Tag Archives: First Amendment U.S. Constitution

October 5, 2025 · 10:09 AM

Banned Books Week 2025 – October 5-11

Every “Banned Books Week” because it highlights the ongoing fight against censorship.  But it’s become especially critical in recent years in what has generally been considered the world’s most powerful democracy.  Under our current leadership, we’re heading towards authoritarianism, and the number of book bans across the U.S. has increased and intensified.

The hysteria won’t stop – certainly not as long as we have right-wing extremists in the White House and both houses of Congress.  Just remember: no one has the right to determine what’s appropriate for others to read!  That’s counterintuitive to the First Amendment to the Constitution and won’t succeed.  It will only drive readership underground and ultimately lead to anarchy.

Authors Guild Censorship Tracker: Monitoring Threats to Free Speech and Authors’ Rights

PEN America: Banned Books List 2025

PEN America: The Normalization of Book Banning

Keep writing and keep fighting!

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September 20, 2025 · 6:13 PM

Watchittocracy

Around 1990 I met a woman who once worked for the now-defunct Braniff Airlines.  She was the aunt of a close friend, and somehow we got to discussing business practices and how things function in the corporate world.  I was already working for a major bank in Dallas.  She noted how the former president of Braniff refused to accept the reality of bad news.  Anyone who dared to step into his office and present him with less-than-stellar information about the company’s dire finances was promptly terminated.  On the day in 1982 the company filed for bankruptcy, she mentioned that employees didn’t get paid and, in some clerical settings, they literally went ballistic and destroyed many pieces of equipment and office furnishings as retribution.  I was shocked, but said I didn’t blame them.

In the summer of 2011 I landed a contract technical writing position with an IT firm in Dallas.  One of the senior technical writers had worked for Braniff as a flight attendant until they went bankrupt.  She confirmed what that other woman had told me two decades earlier.  Braniff employees didn’t receive their last paycheck and lost their patience.

You don’t have to be a business owner to understand that bad news is an inevitable burr in daily operations.  It comes with territory, but some people handle it better than others.  The same goes for comedy.  Cultural shifts can make individuals more or even less sensitive to certain aspects of their surrounding environments.

The U.S. currently has a president, however, who has no problem calling people names and making fun of them, but suddenly draws the line at people mocking him.  “You’re a horrible person” is how he often prefaces a response to someone who asks him a question he finds intolerable.  But, as I wrote in a previous essay, it appears the demonic world of American politics has become riddled with the emotionally fragile.

Last week conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed by a young man while holding an outdoor question-and-answer session at Utah Valley University.  The 31-year-old Kirk left behind a wife and two young children.  Right-wingers immediately jumped into the chaos and started pointing fingers at liberals and the entire Democratic Party. 

“Democrats own what happened today,” South Carolina Republican Nancy Mace groused to reporters the day after Kirk’s death.  “I am devastated.  My kids have called, panicking.  All the kids of conservatives are panicking.”

President Trump ordered flags flown at half-mast in honor of Kirk; something he didn’t do in the bloody aftermath of the January 6, 2021 riots on Capitol Hill.

It’s ironic, though, because Kirk once said that gun-related deaths were merely a price to pay for Americans’ right to own firearms.  “It’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment,” he stated matter-of-factly in 2023.  Now he’s being lionized as a martyr to conservative ideology.

Kirk also believed firmly in free speech, declaring that saying even “contrarian things” is acceptable.  I have to agree with that statement.  But, as the adage goes, be careful what you wish for…

The general concept of free speech is now under attack, as it always has been with Trump and his MAGA mafia.  Recently the Federal Communications Commission ordered the ABC network to cancel or at least suspend Jimmy Kimmel’s nightly talk show, after he commented on Kirk’s murder.  Kimmel didn’t gloat over the assassination; he simply pointed out that Trump supporters are using it to enhance their own anger.

