Category Archives: government

Notes From a Quiet Street (Injured Curmudgeon Edition)

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(being an irregular voyage through some mental flotsam and jetsam that isn’t worth full blogness)

There is so much to writr about these days but unfortunately your constant observer has become a one-fingr typist because was not observant when he went to the mailbox Thursday night and tripped over a little sidewalk wall and found himself in aencounter with a garage door.  The door is fine but the left shoulder of your observer became removed from its socket, said left arm now tightly strapped down.

But I do want anyone in the area to know that on tuesda morning thru Wednesday afternoon I have attanged evhibits from the Steamboat Arabia Museum in KC and National TransportationMuseum in Kirkwood to be in the capitol rotunda to promote legislation to help veterans, provide financial aid to struggling local historical museums, krrp the Arabia in Missouri and help the NMOT achieve its dreams for expansion and protection for and restoration of its collection.

Now onto the original great observations about our times—-

Anybody else getting tired of emails or telephone calls from people wanting to know if your experience with your doctor, your mechanic, your financial advisor, your car salesman, your—-you name it—was a pleasant one?

Feedback Mania has taken hold.

It seems as if every time I go someplace I get an email request almost before I’m out the door wondering if I had a pleasant experience, if the office staff was friendly, or if I would recommend this to others.

Did you enjoy your colonoscopy?  Was the admissions staff chipper enough?  How was the taste of the gallon of stuff you drank?  Was your experience with the drug administered before insertion pleasant?

I’m thinking of saving all of these surveys until I can fill them out while I’m on hold after an impersonal, recorded voice tells me that my call is important.

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I had a dream the other night that I opened my closet door and the only things inside were hangers with t-shirts proclaiming that I had saved a shivering dog or an elephant, that I had helped a school kid get a meal, another kid get healed from a disease (I slept under about three adorable blankets during the night)—you know.

I had bankrupted myself at the rate of $19.95 a month for so many different wonderful causes. In my dream, I decided to go on TV and promise viewers that I would give them a t-shirt that said, “I saved Bob” if they just sent me $19.95 a month.  The t-shirt would cost me 75 cents from the sweatshop in China. I needed the money because I placed a telephone call to see if a Medicare plan was available for me in my zip code and I needed to enroll.

Then I woke up and felt badly because each of these charities is only trying to do good in its small part of the human experience.  All except for the Medicare guy.

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Speaking of insurance:  Can you imagine if Flo and Doug had a child?

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Here is something that is spooky as all get-out:

A few days ago my friend Steve Mays, who was our webmaster at the Missourinet for many years and did great and creative things while some of us sluggards refused to quit living in our  internet caves, was explaining ChatGPT to me.  As I understand it, it’s an artificial intelligence program that lets people feed some information in and the program spits out a theme, a letter, an article, or whatever in whatever format or language or length the user wants.  People talk to it on their cell phones.

Later that day he asked Chat GPT:

Do you have any information about reporting by a man named Bob Priddy?

ChatGPT

Bob Priddy, a renowned journalist in Missouri, retired after a notable 40-year career. He was known for his dedication to government transparency and his critical view on the state of statehouse reporting, especially concerning the decline in media presence and the increasing influence of lobbyists. Priddy also played a significant role in advocating for open government, such as pushing for cameras in judicial chambers. However, he expressed concerns about the worsening state of government transparency in Missouri. His career has been a testament to committed journalism, focusing on impactful stories and the importance of government accountability​​.

As complimentary as it was, I was, and am, a little bit chilled that some lights and wires in a box can churn out something like this about me.

I looked up ChatGPT on Wikipedia.  I wonder who—or what—wrote the article.

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Saw a discussion a few days ago about whether Iowa Hawkeyes’ greatest basketball player should go pro or stay in college. One of the questions is whether Caitlin Clark would take a financial cut if she did.  One sports site, Firstsportz, estimates her net worth already is three-million dollars because of the endorsements of various products and services while in college.

At least Clark has stayed at one school throughout her career instead of being a jock gypsy, as so many athletes have become.

Are we alone in thinking there’s something basically wrong with college sports today?  I doubt it.

Uncertainty

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I want to talk to you today about my greatest hero and about his life and his times which resonate in these uncertain days.

I want to tell you about helping George Clooney make a movie.  But Clooney, whose work I admire, is not the hero of this story.

