Category Archives: elections

King Lear and the Convicted Felon

Posted on by
Reply

A Shakespearian tragedy, some are calling the Trump conviction, not noting the irony of associating someone such as our former president with the talents of a great author about whom he likely has never read, at least with any understanding or appreciation.

One definition of a literary tragedy is a work in which the main character has “a tragic flaw, moral weakness, or inability to cope with unfavorable circumstances.”

That pretty well matches the main character of the drama we are witnessing.   Unfortunately, it also describes many of his acolytes who by their support of him are becoming characters like him.

Which of Shakespeare’s 17th Century tragic characters most resemble the convicted felon/tar baby that many political hopefuls are eager to get stuck to with increased firmness—an old man who rewards those most loyal to him and in doing so is taught the hard way that rewarding loyalty has its penalties?

King Lear is the story of a old man who wants to pass on his estate to the one of his three daughters who loves him best. Two daughters tolerate him at best but flatter him to win his favor. The third daughter, the one he actually loves the most, thinks he knows the feeling is mutual and therefore doesn’t butter him up as her two sisters do.  He vainly falls for the adulation of the two, cuts out the one he loves the most, and gives his estate to the manipulative sisters. He alternates staying with the two winners who treat him badly. As he grows more addled, he is left a vagrant.  Too late he realizes his mistake in favoring the two manipulative sisters but he cannot correct it because his beloved youngest daughter dies.

One of those who stays loyal to Lear is the Earl of Gloucester, who muses in a late section of the play, “’Tis the times’ plague when mad men lead the blind.”

Writer Lawrence Noel interprets the line this way:

The time’s plague refers to it being a problem of the time or era. Referring to it as a plague suggests that it spreads widely and quickly. We might even think of it as being contagious.

Blind people relied on others for guidance, especially in unfamiliar territory. Madmen are insane and cannot distinguish between reality and fantasy.

Putting those elements together suggests that the audience is being told that one of the problems of the time is that those who must trust others to provide them with safe passage in the world are being led by those who do not see the world clearly or in its own state of reality, even for themselves.

As an excerpt, it reflects an attitude about the nature of politics that resonates with modern readers and playgoers in that faith in the clarity of our political leaders’ vision of the world has suffered some setbacks of late. They may assure the common people that we are blind to the realities which only they can see and so we must accept their leadership if we want to go anywhere new. If the leader’s visions are distorted or unhealthy, we are likely to suffer for them.

“When mad men lead the blind.”  The line is sometimes misquoted but that’s what Shakespeare wrote.

Writer and playwright Charlotte Ahlin, who was raised by two Shakespearean actors, has written, “His plays are surprisingly (and sometimes upsettingly) still relevant to our daily lives.” Some of the reactions to the hush money verdict verify her contention.

Many of our political leaders or political leader-wannabes are (in some cases) disappointing us in accusing the Biden justice system of persecuting our former president strictly for partisan political purposes and encouraging the public to ignore that the supposedly weaponized Justice Department is prosecuting two members of Biden’s party—Senator Bob Menendez and Congressman Henry Cuellar, AND that a holdover Trump appointee in the Justice Department is prosecuting Presidential Son Hunter Biden.

The hypocrisy—-

The depth of the betrayal of their integrity—

Their lack of political courage—-

Their disregard for the title of “public servant” that they have sacrificed in pursuit of power—

are appalling.

The damage they are doing to public confidence in one of the most important institutions that define the United States as an example of a republican democracy—a trial by a jury of one’s peers—seems to mean nothing to them.  They are willing to become hostages to the political whims of a man of a kind they likely would not want their daughters to marry. They kowtow to a king who demands to be flattered.

They are gladly capitalizing on leading the blind—the people who don’t know and don’t want to think—in a concerted effort to let our former president hold on to power regardless of the damage he has openly announced he will do.

Listen again to what many of them said about him after January 6.

Listen again to what many of them said about him in their presidential primary campaigns, brief though they were.

Listen to what he has said about them or about members of their families.

Look at the list of those who he promised in 2016 to hire (only “the best people”) for his administration and count the number who have faced criminal charges/financial ruin or jail sentences for their loyalty—or who have written books exposing his machinations.

No president in all of American history has had so many books by his once-closest associates written about his personal and politica l failings.

And wonder why those who are now attacking our legal system as weaponized and corrupt feel they have to read from the script (look for words such as “witch hunt” or “banana republic”) he peddles on social media or during obsequious interviews.

And then, ask yourself this:

Have you ever served on a jury or do you know anyone who has?

This bunch is suggesting the people such as you and your friends, who assumed the responsibility as jurors in his recent trial, somehow connived with the Justice Department to politically persecute this man who has openly claimed to be above the law. Anyone who has been on a jury, or who has been called for consideration to be on a jury, should be insulted by what these bed partners of the now-convicted felon are saying.

If Donald Trump was treated unfairly in his trial, it was the fault of his attorneys and, perhaps himself; there are a lot of people who say the lawyers crafted their defense of him at least partly because of his demands.

He had his chance to claim in court what he loves to claim outside of the court. As he has in the past, he said at the start of the trial that he would love to testify.  But in the end, he chickened out. Again.  He could have told his side of the story but, as he has done in the past, he did not.

—-Because he would have had to take an oath to tell the truth and he is incapable of doing so.

His lawyers helped pick the jury. To refresh your memory, here’s the kind of people they were, thanks to a compilation by NBC News.

Juror 1: A man who lives in West Harlem and works in sales. He is married, likes to do “anything outdoorsy,” and gets news from The New York Times, Fox News and MSNBC.

Juror 2: A man who works in investment banking, follows Twitter as well as Truth Social posts from Trump and said, “I don’t have any beliefs that might prevent me from being fair or impartial.”

Juror 3: A young man who has lived in Chelsea for five years, works as an attorney in corporate law, and likes to hike and run. He gets news from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Google.

Juror 4: A man who’s a security engineer and likes woodworking and metalworking.

Juror 5: A young woman who is a Harlem resident and works as a teacher. She lives with her boyfriend, loves writing, theater and traveling. She gets news from Google and TikTok and listens to podcasts on relationships and pop culture.