For some folks, free speech only seems to have consequences or responsibilities when someone says something they don’t like.  How free should someone be with their own words?  You can’t threaten to kill someone or you can’t call them a rapist without tangible proof.  Slander and threats of violence aren’t covered by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Banned Books Week 2025 is coming up soon, and I recollect a news piece I saw back around 1986 – the centennial anniversary of the Statue of Liberty.  Several foreign-born and newly-minted American citizens discussed the oppression they escaped.  One woman, a Russian, noted that she was a reading a book at an outdoor café, when said she suddenly got the feeling someone was watching her.  But she remembered she was now in the United States – and she could read just about anything she wanted, even in public, without fear that someone would report her to authorities for being a traitor or disruptive; merely because of what she was reading.

Is that where we’re headed?  People need to watch what they read, as well as what they say?  Or is the First Amendment now subject to political interpretation?

Do any of us want someone else to determine what we say and read?  I’m not willing to give up that type of freedom.  No one should.

Image: Dave Whamond

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August 29, 2025 · 6:51 PM

You Won’t Have Mail!

Recently American Online (AOL) made a stunning announcement: they’re shutting down on September 30 – this year.  As in one month from now!  What had once been THE email service for many internet users has apparently run its course and – like most lifelong politicians – is no longer relevant.

Introduced in 1991, the screeching sound of AOL dial up served as the soundtrack of those early days of the cyber universe.  I definitely remember it!  AOL came with my first personal computer in March of 2000.  The “You’ve got mail” voice alert was exciting at the time. 

The influx of broadband remedied the nails-on-chalkboard tone that signaled a connection to the internet.  But, as with dial phones and 8-track tape players, AOL may have become a victim of technology.  It’s just what happens with technology and trends.

Despite my initial love for AOL, I had two major clashes with them; the second of which severed our relationship forever.  In February 2004, AOL published a piece on how Christopher Columbus allegedly used Leap Year Day of 1504 to trick the indigenous Taino people of Jamaica into providing food for him and his stranded crew.  In the comments section, someone posted a completely unrelated remark; something to the effect of “no one has suffered like the Jewish people.”

I have no idea what prompted it, except ethnocentric arrogance.  But I replied with a remark that included the term “politically correct bullshit”.   Apparently that hurt someone’s feelings, so they reported me to AOL who promptly deleted the verbiage and suspended me from commenting for a short period.  In other words, AOL did something that reeked of juvenile behavior – they put me on “probation”.

“Excuse me?”  It was bad enough I could hardly understand the customer service representative through her heavy accent.  Like several U.S. companies at the turn of the century, AOL had outsourced their technical support and customer service to India and other parts unknown.  But, when she told me about the probationary status due to my foul language, I retorted, “You don’t place me on probation!  I place you on probation!”  I was a paying customer, plus the U.S. Supreme Court had already ruled that foul language was protected speech under the First Amendment to the Constitution.  Neither truth would change their cyber mind.

Seven years later I committed another more egregious act – in the minds of AOL leadership.  I emailed a nude image of myself to a close friend in a joke message.  This time it was AOL who got their feelings hurt and literally shut down my email address.  I had to scramble to find another service and settled on Gmail.  But I kept thinking – if everyone who used foul language or sent a nude photo got banned from the internet, well…you wouldn’t have an internet!

My father – who was born in 1933 – told me that, as a kid, he thought the voices he heard from the radio were from tiny people inside the device.  Radio was a popular form of technology in the 1930s and 40s.  Then television, then computers and now…well, who knows what will come up in the future.

Goodbye to AOL.  And life continues.  Like technology itself, it always does.

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October 28, 2023 · 5:44 PM

X Matters

The U.S. Supreme Court commenced its latest term October 2, and after the previous two years of drama and shocking decisions, the American populace is wondering what’s next.  Among the upcoming decisions:

Lindke v. Freed – A case in which the Court will decide whether a public official’s social media activity can constitute state action only if the official used the account to perform a governmental duty or under the authority of his or her office.