Back about 2005, I was wrapping up my second chairmanship of my profession’s national organization, the Radio-Television News Directors Association (now the Radio Television Digital News Association) when George Clooney’s production company reached out to us to help with some information about Edward R. Murrow.  I also was the organization’s historian so the response fell to me.

Edward R. Murrow was, and is, my hero. To be involved, even in such a minor way as I was in producing an Oscar-nominated Murrow movie produced by George Clooney—who can be as serious as a heart attack in his work although many of his movies are light-hearted—is one of the most important distinctions I have gathered.

Murrow had given his greatest speech at our convention in 1958, three months after See It Now was killed by CBS boss William S. Paley. It’s known as the “wires and lights in a box” speech.  It’s also considered his professional suicide speech because he was critical of the early network television news decisions as he warned: “This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it’s nothing but wires and lights in a box….”

Here’s the entire speech, should you choose to listen, from our convention more than 65 years ago:

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I provided the background information and a copy of the organiztion’s 1958 logo for the opening and closing segments of the movie.  You won’t see my name or that of RTNDA in any of the credits, but that was my contribution. I am not bothered by the omission. It was, after all, a minuscule part of the story.

When the movie came out, RTNDA had a reception in Washington where Clooney, Strathairn, and Grant Heslov (who played a young Don Hewitt, the creator of Sixty Minutes), attended.  I have a signed movie poster in my loft office.

Seventy-one years ago, he said:

“If we confuse dissent with disloyalty–if we deny the right of the individual to be wrong, unpopular, eccentric or unorthodox–if we deny the essence of racial equality then hundreds of millions in Asia and Africa who are shopping about for a new allegiance will conclude that we are concerned to defend a myth and our present privileged status. Every act that denies or limits the freedom of the individual in this country costs us the confidence of men and women who aspire to that freedom and independence of which we speak and for which our ancestors fought.”

McCarthyism was ramping up in America at the time.  There are those who feel we are in our greatest peril since then, perhaps greater.  Reading these words reminds us that we as a people have been where we are before and we have survived because reporters such as Murrow (and we still have some today although we are also bombarded by many on the other side) refused to back away or had no fear in confrontations with demagogues. The story of a free nation seems to be cyclical, which is one reason to study unvarnished history.

His most famous broadcast was “See it Now” on March 9, 1954 when he used McCarthy’s own words to condemn him, concluding:

“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine; and remember that we are not descended from fearful men. Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.

“This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn’t create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it–and rather successfully. Cassius was right. “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”

David Strathairn recreated those remarks with great effectiveness in the movie.

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I invite you, especially if you are a reporter today or a young person wanting to be a reporter in this rapidly changing world of journalism, to watch this 1975 program about Murrow, produced by the BBC.

:Bing Videos

And I invite you to read this column from constitutional lawyer John Whitehead, written in 2005 when the movie came out. It seems appropriate now:

The Rutherford Institute :: Edward R. Murrow: “We will not walk in fear, one of another.” |

I close with Murrow’s words that are a challenge to all of us when there are those who believe they can seize power because they can intimidate a nation.

“This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities.”

 Murrow reaches out to us seventy years after that broadcast. All we have to do is remove “Senator McCarthy” and fill in another name and we will understand the challenge we as citizens must not avoid meeting.

One of Murrow’s journalism descendents, Dan Rather, used to close his broadcasts with the word, “Courage.”

May all of us, we who are not descended from fearful men and women, find it in 2024.

 

Passive 

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Maybe it’s a case of thinking the old days were better than today.  Maybe not.

The legislature has returned to the Capitol.  Most people have no idea how quickly things move when the session starts or how intense the work is—or how contentious is can become if a partisan renegade group decides it must prevail, their minority status be damned.

For the last three years the sessions’ last week or so have become mired in political mud and the sessions have been the least productive in long, long memory because of conflicts between the legalization of those Video Lottery Machines that are pimples in our convenience stores and sports wagering legislation that seeks to give our casino a significant tax break to the detriment of our education funds and even to the further detriment of their own host cities.

But that’s a diatribe for another time.

It seems to from our high position that the baneful effects of term limits, about which we were warned in 1992, have produced another regrettable trend.

A passive legislature.

The loss of institutional memory because of term limits cannot be overstated.

