AverageOldGuy
AverageOldGuy's JournalThe 14th Amendment disqualifies Trump
As has been pointed out in other DU entries as well as in a few other opinion sites, there is a body of opinion that Trump is disqualified from office by the 14th Amendment.
The 14th is one of three post-Civil War amendments that have an interesting and some would say "checkered" history:
-- the 13th abolished slavery (but did it really?).
-- the 14th cleaned up a lot of Constitutional vagaries -- who is a citizen, rights of citizens, rights before the law, etc.
-- the 15th which prohibited denying citizens the right to vote because of their race (of course, the old Jim Crow laws worked around that and now Republicans are re-instating Jim Crow, just by another name).
This month, former federal judge Michael Luttig and law professor Laurence Tribe co-authored an Atlantic magazine piece arguing that the 14th Amendment prohibits Trump -- and a host of others -- from ever holding office. Here's a link to the article, though it may be behind a paywall.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/08/donald-trump-constitutionally-prohibited-presidency/675048/
In their article, Luttig and Tribe give a lot of credit to a forthcoming article in the Univ. of Penn. Law Review, a pre-publication copy of which is available in PDF -- all 126 pages of it.
Here is what Luttig and Tribe say:
We were immensely gratified to see that a richly researched article soon to be published in an academic journal has recently come to the same conclusion that we had and is attracting well-deserved attention outside a small circle of scholars—including Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Anjani Jain of the Yale School of Management, whose encouragement inspired us to write this piece. The evidence laid out by the legal scholars William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen in “The Sweep and Force of Section Three,” available as a preprint, is momentous. Sooner or later, it will influence, if not determine, the course of American constitutional history—and American history itself.
I tried to post a link to the U. of Penn. Law Review article, however, it is a looooong URL, so, here's a link to an abstract of the law review article that has a link to the PDF at the top of the page. If you don't want to read all 126 pages, read the introduction that precedes the table of contents then go to page 124 and read the last two pages. I'm over halfway through the law review article and while a lot of legal writing is deadly reading, this one is clear, to the point, and makes sense.
[link:https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4532751|https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4532751
]
Maybe if we started pounding on our members of Congress . . .
Meanwhile, the fact of the Atlantic article and the Law Review article may suggest that something is stirring below the surface.
Let's hear it for Fani Willis
A few notes about Fulton County GA District Attorney Fani Willis.
Born in Inglewood, California.
Her father was a former member of the Black Panthers, later became a criminal defense attorney.
When Willis was in the first grade, her family moved to Washington, D.C. Her parents divorced, and her mother eventually moved back to California.
Willis mostly stayed with her father.
Willis studied political science at Howard University, graduating cum laude in 1993, then moved to Atlanta where she earned her JD from Emory University School of Law (1996).
She served 16 years as a prosecutor in the office she now heads.
At Howard, she was a member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority whose members include VP Kamala Harris, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, Rev Dr. Bernice King, Phylicia Rashad, Roxie Roker, Wanda Sykes, Althea Gibson, Toni Morrison.
"We do it for George."
What’s the big deal with Trump’s attacks on Jack Smith, Judge Chutkan, and former members of Trump's administration who have testified against him before a grand jury and who will repeat that testimony in open court? Maybe this true story will explain why Trump’s attacks are dangerous – warning: This is a LONG story.
I was born (1944) and reared in rural south Mississippi where cotton and Jim Crow were king. Blacks “knew their place” and they knew the cost of getting out of their place. In 1954-55 our community was trying to decide how to deal with the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education. One Sunday, from the pulpit, our pastor proclaimed, “the idea that Blacks are the equal of White people is the damndest lie Satan has ever devised.” While the congregation said “Amen,” I – even at 10 years old – was not comfortable with that proclamation. In 1962, at age 18, I packed up, headed for a small liberal arts college in Alabama, graduated in 1967, left Mississippi and Alabama and never looked back.
One of the jobs that paid for my college was as the nighttime DJ on a local radio station – I came on the air at 7, read news and weather, did commercials, and played records until midnight, signed the station off, and headed back to my dorm room.
The station’s studio was on the 3rd floor of a bank building. The bank employed a night watchman who roamed around the building, checking for locked doors and windows, lights turned off, and the like. A few times on most nights he would come into the studio, listen to the news and weather, talk with me while a record played. He was a large man, carried an Army .45 on his hip and a blackjack in his hip pocket. I suspected he was a Klansman and, after a couple of months, he told me he was a “Kluxer.”