Murray v. UBS Securities LLC – A case in which the Court will decide whether, under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, a whistleblower must prove his employer acted with a “retaliatory intent” as part of his case in chief to succeed on a retaliation claim.

Rudisill v. McDonough – A case in which the Court will decide whether a veteran who has served two separate and distinct periods of qualifying service is entitled to receive all of the education benefits at once from programs associated with both periods of service.

United States v. Rahimi – A case in which the Court will decide whether 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8), which prohibits the possession of firearms by persons subject to domestic-violence restraining orders, violates the Second Amendment.  (Both domestic violence experts and gun rights supporters are closely watching this particular case.)

Vidal v. Elster – A case in which the Court will decide whether the refusal to register a trademark under 15 U.S.C. § 1052(c) violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment when the mark contains criticism of a government official or public figure.

The 2022 Dobbs decision upended the long-standing belief the High Court always moves the nation forward.  It wasn’t akin to the 1954 Brown decision, which reversed the 1896 Plessy ruling.  It was such a regressive move that even legal scholars remain stunned.  Afterwards, Justice Clarence Thomas – the longest-serving member of the Court and a conservative darling – declared the Dobbs decision opened the possibility for reversals of other cases, such as Obergefell v. Hodges that legalized same-sex marriage.  Curiously he said nothing of the 1967 Loving v. Virginia case that legalized interracial marriage.  (Thomas is currently married to a White chick.)

As upsetting as the Dobbs decision was, I know the case that will galvanize Americans; that is, the decision that – if reversed – will incite a revolution.  It is the one case that will drive Americans into the voting booth more than abortion, education, guns, queers or voting itself – Miller v. California, the 1972 decision that technically legalized pornography.  (Also see United States v. Reidel.) Yes, among all the sentient issues plaguing our modern society, denying people the right to view sexual activity will culminate in a revolution that could rival the collapse of the Roman Empire.  In the mid-1980s, President Ronald Reagan – perhaps still angry about the Miller decision – launched a war on pornography.  His then-Attorney General, Edwin Meese, commissioned associates to investigate the adult film industry under the guise of protecting children, which is indeed a noble effort.  But in reality, Reagan’s self-righteous demeanor drove his efforts to limit free speech; to stifle those who dared to disagree with him.  We saw much of the same two decades ago as critics of President George W. Bush were assailed.  Both extremist conservatives and liberals just don’t like when people have something negative to say about their lifestyles.  The same groups don’t have any problem, though, dictating what’s appropriate for others.  Conservatives, in particular, don’t like anything sexual.  It sends them into epileptic fits.

Regardless I can assure everyone that any U.S. Supreme Court assault on pornography will be taken seriously.  It has a lot to do with finances.  As of 2022, the adult film industry in the U.S. profited about $97 billion.  And that kind of money buys a certain amount of power.

The Reagan Administration failed to shut down pornography in the U.S.  Despite the AIDS epidemic, the adult film industry forged ahead in the 1980s and continued growing.  And I can assure even the most ardent of conservatives can’t stop it.  Then again, many of those same conservatives often view pornographic material – they just won’t admit it.  They really can’t because it would undermine their own limited credibility.

No matter what happens with the High Court, I doubt few other matters will resonate with voters as the X factor.  There are few things more obscene to me than war and unfettered censorship.

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July 22, 2022 · 8:40 PM

Next!

“First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.”

Martin Niemöller

We’re still in shock here in the U.S.  In just a matter of weeks, the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court undid decade’s worth of progressive social reforms.  The reversal of Roe vs. Wade last month garnered the most attention, but they didn’t stop with that.