One of the bigget warnings before 1992 was that term imits would transfer power from the chambers to the hallways, where lobbyists roam, because no senior members would be around to advise newcomers on the role of the General Assembly in the process of lawmaking and in the process of shaping state fiscal policy.

The transfer became obvious several years ago when, during debate, the sponsor of a bill would ask of another lawmaker proposing an amendment, “Have you checked with so-and-so out in the hall?”

Later the issue became even more egregious as I watched lawmakers during debate checking their cell phones for text messages from the paid influencers outside the chamber. Lobbyists are banned from being on the House and Senate floors. Physically.  But their electronic presence is undeniable.

As we have watched for these many years, it seems that the legislature today is more likely to accept legislation without question and without hearing the voice of the public as much as it once did. Although we don’t cover committee meetings as much as we did in our reporting days, we have been in a large number of them on the issue of sports wagering, a special interest of ours for several reasons.

The caisno industry, now unfortunately aided and abetted by our major professional sports teams that need millons of dollars a year to try to keep pace with bigger-market moneybag teams, has always presented bills that are—to be frank—terrible fiscal policy for the state and its people and especially for schools, veterans, and the casino’s home cities.

Glaringly absent is any aggressive interrogation of the industry.  I can recall only two instances in which any semi-extensive questions were asked and only one when the questions were aggressively put (and the industry’s response was hardly direct).

In the old days—and I intensely dislike using that phrase—it seemed the legislature, while heavily influenced by lobbyists (who have a place in the system) and their checkbooks, looked more critically at legislation.  And it seems that lawmakers who were more likely to be presented a problem took an initiative, now missing, to fix the problem.

Many legislative hearings where held at night so members of the public could more easily be present without missing a full day of work. Night meetings are scarce today, leaving the field more and more to those who can affort to buy representation.  The voice of the citizen is muted in today’s system and the general assembly is more susceptible to being influenced by political action committee money.

In the first year of my lobbying career (working on getting the casinos to pay to keep the Steamboat Arabia Museum in Missouri), I took some findings of casino greed to a member of the House who told me, “Oh, the casinos will be interested in this. I’ve already gotten two checks form them this year.” He apparently was totally unaware of what a self-indictment his statement was.

Some legislator’s offices are festooned with plaques from organizations thanking them for their support.  When I was running the Missorinet newsroom we had a rule that we would accept no awards from any organization we covered.

We were not their friend. Nor were we their enemy.

We are one of those in the halls again this year, raising our pitiful voice against the steamroller called the casino industry, hoping again that we will trouble the consciences of those who sit quietly while the industry presents its plans for getting richer and richer while the services that serve the people of Missouri that rely on revenue from the industry get poorer and poorer, and poorer still under proposed sports wagering legislation.

Somebody has to ask the questions.  Too bad it isn’t the people who are presented with bills the industry wants passed.

A Distinction Without a Difference

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We were intrigued by the reactions several days ago by the major Republican candidates for Governor to the Colorado Supreme Court’s 4-3 decision that Donald Trump is ineligible to be on thee Colorado primary ballot.  Intrigued but not surprised.

Jay Ashcroft said, “The State of Missouri will reject” the ruling. “The people of this state will make a decision as to who they want to be President of the United States.”  There’s a flaw in that proclamation. The ruling is not Missouri’s to reject. In fact there are Missourians who are turning handsprings and hoping it’s upheld. It’s a matter not from a Missouri Court but from a Colorado court and it is for the national justice system to decide on appeals.

Bill Eigel echoed, “Citizens pick presidents, not unelected liberal Justices.”  In November, yes.  But citizens also can bring lawsuits that might determine who’s on the Missouri ballot in November.

And Mike Kehoe sang from the same hymnal: “Voters have the right to decide who our President is, not unelected liberal judges.

How about unelected CONSERVATIVE judges?  Are they the only ones who can make decisions such as these?

Or, maybe, should only ELECTED judges have the right to rule on constitutional questions?  If they subscribe to that idea, they favor eliminating the Missouri Supreme Court, which is appointed.

What is it, gentlemen?

And while we’re at it, DID Trump engage in an insurrection on January 6, 2021 when he urged a big crowd to keep the Congress from certifying an election he lost?