In late March 1965, all the news was about the Selma to Montgomery march. My night watchman friend was fixated on the march, especially on the “outside agitators” and “Northen n####rs” who had invaded Alabama and were “stirring up the local n####rs.” On March 25, 1965, Viola Liuzzo -- a lady from Michigan who had come to Selma and Montgomery to help with logistics for the march – was driving a group from Montgomery back to Selma when she caught the attention of the local Klan because she was a white woman driving a carload of Blacks. Three local Klansmen followed her car, pulled up beside her, and killed her with two shots to the head.
The next night, after I read the hourly news -- which was all about the murder -- the watchman, who was listening intently, told me “We did that for George.”
Puzzled, I asked him: “You mean George Wallace, the governor?”
“Yeah, for George. You see, George is Governor, he wears a suit, makes speeches, and he can’t do what needs to be done to get rid of the outside agitators and the n####rs, so, we do it for him. We listen to George.”
Two weeks later I was reading a Birmingham newspaper with photos of a group of white men attacking a group of Black demonstrators. There, among the attacking group, was my night watchman friend, beating a young Black man with his blackjack.
Yesterday, while watching a video clip of Trump’s attacks on Jack Smith and Judge Chutkan, I suddenly recalled these events from 58 years ago and I felt a chill all over me. The Klan was doing for George Wallace what he, because of his position, could not do. George Wallace is gone. Trump has picked up Wallace's mantle and there are a lot of night watchmen out there with weapons far more deadly than a blackjack.
Could Trump lose his right to vote?
As I recall, sometime during his Presidency, Trump changed his legal residence from NY to Florida.
In Florida, a convicted felon loses the right to vote. You lose the right to vote in Florida if you are convicted of a felony until you finish your sentence, including prison, parole and/or probation, and pay the money you were ordered to pay by a court when you were convicted.
A simple kindness
My wife fell two weeks ago Sunday -- standing in the bathroom, she turned suddenly, twisted right ankle and knee, fell into the wall slamming her shoulder into the wall, then slid down the wall, landed on her elbow jamming her humerus into the shoulder socket. She now has braces and splints on ankle and knee; simple sling that allows her right arm to hang as gravity pulls the bone down from the shoulder socket.
She's in a wheelchair and during the past ten days, we have made a few trips out of the house -- library to get books; salon to have her hair washed (I wash hair for her but nothing like letting a pro do it); restaurants.
Invariably as we approach a doorway, someone appears out of nowhere to hold the door open. Holding the door open for someone in a wheelchair or a walker or with a cane is not just a good deed -- IT'S A MIRACLE, IT'S A LIFE SAVER. Until you have lived with a wheelchair, crutches, walker, or cane, you don't know how important and helpful it is when someone does a simple, kind move like holding the door open.
We were leaving a restaurant tonight, no one was anywhere near, we were struggling to open the exit door when a tall, muscular young Black man appeared behind us and said "I got this." He held the door open, then, told me to let him push the chair -- he wheeled her out to our old Ford Explorer, helped her into the passenger seat, folded the chair and put it in the back (at age 78, it's struggle for me to get it stowed). Wife and I were both in tears we were so thankful. And just as suddenly as he appeared, he disappeared -- his last words were "I'm just glad to help!"
Whither the United (?) Methodist Church
This comment likely is too long, does not go into the tiny details, and may not have some dates correct. If there are any Methodists out there who care to comment, correct, or rebut anything, I have no pride of authorship – have at it.
The United Methodist Church is in the midst of breaking up -- being destroyed – or becoming stronger – no one knows. Here’s what’s going on as I understand or misunderstand it.
Wife and I are 80 and 78. We are Southerners, I was born and reared in deep south Mississippi as a Southern Baptist, she in east Alabama as a Congregationalist complete with speaking in tongues and laying on of hands. We met in college in Alabama in the mid-1960’s about the same time we each turned our backs on our upbringing.
In the early 1990’s we affiliated with a United Methodist Church in northern Virginia. In 2007 we retired to rural Virginia (to a county that went 70% for Trump) and joined a small UMC with 72 people on the rolls and if we get 25 on a Sunday morning it’s a miracle.
While most of us think of the UMC as the Methodist church on the corner, in fact the UMC is world-wide, with about 58% of the membership in the US, 30% in Africa, and the rest in Europe, Asia, the Philippines, Caribbean and Latin America.
The UMC is governed by the Book of Discipline which states, in paragraph 161 C: “ The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and considers this practice incompatible with Christian teaching.” A few years ago, the state UMC Conference in one of the New England states ordained a gay bishop; -- I don’t recall the location or the date. This action started discussion, some heated and pointed, about the future direction of the UMC, especially as regards LGBTQ members and clergy and same-gender marriage.