In Vega vs. Tekoh, the High Court ruled that a violation of Miranda rights doesn’t provide a basis for civil damages.  The original Miranda vs. Arizona decision ensured people accused of criminal behavior have the right to legal counsel and to remain silent in the face of police interrogation.  Miranda was decided in line with the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment, which had already established certain guidelines for addressing criminal procedures.  The Vega ruling now ensures that law enforcement can act with impunity.  I suspect it’s a response to the vitriolic reactions to high-profile police killings over the past…well, several decades; the ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests and all that.  In Vega, the SCOTUS majority noted that, if the original Miranda court intended to create a constitutional right versus a prophylactic rule, it would have definitively declared that immediately upon deciding Miranda.  The 1966 Court knew how to use its words, the current Court essentially declared, and those words used were not “constitutional right.”  See how verbiage can be twisted so easily by academics?

In West Virginia vs. the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Court undercut the latter’s efforts to regulate greenhouse gases.  SCOTUS agreed with Republican-led states and energy companies that the 1970 Clean Air Act gave the EPA too much power over carbon emissions.  The decision was also a strike back against the 2015 Clean Power Plan – an Obama-era policy that targeted adverse climate change.  To environmentalists, it wasn’t surprising that energy conglomerates were adamant in reversing the CPP, as well as the CAA.  But the West Virginia ruling falls in line with the belief of conservatives that climate change is a hoax.  That’s why energy companies overwhelmingly support Republican candidates.  I have to note West Virginia is a top coal producer.  It also ranks as one of the poorest states in the union.

In his statement regarding the Dobbs ruling, Justice Clarence Thomas suggested the Court should revisit other high-profile rulings, including Griswold vs. Connecticut, which declared the legal usage of contraceptives; Lawrence vs. Texas, which struck down anti-sodomy laws; and Obergefell vs. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage.  Curiously, he didn’t call for a review of Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education, which declared that racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional or Loving vs. Virginia, which legalized interracial marriage.  I guess this is because overturning these decisions would impact Thomas, a Negro married to a White chick.  It’s amazing how some people have no problems enacting laws that wouldn’t affect them personally.

In the 1983 film “The Star Chamber”, Michael Douglas portrays a relatively young judge who becomes engaged with a group of other jurists who find the legal system has gone awry in favor of criminals and decide to enact vigilante justice to right those perceived wrongs.  They hire assassins to kill certain criminals who have escaped incarceration.  The movie is replete with scenes where highly articulate lawyers help defendants get out of trouble.  In one early scene, Hal Holbrook’s character tells Douglas, “Someone has hidden justice inside the law.”  It’s an attempt to justify the group’s brutal actions.

That’s how I often view the legal system.  Charismatic lawyers prancing around even the most heinous of crimes with carefully-crafted verbiage; a kind of Tolkien-style language only they understand, but something the rest of us have to deal with toiling away in the trenches of reality.  I certainly don’t recommend assassination as a viable resolution to our nation’s political ills.  That’s where the treasured right of voting comes into play.  People need to take their voting rights seriously and understand the significance of not voting.  We’ve seen the fruits of voter apathy in my home state of Texas.  In recent years, the right to vote has come under fire from conservatives.  As with many other rights, this isn’t a surprise.  Conservatives have always tried to suppress voting.  You know…the way totalitarian regimes like Russia have.  I’ve noted more than once that the (fair and legitimate) elections of Barack Obama prompted (mostly White) conservatives to launch their assault on the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  During their convention last month, the Texas Republican Party called for repeal of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which guarantees the right to vote regardless of race.  They did this because…well, because that’s what conservatives do – at least here in the U.S.  They were quick to abolish fascism in Europe during World War II, but weren’t so eager to do the same at home.

With this in mind, I wonder if many conservative queers who voted for the likes of George W. Bush and Ted Cruz are satisfied with their decisions.  Along with many mainstream right-wingers, some are ecstatic that Roe was overturned.  But now, I hate to see their reactions at the thought of reversing Lawrence or Obergefell.  But the neo-Nazi clowns who have targeted the so-called “liberal agenda” for years are coming for their faggot asses next!  I just hope they’ll be happy sitting in their designer closets polishing their Ronald Reagan Glee Club pins.