Juror 6: A young woman who lives in Chelsea and works as a software engineer. She gets news from The New York Times, Google, Facebook and TikTok.

Juror 7: A man who lives on the Upper East Side and works as attorney as a civil litigator. He enjoys spending time in the outdoors and gets his news from The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and the Washington Post.

Juror 8: A man who’s retired but worked for a major wealth manager. He said he enjoys skiing, fly fishing and yoga.

Juror 9: A woman who is a speech therapist, gets news from CNN and likes reality TV podcasts.

Juror 10: A man who works in commerce, reads The New York Times and listens to podcasts on behavioral psychology.

Juror 11: A woman who works as a product development manager and watches late-night news and reads Google, business and fashion news.

Juror 12: A woman who is a physical therapist who likes running and tennis and listening to podcasts on sports and faith.

Alternate 1: A woman who works as an asset manager and likes to run, hang out with her friends and eat.

Pretty formidable list of persecutors who are tools of the Justice Department, don’t you think, especially since this trial was in a state court not a federal court where the Justice Department has a role?

The fact that it took this varied group only about eleven hours to unanimously convict our former president on every one of the THIRTY-FOUR charges speaks volumes for the strength of the case against him, the presentation of the evidence that supported all of those charges, and the inability of Trump and his lawyers to induce even one of the twelve to hang the jury.

There was nothing wrong with the justice system that day.

How strange it is that those sycophants, including several of our Missouri statewide candidates who also have swallowed gallons of the Trump Kool-Aid, to now expect a flawed justice system weaponized to get him and him alone to later exonerate a  president who tried during his own term to weaponize the Department of Justice.

Mad men. And some women leading “the blind,” people who don’t want to know but will blindly accept what they are told.  And the mad men are happy to lead them, happy to tell them.  And why?  Because they want power and lack the integrity to win it on their own standards.

They have, instead, attached themselves to arguably the least honest man in the country who spouts lies and lies and lies. And too many of our political leaders or leader wannabes are disgracing themselves in joining him in trying to disgrace those responsible citizens who fulfilled a sacred role in our society during his trial.

They have become dangerous in their service to an old king who thinks one-way loyalty is his privilege. They are the mad men.  We must not be blind to them.

Those who refuse to be blind can make sure they pay a price for their hypocrisy, their lack of integrity, honesty, and of courage when we vote in August and November.

 

A “Day” in the Life of the Senate

Posted on by
Reply

This Senate Journal for Monday, May 13, 2024 also is the journal for Tuesday and Wednesday because of a record filibuster, led by Democrats demanding so-called “ballot candy” be removed from a resolution saying no constitutional amendment could be adopted unless it carried in a majority of the state’s eight congressional districts, even if the overall vote was favorable. Democrats, already opposed to the resolution, objected to language added by the House duplicating existing law but making the proposal more appealing to the public—the “ballot candy” opponents wanted removed.

This might be dry reading to those who are not as immersed in state government as your obedient servant has been for most of his life.  We are doing this to place these events in a better record than the Senate Journal provides.

The journal for the “day” that turned into the “fifty-hour filibuster” led by the ten Democrats in the 34-member Senate is covered on pages 1059-1061 of the daily journal (the daily journals are compiled at the end of the session into one large volume, thus these page numbers pick up with the journal page number of the preceding day).  The rest of “Monday’s” journal is made up of messages from the House telling the Senate it has approved its own bills, has changed Senate bills and needs Senate approval of the changes, requests for conference committees to work out differences between the two chambers on various bills, and other routine legislative business.

Because the House of Representatives’ rules limit debate time, filibusters do not occur there.  But the Senate has no such restrictions and a parliamentary procedure called “moving the previous question,” which—if approved—immediately ends debate and calls for a vote, is seldom used.

Because the journal is a record of actions, not a by-word recording of the debates, the only indication that a filibuster occurred is the listings of the names of those who presided over the chamber at various times. The number of names is an indication of the extensive length of the filibuster.  The fact that there are no journals for Tuesday and Wednesday is another indication.

Legislative “days” are not calendar or clock-determined.  A legislative day ends with adjournment. In this case, a “Monday” lasted until Wednesday on the calendar while, for journal purposes, the legislative day was still Monday.  Adjournment in this case did not occur until some Republicans crossed party lines to join the Democrats in sending the bill back to the House with a request for a conference.  The House on Thursday rejected the Senate’s request, telling the Senate to pass the House Committee Substitute.   Senate leadership knew that the minority Democrats would resume their filibuster if the bill was returned to the floor unchanged and would run out the clock at 6 p.m. on calendar Friday.  Because there was no use spending the last day of the session in a filibuster, the Senate adjourned after a ten-minute session Friday.

We have consulted the Senate archived recording of this long “Monday” to ascertain the exact amount of time the filibuster consumed.  We have done this because this event was unprecedented in Missouri legislative history and smashed a previous unprecedented 41-hour filibuster a few days earlier by the right-wing Senate Freedom Caucus.

Monday, May 13, 2024:   Sponsor Mary Elizabeth Coleman moved that the Senate adopt House Committee Substitute for Senate Substitute Number 4 for Senate Committee Substitute for Senate Joint Resolutions 74, 48, 59, 61, and 83.  That sounds complicated but it represents the path the bill had taken to that point.

There were five similar resolutions on this issue filed in the Senate.  A Senate Committee combined those resolutions into one but not before the entire Senate had debated the bill and three substitute versions were voted down, leaving the fourth that gained enough voter for passage.

The amended and combined Senate resolution went to the House where a House Committee substituted its version. The House passed the revised bill.  The changes had to be approved by the Senate before the proposition could be put on a statewide ballot.

Monday, May 13 was the first day of the last week of the 2024 legislative session. Democrats, outnumbered more than 2-1, knew the clock was their greatest friend when it came to getting this proposition changed or killed.  They launched a filibuster that blocked a vote that surely would have sent the issue to the November ballot.

Our legislature records its debates and archives them.  We went to the May 10 audio journal and tracked how much time was spent on this bill in each day.  The Senate archive recording resets to 0:00 at the end of each 24 hours.

Day One, Monday, May 13.

