(If you missed this news, you might also be missing other important events. I suggest that you sign on to receive Professor Heather Cox Richardson’s daily newsletter, ‘Letters from an American.’ It takes just a few minutes to read and you end up being smarter than you were before you read it! It’s free (unless you choose to become a paying subscriber, enabling you to make comments, but that’s totally optional). Just CLICK HERE to get to there or just paste it on your browser line. https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/ )
Anyhow, I watched the Mar-a-Lago story (I live about fifteen miles from the place) unfold Monday evening on TV. MSNBC and CNN did a credible job with expert commentary, considering the absence of real details as to what they were looking for and what they found. I checked out Fox occasionally, where their misinformation and diversion machinery was in full swing.
At Fox, the order of the day was to refer to it as a 'raid,' not the enforcement of a court order which it was, and point out that it was carried out by Democrats, according to Fox, not by the Department of Justice via the FBI, which was the case.
Somehow, they quickly managed to switch the subject from the search of
Mar-a-Lago to criticism of President Biden and his son Hunter’s involvement
with a Ukrainian firm, a typical Fox diversionary tactic, just like attacking
Hillary Clinton’s emails was in 2016.
(A good political cartoonist might someday
picture the Attorney General slicing that tightrope and Fox tumbling into a hell-like abyss resembling the pit depicted in a painting by Hieronymus Bosch, 'The Garden of Earthly Delights,' a triptych of which the rightmost panel appears to the left.
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Which Party is Healthier? - The Blues or the Reds?
The Republican Party demands adherence to
positions which often are based on downright lies. Those Republicans who don’t sign on the
dotted line, approving such lies, are known as RINOs (Republicans In Name Only)
and face being shunned by other Republicans and having to deal with primary
challenges by those who have swallowed the G.O.P.’s Kool Aid. Just watch the heroic Liz Chaney lose her seat in
Congress on November 8 on this basis.
The Democratic Party welcomes anyone into their
party who wants to be there. That’s why
Senators Manchin and Sinema remain Democrats in good standing, although they
disagree with many in their party. At
the other extreme, Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria
Octavio-Cortez and the ‘Squad’ may be too far to the left for many Democrats,
but they are still part of the same party.
No one is called a DINO.
Democrats manage to disagree without being disagreeable. Republicans manage to be disagreeable without
even trying very hard.
That’s the big difference between the two
parties. Which is healthier?
JL
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The Fifth Amendment - Civil vs Criminal Use
The defeated former president (by now you must know I avoid contaminating this blog by including his actual name) has taken the Fifth Amendment, to avoid self-incrimination in the New York State civil case concerning his firm’s business practices.
It should be noted that in such civil litigation, the Supreme Court has permitted ‘adverse inferences’ to be taken from pleading that Amendment, something it does not permit in criminal cases. Nevertheless, both the prosecution in criminal cases and the public certainly can take note of it, although such ‘adverse inferences' cannot be used in criminal litigation in which the same person is involved and who might plead the Fifth Amendment to avoid self-incrimination. They cannot shut their ears.
JL
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Hey Maureen,
‘Fuhgeddaboudit!’ Biden’s Doin’ Great!
Recently,
Maureen Dowd in her New York Times column addressed the question of
whether President Biden should run for a second term. That should be the last
thing on voters’ minds today. With the
help of Vice-President Kamala Harris’s vote creating a majority in the
otherwise evenly divided Senate, and some skillful compromising, the Senate
passed the Inflation Reduction Act, passing it on to the House for their
approval and to President Biden for his signature. I hope it is passed there and signed by the
time you are reading this.
With President
Biden’s reputation enhanced by (1) the passage of this bill, far less than he
originally wanted but nevertheless an achievement of historic proportions, with
(2) the elimination of the surviving leader of Al Qaeda, with (3) the
strengthening of NATO with Finland and Sweden applying for membership, with (4)
the steady drop in gasoline prices, and with (5) the general displeasure most Americans now exhibit toward the Supreme Court after their unpopular rulings
regarding abortion and gun violence, Joe is looking better and better every
day.
The Inflation
Reduction Act provides seniors with improved Medicare prescription plan
benefits, extended some temporary Affordable Health Care Covid benefits, shifted more of the tax burden to the wealthy and businesses and most crucially, made significant upgrades in our regulatory structure to combat climate change, all of which reflect favorably on President Biden.
There is a time
and a place for thoughts like those of Ms. Dowd, but now is far from it! All efforts should be directed toward
maintaining, or even expanding, Democratic control of Congress.
Maureen, as we
said back in New Joisey, ‘Fuhgeddaboudit!’
JL
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Power to the People: But By What Route?
Once upon a
time, there used to be a Federalist Party in this country. Its name was confusing because while it
suggests that they saw the nation as a ‘federation’ of almost sovereign
states still possessing considerable power, during the terms of our Federalist
presidents (Washington and both Adams), they drifted toward a strong national
government, with the individual states having less power. After the 1824
election, which had an aroma about it, the Federalists as a party disappeared
from the scene, their remnants being absorbed in the short life of the Whig
Party whose philosophy was ‘anybody but Andrew Jackson.’
From our third
president, Thomas Jefferson, through our fifteenth, James Buchanan, the idea
that real power rested with individual States prevailed. Their party was initially
called ‘Democratic-Republican’ but ultimately just plain ‘Democratic’ starting
with Andrew Jackson, our seventh president.
Contrary to today’s Democratic Party, the Democratic Party of those days
was a Jeffersonian ‘states-rights’ party, a ‘federalist’ party in the true
sense of the word, harboring a distaste if not a fear of domination the
‘national’ government.
The birth of the
Republican Party in the 1850s favored a strong national government and the
administrations of presidents Lincoln and Grant both took that course. That is contrary to the Republican Party of
today which became a ‘states-right’ party in the 1870s, reverting to
pre-Lincoln and more Jeffersonian positions, and remains as such, while
Democrats drifted toward a stronger national government, culminating in FDR’s
New Deal in the 1930s.
Whether power ultimately rests with a strong national government or the states does not matter as much as which serves the people best. The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, part of the original Bill of Rights, requires that ‘The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.’ Does the word 'or' imply a choice? And if so, what is it?
This might be taken to mean that if something isn’t covered in the original articles of the Constitution and its first ten amendments (the Bill of Rights), it falls within the authority of individual states (unless specifically prohibited from ending up there), even it means challenging the law.
This is the position of those calling
themselves ‘originalists,’ believing in the primacy of states’ rights. They include much of today’s Republican
Party, today’s Supreme Court and today's ‘Federalist Society,’ despite that back in
1789, two of the three authors of the ‘Federalist Papers’ (Hamilton, Madison and John Jay) argued in
favor of states ceding some of those powers to a national government.
It should not be ignored by those in favor of either state or national dominance that the final four words of the Tenth Amendment are ‘or to the people.’ The people? Directly? Through the states? Through Congress? What do they mean? Take some time to re-read Federalist Paper #39 in which Madison attempts to explain this. Even he wasn’t sure. And even some Supreme Court Justices today are not sure.
JL
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America Afloat
(A
poem always worth repeating in blog postings. To learn more, visit this blog’s
posting of July 30, 2022.)
Jack Lippman
The greatness of America
Is
that it does survive
Attacks
upon democracy
Whose
flame it keeps alive.
The laws that blossom from the words
The
Founding Fathers wrote
Still
serve us well today to keep
America
afloat.
This
doesn’t happen by itself,
We
cannot wish it true,
The
bottom line, my friends, is that
It
all depends on you.
JL
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That’s Not Enough
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