If anyone in the U.S. believes democracy is functioning just perfectly and nothing is wrong, they need to consider this: five of the current justices on the Supreme Court were chosen by presidents who did NOT win the popular vote.  George W. Bush didn’t really win the 2000 presidential election and he barely won the 2004 election; yet he was able to appoint two justices – Samuel Alito and John Roberts.  Donald Trump certainly didn’t win the 2016 presidential election (perhaps the most corrupt in U.S. history), but he was able to appoint three justices to the Court: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney-Barrett.  Gorsuch’s selection came because Republicans refused to grant President Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, the decency of a hearing upon the death of Antonin Scalia in 2016; claiming it was an election year and the next president should choose the nominee.  However, Barrett’s nomination came after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg in 2020.  The same band of Republicans who denied Garland a hearing rammed through Barrett’s confirmation without hesitation.

I don’t know if most Americans fully comprehend the significance of the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe.  It could lead to much worse.  But this is what happens when people don’t bother to vote in even the most mundane of elections.  Liberals seem especially reticent to take local races seriously.  I can only recommend everyone concerned about our democracy to make that concerted effort to vote.  I understand how many people feel their votes don’t count, particularly after the 2000 and 2016 presidential elections and all the corruption involved in both.

Yet, democracy is not a natural form of governing.  Humanity is more likely to construct an oligarchy-style system.  In worse case settings, totalitarianism can take root, as it almost did with Donald Trump in the White House.  People need to be wary of the current U.S. Supreme Court and its fascist leanings, disguised as social conservatism.  (Then again, fascism and conservatism are pretty much the same ideology.)

It’s starting with the Roe reversal.  Unless we place more moderates into public office, it will only get worse.

Bottom image: Michael de Adder

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June 10, 2022 · 11:57 PM

Total Madness

Children flee Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas on May 24, 2022.

They’re like recurring allergies – they just keep hitting over and over.  But we have a bevy of cures for allergies.  We don’t seem to have many for the sickening epidemic of mass shootings in the U.S.

As of this day, the U.S. has experienced over 250 mass shootings in 2022 – more than the number of days thus far in the year.  A mass shooting is defined as an event where four or more individuals are shot, not including the actual assailant.

Two recent massacres – 10 people in a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, and 21 at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas – have garnered considerable attention.  The Buffalo calamity was racially-motivated, and the Uvalde event was the worst school shooting since the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.  Between the Buffalo and Uvalde episodes, the U.S. experienced 14 other mass shootings.  Let that sink into your brain for a few minutes.

The gun issue has always been sensitive and controversial.  Hardline gun rights advocates have consistently placed the value of their sacred firearms over the right of people to live peacefully and happily.  Even more aggravating is a recent survey where 44% of Republican voters say mass shootings are one price we have to pay for living in a free society.  Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.  Ironically, many of these people consider themselves pro-life.

On the other side, far left gun control proponents want to eliminate all firearms for private citizens; believing that – in this violent, imperfect world – we only need herbal tea and kind words to solve every crisis.  These are the same people who get so emotional it’s almost painfully embarrassing to watch them recount their ordeals.  I understand these are horrific events, but the time for tears and anguish has already passed.

And that’s what I want to communicate to liberals.  Stop crying!  It’s time to get mad, stand up and yell back at these idiotic gun nuts whose only resolution to firearm blood baths is another weapon and a few thoughts and prayers.  Thoughts and prayers serve as little more than toilet paper for the carnage.

In the immediate aftermath of both Buffalo and Uvalde, as more talk of gun violence and gun control arose, we heard the usual cadre of right-wing loudmouths more worried (as always) that the rights of “law-abiding gun owners” could be desecrated.

Spare me the narrow-minded anxiety!

People have more of a right to live than anyone has a right to own a gun.  And no, they aren’t equally significant.  But conservatives campaigning for public office consistently point out one characteristic: they are pro-Second Amendment.  I see these ads every election cycle, especially here in Texas.  They always skip over the First Amendment, which ensures free speech and peaceable assembly and guarantees the right to vote.  Again, the twisted priorities of the conservative mindset.

