Tuesday, January 26, 2021
A modest impeachment proposal
Much discussion is being given to the so-called second impeachment of Donald John Trump. Some have called it unConstitutional, some have called it necessary. It seems a bridge too far to waste resources and promote further divisiveness to have taken a hurried and undebated vote in the House to impeach President Trump on his last full day in office January 19. To proceed as laid out, the Senate has agreed to hold the trial in order to convict him, it must be conducted after he's left office -- or at least theoretically.
The relevant Article and Section of the Constitution regarding impeachment reads thus:
"The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.
Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law."
The first paragraph refers to the President of the United States, not the former President of the United States.
The second paragraph states that judgement shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification, etc. But if the former President has left office, then no judgment can be forthcoming, since removal is no longer an option and disqualification, etc, can only accompany removal. It cannot be substituted for it; it must be a part of it.
By proceeding against a citizen who does not hold an impeachable office (former President), Congress's action amounts to a Bill of Attainder, another violation of Mr. Trump's rights.
Without analyzing the (doubtful) merits of the case, let us instead turn this on its head based on the actual words in the Constitution.
When the new Senate Majority (Equality co-leader) Schumer made the announcement that the President had been impeached and would be tried by the Senate at a later date, it was already after Biden had taken the oath of office. Not the former President, but the President! Either Schumer was recognizing that Trump was still the legitimate President of the United States, or he was announcing Biden's impeachment!
If, as specified in the Constitution, the President of the United States is tried by the Senate, then Donald Trump's term was extended de facto by the timing of the article of impeachment. He must therefore remain President until such time as judgment is rendered on the impeach-ment trial to remove him from office -- if that is in fact the verdict, as voted on by 67 (two-thirds of the) Senators. If they cannot garner 67 votes to convict, he remains President until impeached yet again, or the 2024 election, or he decides to resign (whichever occurs first).
Since Trump must remain as President due to the impeachment, Joe Biden's inauguration was an illegal usurpation of power by the Democrats and thus invalid -- as well as all his cabinet appointments, staff assignments and executive orders! Joe Biden is now illegally occupying the White House and the Biden administration is guilty of an insurrection!
Or the Democrats can put an end to this tantrum of childish vindictiveness, punish those who participated in bringing it about, and try to salvage whatever little goodwill can possibly remain toward the "new" administration, even after all the ill-thought out actions they have taken in less than a week.
But only after a public apology by Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer is made TO President Trump AND the American people. Then Pelosi and Schumer and the so-called House managers must be removed from office. And every Democrat AND Republican who voted on or publicly supported the impeachment resolution in either chamber should face disciplinary action.
Sunday, January 24, 2021
It's been awhile . . . .
. . . . perhaps too long for the creative juices to be restored.
A Discussion of Racism
I'm a "racist." Yes, now I've said it. I used to be more of a "racist" than I am now, but I'm still a "racist." I'm not a bigot, and I'm not a white supremacist, and I don't believe in enforced segregation. But in today's hyper-venacular, I'm a "racist."
I wrote this in the wake of the horrible massacre that occurred at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC, at the hands of a despicable, ignorant, uneducated, mentally-disturbed white male. None of those adjectives give him an excuse for what he did. No adjective can provide rationale or absolution for his actions. But perhaps the victims must be the catalyst for the soul-searching that we all -- white, black, yellow, brown -- must undergo today.
I believe my parents were "racists" as well, and that is where my initial attitude toward Negroes (as they were called during my formative youth) were probably conceived. They weren't active, or even passive, haters; they never used (at least in front of their children) the word "nigger." They were never unkind to them, and never mocked them. At worst, they were condescending. They just didn't go out of their way to befriend people of minority background, and they did hold them generally to be culturally and socially inferior.