Ashcroft, as the state’s top election official, is going to file a friend of the court brief supporting Trump’s candidacy when the case goes to the U.S. Supreme Court, presumably a court these three would endorse because Trump made sure it tilts conservative. A lower Colorado court had ruled that Trump could not be removed from the ballot because the 14th Amendment, the central arguing point for the Keep Trump folks, is vague about whether it covers the President of the United States. The issue is whether “officers of the United States” in the amendment includes the president who is the top officer of the United States. One of the responsibilities of Supreme Courts at the state and federal level is to clarify vague language in the statutes or the constitutions.

But how can a ruling from an unelected U. S. Supreme Court be acceptable regardless of what the ruling is because none of the Justices was elected, even the conservative ones?

Those who favor the concept of originalist interpretation of the Constitution will enjoy this.

Ashcroft also argues that the amendment refers to people who take an oath to “support” the Constitution. But the presidential oath swears to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution.  It will be interesting to see how the judges in Washington D. C. split that hair.  It sounds from our high observation point like a distinction without a difference.

What does that mean?

A check of the logicallyfalacious.com website offers this explanation:

Claim X is made where the truth of the claim requires a distinct difference between A and B.

There is NO distinct difference between A and B.

Therefore, claim X is incorrectly claimed to be true.

Can one “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution without being in “support” of it?  And in the reverse, can one “support” the Constitution without taking steps to “preserve, protect and defend” it?

As far as Ashcroft’s claim that “the people of the state will make a decision as to who they want to be President of the United States,” let’s wait to see if anybody files a lawsuit to keep Trump off the Missouri primary election ballot—-and how those unelected Missouri Supreme Court judges who early in their careers as lawyers had to take this oath:

I do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Missouri;
That I will maintain the respect due courts of justice, judicial officers and members of my profession and will at all times conduct myself with dignity becoming of an officer of the court in which I appear;
That I will never seek to mislead the judge or jury by any artifice or false statement of fact or law;
That I will at all times conduct myself in accordance with the Rules of Professional Conduct; and,
That I will practice law to the best of my knowledge and ability and with consideration for the defenseless and oppressed.
So help me God.

The oath allows some latitude. It’s okay to substitute “affirm” for “swear,” and it’s okay to substitute “under the pains and penalties of perjury” instead of saying, “So help me God” at the end.

Someday we’ll discuss the silly argument against “unelected” people.  After all, one of the three candidates we’ve just mentioned once was an unelected person serving in one of the state’s highest offices. That defect didn’t seem to limit his effectiveness in carrying out his sworn duties.  Just for the record, this is the oath that the Governor and Lieutenant Governor of Missouri take:

I ­­­­_________ do solemnly swear and affirm that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Missouri and I will faithfully demean myself in the office of Governor (or Lt. Governor) of the State of Missouri.”

It’s different for members of the legislature.  The first part is the same but after swearing to support the Constitutions, it continues, “and faithfully perform the duties of my office, and that I will not knowingly receive, directly or indirectly, any money or other valuable thing for the performance or nonperformance of any act or duty pertaining to my office, other than the compensation allowed by law.”

—campaign contributions from those who approve of their voting record or who would benefit from their voting record notwithstanding (that part is not included).

Well, the Colorado case is headed to a bunch of unelected Justices in Washington to interpret a Constitutional Amendment written at the end of the Civil War to keep people like Robert E. Lee or our own Confederate Governor, Thomas C. Reynolds, who had sworn loyalty to the state and federal Constitutions and then tried to wipe out the government they’d sworn to uphold and protect to keep them from ever holding public office again.

University of Maryland law professor Mark Graber provides an almost line-by-line explanation of the amendment. We’ll find out eventually if this is the kind of thinking the Supreme Court will adopt, but his references to the original purpose of the amendment might be helpful to understanding in in its totality.

Does 14th Amendment bar Trump from office? A constitutional scholar explains Colorado ruling • Missouri Independent

The unelected Justices have a special oath that actually is two oaths in one, a Judicial Oath and a Constitutional Oath:

“I, _________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as _________ under the Constitution and laws of the United States; and that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

These judges who have sworn to “support and defend” the Constitution might decide if the oaths they took mean they also “protect and preserve” the Constitution.

(This entry was misdated for January 3, 2023 by mistake but has since been placed in its proper chronological context thanks to the eye of a long-time friend who commented on it two days before it was supposed to appear here.  let this be a reminder to all of us that it is now Twenty-twenty-FOUR).