0:00:00—The Senate begins its “day” with a prayer from Reverend Stephen George.

0:04:52—Senator Mary Elizabeth Coleman moves Senate approval of  HCS/SS4/SCS/SJR 74, 48, 59, 61 and 83.

0:06:15—Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo makes substitute motion to send the bill back to the House and to ask for a conference committee to work out the differences between the House version, which had “ballot candy” added to it, and the Sente version.  This is the beginning of the filibuster.

“Monday” part one (Monday-Tuesday on the traditional calendar): 24 hours, of which 23 hours, 53 minutes and 45 seconds were spent filibustering the resolution. Running filibuster time: 23:53:45.

“Monday” part two (Tuesday-Wednesday on the traditional calendar): all 24 hours were involved in the filibuster. Running filibuster time: 47:53:45

“Monday” part three (Wednesday on the traditional calendar); 02:15:36  Roll call vote begins.  Roll call results announced: 02:18:06. The motion to send bill back to the House passed 18-13, with eight Republicans crossing party lines. The filibuster is official ended.

02:24:41: The Senate adjourns until Thursday morning.  “Monday,” the longest known “day” in Missouri Senate history, has finally come to an end.

Total filibuster time: 50:11:51

Total time of “Monday, May 10, 2024” in the Missouri Senate: 50:24:41.

Miserable, Just Miserable

Posted on by
Reply

The Missouri Constitution establishes a definite date each year for adjournment of the Missouri General Assembly.  This was one of those years when adjournment couldn’t happen soon enough.

This miserable session will be remembered as the session that a handful of Republican senators calling themselves the Freedom Caucus ran into the ground because a majority of their party didn’t buy their demands.  They accused the majority of their majority party of being RINOS, a nickname our former president likes to apply to any Republican who does not love him. There is considerable reason to consider far-out clusters such as this as the real Republicans in Name Only.

This will be remembered as the Session of the Filibuster.  The Freedom Caucus kicked off the session with a lengthy discussion of Senate procedure, filibustered for eleven hours trying to force colleagues to act quickly on bills making it harder for citizens to create laws through initiative petition. That led President Pro Team Caleb Rowden to strip four members of the Freedom Caucus of their committee chairmanships and (this seemed to be the most terrible punishment to some of them) took away their parking spaces in the Capitol basement.  Senators Bill Eigel, the ringleader of the caucus, Rick Brattin, Denny Hoskins and Andrew Koenig lost their prestigious positions, after which Eigel stopped action in the Senate for four more hours so he could question several Senators who seemed to support Rowden’s action.

Rowden calculated in late January that the Senate had been in floor session for 17 hours and 52 minutes in 2024. He said the Freedom Caucus had filibustered “things of no consequence whatsoever relative to a piece of policy” for 16 hours and 45 minutes of that time.

And it only got worse. But in the end, the filibuster bit the Freedom Caucus—uh—in the end.

As the session reached May and the crucial last couple of weeks, including the week in which the state budget had to be approved, the caucus stopped things cold for 41 hours—believed to be the longest filibuster in Missouri legislative history—because its priorities were not THE priority of Senate leadership.

But that filibuster record was to be broken in the final week when Democrats and some Republicans fed up with the Freedom Caucus’s behavior got in the way of final approval of the resolution changing the way the state constitution can be changed. Those who had lived by the filibuster died by the filibuster.

The final filibuster lasted FIFTY hours and change. It succeeded where the Freedom Caucus belligerency failed. The Freedom Caucus’ bull-in-a-china shop philosophy of government was repudiated by a Senate that seemed to, in this case at least, rediscovered bipartisanship. But the damage done by this group could not be reversed.

The 2024 legislative session was the least productive in modern memory—or even ancient memory, for that matter.  Only 28 non-budget bills were passed.

That beats the record of 31 in the 2020 session.  But remember, that was the Pandemic Session when the legislature did not meet for several days then operated on a limited basis for several other days.

Eigel disavowed responsibility for that miserable record.  “A lot of bad things that didn’t happen this session didn’t happen because of the people standing behind me,” he said in a post-session Freedom Caucus press conference. His words probably didn’t carry any water with Senators and Representatives who had worked hard and conscientiously on bills that would have done GOOD things only to see them disappear into the ongoing mud fight in the Senate led by Eigel and his band.

Eigel has dreams of becoming Governor.  Denny Hoskins thinks he’d be a peachy Secretary of State. Andrew Koenig thinks being State Treasurer would be wonderful. Rick Brattin just hopes to get elected to another term in the Senate.

There are some folks who have watched them this year who hope they still don’t have parking places in Jefferson City in 2025.

The 50-hour filibuster deserves a closer look. We’ve taken that look to establish the exact length of it so that future observers will know when they have witnessed an even more regrettable example.

Incidentally, it is believed the longest filibuster by one person in Missouri history was Senator Matt Bartle’s futile effort to block some gubernatorial appointments in 2007. He held the floor for seventeen hours.

How to be a Leftist With One Word

Posted on by
Reply

The word is “Democracy.”

The denigrating reference to one of the most honored words in our American existence was stunning when I read it.

“Democracy” seems to have become a bad word for some people.

The Jefferson City newspaper had an article yesterday about whether our city council elections should become partisan political elections again.  The City Charter adopted three or four decades ago made council elections non-partisan.  But in last month’s city elections, the county Republican committee sent out postcards endorsing candidates.

All of them lost.

A new political action committee established to oppose a Republican-oriented committee that killed a library tax levy increase last year had its own slate last month. All of the non-GOP candidates won, which prompted a leading member of the GOP-oriented group to comment in the paper that the new PAC, as the paper put it, “used leftist buzzwords like ‘transparency’ and ‘Democracy’ on their website.”

Friends, when things have gone so far out of whack that “Democracy” is nothing more than a “leftist buzzword,” our political system is in extremely perilous condition.   And if the same side considers “transparency” to be something that is politically repugnant, it appears that a substantial portion of our political system has abandoned one of the greatest principles of our national philosophy—-that government of the people, for the people, and by the people should not hide what it does from its citizens.