When I was in junior and senior high school in the Midwest, there were a handful of kids who were minorities. Perhaps statistically there should have been more, but since there were some, I assumed that's all there were. Two of them in my classes were black students, both of were class leaders academically and in extra-curricular activities. I never heard anybody even hint that they shouldn't hold leadership positions because they weren't white. I just assumed that they earned those positions on merit, not by preferential treatment. Perhaps I was naive.
When I transferred to a high school in Northern Virginia in my senior year, I didn't notice that there were no black kids. In both my former school and my new school, there were kids of Mexican-American lineage, whose fathers were serving in the military. They were accepted as peers; we all came from military or government civilian families. It wasn't until years later that I recalled seeing school buses full of black kids passing by without stopping at our bus stops, but never arriving at our school. At that age, the concept of intentional segregation never occurred to me.
Decades ago, this country attempted to legislate integration of schools and neighborhoods. Yet when given the opportunity, it never happened. White people were accused of racism, bigotry, and "white flight," yet in the end, blacks and hispanics generally remained living among blacks and hispanics of the same economic and social strata. It was something that couldn't be legislated, namely that people tend to associate with and live among people like themselves. Where "minorities" strove to improve their economic conditions and expand their social circles, they were called names by their own people and accused of being race-traitors.
I wrote this in the wake of the horrible massacre that occurred at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC, at the hands of a despicable, ignorant, uneducated, mentally-disturbed white male. None of those adjectives give him an excuse for what he did. No adjective can provide rationale or absolution for his actions. But perhaps the victims must be the catalyst for the soul-searching that we all -- white, black, yellow, brown -- must undergo today.
I believe my parents were "racists" as well, and that is where my initial attitude toward Negroes (as they were called during my formative youth) were probably conceived. They weren't active, or even passive, haters; they never used (at least in front of their children) the word "nigger." They were never unkind to them, and never mocked them. At worst, they were condescending. They just didn't go out of their way to befriend people of minority background, and they did hold them generally to be culturally and socially inferior.
When I was in junior and senior high school in the Midwest, there were a handful of kids who were minorities. Perhaps statistically there should have been more, but since there were some, I assumed that's all there were. Two of them in my classes were black students, both of were class leaders academically and in extra-curricular activities. I never heard anybody even hint that they shouldn't hold leadership positions because they weren't white. I just assumed that they earned those positions on merit, not by preferential treatment. Perhaps I was naive.
When I transferred to a high school in Northern Virginia in my senior year, I didn't notice that there were no black kids. In both my former school and my new school, there were kids of Mexican-American lineage, whose fathers were serving in the military. They were accepted as peers; we all came from military or government civilian families. It wasn't until years later that I recalled seeing school buses full of black kids passing by without stopping at our bus stops, but never arriving at our school. At that age, the concept of intentional segregation never occurred to me.
Decades ago, this country attempted to legislate integration of schools and neighborhoods. Yet when given the opportunity, it never happened. White people were accused of racism, bigotry, and "white flight," yet in the end, blacks and hispanics generally remained living among blacks and hispanics of the same economic and social strata. It was something that couldn't be legislated, namely that people tend to associate with and live among people like themselves. Where "minorities" strove to improve their economic conditions and expand their social circles, they were called names by their own people and accused of being race-traitors.
Even though I'm a "racist," I associate with people who have the same interests and passions as do I, regardless of color or sexual orientation. I learned long ago that black people, hispanic people, asian people, women, and people whose sexual preferences are different than mine, have lesser, equal, or greater skills and abilities than I in those areas. Some will never be better than me, and I will never be better than others. We're all endowed with traits or characteristics that we need to develop or hone. That's humanity, and it excels in a free society.
I admit to being a "racist" in that I'm proud of what my white forebears have left the world -- the concepts of democracy and freedom, dating back to the Greeks. I'm proud of the Magna Carta, of the Declaration of Independence, and of the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights. I'm proud of the contributions that Thomas Hobbes, John Stuart Mill, John Locke, and Edmund Burke made to political thought, and that John Adams, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Mason and other giants transformed into a Republic of laws, not of men, and a country that founded in individual freedom and liberty. I revere the concept that "all Men are created equal," and I praise the message carried in the slogan of "Liberte! Egalite! Fraternite!" I still cling to the concept that government and its employees are servants of the people, not their masters.
