Constitution

Talk Of Obama Impeachment Over Benghazi Tragedy: Republican Insanity!

Ronald 68 Comments

The Republican Party and the conservative movement have been out to get President Barack Obama from the day he took office, just as they were with President Bill Clinton.

The right wing was able to impeach Bill Clinton over his sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky, but was unable to remove him from office, even with a majority Republican Senate in 1999.

Now, the tragedy of the death of the ambassador and three support staff in Benghazi, Libya, is being conjured up to be a scandal on the level of Watergate under Richard Nixon, Iran Contra under Ronald Reagan, and the sex scandal under Clinton.

And Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, now a right wing talk show host gone mad, are suggesting that impeachment of Barack Obama is possible, a totally lunatic concept!

NOTHING about Benghazi is worthy of impeachment, and it would simply be another “lynch mob” as occurred with Bill Clinton, making a mockery of the impeachment provision of the Constitution, by utilizing it for the third time in 40 years, when only the Richard Nixon case was worthy of impeachment!

It would undermine the ability of the government to deal with the many domestic and foreign policy issues this nation faces, and be a waste of time and money, as even with an impeachment, which would stain the reputation of Obama permanently, as it did with Clinton, the reality is that NO WAY would a two thirds vote of the Senate be possible to remove the President from office, any more than it was with Bill Clinton!

It is an exercise in futility, unjustified, and clearly is just a political ploy that would reverberate on the Republican Party and the conservative movement, leading to just more political confrontation, and cause disgust among the American people!

Sandra Day O’Connor And Second Thoughts on Bush V. Gore: 12 Plus Years Too Late!

Ronald 11 Comments

Former Supreme Court Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has indicated second thoughts about her vote in the infamous Bush V Gore case of December 2000, when the Court decided to intervene in the 2000 Presidential Election controversy between Al Gore and George W. Bush in Florida.

The Supreme Court decided that the vote recount ordered by the Florida State Supreme Court should be halted, giving the victory to Bush, and leading to his election by the miniscule margin of 537 votes, and making him the Electoral College winner by 271-266.

Now, O’Connor has expressed regret that the Court did something it had no precedent to do, decide the election results in a closely competitive contest by far less than one percent of the vote. Where does it state in the Constitution that the Supreme Court should so intervene? The state Supreme Court should have been the final determinant, and possibly, Bush would have won anyway, but at least the Supreme Court would not have done what was a revolutionary precedent!

It could be that O’Connor feels guilt because she is well aware of the disasters that occurred under George W. Bush, and the beginning of the attempt to change his historical image, through the opening of his Presidential Library this week in Dallas, Texas.

We will never know whether Al Gore would have been a better President, but it is hard to believe that he would have been worse than Bush turned out to be!

The Senate In Crisis A Century After The 17th Amendment

Ronald 2 Comments

The US Senate was a very undemocratic institution a century ago, controlled by special interests, including the oil, steel, banking and other trusts and monopolies, and its membership selected by the vote of corrupt state legislatures across the nation.

The Senate was exposed for its faults and corruption by David Graham Phillips in his article in 1906 in Cosmopolitan Magazine, which has been reprinted in 2012, an article of 108 pages, a small book, exposing the corruption of Senate Majority Leader Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island. This was followed up by other articles in muckraking periodicals, exposing the corruption of other US Senators.

These articles motivated a reform movement, leading to the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, establishing popular vote elections for the US Senate. It did not mean that every Senator elected was brilliant, or a positive force, but at least the people had the final say on who would represent them, as in the US House of Representatives!

Now, a century later, the US Senate is in paralysis, greatly due to the abuse of the filibuster system, which now requires 60 Senators to end a filibuster, while it used to be even worse, 67 before reforms in 1975. The filibuster was originally utilized to stop civil rights advancements, but now it is used to prevent any action on many nominations and many bills, effectively hamstringing any progress or change on anything controversial.

But also, it is clear that special interest groups, similar to those a century ago, but more such groups and more widespread, have made the US Senate captive again.

And with growing differences in population in coastline states, as compared to states in the interior, we are finding the concept of each state having two US Senators, whether they represent millions of citizens, or just hundreds of thousands of citizens, becoming one where states with few people, are able to stop what the majority of the American people want!

Four Democratic Senators, scared to death of the National Rifle Association, end up refusing to support the end of the filibuster on extended background checks on gun sales, and yet these Senators represent small populated states (North Dakota, Alaska, Montana, Arkansas) which represent only about 5.4 million people, out of a national total of 309 million people, meaning they represent 1.6 percent of the people, in a nation in which up to 90 percent, including gun owners, want extended background checks on gun sales.