Last year, when Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed several pieces of legislation into law that declared the state to be a “Second Amendment sanctuary”, I wasn’t shocked.  But I was angry.  This is the same governor who oversaw blatant attacks on the right to vote by dismissing the reality of gerrymandering in the state and allowing for partisan poll watchers.  In older days, partisan poll watchers across the South carried guns and would deliberately intimidate (mostly non-White) voters.  Conservatives steadily bemoan the myth of rampant voter fraud, while ignoring the very real pandemic of gun violence.

For the first anniversary of the 1999 Columbine school massacre, a national news network interviewed several of those first responders.  One man stated that he was particularly upset that the perpetrators (two teenage boys) had included girls among their victims.  He said could understand them shooting boys, “but they shot girls, too.”  I literally stopped when I heard him say that.  Aside from the shock value of the verbiage, that he could differentiate between the genders of the victims and therefore categorize his horror level proved how complacent people in this country have become towards violence.  It certainly was one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard.

The outrage continued in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook massacre, when the U.S. Senate held a hearing on gun violence in the nation and the National Rifle Association’s Wayne LaPierre sat with a scowl on his face and became defensively hostile with every question lobbed at him.  And, as usual, liberals wept, while conservatives grunted.  And then…nothing.  Nothing happened.  No new legislation to address gun violence; no new funding for mental health counseling…nothing.  With that, it seemed the gun violence debate in the United States ended.  We’d accepted the murder of helpless children and thus, nothing more could be done.

At this point, I really don’t hold out much hope for any kind of movement on the legislative front.  Politics has gotten in the way of public service.  So, what’s new?

I remain as tired of the crying from liberals as I am of the concern for gun owner rights from conservatives.  If only the latter group understood the extent of the damage caused by bullet wounds, then perhaps they’d rethink their commitment to ensuring gun rights over human rights.  It’s time for we progressives to get mad and shout down the right-wing extremists who proudly pose with their firearms for family holiday photos the way most normal-minded folks pose with their children and pets, armed with little more than smiles.  The saccharine responses from the horrified won’t result in any considerable change.  They’ll just fade into the morass of national traumas.

Then we’ll have another mass shooting – in a school or some public venue.  And the cycle of tears and excuses will begin all over again.

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June 4, 2022 · 9:52 PM

Best Quotes of the Week – June 4, 2022

“This bullshit you get from this guy about mental health and evil.  The only evil that exists is when the leader of this state has a problem and is a problem of epic proportions.”

Texas State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, criticizing Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for citing mental illness as a key factor in mass shootings, but thwarting funding for mental health care

“How many children have to die before you start to care?”

Jamiee Roeschke, in a statement to the National Rifle Association

Jaimee and her sister survived a shooting at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California, in 2019, in which two students died after a gunman opened fire on the school’s quad.

“No online platform, website, or newspaper should be directed by government officials to carry certain speech. This has been a key tenet of our democracy for more than 200 years and the Supreme Court has upheld that.”

Matt Schruers, President of Computer & Communications Industry Association, after the U.S. Supreme Court issued an emergency ruling temporarily blocking the State of Texas House Bill 20 from being enforced

A lower court will resolve a preliminary First Amendment challenge to the statute, also known as Texas’ “social media law”.

“No online platform, website, or newspaper should be directed by government officials to carry certain speech. This has been a key tenet of our democracy for more than 200 years and the Supreme Court has upheld that.”

Matt Schruers, President of Computer & Communications Industry Association, after the U.S. Supreme Court issued an emergency ruling temporarily blocking Texas’ HB 20 from being enforced

A lower court will resolve a preliminary First Amendment challenge to the statute, also known as Texas’ “social media law”.