City councils are the closest governments to the people.  Elections of members of city councils should focus on the issues that most directly affect residents of wards and cities, not on whether candidates can pass party litmus tests or mouth meaningless partisan rhetoric.

The Jefferson City newspaper spent weeks publishing articles giving candidates’ opinions on the issues that confront citizens living on the quiet (and some noisy) streets of the city. Voters had ample opportunities to evaluate candidates on THEIR positions, not whether they were an R or a D.

Bluntly put, the county Republican committee did not respect the non-partisan system that has served our city well for these many decades.  And to have one of its leading characters dismiss words such as “transparency” and—especially—“Democracy” as “leftist buzzwords” is, I regret to say, a disgrace.

One Man’s Vision—5 

Posted on by
1

The shift of the focus on a convention center and hotel reopens the penitentiary for more redevelopment ideas than museums.

We need a new library.

Last August, the local library board asked voters for a 15-cent levy increase to renovate, expand, and modernize our 50-year old building.  The $28-million effort was killed by a secret group of people, none of whom had ever attended a single library board meeting during which these plans were developed (and who have never attended a board meeting since), who circulated a huge lie throughout Cole County that the library board was going to increase property taxes by 75%.  We were asking for nothing of the sort and I am still waiting for someone from this group to explain to the library board why they circulated this lie and who created it.  I want to see its homework but it appears no one from this group has the courtesy or the courage to prove its case.

—Because it can’t.

What is true is that the need for 21st century library service has not changed.  We know that we will have to go to the voters again but we worry that this group so poisoned public confidence in the library system and the library board that our task of winning support for the library this city, county, and region must have for most of the rest of this century is much harder.

Nonetheless, we cannot stay in a building that no longer meets the needs of our constituents. Our efforts to maintain the services we offer has led to the rental of office space across High Street for our administrators who have been crowded out by the space we needs to meet our responsibilities. We are facing a choice of moving some of our staff back into the building and reducing some services now occupying the space they would reclaim, or leaving things as they are.

We have never had the parking we need.  When the present building was constructed, the plan was to tear down the original Carnegie building to create parking for our patrons. After the building was completed, however, those interested in historic preservation preserved the old building.

We thought in our planning for last year’s renovation election that the county would be picking up some of the Buescher vacant lots and leasing some of the space to us, but the city decided after we had set the August election date that it would be keeping all of them—although it has told us it will lease space to us once it has completed its acquisition program.

But that still does not resolve the inadequacies that have developed through fifty years since the building was new.  The county has indicated an interest in acquiring the building if we decide to sell and move, and further negotiations are warranted because we will, eventually, move.

We have no choice but to do so if we are to responsibly serve our patrons.

About twenty years ago or so, we planned to put up a new building across Lafayette Street from the original prison entrance. But the federal government decided to build the Christopher S. Bond Federal Courthouse there, leaving us in our present situation.

Moving the convention center discussion to Madison and Capital re-opens the prison as a potential site for a new library. It’s in the minds of our library board members but not yet an active discussion.

We are starting to think about asking ourselves, however, “How can we do this?”

Why Let Others Decide? 

Posted on by
1

The latest effort to let other people decide what’s best for the rest of us is at large in the Missouri Capitol.

It is bill designed to take away some more of our voting rights. I say “some more” because of two obvious incidents from our past, within the last thirty years or so, in which we as voters gave away our right to vote.

First was term limits.  In 1992, voters statewide decided you and I could not vote to retain our state representative or our state senator, no matter how well they had represented us, beyond a certain number of years. We, as a people, forfeited our right to vote for a third term for a senator we trusted or our right to vote for a fifth term of a representative who had responsibly served us.

(Hypocritically, in the same election, voters elected many incumbents to terms beyond the limits they also approved).

Later, voters statewide decided to ban any city from imposing an earnings tax other than the cities of St. Louis and Kansas City—and voters there would have to approve continuation of those taxes every five years.  No other cities were seriously considering such a tax at the time, but that decision precluded any city from asking voters to think about one.  Again, othrers have decided you and I can never have a chance to vote on this issue in our towns.

Now a movement is afoot to make it harder to change our constitution. And this one is even more dangerous because it could declare a majority vote doesn’t count.

The Senate already has passed this bill that says the constitution would not be amended, even if the proposal carries by a majority statewide, unless it has a majority in more than half of the state’s congressional districts.  That means it must be approved by voters in five of our eight congressional districts we now have and will fail even if the statewide results show majority approval.

If you vote on the prevailing side, your vote is worthless if the issue gets a statewide majority but gets a a majority in only four of our congressional districts.

So much for one-person, one-vote. My vote and your vote might not carry the same weight as the vote of someone in a more reluctant congressional district.  Our votes will not be equal.  We might win the majority but the majority will not rule.

If it is such a good idea, why are elections for legislators run on the same principle?  Why shouldn’t someone have to carry a majority of the precincts in their district, not just get the most votes overall, to get elected?

The proposed constitutional change is a Republican idea and Republicans don’t want voters in the Democratic congressional districts in our metro areas and, probably, the more liberal district that includes Columbia, to post majorities that more than offset votes in conservative areas of Missouri.

Can anyone name any other election law that says voters in some places don’t count even if they are in the overall majority?

Doesn’t sound very “American.”

Fortunately, this idea will require a simple majority to defeat it when it does on the statewide ballot, assuming voters realize that they are once again being asked to give away a right to decide issues on the basis of all votes being equal.

Our constitution already has too many things in it that should be state laws subject to updating as needed as our society changes.  Many of those things have been put in the constitution because the legislature refused to enact them as statutes.  We might have a chance to make that same mistake with a sports wagering proposition because the legislature annually fails to pass a more responsible sports wagering law.

There are ways to make it harder to turn legislative failures into constitutional amendments that reduce the opportunities our elected representatives and senators have to enact public policy.  This proposal is not an appropriate way to do that.

The bill is Senate Joint Resolution 74. It will soon be on the House floor for debate.  We will serve ourselves well if we tell our Representatives that our vote should be equal to the votes of others on proposed constitutional changes.

Sauces for geese and ganders should be equal.  So should votes for legislators and for constitutional amendments.