We allow the 49th 48th, 45th, and 33rd states in population to hamstring the rest of the nation, absolutely insane when one thinks about it, and this is not just true on one issue, but many!

This problem of small populated states,the abuse of the filibuster, and special interest groups (including major corporations) is a situation which threatens resolution of ANY major issue facing the nation in the 21st century, unless, somehow, some kind of reform of an outdated system of the 18th century is brought about, which is extremely unlikely!

Supreme Court Bitterly Divided Over Possible Curbing Of Voting Rights Act: A Repeat Of The Compromise Of 1877 Abandonment Of African Americans!

Ronald 6 Comments

It is clear that the Supreme Court is bitterly divided over the Voting Rights Act, which is hanging in the balance after the oral arguments this week, with Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan strongly challenging Justice Antonin Scalia, who said the act was a “racial entitlement”, which demonstrates that Scalia has no understanding of the history of the denial of voting rights, and the need to continue to monitor what those states that have discriminated are now doing.

The Republican Party abandoned African Americans on this day in 1877, when they agreed to the Compromise of 1877, making their candidate for President, Rutherford B. Hayes President, despite the clear cut lead of Democrat Samuel Tilden in popular votes. Part of the deal was for the GOP to stop being the party that had advanced civil rights through two laws during Reconstruction, the creation of the Freedmen’s Bureau, and the passage of three amendments to the Constitution.

The southern states went ahead and continued a policy of discrimination for the next ninety years on voting, and imposing Jim Crow segregation, and the GOP, the majority party until 1932, did nothing about it, due to the deal set up in the Compromise of 1877.

After ninety years, finally, voting rights, supposedly guaranteed under the 15th Amendment, but not enforced, were restored under the Voting Rights Act, but not before civil rights marchers were beaten up, such as Congressman John Lewis of Georgia, and others slaughtered in the name of promoting civil rights in the South.

But along comes Antonin Scalia, who conveniently forgets that even Jews, and also Italians such as himself, were lynched in the South in the near century in which African Americans were denied their basic rights, including voting.

And he wants the Court to become “activist”, when that is precisely what conservatives claim they hate about the Supreme Court. And so therefore, to hell with the overwhelming vote of the Congress to extend the Voting Rights act in 2006, and let’s wipe out all progress and return us to the states “deciding” if any group can vote, instead of “guaranteeing” the right to vote, the basic element of democracy!

So just as the Compromise of 1877 brought us a President who had NOT won the popular vote, and followed through on taking the GOP out of its civil rights activism, so now, two appointments of another President, George W. Bush, not elected by popular vote, and instead put in by a partisan Republican Court including Scalia, shall repeat history and deny Africans Americans the guarantee of the right to vote granted in the 15th Amendment in 1870!

Presidential-Vice Presidential Relationships Rarely Warm

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When one looks at the relationships between Presidents and Vice Presidents historically, it is clear that most Presidents look at their Vice Presidents and see their own mortality; often see the Vice President as a rival; often have disdain for the Vice President; and often do not support the Vice President in his Presidential ambitions to follow the President in office.

Examples of the above abound:

George Washington ignored John Adams, and Adams lamented that he was in an office that had no influence or respect.

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were at constant odds, being of different political parties, and elected together by the early quirks of the Electoral College, later resolved by the 12th Amendment to the Constitution in 1804.

Thomas Jefferson literally refused to recognize Aaron Burr, after Burr tried to steal the Presidency from him in 1800, with Burr’s contention that he and Jefferson had ended up in a “tie” vote in the Electoral College, forcing Alexander Hamilton, a rival of both Jefferson and Burr to intervene and call for support of Jefferson, which led to the gun duel between Hamilton and Burr in 1804, and Hamilton’s tragic death.

John Quincy Adams discovered that John C. Calhoun was undermining him, and Calhoun switched sides and ran with Andrew Jackson in 1828.

However, Jackson and Calhoun became bitter rivals, and the Nullification Crisis over the protective tariff, with Calhoun enunciating the doctrine of states rights, nullification, interposition, and secession almost led to civil war, prevented by the intervention of Henry Clay, but only after Jackson threatened to hang Calhoun, a threat that could not be ignored, since Jackson had killed several opponents in gun duels.

Abraham Lincoln hardly dealt with his first term Vice President, Hannibal Hamlin, and then “dumped” him, for Andrew Johnson, someone he hardly knew.