 

 

This One Joins Legendary Defenses

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But this time it didn’t work.  REALLY didn’t work.

The story has been told that one of Missouri’s colorful early lawyers once had a client who had been accused of libeling another person. In his closing argument, the lawyer told the jury his client could not be found guilty of libel because he was such an inveterate liar that nobody would believe him and since nobody would believe anything he said, his remarks could not have slandered the plaintiff.

The story says the jury was sympathetic to that plea and the liar was found not guilty.

Such an argument came to mind a few days ago while listening and watching and reading of of the defense attorney for Rudy Giuliani in Giuliani’s trial for defaming two Georgia women with his lies about the 2020 election. He  had said he would take the stand in his own defense and prove that everything he had said was true. His attorney did not let him testify.

The defense, in the end, was an effort to evoke sympathy from the jury for the day’s equivalent of Missour’s 19th Century liar.  Giuliani’s lawyer, Joseph Sibley, told jurors, “We made the decision not to have my client testify because these women have been through enough. These women were victims and, as the court has ruled, my client has committed wrongf ul actions against them.”

Sibley might have made some jurors’ jaws mentall drop when he said, “I have no doubt that Mr. Giuliani’s statements caused harm; no question about it. But just because these things happened, it doesn’t make my client responsible for them.”

!!!!!!!!!!!!

“When you see my client’s state of mind, you’re going to say, ‘You should have been better but weren’t as bad as the plaintiff’s make you out to be,” Sibley said, because, “Rudy Giuliani is a good man.  I know that some of you may not think that. He hasn’t exactly helped himself with some of the things that have happened in the last few days. The idea of him being a racist, or him encouraging racist activity, that’s a really low blow. That’s not who he is. He overcame negative stereotypes.” .

“I know he’s done things that are wrong. I know these women have been harmed. I’m not asking for a hall pass on that,” Sibley said. But damages had to be “in some way tied to what the actual damages are.”  They had to be “more closely related to the actual damage number.”

And just what would be that “actual number?”

Sibley pleaded for the jury to have mercy on Giuliani, whom he described as a “flat earther” who would never quit believing  his own lies. Sibley harkened back to the days when “America’s Mayor” was a unifying force in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. “This is a man who did great things. If he hasn’t been so great lately, I want you to judge him by the entire character of who he is.”

Let’s add some context to this:  Twenty-five years ago, a prominent Democrat was accused of (pardon the vulgarity here) diddling an intern.  Bill Clinton said, “There’s nothing going on between us,” to his top aides. When a grand jury asked him a question to the effect, “Is there anything between you and Miss Lewinski, Clinton answered with this masterpiece of gold-medal verbal gymnastics:

“It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is…If ‘is’ means is and never has been…that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement…Now if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relatons with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no and it would have been completely true.”

If there ever were created an Encyclopedia of Jabberwockey, the statements of Bill Clinton and Joseph Sibley would have to be featured.

Giuliani was Giuliani after the jury nailed him with a $148 million judgement: “The absurdity of the number really underscores the absurdity of the entire proceeding. I am quite confident that when this case gets before a fair tribunal, it will be reversed so quickly it’ll make your head spin. The absurd number that just came in will help that, actually.”

It would not be surprising if an appeals court reduces the damage awards; they sometimes do that while upholding the defamation judgment.

Regardless of what happens on appeal, this jury sent a message to others who have espoused the “stolen election” lie and who are facing their own defamation suits from voting machine companies and from other election workers. They should be very nervous.

If reports are true, Giuliani has little money and many creditors.  Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss might see little or no cash.  But they have received justice.  Whether they ever can get their lives back, though, is questionable.

Is there any amount that could make these women whole again?  Ruby Freeman says people with bullhorns standing outside the house where she had lived for 20 years, shouting racist insults, have forced her to leave  her house and move time and again, her belongings in her car.

Shaye Moss said she’s afraid to leave house, fears being lynched, and that she’s received death threats repeatedly.

Sibley urged the jury to “send a messge to America that we can come together with compassion and sympathy. And I think we need that.”

Let’s just hold hands and sing Kum by ya, in other words. Shaye and Ruby can lead it off.

Giuliani’s state of mind.  We’re so tired of hearing the word “unhinged” used for him and for his leader and others in that merry band, but we don’t have hours to spend with the big dictionary at the back of the classroom to find a better one.