The County, The Man  

Posted on by
Reply

One of our counties is named for a man who was the nation’s fifth Chief Justice of the United States.  Before that, he was the 12th man to be Secretary of the Treasury. Before that, he was the 11th United States Attorney General.

We pronounce the name of the county “Tainey.”  But his name was really pronounced “Tawney.”   Roger Brooke Taney represents the dual nature of history and the fame and the infamy that comes from it, a duality that we cannot escape and from which we must not hide.

This man who is best remembered for delivering a historic anti-freedom decision in 1857 was part of the court that ruled on a historic pro-freedom case in 1841.

The Amistad case involved Africans who broke free and seized their ship, eventually landing at Long Island.  The owners of the ship sued for recovery of their property—the ship and its cargo. Former President John Quincy Adams argued for the slaves and the court ruled 6-1 with Taney in the majority that the slaves belonged to no one and were therefore free because, “in no sense could they possibly intend to import themselves here, as slaves, or for sale as slaves.”

The point of slave law ruled upon by the Taney court sixteen years later was entirely different. Taney is best remembered for delivering the decision that denied freedom to Missouri slave Dred Scott.

Missouri courts had handled hundreds of “freedom suits” filed by slaves who claimed they had gained their freedom because their owners had taken them to free states before coming to slaveholding Missouri. Some 300 of those cases were filed in St. Louis where a monument now stands honoring those slaves. Many of the suits succeeded but they ended with the Scott case.

The case was heard twice by the U. S. Supreme Court, a second hearing held because, as Taney wrote in the final decision, “differences of opinion were found to exist among the members of the court; and as the questions in controversy are of the highest importance…it was deemed advisable to continue the case, and direct a re-argument on some of the points, in order that we might have an opportunity of giving to the whole subject a more deliberate consideration.”

You can read the entire decision at Dred Scott v. Sandford Full Text – Text of the Case – Owl Eyes

The court voted 7-2 that Scott, as a slave, had no constitutional right to sue for his freedom. It is a long, long decision written by Taney and announced on March 6, 1857.

“The question is simply this: Can a negro, whose ancestors were imported into this country, and sold as slaves, become a member of the political community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States, and as such become entitled to all the rights, and privileges, and immunities, guarantied by that instrument to the citizen? One of which rights is the privilege of suing in a court of the United States in the cases specified in the Constitution,” Taney wrote the long opinion that includes:

The words ‘people of the United States’ and ‘citizens’ are synonymous terms, and mean the same thing..,The question before us is, whether the class of persons described in the plea in abatement compose a portion of this people, and are constituent members of this sovereignty? We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word ‘citizens’ in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them.”

…The legislation of the States therefore shows, in a manner not to be mistaken, the inferior and subject condition of that race at the time the Constitution was adopted, and long afterwards, throughout the thirteen States by which that instrument was framed; and it is hardly consistent with the respect due to these States, to suppose that they regarded at that time, as fellow-citizens and members of the sovereignty, a class of beings whom they had thus stigmatized; whom, as we are bound, out of respect to the State sovereignties, to assume they had deemed it just and necessary thus to stigmatize, and upon whom they had impressed such deep and enduring marks of inferiority and degradation; or, that when they met in convention to form the Constitution, they looked upon them as a portion of their constituents, or designed to include them in the provisions so carefully inserted for the security and protection of the liberties and rights of their citizens…

 Upon the whole, therefore, it is the judgment of this court, that it appears by the record before us that the plaintiff in error is not a citizen of Missouri, in the sense in which that word is used in the Constitution; and that the Circuit Court of the United States, for that reason, had no jurisdiction in the case, and could give no judgment in it. Its judgment for the defendant must, consequently, be reversed, and a mandate issued, directing the suit to be dismissed for want of jurisdiction.

The opinion fueled fears of those who felt the slave economy eventually would collapse that the opposite would happen if the institution were to spread into new territories to the west. The 1821 Missouri Compromise forbade that but Taney’s ruling threw out that compromise:

“Every citizen has a right to take with him into the Territory any article of property which the Constitution of the United States recognises as property.”

It has been called the worst Supreme Court ruling in our history and a direct contributor to the Civil War.

Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas, who had eyes on a presidential run in 1860, told a crowd at the Illinois Capitol that those who disagreed with the ruling were “enemies of the constitution. One of his listeners was Springfield lawyer Abraham Lincoln, who had his eyes on Douglas’ seat in the Senate. One of Lincoln’s newest biographers, Steve Inskeep, wrote that Lincoln responded two weeks later that Douglas “dreads the slightest restraints on the spread of slavery” and asserted that the decision did not “establish a settled doctrine for the country.” Inskeep says Lincoln felt the Scott case was more than a bad ruling; “It was part of a conspiracy to spread slavery everywhere.”

The next June, Lincoln told another meeting in the statehouse, the conflict over slavery had not been resolved.

“A house divided against itself, cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved – I do not expect the house to fall – but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become lawful in all the States, old as well as new – North as well as South.”

The Lincoln-Douglas debates that came afterward elevated Lincoln to the national spotlight and in 1860 into the presidency.

Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4, 1861, just two days short of the fourth anniversary of the Scott case, showed how rapidly the decision had changed the nation. It began with a dramatic moment when the tall, young abolitionist president-elect, in his first public appearance with a beard, filed in “arm in arm” with the Chief Justice who would swear him in.  Roger Taney, days short of his 84th birthday, “looked very agitated and his hands shook very perceptively with emotion,” as one reporter put it, as Lincoln placed his large hand on the Bible and took an oath to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

We do not know if the walk “arm in arm” or Taney’s shaking hands were matters of emotion or of the infirmities of age.  He died a little more than three years later, having witnessed the imposition of the Emancipation Proclamation that declared slaves in southern states were free, and, six months before his death, the passage by the United States Senate of what would become the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude.

On March 6, 2017, the sixtieth anniversary of the decision, descendants of the Taneys and the Scotts met at the Maryland State Capitol, where a statue of Taney stood, for a ceremony of reconciliation. Charlie Taney, great-great-great grand nephew of the judge, acknowledged, “I’m sure he wouldn’t be happy with this,”  but continued, “There’s totally something about seeing the Scotts and the Taneys side by side working together on reconciliation that strikes a real chord in people.”

