Sunday Morning Coming Down

June 25, 1973: White House counsel John Dean recounts his meetings with President Nixon to the Senate Watergate Committee: “I began by telling the President that there was a cancer growing on the Presidency, and if the cancer was not removed, he President himself would be killed by it.” If you were at home and watching the television you might have seen President Trump calling for people to walk to the Capitol and he would be with them on January 6th, 2021 .  Later in the afternoon it got ugly, and violently dangerous.  Some in the crowd were calling out to hang Mike Pence. Two Impeachment Trials, criminal indictments, and civil fraud, defamation and sexual abuse judgments are not the stuff of witch hunts and victimless crimes.  Chris Christie:  "He'll burn America to the ground to help himself," Christie said, in a direct address to the camera. "Every Republican leader says that in private. I'm the only one saying it in public."   In many ways the legal iss...

 I think it is a form of Karma that a former holder of this country's highest office and famous for snarky nicknames has a down low nickname from compliments of his own political party. 

I announced at the UU of Miami that I was going to set up a "cuss jar" at my house as a fund raiser of sorts.  Self imposing a fine when I said out loud " mother^$*()" when I should have just said "oh well".   Speaking to the minister after the service about my announcement he commented on a "Guest at Your Your Table" which was a Thanksgiving to Christmas fund raiser for the UU Service Committee.  You were supposed to make a donation daily which would be approximately what it would cost to feed another mouth. In concept it's good, its execution poses problems. The minister volunteered that he would be a bad candidate for a "cuss jar" as he never swore.  Conversation complete, I instinctively rolled my eyes and said a silent "oh well".

The Governor of North Dakota is Doug Burgum.  I'm not going to make him a hero. You can read what he's done in Wikipedia.  He's a Republican and was an early big investor in Great Plains Software which was acquired by Microsoft. I'm not sure how wealthy he is.  He has enough money to offer $20 gift cards to the first 50,000 voters that donate $1 to his presidential campaign so he can appear on the stage with other Republican hopefuls in their first debate.  I guess it's easier than getting 50,000 people to send you $20 (a double sawbuck) $1,000.000. I'm a democrat.   Closed party primaries and open party primaries have positive features for candidate selection.  The biggest problem with primaries is small turnouts and results that represent the most active, truest believers, who might not be the best candidates. Being a governor of even a small state is a good training ground for higher office. What would people think if Walmart offered gift cards to v...

The highest three branches of government in the u.s.a. hardly rate being capitalized. We have elected at least one president that is a better performer than a governor. (Twice impeached, twice indicted and the legal system isn't done.) Our representatives in congress are too often better at fund raising than legislating.  (According to U.S. Term Limits over 50% of their time is spent raising money for their campaigns.) Our supreme court judges now reflect a political system rather than an old fashioned 'judicial temperament".  Some long recognized decisions have been overturned by a "packed Supreme Court" handpicked from the Federalist Society legions.    

If there are ethics rules for lower level Federal Judges regarding gifts of free travel and other free stuff like vacations, why don't they also apply to Supreme Court Justices as well.  This is a really simple problem to solve.  I would give the "fish eye" to a Supreme Court Justice who asserted that it didn't apply to the Supreme Court. 

On June 8th the former President of the United States of America was indicted by a federal grand jury in Miami. This has never happened before.  Nixon was pardoned by Ford.  At the time it was politically risky but it let the country move forward.  It did leave unanswered what we should do with a president who may have broken the law and it seems to be using his former status as a defense against prosecution. I've served on federal grand juries twice and it is a sobering experience.  We heard cases about fights on airplanes and we heard more than a few serious drug cases that were common in Miami at the time. The current situation is without precedent.   The indictment of a former president means that there are sufficient legal grounds to believe that he has broken the law.  How this will be resolved is to be determined at a later date. Regular people face consequences for getting caught breaking the law all the time.  Why should a past president ...