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How Democrats can lose again: The litmus test

The GOP is doing its damnest to rip itself apart, fighting among themselves, looking like fools, and with the lowest approval rating for a President in his first few months ever.  So Democrats can be optimistic, right?

Nah. This is kind of what we had over the last year and we still lost, didn’t we?  Oh, sure, you can argue that technically we won because we got more votes, but this is America, and we’re still doing things stupidly simply because a bunch of rich white men 225 years ago thought it was a good idea.

We Democrats will screw it up again. We’re already seeing that. Democratic Representative Ben Ray Luján said there will be no litmus tests for candidates as the party looks to get a majority in 2020. Roe-v-Wade-protest

Liberals are already screaming, because we don’t want anti-abortionists taking away our rights. How dare we support a candidate like that!

Well, while in a perfect world, I’d agree with that, the bottom line is that we need to win in places where we usually don’t if we want our majority back (especially given GOP dirty tricks involving gerrymandering and voter suppression — without those two things, we’d probably already have a majority).

So we can be absolute purists and then whine about how perfect we are while the GOP keeps its majority and destroys everything we stand for — or we can face the real world and understand that it’s better to support a candidate you agree with only 70% of the time in order to keep out one you agree with 0% of the time.download (5)

“As we look at candidates across the country, you need to make sure you have candidates that fit the district, that can win in these districts across America,” said Luján. Does that mean we may end up with candidates who aren’t perfect?

Well, sure. But it’s better than ending up with elected representatives who are sworn enemies.

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Editorial cartoon: National treasure

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Nick Anderson

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Can the President pardon himself?

No.

That was easy!

I mean, come on — you don’t have to be a Constitutional scholar to figure that one out. A President who has the power to pardon himself is a king, a dictator, a tyrant. A President could murder his enemies and then pardon himself afterwards if that were the case.trump evil

The Constitution mentions the pardon power in Article II, Section 2. The president “shall have the Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for offenses against the United States.”

“Offenses against the United States” means for federal criminals, not state ones. So if, say, the state of New York brings charges against Trump, it doesn’t appear that he would have the power to pardon himself of those charges.

But even so, it’s a long-standing tradition in both English and American law that a person cannot judge themselves. A judge who commits a crime in his or her jurisdiction must have another judge appointed to rule over that trial. Clearly, a pardon is a type of judging and therefore a person cannot pardon themselves.

Usually no one gets pardoned until after they have been convicted and have served some time — the President may pardon them so they can have a clean record.  However, Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon before Nixon had been convicted or even charged (even though those charges were clearly coming). This set a bad precedent, was highly criticized by many legal scholars, and surely played a part in Ford’s failure to win re-election. Since Nixon accepted the pardon, it also means that he agreed he was guilty, doesn’t it?

But there’s more to Section 2 as well — “except in Cases of Impeachment.” So a President cannot pardon anyone who has been Impeached (which would include himself). Impeachment, of course, is separate from criminal proceedings. Bill Clinton was impeached even though he had not committed any crime.

So can a President pardon himself? While the Constitution does not explicitly say, all precedent and logic state that he cannot.

Can I mention in passing how absolutely ridiculous this past year has been? If I had pitched this as a fantasy novel to follow Bloodsuckers, my agent would have said it was too outrageous and unbelievable. And now this lunatic President is talking about pardoning himself?

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Editorial cartoon: Impede, Obstruct…

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Darrin Bell

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Resist the Left-Handed Agenda

Our culture has degenerated to the point where people openly are left-handed, in public, unashamed, and television and the media encourages such deviant behavior.

Left-handed people keep shoving their left-handedness down our throats and are expecting us to just accept this without complaining. They call for “Lefty Pride” and openly promote their radical agenda. President Obama himself constantly signed executive orders using his left hand, and people acted as if it was no big deal.lefty

As we know, being left-handed is a sin in the eyes of God. Sure, people claim they were born that way, but even if that were true, these sinners chose to act on their left-handedness, and often perform left-handed acts in public. We can love the sinner and hate the sin, after all, but when you choose to sin, God does not excuse you. Think of the children!

We need to preserve our precious way of life and fight against those liberals who want to treat being left-handed as if it was “natural.” And don’t get me started on grocery stores that promote shellfish where the children can see it!

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Editorial cartoon: The fanatics

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Clay Bennett

Meme: It’s About Time!

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Real people complaining about fictional people

The new Doctor Who has been announced, and it’s a woman. So of course, some fanboys (and some fangirls) are complaining. “But the Doctor is a man!”

No, the Doctor is fictional.

The biggest complainers are the ones who get an idea in their heads and decide that X version of a fictional character is the only one possible, and any variation is blasphemy. “Superman can’t be black!” they scream, ignoring the fact that Superman isn’t even human — he could be green and polka dotted (although that might make his secret identity a bit tougher to hide).

Sometimes it really matters whether a character is male or female, black or white … if it’s important to the plot. And sometimes the writer/director/producer decides to go against the expected to make a point or to do something different with the character.

Re-interpretations of fictional works happen all the time. Look at how many times Shakespeare has been done in a new way. Characters can change race and sex; the story can take place in the present or the future — it’s fiction. You can do that.

With Doctor Who, it’s even easier to change, because the Doctor changes. Since the show has been going on for 50 years or so, the same actor has not played the part and so the writers came up with “regeneration” where the Doctor sheds his old body and takes on a new one. I’ve never understood plot-wise why that has to happen, but I certainly understand why that needs to be done for TV’s sake. And there is nothing in the established history of the show to indicate why the Doctor regenerated as male the last dozen times (or, for that matter, why the aliens always seem to be attacking London, but that’s a separate issue). So what’s wrong with a female this time?  Statistically speaking, shouldn’t that have happened long ago?

For that matter, what’s wrong with changing real, actual history for dramatic purpose? Hamilton features minority actors playing the white Founding Fathers, and they did that to make a specific point, as well as to say, “Who cares what color the actor is that plays this part?”  The story is still plenty strong, the characters are believable and real, and so what if they don’t look exactly like the people they’re portraying?

So let’s stop complaining when we get a black Santa Claus or a black Hermione, or a female Doctor Who. It’s fiction.

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Editorial cartoon: If He Only Had a Brain

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Stuart Carlson

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Ten Commandments? What are they?

Hobby Lobby recently was charged by the Justice Department with stealing millions of dollars of artifacts in violation of the law.

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These devout Christians, you may recall, went all the ways to the Supreme Court to fight for their right to deny contraceptive coverage to their employees because of their strongly held religious beliefs. And then the Court made one of the worst decisions in its history by deciding that corporations could have religious beliefs and discriminate based on  those beliefs.

Well, not surprisingly, like many (if not most) Christians, they only care about some of the things their religion tells them. Stealing and lying — both clearly prohibited by their Ten Commandments, doesn’t seem to apply to them. Contraception — not mentioned anywhere in the Bible — well, that’s different.

Picking and choosing what religious laws you want to follow is nothing new, but the hypocrisy here is overwhelming.

To make matters worse, these artifacts were stolen in Iraq, and most likely stolen by agents of ISIS, so Hobby Lobby should now be categorized as a terrorist supporter, and the leaders of that organization should face serious criminal penalties. I mean, after all, I’ve represented people in my law practice who were stealing a few dozen dollars worth of stuff from WalMart who are now sitting in jail. Surely someone who violates the law and steals millions should be treated worse.

Ha ha! Just kidding. You know that will never happen.