When Theodore Roosevelt decided not to run for another term in 1908, he ignored his own Vice President, Charles Fairbanks, and backed his Secretary of War, William Howard Taft.

Woodrow Wilson gave little concern to the role of his Vice President, Thomas Marshall, and when Wilson suffered a stroke in 1919, he did not intervene to prevent his wife from preventing Marshall from visiting him, and ascertaining the state of his health, or allow him to take over Presidential authority.

Franklin D. Roosevelt ignored his three Vice Presidents—John Nance Garner, Henry A. Wallace, and Harry Truman. This led Garner to say the Vice Presidency was not worth a pitcher of “warm spit”. Wallace was allowed to “hang in the wind” over his public statements on civil rights, and be “dumped” on the demand of Southern Democrats in 1944. Harry Truman was not informed of anything, including the atomic bomb project, in his brief Vice Presidency.

Dwight D. Eisenhower had a strong dislike for his Vice President, Richard Nixon, as shown by his original plan to “dump” Nixon in 1956; his lukewarm support of Nixon in 1960; and his having problems remembering Nixon as a potential future nominee in 1964. At the end, however, Ike witnessed his grandson, David, marry Nixon’s younger daughter, Julie, and was supportive of Nixon in his last year of life, the first year of the Nixon Presidency.

John F. Kennedy failed to use the talents of Lyndon B. Johnson, his Vice President, to a great extent due to the hatred of his brother, Robert Kennedy, for LBJ. Robert Kennedy went out of his way to embarrass and humiliate Johnson in every way possible.

Johnson abused his Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, once he realized that Humphrey was critical of his Vietnam War policies. He threatened to leave Humphrey out of his cabinet meetings, and forced him to speak up for the war, which undermined Humphrey’s own Presidential campaign in 1968. And secretly, because Humphrey started to veer from support of the administration policies late in the campaign, Johnson hoped for a victory of Richard Nixon.

Richard Nixon utilized his Vice President, Spiro Agnew for political gain, but showed little respect for him, and let him “hang in the wind” when Agnew was forced out of the Vice Presidency in 1973. And Nixon picked Gerald Ford as his successor Vice President under the 25th Amendment, thinking that this insured that Nixon would not be impeached and be removed from office.

Gerald Ford had a strong respect for Nelson Rockefeller, who he selected as his Vice President, but yet “dumped” him for Bob Dole in the 1976 Presidential race.

Ronald Reagan was never close to George H. W. Bush, who had been his chief rival for the 1980 Presidential nomination, and never invited the Bushes to a private dinner at the White House, although he utilized Bush’s expertise in foreign policy and intelligence, as Bush had been head of the CIA.

Bush did not care for Dan Quayle very much, and considered “dumping” him in 1992 over Quayle’s embarrassing flubs. Quayle was given less involvement in the administration than his recent predecessors, and when he tried for the Presidential nomination in 1996, Bush did not back him in any way.

Bill Clinton was closer to Al Gore, but their friendship and collaboration suffered greatly during the scandal over Monica Lewinsky, and the pursuant impeachment trial. Gore decided not to ask Clinton, who remained popular, to work for him in the last days of the 2000 Presidential campaign. After his defeat, there were recriminations between Gore and Clinton over who had been responsible for Gore’s defeat.

George W. Bush relied on his Vice President, Dick Cheney, a lot in the first term, but became estranged from Cheney in the second term over the Scooter Libby scandal and in other ways, as Bush asserted himself much more, making clear he did not need Cheney as much as in the first term.

With all of the above examples of estrangement, or lack of closeness of Presidents with their Vice Presidents, there are two shining examples of very close, warm relationships between two Presidents and their Vice Presidents.

These would be Jimmy Carter with Walter Mondale, and Barack Obama with Joe Biden.

Carter and Mondale were the closest team in American history, with Carter allowing Mondale to share just about every decision in a way no Vice President, before or since, was able to do, and they remained close personal friends, for what is now the all time record of 32 PLUS years out of the Presidency, the longest lasting team in American history, with Carter now 88 plus and Mondale just passing 85, and both still in good health. No sense of any rift has ever existed between the two men, and their relationship was the smoothest ever, a lot of it due to Carter’s lack of insecurity about his Vice President, a testimonial to the former President!

Also, every indication is that Obama and Biden have as close a relationship, but with Biden nearly a generation older, while Carter and Mondale are less than four years apart in age. It seems as if there might be some issues between Obama and Biden, but that will have to be left to the future to find out. Also, a question arises as to how Obama will handle a possible competition for the next Presidential nomination between Biden and Hillary Clinton, both of whom have been crucial to his Presidency’s success so far.