Another descendant, Kate Taney Billingsley, said, there had been mixed feelings in the family about Taney: “A lot of people, it was like, they were proud of the name because it was a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court for other rulings he had made that was not the Dred Scott decision, and yet everybody agreed that it was a complete smear on our name and it was a terrible, terrible decision.”

On the other side was Lynn Jackson, the great-great-granddaughter of Dred Scott, who runs the Dred Scott Foundation of St. Louis, who hoped the event could foster something bigger. “It’s an open door for us to say if the Scotts and the Taneys can reconcile, can’t you?” she asked. “If you look at relationships in our nation, these are supposed to be the two who are really supposed to hate each other. But it’s not about hatred, it’s about understanding, and then relationship building and trust.”

There had been discussions about removing Taney’s statue from the Maryland Capitol grounds at the time but the families opposed it.  They suggested it would be more appropriate to put up a statue of Scott and one of Frederick Douglass, who escaped from slavery in Maryland and became a national abolitionist leader.

It wasn’t to be.  The state removed Taney’s statue in 2017, two days after Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh ordered removal of a replica of the statue from city property.

In December of 2022, the United States House of Representatives completed the process of ordering the removal of a bust of Taney from the old House Chamber that was used by the Supreme Court until its own building was constructed.  Maryland Congressman Stenny Hoyer, who noted that every day he served in a chamber that had been built by slaves, said, “While we cannot remove the stones and bricks that were placed here in bondage, we can ensure that the moveable pieces of art we display here celebrate freedom, not slavery, not sedition, not segregation….”His narrow-minded originalist philosophy failed to acknowledge America’s capacity for moral growth and for progress. Indeed, the genius of our Constitution is that it did have moral growth, it did have expanded vision, it did have greater wisdom. Taney’s ruling denied Black Americans citizenship, upheld slavery, and contributed, frankly, to the outbreak of the Civil War.”

The bust was removed on February 9, 2023 and replaced by a bust of Thurgood Marshall, a civil rights attorney who played a key role in the 1954 Supreme Court ruling that ended segregated schools in America, and later the first black member of the U. S. Supreme Court.

Taney County, Missouri was carved out of Wayne County by the state legislature in 1835, the year that Andrew Jackson appointed Taney to succeed Chief Justice John Marshall, who had died earlier that year.  Taney’s nomination was confirmed in 1836, making him the first Catholic to serve on the court. Taney County was formally recognized as an organized county in 1837, almost twenty years before the ruling that became the deciding “smear” on his record and on his descendants’ name.

In advocating for the removal of the Taney bust from the national capital, Congressman Stenny Hoyer noted the duality of history when he said, “We ought to know who Roger Brooke Taney was, a man who was greatly admired in his time in the state of Maryland. But he was wrong. Over 3 million people visit our Capitol each year. The people we choose to honor in our halls signal to those visitors which principles we cherish as a nation.”

There are no known statues of Taney in Taney County and there has been no overt move to change the name of the county. The name honors the distinguished public servant that he was, not the jurist who wrote one opinion that overshadows everything else he wrote or was.

Taney, the man, is a reminder of something else said by the man he swore in as President of the United States when he delivered his annual message to Congress late in 1862:

“The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise — with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.”

Sometimes words cross all barriers of time. Taney’s words. Lincoln’s words. Words of yesterday become words of today. It is up to us to decide what to do with them.

(Photo credits: National Judicial College, Library of Congress)

 

BONUS:  SCOTUS SAYS TRUMP CAN STAY; MISSOURI PRECEDENT

Posted on by
Reply

We interrupt today’s regular entry to bring you this perspective on the big news of the morning, so far:

The United States Supreme Court today unanimously ruled that Colorado cannot keep Donald Trump off its presidential primary ballot. All nine judges wrote separate opinions explaining why states cannot determine who will run in national elections based on Section three of the Fourteenth Amendment, which Colorado and some other states had cited to kick Trump off the ballot for taking part in an insurrection.

The Supreme Court says the authority to enforce that section that bars those involved in insurrections from holding office rests with Congress, not the states.

Would Congress do that?  Some of those disappointed in today’s ruling say a Congress that works the way a Congress is supposed to work would be far more likely to do it than today’s dysfunctional bunch.

Today’s ruling has a Missouri precedent, sort of.

In the early 1990s, when Missouri and 22 other states made the mistake of enacting term limits on members of their legislatures, an effort also was made to limit the amount of time members of Congress could serve. The Arkansas Supreme Court threw out the law in that state and U. S. Term Limits took the case to the Supremes, where justices voted 5-4 in 1995 that the requirements for service in the United States House and the United States Senate are established in the U. S. Constitution which trumps state laws or state constitutions.

The Fix Was Only Partly In 

Posted on by
Reply

It was all planned, wasn’t it?  Except it all fell apart.

The MAGA people in their tinfoil hats had predicted the Super Bowl would be rigged so the Chiefs would win—in fact, the playoffs—if not the whole season—had been rigged by he NFL so the Chiefs would win and then Travis Kelce and girlfriend Taylor Swift would announce their endorsement of President Biden during the halftime show.

We must have missed that announcement.  We were chowing down at a friend’s “Souper Bowl” party while Usher’s spectacular halftime show was under way. It’s probably all coach Andy Reid’s fault that he would not let Kelce leave the locker room while the Chiefs rehearsed the NFL and the Democratic National Committee’s plans for the Chiefs to win.

How clever of the Chiefs and the 49ers to heighten the drama by taking the game into overtime. But that was part of the plan, wasn’t it?  More commercials at $7 million for each thirty seconds.  And how much of that will secretly wind up in the Biden campaign account (that wasn’t part of any conspiracy theory that we heard before the game but it came to mind in the aftermath)?

And when Kelce and Swift met on the field afterwards, they appeared to get lost in their own hugging and kissing that they forgot about making the endorsement. Up to then, things were pretty good and then they forgot their lines and messed it all up.

