Tag Archives: U.S. Constitution
Verbal Faux Pas of the Week – February 13, 2021
“My name is Bruce Castor, and I am the lead prosecutor – err – lead counsel for the 45th President of the United States. I was an assistant DA for such a long time that I keep saying prosecutor, but I do understand the difference.”
Bruce L. Castor, in his opening defense of Donald Trump during Trump’s impeachment trial
It should be worth noting that, earlier in his career, Castor fought to let Bill Cosby go free while Trump’s other impeachment lawyer, David Schoen, was set to defend Jeffrey Epstein before the latter died in prison.
Filed under News
Worst Quote of the Week – February 13, 2021
“The Executive Committee of the Republican Party of Louisiana has unanimously voted to censure Senator Bill Cassidy for his vote cast earlier today to convict former President Donald J. Trump on the impeachment charge.”
Louisiana State Republican Party, in a statement condemning recently-elected U.S. Senator Cassidy for voting to impeach former President Donald Trump
Cassidy was only one of seven Republican senators to vote along with Democrats to impeach Trump.
Filed under News
Best Quote of the Week – February 13, 2021
“President Trump may not know a lot about the framers, but they certainly knew a lot about him. Given the framers’ intense focus on danger to elections and the peaceful transfer of power, it is inconceivable that they designed impeachment to be a dead letter in the President’s final days in office, when opportunities to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power would be most tempting and most dangerous as we just saw. Thus, as a matter of history and original understanding, there is no merit to President Trump’s claim that he can incite an insurrection and then insist weeks later that the Senate lacks the power to even hear evidence at a trial, to even hold a trial.”
Rep. Jaime Raskin, in his opening statement during Donald Trump’s impeachment trial
Filed under News
Don’t You Understand? They’re Victims!
“The Devil made me do it!”
You have to understand something about the people who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6. They’re not entirely responsible for their actions. They had merely responded to the words of their newly-formed deity, Donald Trump. In the hours leading up to the siege, Trump had infused them with idea that he had been wronged by the voting process; that the 2020 elections had been manipulated by covert gangs of leftist forces determined to enforce abortions and gun confiscations upon helpless, red-blooded, bible-carrying Christian American citizens to ensure his loss. He was a victim, Trump maintained, and vicariously so were his minions.
CHARGE!!!!!!!!!
Thus, the Trumpians had been victimized by the same queer-loving renegades and they were justified in storming the Capitol, tearing through offices, screaming like children told to come in for dinner, threatening others because they got their feelings hurt – all while dressed like ghosts of the Civil War and refugees from a Comic-Con conference gone wrong.
Please!
The Capitol Hill warriors are no more victims of enraged rhetoric than porn stars are of poor script-writing. For years conservatives have proclaimed the tenets of individual freedom and personal responsibility. They declared such values in reactive angst to a welfare society and relentless victimhood proclamations.
They loathed when non-White people bemoaned centuries of Euro-colonial oppression and systemic racism. They rolled their eyes at the thought of women hollering about sexual harassment in the workplace and on college campuses. They snickered at queer folks complaining of innate homophobia on the job and in school.
Then the U.S. Congress met on January 6, 2021 to certify Joe Biden as the winner of last year’s presidential contest, and – as Dante Alighieri once wrote – all hell broke loose.
The Trumpian crowd became maddened by the process and felt they had no other recourse but to subvert that constitutional mechanism in the most violent manner possible. Their voices and votes had been ignored and they had to stop the madness.
So, in the name of Ronald Reagan, where the hell was all that talk of personal responsibility? Where were the people to take ownership of themselves and their actions? In other words, why do the Capitol Hill rioters suddenly see themselves as victims of…well, anything?!
They all sound like a bunch of – oh, God! A bunch of minorities, women and queers! Pass the rifle and heaven forbid! Now these “victims” have placed themselves in the same category as tree-loving, pot-smoking, Muslim-loving liberals!
What’s going to happen next? The magnetic poles will switch sides – like communist traitors – and life as we know will extinguish itself?
Again – please!
I personally don’t care to hear the anguished state of mind of these mentally- challenged pencil-dick and cavern-cunt imps. What happened with last year’s presidential elections is something known as democracy. It’s the sustenance upon which civilized societies survive. We cannot exist without it. The goons who stormed the Capitol three weeks ago didn’t fall victim to the verbiage of Donald Trump; they were victims of their own damned stupidity. If they truly were swayed by Trumpian oratory, they are as gullible as a child believing in Santa Claus. They roared into that building because what was left of their brain cells had perished in the swamp of their own hysteria.