So the Presidential-Vice Presidential relationships have been almost always far from warm and close, with only the two exceptions mentioned above.

This would be an excellent topic for a future scholarly study!

Rand Paul Makes A Fool Of Himself In Response To The State Of The Union Speech Of President Obama!

Ronald 2 Comments

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul continues to amaze people with a head on their shoulders, as he is rapidly becoming a major embarrassment to his own father, former Texas Congressman Ron Paul, and to the Republican Party base, which he seems determined to destroy in his quest to become President!

Having already made clear when Hillary Clinton testified about Benghazi, Libya, that he would have fired Clinton if he were the President at the time, an amazing statement to make in the first place, now Rand Paul has responded to the State of the Union Address of Barack Obama, as well as the response of Florida Senator Marco Rubio for the Republican Party, as chosen by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner.

Paul told us he would not have allowed the use of drones against Anwar Al Awlaki, a declared terrorist of American citizenship who we know planned various terrorist attacks, and that somehow, he is going to stop the President from being the Commander in Chief of military affairs. One can disagree with what Obama did, but Paul has the gall to think that somehow he is going to stop the President from what are his powers under the Constitution?

Calling Obama a “King”, Paul makes clear that while the President should not have such power over the military, there should be absolutely no movement on gun regulation or safety in any form, portraying the government as the enemy of the Second Amendment, when all that is being asked is reasonable regulation, not the taking away of people’s rights to own guns, if they are mentally stable!

Paul also advocated massive cuts in spending, including in defense, which fits his image of being a modern day isolationist. Sure, there can be defense cuts, no question about it, and other cuts, but Paul fails to understand the threats this nation faces, and the massive problem of real harm to the poor, the sick, the disadvantaged, were we to pursue his drastic cuts, which almost no one in the Republican Party advocates, including Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, head of the House Budget Committee!

Rand Paul also said Barack Obama is Robin Hood, when we actually need Adam Smith, the author of THE WEALTH OF NATIONS, advocating “Laissez Faire” economics, an idea of the late 18th century, which is totally unrealistic in the modern world of the 21st century!

The major news networks failed to carry Rand Paul’s speech, which in itself is a commentary on how he stands in the minds of serious people. He and his Tea Party followers represent a viewpoint which, if enacted, which will not happen, will permanently eradicate the Republican Party as an alternative to the Democratic Party. If there is the desire to prevent what conservatives call a “one party state”, then they need to adapt to reality and stop sounding like and advocating loony ideas that take us back to the 19th century, when America was suffering through the Gilded Age of unregulated capitalism and a weak labor movement!

Sadly, we are likely to be plagued by a Rand Paul Presidential candidacy in 2016, which just might make the political circus of 2012 seem only like the preview of comedy entertainment!

Marco Rubio Response To State Of The Union Speech Of Barack Obama Comes Up Short!

Ronald 14 Comments

Florida Senator Marco Rubio presented the official GOP response to President Obama’s State of the Union Address last night.

As always, Senator Rubio comes across as charismatic, handsome, well spoken, and a pleasant personality.

But when it comes to substance, Rubio was wanting in many ways.

He hardly touched on foreign policy at all, spending most of his time condemning “big” government, claiming that it cannot solve people’s problems, forgetting that he is where he is because of help from government through student loan programs, which he pointed out he had just paid off finally after many years of payments.

Rubio failed to realize that it is government which provides so many opportunities and forms of assistance, including his mother’s Medicare and Social Security.

Rubio forgets that it was the interstate highway system, initiated by Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, which has allowed the nation, and particularly Florida, to become a success story in growth of population and economic opportunity.

Rubio criticizes government, while making sure that he spends his career in government service, including the Florida legislature, where he spent a decade.

It is also ironic that Rubio and his party attack “big” government, when George W. Bush led the greatest expansion of government in four decades!

Rubio offered no hope for any solution to gun violence, and denied climate change, just as he has, earlier, questioned evolution, so he believes that science has no validity, while invoking religion, of course, all of the time, forgetting that we have a Constitution and Bill of Rights that promotes separation of church and state.

Rubio also shows bad math, as he claims Barack Obama has raised the national debt more than any President, which is not true, and fails to reflect the deep chasm we were in when he took the oath of office, the worst since 1933!

And his belief that often corrupt state governments, including his own state of Florida, can do a better job of operating safety net programs, is belied by the stark truth of just the opposite result!

So Marco Rubio gives a good speech, but the details come up short, if one is interested in reality!