How did it reach this point?  How could a great man in 2001 fall so far in less than twenty years?

We have referred in a past column to Giuliani as the most pitiful person in American politics. He is likely to stand in history as a great example of the dangers of falling in thrall to a person of no morals, of no respect  for anyone else, of no goal but power. It is telling that Giuliani’s Pied Piper has never shown on his own social platform or political stages any responsibility for the actions taken by Giuliani on behalf of his leader.

It is possible to have pity on someone but have no sympathy for them.  What he and his leader have done to these women, to many others, and to the nation itself deserves stern judgement. The jury has inflicted what Sibley has called a financial “death penalty” on Giuliani. So be it.  He has never personally asked for mercy; he has, in fact,  shown no remorse for what these people have gone through because of his words and has blamed others for what he has said. He threw gasoline on his own fire during the trial when he told reporters , “Everything I said about them is true,” and he reiterated that the women “were engaged in changing votes,” remarks that the judge suggested could lead to another defamation lawsuit.

After the verdict Giuliani remained defiant—”I don’t regret a damn thing,” he said. So much for coming together with compassion and sympathy.

This is why we have jury trials.  A dozen people who struggle to achieve justice from injustice is one of the greatest parts of our democratic system. There are plaintiffs and there are defendants. And then there are the heroes of our democracy, the jurors.

The Governor and the Book

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I see that Governor Parson has written a book.  It will be released next March but some excerpts have been made available to the press.  He calls it No Turnin’ Back.

I look forward to buying one.  Maybe he’ll have a signing at Downtown Book & Toy. I’ll be near the front of the line, I hope.  Ernie and Hazel, the bookstore cats, probably will have to be locked away because the line is likely to stretch a good distance down High Street.

It’s going to be a historic book because Mike Parson has been a central figure during some major points of history.  He came into statewide office as Lt. Governor, set to fill the role as Senate President and preside over the chamber in which he had just served eight years, while Eric Greitens careened throughout the capitol as a governor who antagonized most of the people he needed to make into allies.

Then came the historic day when Greitens announced his resignation as governor, getting out of town before he could be run out of town.  Suddenly Mike Parson—who was tending to his cattle on his southwest Missouri farm that day—became THE top guy in state government.

Then Covid hit. And for stress-laden month after month, Parson had to steer the state through shortages, uncertainties, and deaths.

We haven’t asked him but we have asked several former governors about the toughest decisions they had to make.  The most frequent answer has been that it was the decision to allow an execution to go ahead.

No governor serves without making mistakes. Some are mistakes they know pretty quickly they made. Others will emerge with the passage of time that places conduct within context. We don’t have much doubt that Governor Paron will recognize what he could have done differently or done better.  But at the time, somebody had to do something, and once done there is no turning back, which is why the title is appropriate.

I wish more governors had done what he is doing. History will paint its own picture. But self-portraits have value, too.

Jim Spainhower, who was a former State Representative and later a two-term State Treasurer and a 1980 primary election challenger to Joe Teasdale, was also a minister of my denomination, the Christian Church/Disciples of Christ.  He wrote a book called Pulpit, Pew, and Politics.

He told me when my first book was published, “Now you can start your prayers by saying ‘Oh though who also hast written a book.’”

Mike Parson is a man of faith, as you will hear if you click on the two-parts of an interview Ashley Byrd of the Missourinet did with him.  He, too, will soon be able to begin his prayers with those words.

Maybe we’ll greet each other at the book-signing with those words.

He talks with the Missourinet’s Ashley Byrd about the book and about his life and his governorship on these links:

Gov. Parson writes autobiography, but not to prepare a run for another office (LISTEN TO INTERVIEW PT. 1) – Missourinet

Gov. Parson: This office is not about yourself, it’s a much higher calling than your last name (LISTEN – PT 2 INTERVIEW) – Missourinet

(We thank our friends at The Missourinet for the photo.)

Values 

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It’s easy to get irritated by somebody who claims their values are somehow universal and by reference also must be my values if I am to be a good American or a good Christian, or a good something that only they can judge.

This has been going on for a long time in our political system.  The most prominent promoters of this presumption today are those labeled White Christian Nationalists.  They seem to have superseded so-called Evangelicals in their oppressive assumptions that they are righteously entitled to set a moral tone for me and for my nation.  Some folks combine the two into Evangelical White Christian Nationalists.