Maybe it was because they engaged in alternate activity because they were afraid they would say something that would prove claims that she is some kind of a Pentagon asset, although the tin hat folks have not specifically defined what that asset might be. If she ever slips and introduces herself as “Swift, Taylor Swift,” we’ll all know.  So far she hasn’t let it slip, but in the exciement of the Super Bowl she might have done it, so that’s why the Pentagon probably ordere Kelce to plaster his lips to hers because it’s hard to give away high-security secrets when your lips are linked with someone else’s lips.

President Biden commented on X, “Just like we drew it up,” again showing his decline in mental acuity by forgetting they were supposed to endorse him or that the scheme was to be top secret.

Noted liberal mainstream media talking head Joe Scarbrough the next morning disguised the failure of Kelce and Swift to perform by focusing instead on “all the MAGA, ultra-MAGA freaks” and Biden’s comment being “him mocking the snowflakes.”

Biden, showing that he is more contemporary than many give him credit for being, used TikTok to stream a video showing him answering questions about the Super Bowl. He refused to acknowledge that the fix was in by refusing to pick a winner.

“I’d get in trouble if I told you,” he told an interviewer who succested there had been “deviously plotting” for the Chiefs to make the playoffs and then taking the Super Bowl.

Sorry, Joe B.  You can run but you can’t hide.  All right-thinking—or is it ultra-right thinking?—people know the truth.  Kelce and Swift dropped the ball.

One more thing:

President Biden declined to do a pre-game interview, something called “a traditional sit-down” by one news agcncy although it hasn’t been a “tradition” very long. And guess who volunteered to replace him?

Ah, it’s not that hard a question. Our ex-president “praised” the incumbent’s decision, diplomatically noting, “A great decision, he can’t put two sentences together. I WOULD BE HAPPY TO REPLACE HIM – would be “RATINGS GOLD!”

He seemed to have a different attitude when HE skipped the pre-game interview in 2018.

As far as Ms. Swift is concerned, our former president thinks she would be a traitor if she endorsed the current president.  He figures she owes him, big time because he signed the Music Modernization Act “for Taylor Swift and all other Musical Artists,” he put it on Truth(?) Social.

“I signed and was responsible for the Music Modernization Act for Taylor Swift and all other Musical Artists. Joe Biden didn’t do anything for Taylor, and never will. There’s no way she could endorse Crooked Joe Biden, the worst and most corrupt President in the History of our Country, and be disloyal to the man who made her so much money.”

“Was responsible for?”

He had nothing to do with the bill, officially called the “Orrin G. Hatch-Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act,” which had gotten unanimous passing votes in both the Senate and the House. It is, to oversimplify things, a major update in copyright laws to deal with use of music on streaming services.

HE “made her so much money?” Last time we looked, that sure wasn’t Donald Trump dancing and singing  under the spotlights in various venues around the world.  It appears she is capable of making “so much money” on her own.

So he’s upset that this ungrateful superstar might think she has a much better person to endorse. Four years ago she ripped the then-president for “stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency.”

As a side note, has anyone compared the sizes of the audiences for her performances with the sizes of audience for HIS performances?

The former President about eight years ago professed to be a regular reader of Rolling Stone who likes Elton John, Paul McCartney, Jon Bon Jovi. He “new Michael Jackson very well…I knew him better than almost anybody.”  Pavarotti was a “very dear friend.”  Not on his lis are the numerous artists who have asked him to stop using their music at his campaign rallies including The Rolling Stones. His favorite song? Peggy Lee’s “Is that all there is?” The lyrics are about a person disillusioned with life events.

But it’s not all bad with the former president. “I like her boyfriend, Travis, even though he may be a Liberal, and probably can’t stand me!” he said on his page.

Sorry, Donnie, that’s probably not enough to get you a seat in the Chiefs’ luxury box so Taylor can hug you in celebration of one of Travis’ great plays. And I don’t think Travis would want to hug you, either, despite your grudging admiration of him.

In keeping with the spirit of Tinfoil Hat Sports, Inc., we offer this conspiracy theory for the 2024-25 football season;

The NFL will restructure its schedule so the Super Bowl and inauguration day fall on the same day.  The inauguration will be moved from the Capitol to the halftime show in New Orleans. The Chiefs will survive a tough, but rigged, schedule and will be down by at least ten points at the half and Andy Reid will forget about taking the team to the locker room so Travis and Taylor can perform a poem they have written and set to music for the occasion before their choice for President takes his oath of office. The Vince Lombardi Trophy will be awarded to the Chiefs by the President at the end of his speech although the game is only half over, However it will continue as arranged to make sure all of the commercials are run and to formalize the pre-arranged result. There will not be an overtime because the inaugural ball will begin in a hail of confetti after the Chiefs pull out another close victory that beats the spread.

And eight Clydesdales will circle the stadium pulling a Bidenweiser beer wagon.

Bet the farm.  It’s already been arranged. You read it here first.

-0-

Replace The National Bird?

Posted on by
Reply

The hard right wing of the Republican Party keeps proving there is no limit to their lunacy.  It is so pronounced that we are surprised they haven’t advocated replacing the Bald Eagle with the Loon as our national bird. Maybe they’re too busy cooking up conspiracies to get to that.

Out with the elephant as the party symbol. In with the Loon.

I have decided these people need a sense-of-humor transplant for starters.  Have you ever seen any of them indicate any sign of sincere happiness about anything?  But if they got the transplant, who would be the first ones they would laugh about?  The mirror holds the answer.

There seems to be no end to their absurdity, to wit:

Not content to maintain that the 2020 election was rigged, they now are all a-twitter (or maybe all a-X) about how the NFL has rigged the playoffs and the upcoming Super Bowl so the Chiefs will win and Taylor Swift and boyfriend Travis Kelce will announce they endorse Joe Biden for re-election.

I kid you not.

Dominick Mastrangelo and Sarakshi Rai wrote for The Hill last week that Swift, a person of the year for Time magazine and the dominant figure in the entertainment world led some artificial intelligence-composed fake images “broke the internet,” has become an obsession with the nutcase caucus of the GOP.

Swift endorsed Joe Biden four years ago and has been “somewhat active” politically otherwise. “Swift’s incredible popularity is also bringing to the forefront various ugly sides of 21st century American life, from explicit AI-generated deepfakes of the superstar that briefly closed down Taylor Swift searches this week on X to unfounded conspiracy theories,” they wrote,.

