HL 26 – Demoralized and Disheartened by Gorsuch Deception
We keep hearing and reading how polished, nimble and skillful Judge Gorsuch was in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. One NPR reporter even likened him to God – at least with respect to voice – that SHE either must have heard or assumes to be male. This despite the Judge’s annoyed response to a Senator Franken question, with “I’m not God.” […]
HL 25 – In Challenging Trump’s Attempt to Kill ObamaCare, the ACLU Enters Perilous Territory
Like many liberals and conservatives, your blogger is a longstanding and card carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union and contributor of money and sweat toward its efforts. I constantly tell my civil liberties class how often the ACLU was and is a plaintiff (and sometimes the only one) challenging government infringement of civil liberties and civil rights protected by the United States Constitution. That is what is generally understood, and how the ACLU has heretofore defined “civil liberties” and “civil rights” – those freedoms granted or protected in the Bill of Rights and the 13th, 14th and 15th, post-Civil War, constitutional amendments. […]
HL 24 – “I was the Law” – Preet Bharara’s Grandstanding Exit
The reflexive but understandable assumption is that most of President Trump’s personnel moves involve partially or wholly corrupt motives. However, criticism of his recent firing of United States Attorney Preet Bharara is much ado about nothing. Indeed, most noteworthy in this departure was the posturing of the Manhattan-based head federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York. The U.S. [...]
HL 23 – Trump Wiretap Tantrum Evokes Twilight Zone Episode 73
President Trump’s latest puerile Twitter tantrum involves his claim that “sad” or “sick” predecessor Obama tapped Donald’s phone before he took office. Again, this caused many to search for analogies and references in art, hi and lo, to compare with Trump’s actions and the “carnage” daily inflicted on our country by it and him. One reference that scared the bemozes out of your blogger, because it so precisely captured the look and feel not only of Trump but the finger puppets that surround, indulge and encourage him, is Twilight Zone Episode 73. It will be familiar to many readers of an age, certain or otherwise, and also for many Gen Xers and some Millennials who saw it reprised in the 1983 T-Zone movie. […]
HL 22 – Betsy DeVos Squanders her Lord Jim Moment
As the leaking leakers leaked details of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos being bullied by Jeff Sessions and President Trump to drop her opposition to the administration’s rescission of the federal directive on transgender student access to bathrooms of their choice – it conjured the image of Joseph Conrad’s “Lord Jim” – perhaps as portrayed by Peter O’Toole – presented with the opportunity to redeem himself of a shameful past failing and to save others through an act of self-sacrifice. […]
HL 21- Use 25A and Draft and Enact 28A
Sticking with and doubling down on its early and repeated prediction that Donald will leave or be escorted from the White House within three years, his recent conduct makes it more likely that the end will come through operation of the twenty-fifth amendment, that in most relevant part provides: “Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal [...]
HL 20 – Jamie Dimon Tutors Trump on Gutting Dodd-Frank
At the February 3rd meeting of his “so-called” economic advisory council, President Trump announced his intention “to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank” and saluted Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase, saying “there’s nobody better to tell me about Dodd-Frank than Jamie, so you’re going to tell me about it.” The two men met later that day. Most [...]
HL 19 – A Nation of Laws Not of Judges or the People Who Appointed Them
The press coverage of various legal challenges to President Trump’s immigration and alien entry restrictions (“it’s not a tumor”) has increasingly focused on the judges who are adjudicating these cases in federal district courts and at the appellate level. It’s a free country with an independent and free press – at least as of today – but this press focus [...]
HL 18 – Schumer as Hamlet in the Gorsuch Nomination
The moment has come for Chuck Schumer and the Senate Democrats to be or not. They and we have experienced the result of their reasonableness. We live with the result of their appeal to the electorate on that basis. They pointed to the unconstitutional intransigence of the Republicans in their refusal to vet and vote on Judge Merrick Garland, President [...]
HL 17 – The Importance of What We Call the Man Whose Pants are On Fire
Last week the New York Times published its version of a current Trump-related ubiquitous press exercise, self-consciously examining how to characterize the president's constant expression of untruths and implicitly also questioning what to call him - the one who says , honks and tweets them. The Times has regularly and bravely published headlines and articles that say Trump "lies" and [...]