It’s just so incredibly interesting that these right-wing extremists who wrap themselves in the American flag and cry freedom – while waving the loser traitorous Confederate flag – are suddenly helpless and violated. They couldn’t help themselves. Their faux president told them to do it.
The reality is quite simple: they’re violent and they’re stupid. But they aren’t victims.
Filed under Essays
Most Dramatic Quote of the Week – December 12, 2020
“Literally the survival of our nation and our rights as Americans and as Christians is on the line with these two races on January 5 in Georgia.”
– Ralph Reed, political activist and former head of the Christian Coalition, on the need to overturn Joe Biden’s presidential election win
Reed warned that unless “something happened” to reverse the certification of votes in the election, “we’re looking at the possibility and the prospect of a Vice-President Kamala Harris being able to break a tie and turn control of the U.S. Senate over to Chuck Schumer, AOC and the squad, and the far left,” Reed said. (Reed was referring to New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and 3 other female members dubbed as “The Squad” (all non-White) who serve in the House of Representatives, not the Senate.)
“The country that we have known for over 230 years will be gone, and there will be no protection for our rights as believers or of the minority rights of the conservatives in the Senate,” Reed added.
Cue the violins.
Filed under News
A Guide to Women NOT Voting
This year marks a century since the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution assured women the right to vote. But it’s tough to imagine that only now will we be getting our first female vice-president. Still, it’s equally difficult to understand there was a time when the concept of women voting was radical and almost subversive. The old guard of White men who bore something like 99% of the nation’s wealth and power 100 years ago usually had trouble extending those privileges.
In 1917, the National Woman Suffrage Publishing Company (the publishing arm of the National Woman Suffrage Association) came out with “This Little Book Contains Every Reason Why Women Should Not Vote.” And all of its interior pages were blank. It was essentially a comical publication, but at its core was a serious message: there are no good reasons to deny women the right to vote.
Granting women the right to vote was just one major step in the ongoing struggle for voting rights in the United States. As much as detractors tried, they couldn’t squelch the myriad movements to ensure that very basic right, such as the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Considering what’s happened in this year’s elections, it appears that struggle is not over.
Filed under Classics
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.
Truth Amid the Obstruction
No time is right for a health pandemic, but COVID-19 couldn’t have arisen at a more inconvenient period for Americans: at the start of the 2020 presidential election race. Things had been proceeding somewhat normally until March, when concerns about the “novel coronavirus” began altering the social landscape. When I saw that this summer’s Olympics in Tokyo had been postponed – possibly to next year – I knew our world had been capsized by this invisible biological menace. Viruses, like facts, always have a way of sneaking into our lives and making us rethink everything we’ve ever learned. Facts, however, are good things. But, while a crisis of any kind can bring out the best humanity has to offer, it can also bring out the worst.
Right now political conservatives in the U.S. are trying to finagle the COVID-19 miasma into an obstructionist nightmare for the voting populace. Last week thousands of voters in Wisconsin were forced to leave their homes and venture out to designated polling places to cast their votes for a candidate in the Democratic primary. On April 6, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, refused to allow an extension of absentee voting in Wisconsin; thus, forcing the primary to go on as planned on April 7. On April 2, a federal judge had ruled that absentee voting can be extended. But unsurprisingly, the Republican National Committee appealed the ruling, which landed on the docket of the High Court.
In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote that “the court’s order, I fear, will result in massive disenfranchisement.” She went on: “Because gathering at the polling place now poses dire health risks, an unprecedented number of Wisconsin voters – at the encouragement of public officials – have turned to voting absentee. About one million more voters have requested absentee ballots in this election than in 2016. Accommodating the surge of absentee ballot requests has heavily burdened election officials, resulting in a severe backlog of ballots requested but not promptly mailed to voters.”
Political conservatives don’t like it when people they consider insignificant actually have the audacity to practice their right to vote. For a good part of American history, they’ve done just about everything they could – including intimidation and violence – to stifle voting rights; which, they’ve obviously forgotten, is one of the fundamentals of a democratic society. The right to vote is clearly mentioned in the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution! Then again, they may not necessarily forget about it, as they just ignore it. And they always seem to skip over to focus attention on the 2nd Amendment, which addresses firearms.