I admit to being a "racist" in that I'm proud of what my white forebears have left the world -- the concepts of democracy and freedom, dating back to the Greeks. I'm proud of the Magna Carta, of the Declaration of Independence, and of the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights. I'm proud of the contributions that Thomas Hobbes, John Stuart Mill, John Locke, and Edmund Burke made to political thought, and that John Adams, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Mason and other giants transformed into a Republic of laws, not of men, and a country that founded in individual freedom and liberty. I revere the concept that "all Men are created equal," and I praise the message carried in the slogan of "Liberte! Egalite! Fraternite!" I still cling to the concept that government and its employees are servants of the people, not their masters.
I'm less proud of some of the other things that my white forebears have left the world -- Marxism, fascism, socialism, colonialism, collectivism. Apparently, those concepts that are abhorrent to me weren't too abhorrent to not be adopted by some Asian nations, some African nations, some Latin American nations, and briefly by some European nations. At least the European nations saw, or were made to see, the error of those ways.
I don't care that some of the Founding Fathers may have owned slaves. I don't condone it; I condemn it. But I also didn't live in their times, and neither did today's critics of them. While I understand that it's a visceral gut-punch to the descendants of those slaves, it's far enough removed for them to get over it. It's more than a century and a half in the past. I don't feel responsible for slavery. It originated thousands of years ago, and it wasn't invented by white people or by capitalists, although they participated and practiced it until they were the first to eliminate it by way of sacrificing 600,000 mostly white lives in the middle of the 19th Century. In the American South, according to the 1830 census, more than 10,000 slaves were owned by "free men of color." Even though it's been outlawed by Western developed countries, it's still practiced today in African, Middle Eastern, and Asian countries. Slavery is not a white man's legacy.
I can't help but notice that while the race-mongers whine about mistreatment of blacks or other minorities in this country, none are flocking to any African country to enjoy the Rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. In fact, if anything, people from African, Asian, and Latin American countries still flock to the nation that best embodies and recognizes these Rights. In the United States we still have a long way to go to realizing the dream where people are not judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character -- on both sides of the race equation. In Africa, people are still slaughtering each other on the basis of tribal affiliation, something they routinely did before colonization, and have resumed since the end of colonization.
I don't care that some of the Founding Fathers may have owned slaves. I don't condone it; I condemn it. But I also didn't live in their times, and neither did today's critics of them. While I understand that it's a visceral gut-punch to the descendants of those slaves, it's far enough removed for them to get over it. It's more than a century and a half in the past. I don't feel responsible for slavery. It originated thousands of years ago, and it wasn't invented by white people or by capitalists, although they participated and practiced it until they were the first to eliminate it by way of sacrificing 600,000 mostly white lives in the middle of the 19th Century. In the American South, according to the 1830 census, more than 10,000 slaves were owned by "free men of color." Even though it's been outlawed by Western developed countries, it's still practiced today in African, Middle Eastern, and Asian countries. Slavery is not a white man's legacy.
I can't help but notice that while the race-mongers whine about mistreatment of blacks or other minorities in this country, none are flocking to any African country to enjoy the Rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. In fact, if anything, people from African, Asian, and Latin American countries still flock to the nation that best embodies and recognizes these Rights. In the United States we still have a long way to go to realizing the dream where people are not judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character -- on both sides of the race equation. In Africa, people are still slaughtering each other on the basis of tribal affiliation, something they routinely did before colonization, and have resumed since the end of colonization.
So in an imperfect world and society, I strive to make it more perfect. I join hundreds of millions of others in this country -- the last best hope of freedom and liberty -- who feel similarly. But not by attempting to shame a group for something they didn't do, or because of the color of their skin. It's long past time we moved beyond that.