Things came to a head at a called General Conference of the worldwide Church in February 2019 where three church types were proposed: (1) Traditional – adhere strictly to the Book of Discipline; (2) Contextual -- each church cand decide for itself how to deal with LGBTQ members or clergy; (3) Progressive – self-declared LGBTQ can be clergy, same-gender marriages can be performed. A “disaffiliation process” also was established so any local congregation unhappy with the UMC could become “disaffiliated” -- settle any financial, property, and legal obligations to the UMC and go their own way.
At this point, I lost interest in the wrangling among members, clergy, and the UMC leadership, all of which seemed to me to ignore the message of Christ. But who wants to listen to me?
So – today I ran into a guy that I am acquainted with but avoid because he has two baseball caps that he wears interchangeably – a red MAGA cap and a black and white cap that reads “I wish I lived in the American I grew up in.” I could not avoid him today and he launched on a 30-minute harangue. His is one of four churches in our county that have disaffiliated from the UMC and he wanted to tell me the details – I knew this because (1) they have removed the “United” from their church sign, and, (2) three couples from their church who disagreed have now joined my church.
He went on to tell me that around 6,200 United Methodist churches have disaffiliated nationwide and another 2,000 are expected to do so before the window closes at the end of 2024 (out of about 30,000 Methodist churches nationwide). From a high of around 11 million members in the 1960’s, the UMC has dropped to about 6.5 million and is expected to lose as many as another 2 million through disaffiliation. Church leadership is expecting a 38% drop in income, 2025-2028.
We already have seen similar schisms in the Presbyterian and Episcopal churches. Some argue that these schisms are simply the result of a trend away from denominationalism, central leadership, and toward local church governance, ownership of property, and doctrinal direction.
Regardless of the cause or the outcome, in my little county four churches have removed the word “United” from their signs, leaving only “Bethany Methodist Church”, etc. My church has not even thought of LGBTQ issues, no one is interested in disaffiliation, and we have picked up a few members from the local disaffiliated churches. Meanwhile, we have no pastor so we lay members are filling in – I’m speaking tomorrow using the book of Micah as my text, concluding with Micah 6:8: He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
With everything that's going on . . .
. . . RFK, Jr.; Trump indictments; etc., etc. . . . sometimes we just need to stop and recognize that normal life goes on.
It's now 2:00 AM, Friday, July 21 and I just ate a whole pint of Ben & Jerry's "Cherry Garcia" ice cream!!
And later today I'm planting 100 periwinkle plants.
Two days ago Sweet Thing and I were walking down our road and encountered three spotted fawns about 1/4 mile from our place.
The Andromeda Galaxy is high in the east and Jupiter just broke the eastern horizon.
Joe Manchin is up to no good - - - again
Manchin's ego is much larger than his brain. This CNN article pisses me off.
West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin will be back driving Democrats to distraction Monday by appearing in New Hampshire with a group whose exploration of a third-party presidential ticket is stoking fears they could hand the White House to Donald Trump.
The moderate Democratic senator will take part in a town hall hosted by the group No Labels to help launch a new “common sense” platform on immigration, health care, gun control, the economy and other issues that it believes are being ignored by what it views as two ideological and increasingly extreme main parties.
Manchin – who’s facing reelection to the Senate next year but has not yet said whether he’ll run – will be in his familiar political sweet spot, staking out ground to the right of his party and attracting a political spotlight he uses to maximize his influence. Last year, for instance, Manchin’s initial refusal to back a massive climate, tax and social safety net planned forced President Joe Biden to scale back and renegotiate a huge piece of his domestic agenda.
Permit me to congratulate my brother and his colleagues for making the world a little safer.
Congratulations to my little brother and his colleagues!! Much of his professional career was with Bechtel Engineering.
Under the Chemical Weapons' Convention of 1997, the US pledged to destroy our stockpiles of chemical weapons by Sep. 30, 2023 -- some of the world's deadliest stuff configured as rockets, bombs, and artillery shells. Tons and tons of these weapons were stockpiled at Pueblo Army Depot in Colorado and Bluegrass Army Depot in Kentucky.
Bechtel was awarded the contract to design, build, and operate the destruction facilities. The engineering problem was to destroy chemical weapons, render any remaining components harmless, and not allow any chemicals to escape. Some really talented and smart people at Bechtel designed the process, the buildings, and the equipment to handle this dangerous task. Just about everything they did had not been done before . . . this was some really pioneering work.
On July 7, 2023, the last of the US chemical weapons were destroyed at Bluegrass Army Depot. The destruction was accomplished without a single chemical leak or accident -- and without any fanfare. Congratulations to the Bechtel folks and my brother.
https://www.bechtel.com/newsroom/releases/2023/07/bechtel-destroys-last-munition-in-u-s-chemical-wea/
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