Latest on Trump

Donald Trump, in recent news, has downplayed the guilt of Saudi Arabia in the murder (in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, Turkey) of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who worked for the Washington Post. He says that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has assured him that he did not order the murder of Khashoggi. Trump says he believes the Crown Prince.

This is very reminiscent of when Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and said that he believed Putin when Putin denied that Russian hackers had interfered in the US elections in 2016.

It looks as though Trump cannot conceive that anyone could or would lie to him. This from a man who is one of the most colossal liars of our time.

In both cases Trump has appeared to scorn his (or our, the US's) intelligence community, and what they were telling him, for the sake of cozying up to the leader of a foreign country (in the case of Saudi Arabia, they are somewhat more clearly our ally than would be the case with Russia).

I have to think that Trump was motivated by a desire to not alienate Putin, or Saudi Arabia. (One might say in the Saudi case that this was motivated by the US dependency on Saudi oil, but the truth is that currently the US is an exporter of energy so we are not as dependent on Saudi oil as was once the case. The US does sell Saudi Arabia a lot of arms and weapons, and maybe that is the motivation for trying, as Trump is apparently doing, to avoid any friction by saying that we believe what they tell us and don't believe they did something despicable--which earlier he seemed on the verge of doing.)

In other news, Trump has criticized a US district court for not ruling as Mr. Trump would have liked (the case, I believe, involved an asylum-seeker who had crossed our border). Trump complained about "Obama judges" who are not, in Trump's view, sufficiently concerned with the "safety" of our country and who are not taking a very hard line with asylum applications. He was rebuked by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, who said "There are no Obama judges, nor Trump judges, nor Bush judges. . . " and that we should be thankful that we have an independent judiciary.

Trump never takes disagreement or criticism lightly, so he struck back at Chief Justice Roberts. All this, I think, played out on Twitter, a platform clearly beloved by Trump.

I imagine that Trump's handlers have had to remind him (or, more likely, to try unsuccessfully to convince him) that he is not a king and must abide by the laws and the constitutional limits on his power and authority.

Copyright © 2018,

The Nomination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court

There was a post here about then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh; but I've deleted it because there's been so much water over the dam since I wrote that. (So this displays with an incorrect date and was actually posted on 10/11/2018.)

There was a complex and emotional story leading up to Kavanaugh's eventual (last Saturday) confirmation to the Supreme Court by the US Senate Judiciary Committee and then the whole Senate--as required by the US Constitution.

Since the story was well reported, even in international news, I will recap it briefly: Kavanaugh was accused of sexually attacking a woman, going back more than 30  years. Both Kavanaugh and his accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, testified in a special Senate hearing. Kavanaugh got very emotional, particularly in relating how the accusations have taken a toll on him and his family--and this probably earned him a good deal of sympathy.

However, he segued into a rant in which he claimed that the whole business was a plot by Democrats to exact revenge for Trump's defeat of Hilary Clinton in the presidential election of 2016. (Had he been coached in this by Trump? Because it sure sounds like one of Trump's paranoid hoax/conspiracy claims.)

Anyway, an FBI investigation was ordered. However, the problem with that is that Trump ordered the investigation and thereby was able to set the parameters and limits of the investigation, and limited it such that the FBI was allowed only a week for the investigation and interviewed only nine people. Probably it was a foregone conclusion that the bottom line to the FBI report contained nothing earth-shaking and was in fact entirely trivial.

(In the Senate vote, Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine widely regarded as a moderate who frequently did not follow Republican or Trump ideology; and Democratic Sen. Manchin from Tennessee, both voted to confirm. This was a surprise (a disappointment, if you were on one side of the issue). So the vote was 50 Yea, 48 No. If one of those two had voted No, there would have been a 49-49 tie; and then Vice President Pence, acting as Senate President Pro Tempore, would have cast the deciding Yea vote--again, all according to the Constitution.)

So Mr. Trump in the end got his extremely conservative nominee confirmed and now, we are told, we have the most conservative Supreme Court in many decades, one which may well reverse such landmark Supreme Court decisions as Rowe v. Wade (which legalized abortion) and Obergefell (which legalized same-sex marriage). The only hope that these decisions will be left alone is if the Court keeps in mind a judicial principle called stare decisis ('let the decision stand').

Copyright © 2018.