Vivek Ramaswamy, a paragon of reasonableness, wrote the morning after the Chiefs beat the Ravens for the AFC championship, “I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month. And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall. Just some wild speculation over here, let’s see how it ages over the next 8 months.” None other than Elon Musk responded, “Exactly.”

Other inmates running the far right asylum chimed in. Jack Lombard, an activist who lost a bid for the House two years ago, went on social media to proclaim that he has “never been more convinced that the Super Bowl is rigged.”

Somebody named Mike Crispi who is described as the host of a Rumble video on Musk’s social media site says the NFL has “totally” rigged the Super Bowl, “all to spread DEMOCRAT PROPAGANDA.”  And, he says, halftime entertainer Usher is going to have to share the spotlight with Swift, who “comes out at the halftime show and ‘endorses’ Joe Biden with Kelce at midfield.”

“The NFL is totally RIGGED for the Kansas City Chiefs, Taylor Swift, Mr. Pfizer (Travis Kelce),” Crispi said “All to spread DEMOCRAT PROPAGANDA. Calling it now: KC wins, goes to Super Bowl, Swift comes out at the halftime show and ‘endorses’ Joe Biden with Kelce at midfield.”

This isn’t something that just became obvious to the loon flock. The writers for The Hill record that Jesse Watters, a FOX News host, said a few weeks ago that this conspiracy isn’t just focused on the Super Bowl.  The Pentagon’s psycholical operations unit has tought about turning Swift into “an asset.”

A lot of people think she already is, and a good one, but in an entirely more complimentary way. “It’s real,” Watters is quoted as saying. “The Pentagon psy-op unit pitched NATO on turning Taylor Swift into an asset for combatting misinformation online.” Somehow a report by Politico that a presenter at a NATO cyber conference referred to Swift as a powerful influencer has turned her into a tool for the psy-op unit.

Over on the pro-Trump Newsmax channel, talking head Greg Kelly warned that public admiration of Ms. Swift could bring the wrath of God down upon her followers because it’s idolatry. “If you look it up in the Bible, it’s a sin,” he proclaimed, without mentioning any concerns about what has been called the Trump Cult.

And what would the loon caucus be without George Soros to drag into any discussion?  Alison Steinberg, a host on another pro-Trump channel (One America News) complained with not a scintilla of evidence that she is “owned by Soros.”

FOX News recently noted that her short flight in her personal jet from New Jersey to Baltimore to watch the AFC championship game produced three tons of CO2 emissions. The story was a personal attack on her, however, rather than an explanation of why the burning of that fossil fuel contributed an infinitesimable amount to climate change. Ignored in the enthusiasm to attack someone who might influence voters away from the network’s favorite ex-president was any mention that said ex-president is an ardent protector of coal mining that continues to produce the fuel that has powered the Industrial Age from the beginning and is a major contributor to mankind’s contribution to our changing climate.

Rolling Stone magazine has reported that the former president is still smarting because she was named Time magazine’s person of the year instead of him. Citing a person close to the former president and another source, it says, “Trump has also privately claimed that he is ‘more popular’ than Swift and that he has more committed fans than she does.”

None other than Trump lawyer Alina Habba, whose defense of the former president resulted in an $83 millon judgment against him, has asked on social media, “Who thinks this country needs a lot more women like Alina Habba and a lot less like Taylor Swift?”

Boy, is THAT ever a hard question to answer…………

The fact that Taylor Swift IS a significant influencer and that her influence has grown since 2020 has put some fear into the hearts of people who cannot grasp that things happen that are not the result of a conspiracy against them and their leader(s).  And there are grounds for their fears.

A Newsweek poll done by Redfield and Wilton strategies of 15-hundred respondents showed 18% of them were “more likely,” or “significantly more likely” to vote for someone Swift endorses.

And that is precisely what the MAGA crowd  wants to discourage. FOX personality, Brian Kilmede, has given some advice that Swift can sweep aside without a thought: endorsing Biden would be “the single dumbest thing a mega superstar could ever do.”

We can think of several dumber things.  Instantly.  Because a lot of mega, or MAGA, superstars have done a lot of dumb things. As far as we know, Taylor Swift never recommended people drink bleach to ward off COVID or other made other similar squirrelly recommendations, for example.

“Why would  you tell half the country that you don’t agree with them in this highly polariezed time? You stay out of it…it would be the craziest thing you could ever do. And Biden isn’t worth it,” he said.

Jeanine Pirro, another FOX personality chimed in that Swift should not “get involved in politics” because she might “alienate her fans.”

How odd that these critics worry about the costs she might incur from exercising her freedom of speech while their own idol complains his freedom of speech is being limited because his message is the exact opposite of hers.

Former CNN talker Chris Cuomo, now doing a similar show on Nexstar’s News Nation, calls these ravings a “mashup of madness” and confesses, “I don’t know what they’re talking about. I don’t know what they’re playing at. It’s completely divorced from reality. No one with a working brain can believe this energy that they’re putting into this. She hasn’t even endorsed anybody. Who cares who she endorses.”

The Biden campaign, Chris. It has indicated the obvious, that he’s open to the idea. She endorsed him in 2020 and her endorsement likely will carry even more weight now. think of how many more people would show up for a Taylor Swift political rally than show up for a Donald Trump political rally.

We have never met Ms. Swift and doubt we ever will. But she sounds far smarter than those who are incubating the latest crop of loon eggs. She is highly capable of making her own decisions without counsel from Kilmede and others who conveniently overlook the log in their own eyes*, thank you—and that is precisely what this bunch is afraid she will do.

Taylor Swift scares the bejeesus out of this crowd because she is admirable for the way she encourages others through her music to be better and to do better. They hate her because she is intelligent and sincerely enthusiastic about things like football and one player—-who seems to be a nice guy away from the ferocity of the game—in particular.  And she speaks her mind— intelligently. I bet you could get a cogent answer if you asked her about the Civil War.

While on the other side, we hear only the tremulous sound of the loon.

(*Matthew 7:3-5: Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 4 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.)

(Photo credit: National Audubon Society)