Conservatives established and enforced such obstructionist tactics as “grandfather clauses”, literacy tests, and poll taxes. Voting advocates had to fight for confidential voting. Early feminists had to do the same to get the 19th Amendment ratified. When President Lyndon Johnson signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act into law, he conceded that he and his fellow Democrats had probably handed the South to the Republican Party. And he was right! Slowly, but surely, over the ensuing decade, many White southerners began switching to the GOP. A number of well-known U.S. politicians, such as Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms, also changed their allegiances to the Republican Party.
The election of Barack Obama solidified in the minds of many conservatives the horrors of expanded voting. They then launched a number of efforts – both at the national and state levels – to ensure that would never happen again. A slew of voter identification rules were suddenly enacted.
The COVID-19 scourge has prompted calls across the nation for expanded absentee voting, such as mail-ins, which has been rebuffed by conservatives who holler voter fraud could result. This week Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton opined that fear of catching the virus does not qualify voters to vote by mail.
But State Judge Tim Sulak ruled that Texans afraid of catching COVID-19 should be allowed to vote by mail during the pandemic, using the state’s disability clause in the state’s election code, and said he will issue a temporary injunction. The Texas Democratic Party and several had filed a lawsuit over concerns that voters in this July’s elections, including the primary runoffs, could come in contact with infected people when voting in person.
“Based on the plain language of the relevant statutory text, fear of contracting COVID-19 unaccompanied by a qualifying sickness or physical condition does not constitute a disability under the Election Code,” Deputy Attorney General Ryan M. Vassar wrote in a letter to Fort Worth State Rep. Stephanie Klick, a fellow Republican.
And, of course, Paxton was “disappointed” that Sulak had “ignored the plain text of the Texas election code to allow perfectly healthy voters to take advantage of special protections made available to Texans with actual illness or disabilities.”
The voter fraud claim is the default mantra of right-wing politicians every time they enact legislation that impacts the voting process. Texas Republicans have long opposed the expansion of mail-in voting. In 2017 the GOP-dominated state legislature stiffened penalties for election fraud.
“Our state is better off when more Texans participate in our democracy,” said Gilberto Hinojosa, chair of the Texas Democratic Party. “Voting by mail is safe, secure and accessible. It allows more voters to participate in our democracy, and it’s a common sense way to run an election, especially during a public health crisis.”
Like the Texas Innocence Project, you know the Texas Democratic Party has their work cut out for them!
Currently, residents over age 65, military members, those who will be away from their residence during voting and people with disabilities can request mail-in ballots. Democrats argue that a disability, defined as a “sickness or physical condition that prevents the voter from appearing at the polling place on election day without a likelihood of needing personal assistance or of injuring voters’ health,” covers all Texas voters under the age of 65, including those who are afraid to catch the COVID-19 virus.
In his letter to Klick, Vassar naturally disagreed, stating that fears of catching the virus is neither a sickness nor a physical condition, but an emotional reaction to the pandemic is not “sufficient to meet the definition of disability”.
It’s ironic that Vassar regards concerns of contracting COVID-19 as emotional. Throughout Obama’s presidency, conservatives screamed that his administration would ban all firearms, abandon Israel, and force churches to conduct same-sex weddings. None of that happened. It never has and most likely it never will. Yet, liberals are always justifiably concerned that voter suppression is a real possibility when conservatives are elected to office. Justifiably concerned because many state legislatures, such as Texas, actually have moved to enact legislation to combat the ubiquitous pandemic of voter fraud.
During Black civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, news cameras captured horrific scenes of police physically assaulting individuals or using water hoses to attack groups of African-Americans. I’ve seen some of that footage – startling black-and-white images of mostly peaceful citizens wanting to vote or be able to enter a restaurant and have a meal. We don’t see that now. Instead, we see elected officials use the power of their position to suppress voting. Firearms have metamorphosed into pens – but they pose no less of a risk.
While I have my own doubts about the effectiveness of the voting process – the fraud-ridden elections of George W. Bush and Donald Trump being the most recent examples – people in any truly democratic society have the right to cast a ballot. And eventually, the obstructionist tactics of those elected (not ordained) politicians will reveal the truth behind their dubious motives.
Filed under Essays
Chief Writing Wolf 