  He wrote an unsolicited nineteen page legal opinion about the power of the President and his inability to obstruct justice, and he has continued to act in concert with the White House plan.  He has joined the President’s theme questioning the validity of the Mueller probe, even going so far as to say that Federal agencies “spied” on the Trump campaign. Though he later tried to explain this as “legal spying,” his word choice was exactly the same as the President’s real attorneys, Giuliani and Sekulow.  

Last night we discovered that Mr. Barr has been briefing the White House on the Report, giving them a head start on their preparations.  The White House has been authoring a rebuttal, which I’m sure will be summarized quickly as soon as the actual Report becomes public.  Barr gave no such head start to Congress, and has acted disdainfully towards the House Committees most involved in investigating the election of 2016.  The Congress will get the exact same version of the report that the public will see, making it clear that Mr. Barr holds their Constitutional duty in low regard. In the past Congress got an unredacted version, and the public got the “rainbow” edition. 

There is a tradition in Washington called “Friday evening taking out the trash.”  It is when the stories that they want buried are released, Friday after five in the afternoon, when everyone has started the weekend.  Mr. Barr has tried to “trash” the Mueller report, releasing it on the Thursday before Easter and Passover weekend.  The result won’t be a report in the trash, it will mean that the media won’t get an Easter break this year.  Ari will miss Passover, and Rachel won’t go fishing.  

So this morning Mr. Barr has called a press conference, after the President tweeted him to do so.  The conference is about the report, but will be held several hours before the actual report will be released.  It is Barr’s last chance to shape the narrative, to put his obscure “unitary executive” spin on whatever it is the Mueller Report will reveal.  Mr. Mueller himself was not invited to participate.  It is vaguely reminiscent of a press conference in the summer of 2016, when FBI Director Comey tried to shape the Hillary Clinton email story:  no charges but reckless behavior.  We saw how well that turned out.

All of this action and reaction to the unreleased report seems to indicate that the Mueller Report will not be good for the Trump Administration.  If it actually did exonerate the President and his campaign from blame, then none of this “spin” would be necessary.  Like most of the Russia crisis, there seems to be so much smoke, there must be a fire somewhere.  

Today we will find out. And no matter how much shaping and spinning Mr. Barr, Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Sekulow, Senator Graham, Congressman Jordan and all of the rest may do, we will soon know for ourselves what Mr. Mueller had to say.  And that’s the foolishness of all of this; the American people can and will read.  They will know directly without the filter of spin and interpretation.  By Good Friday, or at least Easter Monday, we will finally know the truth of what Robert Mueller did, and found:  Hallelujah!