More on Kim Davis (Kentucky County Clerk Refusing to License Same-Sex Marriages)

A recent development in the (unfortunately) ongoing saga of Ms. Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who has been refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, is that she received a visit from Mike Huckabee, a former US state governor and currently a candidate for the Republican nomination for President of the United States.
 

I think it is shameful and outrageous that Ms. Davis receives encouragement in her defiance of the law from a politician. This would seem to show that Mr. Huckabee has either no knowledge of, or no respect for, how the US system of government works. The US Supreme Court is just what its name suggests--supreme. As the Court's decision in the recent same-sex marriage case implies, there is no exception recognized for personal preference, even on grounds of "conscience"--even though many on the Religious Right have been arguing for, and trying to enact into state laws, exceptions on the basis of "religious freedom" which would simply mean license to ignore various anti-discrimination laws (for example, laws against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation)--and would thus translate to freedom to discriminate.

 

Mr. Huckabee, Ms. Davis, and others of their persuasion must realize that we live in a secular society. Our government is not one of religious law. They seem to wish for a government in the US which is based o n "Judeo-Christian" law and which thus would be a theocracy--even at the same time that they deplore theocratic societies and governments which are being established in Muslim areas of the world, such as ISIS, ISIL, boku haram, and so forth. The negative example which those authorities show us, of what theocracy means, seems to be a lesson lost to those who want a Christian theocracy in the US.

 

Copyright (c) 2015.

US Supreme Court Ruling on Same-Sex Marriage

It was just announced today: in what the news inevitably would call a "historic" decision, the US Supreme court has ruled that state bans on same-sex marriage are unconstitutional, and also that a state must recognize a same-sex marriage performed in another state.

I was a bit surprised at this decision--even though many pundits had said that it was a likely outcome--because the current makeup of the Court is quite conservative, with the likes of Justice Antonin Scalia who, to my way of thinking, has often shown himself to be extremely conservative (not surprisingly, Scalia was one of the four justices who dissented from the majority decision).

There are those who say that this is "redefining" marriage, and that marriage is a thousands-of-years-old institution. To that I'd like to reply that marriage was "redefined" in 1967, in the famous Supreme Court case of Loving v. Virginia, which ended bans on inter-racial marriage.

There was a time, maybe 30 years ago, when I did not advocate gay marriage. My position was, "Why should we try to ape heterosexual institutions?" Well, I have long since changed my mind because now I recognize that permitting us (gay people) to marry is to validate our relationships and our love. It is a big step toward permitting us to feel that we are equal members of society, rather than in many ways second-class citizens.

Of course this decision will not go down well with some people. Given that some prejudices run strong in some areas or among some people, and given how gun-happy America seems to be, my fear is that, in one of the "Bible Belt" states, such as Texas, Mississippi, or Alabama, two people of the same sex getting married might get shot while they are trying to "tie the knot."

Also, those same states will find ways to drag their feet and otherwise avoid issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, just as for 150 years they have evolved a repertoire of ways to keep African-Americans from voting. It seems that prejudice--what they'd call preserving their way of life--can spawn a lot of ingenuity.

Copyright (c) 2015

And Still Another Gun Massacre

America is currently reeling from yet another massacre by gun.

Readers of my blog know where I stand on gun control. There has been jurisprudence that has affirmed government's right or power to place some limits on so-called "Second Amendment rights" (gun ownership). But, with the current conservative Supreme Court, and enormous lobbying power by the NRA (National Rifle Association), enacting any meaningful gun control--even over assault weapons, which are certainly not needed or used by hunters--is extremely unlikely.

At this moment I don't intend to take on the arguments of the pro-gun segment of the population. I have done so numerous times, in various places. I just want to point out one effect of this most recent event on the collective consciousness of Americans, which is that now people can no longer feel safe even going to the movies.

There are more and more places where we can no longer feel safe. When I was in school, some 55 years ago, there was no such thing as school shootings. Lockdown was not a word in our vocabularies, back then. We may legitimately wonder what has happened, what is going on with our society.

Is this the kind of America that we want?

It should be clear enough what the problem is: guns, and even assault weapons, are too readily available and can get into the hands of mentally unstable people who will use them to create havoc. The American people must cry out, and cry out loudly.

Copyright (c) 2012 by Richard Stein