Schruers added, “We are encouraged that this attack on First Amendment rights has been halted until a court can fully evaluate the repercussions of Texas’s ill-conceived statute.  This ruling means that private American companies will have an opportunity to be heard in court before they are forced to disseminate vile, abusive or extremist content under this Texas law. We appreciate the Supreme Court ensuring First Amendment protections, including the right not to be compelled to speak, will be upheld during the legal challenge to Texas’s social media law.”

Schruers added, “We are encouraged that this attack on First Amendment rights has been halted until a court can fully evaluate the repercussions of Texas’s ill-conceived statute.  This ruling means that private American companies will have an opportunity to be heard in court before they are forced to disseminate vile, abusive or extremist content under this Texas law. We appreciate the Supreme Court ensuring First Amendment protections, including the right not to be compelled to speak, will be upheld during the legal challenge to Texas’s social media law.”

“This is not an academic conversation. This is a very real conversation where people’s lives could be destroyed by these criminal prosecutions.  In Texas, you’re an adult at 17. We are looking at the prospect of a 17-year-old girl who has an unplanned pregnancy and is seeking an abortion [being] subjected to first-degree felony charges — up to 99 years in jail — and that’s just absolutely unacceptable.”

Austin City Councilman José Vela, on how the city will attempt to shield its residents from prosecution under a Texas law that will criminalize abortion, if Roe vs. Wade is overturned

Vela is proposing a resolution that would direct the city’s police department to make criminal enforcement, arrest and investigation of abortions its lowest priority and restrict city funds and city staff from being used to investigate, catalogue or report suspected abortions.

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February 13, 2022 · 10:30 AM

Worst Quote of the Week – February 12, 2022

“There were tens of thousands of people engaged in peaceful free speech that the press and Democrats try to demonize falsely.  Violence is wrong, and those who engage in violence should be prosecuted.  But peaceful free speech is protected by the First Amendment.”

Sen. Ted Cruz, about the January 6, 2021 riot

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January 9, 2021 · 4:03 PM

Blood Sporting

Tom Freeman’s painting of the August 24, 1814 burning of the White House by British troops during the War of 1812. (White House Historical Association)

In the fall of 1989, the world watched the Soviet Union begin to crumble, as its various satellites in Eastern Europe started breaking free from the decades-long grip of the terrorist state.  The seminal moment came in November when the Berlin Wall was torn down, and the democratic west joined with the communist east to form the New Germany.  That edifice had been both literal and ideological; a true line between freedom and tyranny.

A month later came another equally stunning and even more sanguineous event; one that gained plenty of international attention, but seems to have faded into history.  Shortly before Christmas gangs of angry Romanians stormed the central palace and captured President Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena.  The duo was subjected to a trial and sentenced to death; afterwards they were garroted.  Their demise was similar to that of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress, as World War II came to an end.  Bands of anti-fascist citizens captured them after ambushing their convoy and rushed them through a trial, before stringing them up like wild animals.

I imagine the mobs who invaded the U.S. Capitol building this past Wednesday felt equally aggrieved and outraged by what they perceived to be an unfair presidential election.  Spurred on by the vitriolic rhetoric of their dear leader, Donald Trump, they amassed in Washington from all over the country and launched their angry assault.  In behavior similar to that of developing countries, these renegades overwhelmed Capitol Hill police and managed to enter the arena where lawmakers had convened just moments earlier.

That January 6 was a critical day.  That’s when elected officials gathered to certify that Joe Biden had won the U.S. presidency two months ago and would be sworn into office as the nation’s 46th president on January 20.  The gangs of right-wing ideologues who disrupted that stately process demanded otherwise.

This is the first time since 1814 that the U.S. Capitol had been invaded.  And that was in the midst of the War of 1812; during the early days of the American republic.  Great Britain was still trying to regain control of its former colony and succeeded in burning down the capitol.  That was over 200 years ago.  Last Wednesday came during a war of ideology and political differences.

