By Bob Gaydos

The Marion County Record … still publishing

     There has been plenty of news coverage of the daily stream of complaints from the twice-impeached, four times indicted former president that (1.) accusing him of crimes (91 of them) for things he has said and trying to silence him from talking about the accusations constitute an attack on his First Amendment right of free speech, but (2.) the most recent legitimate threat to the First Amendment has received much less attention, possibly because it happened in Marion, Kansas, where the entire sheriff’s force raided the offices of the local paper, the Marion County Record, and the home of its owners, taking computers, phones, notebooks, etc., looking for the source of information on embarrassing news about a local politician and a business owner, even though the paper had not published articles on either person and despite a warrant that the local DA invalidated two days after the raid as unwarranted, leading (3.) news media organizations to denounce the rare government interference in the operation of a free press, an action which the editor said (4.) created stress which contributed to the death of his 98-year-old mother and newspaper co-owner a day after the raid, which is tragic, as is each of (5.) the estimated 49,500 people who committed suicide in the United States last year, the highest number ever, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control, which said suicides had become more commmon in America than any period since just before World War II, a war whose outcome established the former Soviet Union as a world power, to fear and grudgingly respect, both of which were absent as (6.) Ukraine continued its counteroffensive in the disastrous war launched against it by Russian President Vladimir Putin, which revealed the weakness of Russia’s military, and (7.) Russia’s robotic Luna-25 spacecraft crashed on the surface of the moon, much as (8.) Hunter Biden’s plea deal on tax fraud and gun charges did when a judge

Hunter Biden

refused to accept the terms and (9.) Britain’s hopes of magically winning a World Cup in women’s soccer did when gritty Spain won the title match, one-nothing, which (10.) experts said was pretty much what Hawaii had done to prepare for the disastrous wildfire that devastated Maui, leveling a town and killing more than a hundred people, the kind of devastation Democrats could experience in 2024 if (11.) the deceptively named No Labels Party runs a candidate for president, since the moderate-conservative group wouldn’t take away any of Trump’s loyal followers (assuming he’s not in prison), but could sway some independents away from voting for Joe Biden, who (12.) practiced statesmanship by hosting the leaders of Japan and South Korea, traditional rivals if not enemies, at Camp David, to forge an alliance in the three countries’ favor, kind of the opposite approach of Trump, who (13.) said he would skip the scheduled Republican presidential candidates debate in favor of an interview with Tucker Carlson somewhere Trump can presumably demonstrate his right to free speech ad nauseum without fear of someone confronting him with facts, kind of like (14.) Rudy Giuliani‘s approach claiming that the RICO law, which he is charged with violating in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia, does not apply to conspiracies among political  figures, even though, as the first U.S. prosecutor to use the law, Giuliani, who (15.) has experienced an epic fall from 9/11 grace, (16.) once bragged how he used it against Mayor Ed Koch and other New York City political figures. 

     Ain’t karma great?

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Jeffrey Page

Trump … tweeting.

Donald Trump and his coterie believe that election is tantamount to gaining unquestioned authority in matters of insult, truth and apology.

You may believe that begging someone’s pardon after intended or unintended insult might make the world a little more civil, maybe even a little safer, but Donald Trump seems to hold no such belief.

“If I win,” he informed Hillary Clinton during the campaign, “I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your [missing email] situation because there has never been so many lies, so much deception.” This as Trump’s followers gleefully roared “Lock her up! Lock her up!”

So far, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has appointed no special prosecutor, which could indicate that Clinton is not quite as wicked as Trump would have you believe.

So with no special prosecutor in sight, can Trump stand up and say “I went a little too far; I apologize?”

He cannot.

He’s apparently unaware that in America when you charge someone with a crime you’re supposed to have evidence.

Someone else operating from the Trump Handbook of Practical Politics is Jeff Sessions, who stepped into a Ringling Bros. bucket when he declared recently that the state of Hawaii is little more than a banana republic – seven insignificant islands floating out there on the briny.

Apologize? Sessions?

Reacting to an unfavorable ruling by District Judge Derrick Watson in Honolulu, Sessions told an interviewer: “I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the President of the United States from what appears to be his statutory and Constitutional power.” Such judicial orders are precisely what make America unique, far different from a lot of countries.

At issue before Watson was Trump’s signing an executive order barring travelers from Muslim dominant countries from entering the United States – the so-called travel ban. Watson didn’t think it passed Constitutional muster.

Sessions was “amazed?”

If so, Americans must be “amazed” to learn that their attorney general is “amazed” at what the judges of a great nation do. That is, they interpret the law.

Sessions attributed the hubbub over his island jest to Americans having a lousy sense of humor. Get it? He was just kidding around with those 1.5 million unappreciative Hawaiians, not to mention the rest of us.

Incidentally, yes Watson was appointed by President Obama.

And yes, the Senate vote to confirm him was 94-0.

And yes, one of those yea votes was cast by Jeff Sessions, a senator at the time.

Here’s a handy guide to a few older incidents that beg for apology but have received no such thing.

— “I watched in Jersey City New Jersey where thousands and thousands of people [Muslims] were cheering as that building [the World Trade Center] was coming down,” Trump said about 9/11. Apparently he was the only person to witness such cheering.

— Trump said he doubted he could get a fair trial in a case to be heard by Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel since Trump was calling for a wall to prevent Mexicans from crossing the border to reach the U.S. and Curiel had that Mexican sounding surname. Therefore, Trump’s reasoning went, he could not expect a fair shake from Curiel, except that Curiel is not Mexican but a U.S. citizen born in East Chicago, Indiana, the son of U.S. citizens.

— Trump charged outrageously that President Obama’s people tapped some of Trump’s phones during the campaign for Hillary Clinton’s benefit.

The evidence?

None.