But one thing Rubio accomplished is to make him more noticed as a leading Presidential possibility for his party in 2016!

1913: A Year Of Two “Progressive” Amendments To The Constitution, 16 And 17!

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A century ago, as the Presidency of William Howard Taft came to an end, and as Woodrow Wilson was about to be inaugurated, the Constitution had two new amendments added within two months of each other—the 16th Amendment and the 17th Amendment.

Other than the original ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, never was the country to be so affected by constitutional change that transformed the nation, as with these two amendments.

President Taft, the so called “conservative” leaving office, supported both of these amendments, and they have have a massive impact on the nation ever since.

The 16th Amendment established the “progressive” federal income tax, at a time when we had seen the tripling of population, and the multiplication of social and economic injustice since the Civil War 50 years earlier. Without the federal income tax, there was no way that the nation could ever have moved forward and met its responsibilities to its citizens. The only problem was that over the years the wealthy would find all kinds of ways to manipulate the system, and so, today, the federal income tax is no longer very “progressive”. And also, there is a move on by conservatives and libertarians to repeal the income tax amendment, and have a national sales tax instead, a move that will not happen, but it if did, it would mean greater taxation based on consumption, and would hurt the poor and the lower middle class much more than the wealthy and upper middle class.

The 17th Amendment, the most democratizing amendment we had yet seen, called for direct popular election of the United States Senate, a move encouraged by muckraker David Graham Phillips and his book, THE TREASON OF THE SENATE, published in 1909. Instead of corrupt politicians in state legislatures choosing US Senators, an indication that the Founding Fathers did not trust the masses to choose their Senators, the decision was to allow the people to choose their Senators for a six year term.

How could anyone find fault with this, even with the recognition that often states may make “bad” choices for their Senators? Whatever we think about the choices, it is still better to have the people select their Senators, and in a sense, to be held accountable if they make an embarrassing, or disastrous choice. This is the power of the people, a movement toward direct democracy. And yet, there is a movement among conservatives to repeal this amendment, as well as the 16th Amendment.

Fortunately, it is very difficult to accomplish an amendment, and only the repeal of prohibition of liquor, the 21st Amendment effectively negating the 18th Amendment, has ever occurred.

We can look back on a century of the 16th Amendment and the 17th Amendment, and applaud what progressives accomplished a century ago!

The Humanizing Of The Supreme Court By Associate Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg And Sonia Sotomayor

Ronald 4 Comments

The Supreme Court of the United States is a very “forbidding” institution, with its marble building, opened in 1935, its arches, its tightly controlled public access, and even the robes worn by the nine Supreme Court Justices as they listen to case arguments in the Supreme Court chamber.

The Court has always been seen as an intimidating place, and historically, the Court Justices have made themselves seem distant and aloof from the general public.

But now we are fortunate to have two women on the Court who are particularly open and accessible, and even Associate Justice Elena Kagan has already become much more of a public face, joining Associate Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor in that endeavor.

Ginsburg has, for years, spoken to public school students, given interviews, and made herself the public face of the Court, and now Sotomayor, in particular, and Kagan, somewhat as well, have opened up to the public, with Sotomayor now on a book tour for her revealing autobiography, which makes it easy for average citizens to relate to her and the insecurities she felt as she went from a poor childhood in the Bronx, New York, all the way up the ladder to the Supreme Court.

So two women in particular, and even Kagan moving in that direction, opens up the Court, and it is time for the men on the Court to stop their aloofness and reserve, and show the American people that, while they make judgments on cases as they relate to the Constitution, they are still human beings with real lives and concerns that should not be withheld from public scrutiny.

It would be easier for Americans to respect our system of law and courts if there was more open access to these people, and the women on the Court have done a great service in that regard!

Today An Ironic Day: First Electoral College Election And Day Of Formation Of Confederate States Of America

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On this day in 1789, George Washington was elected by the Electoral College as the first President of the United States under the Constitution.

Also on this day, in 1861, delegates from six states (South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana) met in Montgomery, Alabama to form the Confederate States of America, a move to form a government that was designed to break up the Union that George Washington represented, when he was elected leader of the nation 72 years earlier.

Texas joined shortly after, and after Fort Sumter, the upper South (Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas) joined as well, and the Civil War, the greatest tragedy of the nation’s history commenced, leading to the death of approximately 620,000 soldiers, two percent of the entire nation.

It is upsetting to hear talk of similar desire of some to rise up against the federal government, as if nothing has been learned in the century and a half since the Civil War!