I have never seen anything like it in my life.  Indeed, it is something more emblematic of nations around the world struggling through the growing pains of a new democracy or any new regime change.  It’s similar to what happened in Cuba on New Year’s Day 1959, when Fidel Castro led a ragtag band of rebels into the presidential palace in Havana to overthrow the brutal dictator Fulgencio Batista.  Like Ceausescu and Mussolini, Batista had held onto power for many years through bloodshed and terrorism.  He suppressed free speech and sought to annihilate anyone who dared to disagree with him.  Unlike Ceausescu and Mussolini, however, Batista was able to leave Cuba and live out his life in peaceful exile – and wealth – in Spain.

The people who stormed into the U.S. Capitol building on Wednesday aren’t freedom-loving patriots.  They’re domestic terrorists; redneck hooligans supported and agitated by a psychopathic narcissist who didn’t fairly win the U.S. presidency in 2016.  They weren’t the least bit upset over the blatantly fraudulent elections of that year and 2000.

For decades conservatives have lobbed conspiracy theories about mobs of left-wing anarchists swarming into American homes to seize firearms and bibles and force everyone to love Muslims and queer people.  That has never happened.  It didn’t happen after the raucous turmoil of the 2000 presidential elections and it didn’t happen four years ago.  As upset as liberals were then, groups of enraged tree-loving abortionists and pot-smokers didn’t invade Washington and trash lawmakers’ offices.  The biggest threat came from within the bastions of conservatism.

I hope devout Trumpists are happy with themselves.

One Capitol Hill police officer, Brian D. Sicknick, has now succumbed to his injuries.  Four protesters also died; one of them shot to death.  I’m saddened by Sicknick’s death, but I don’t give a damn about the others.  Like people who drink alcohol heavily their entire lives and develop cirrhosis, they brought this upon themselves.  The Capitol Hill police chief has resigned, and – as of this writing – nearly 20 people have been arrested in connection with Wednesday’s mayhem.  Insurrection is a federal offense, and treason is technically punishable by death.  The legal machinations over this debacle will play out for years.

And Donald Trump will go down in history as a president who fomented a riot and placated the rioters.

The nation will move forward, as time does – whether anyone on the far left or far right like it or not.  The spirit of a truly democratic society can’t be quashed.  It never has and it never will.

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September 19, 2020 · 6:21 PM

Worst Quotes of the Week – September 19, 2020

“It will start getting cooler.  Just you watch. . . . I don’t think science knows.”

– President Donald Trump, in response to a reporter’s question about climate change causing wildfires in the Western U.S.

“You know, putting a national lockdown, stay at home orders, is like house arrest.  Other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history.”

– U.S. Attorney General William Barr, addressing a Constitution Day celebration hosted by Hillsdale College.

The event’s host asked Barr to explain the “constitutional hurdles for forbidding a church from meeting during Covid-19.”  Barr had recently suggested that Sedition Act charges should be carried out against some protestors – even peaceful ones – to maintain the traditional “law and order” status quo conservatives demand every time civil unrest breaks out over civil injustice.  It’s ironic he made his comments during Constitution Day, since the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution covers free speech.

“The blue states had tremendous death rates.  If you take the blue states deaths out, we are at a level I don’t think anybody in the world would be at.”

– Donald Trump, noting the slow decline of positivity case rates and hospitalizations while touting the overall federal response to the outbreak at a White House press briefing.

The pandemic has taken nearly 200,000 American lives so far.  Aside from claiming that “blue states” (those with Democratic governors) are insignificant, I’m equally appalled he ended his sentence with a preposition – more proof he’s an idiot.

“I think he made a mistake when he said that.  It’s just incorrect information and I called him and he didn’t tell me that and I think he got the message maybe confused, maybe it was stated incorrectly.  We’re ready to go immediately as the vaccine is announced and it could be announced in October, it could be announced a little bit after October but once we go we’re ready.”

– Donald Trump, referring to Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over the importance of wearing masks and the timing for a vaccine.

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