This issue has come up in recent days with a letter that Rep. Chris Dinkins, the Majority (Republican) Caucus Chair in the Missouri House, sent to Governor Parson that begins “I am writing to bring your attention to a matter of great concern regarding the resettlement of refugees from Gaza in our state. As a dedicated representative of the people of Missouri, I believe it is crucial to take a proactive stance on this issue and safeguard the well-being and safety of our citizens.”

She wants to keep people out “whose beliefs systems are rooted in anti-American and anti-Israel sentiments.”

She continued later, “Our state has a responsibility to protect its citizens and uphold the values that define us as Americans.”

Just what values is she talking about? “We cannot afford to compromise the safety and security of Missourians by allowing the potential entry of individuals who may harbor hostility towards our nation and its allies,” she says.

Potential entry?  Individuals who may harbor hostilities?  (Actually, the correct word to use in this circumstance is “might.”  As used to teach my reporters, might is prospective; may is permissive.  You might hit me in the nose but you may not.)

The kind of rhetoric in her letter is abhorrent.  We already have a gutful of this kind of conspiracy garbage from a presidential candidate who wants us to think all of those crossing our southern border are fentanyl-carrying killers, thieves, and rapists.

The timing of her letter is atrocious, coming about the same time three Palestinian students were shot while walking down the street near the University of Vermont in Burlington.  Police say two of them are United States citizens and the third is a legal resident of the United States. They were speaking Arabic and two of them were wearing keffiyehs, a headdress worn by Palestinians.

We will learn, eventually, if their shooter thought he should take action against “individuals who may harbor hostility toward our nation.”

What are our national values today? Are they such that we should remove the Statue of Liberty and Emma Lazurus’ invitation to send us the tired and the poor, the wretched refuse of other lands, those yearning to breathe free, the homeless and the tempest-tossed?

Many of those we idealistically have said are welcome are now stereotyped by politicians who seek success by fueling distrust and hate toward people who are not that much different from our own ancestors just a few generations ago.

Rep. Dinkins has ambitions for higher political office in 2024.  Perhaps she should publish a supplement to the letter she released online that outlines in specific and detailed form what she thinks are my values as an American citizen—and what your values have to be to be a good American citizen.

Governor Parson is on the wrong side of Dinkins’ values on this issue, and so, I hope, are most Missourians and Americans.  He wasted no time in throwing her proposal in the ash can, telling reporters, “You don’t have the authority to do that to start off with. I mean, anybody’s been around a little bit, the federal government can place refugees anywhere they want to without asking your permission. First of all, there’s this big difference between Palestinian people, and the people of Hamas. Hamas are terrorist groups that attack our country and hate who we are. We don’t want them here. But I don’t think you want to take everybody that’s from Palestine to make them as bad people. I don’t know that.”

There’s another prominent figure whose recent remarks put people like Dinkins in their places. Bill Bradley, the Crystal City native whose basketball exploits in high school and college led to a ten-year career in the NBA (that was delayed by more two years while he was a Rhodes Scholar and then in the Air Force Reserve) and three-terms as a U. S. Senator from New Jersey.

Our friend, Tony Messenger, wrote in his November 23 Post-Dispatch column about remarks Bradley gave during the Musial Awards event in St. Louis a few days earlier when Bradley received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the organization that promotes humanity and sportsmanship—

“Never look down on people you don’t understand.”

Tony noted the comment came four days after the St. Charles County Council considered a resolution opposing the International Institute’s program to make the St. Louis metro area a destination for certain Hispanic immigrants. The council did not take action.

The St. Louis metro area has been a haven for many immigrants including large numbers of Germans, Italians, and Irish people in the 19th Century whose cultures still thrive in that city—te German culture spreading well into the heart of the state. More recently, St. Louis has opened its arms to those fleeing from Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Ukraine in addition to many coming from Latin America.

Kansas City also has been a magnet for immigrants. In fact, it has the Greater Kansas City Hispanic Chamber of Commerce which works in eight counties on both sides of the state line and bills itself as “the birthplace of the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (in) Washington, D.C.”

The immigration story of the St. Louis area and all of Missouri started even earlier than the 19th century. When Spain controlled Missouri, it welcomed French Canadian immigrants who were central to the defeat of an invading British force that convinced Native Americans it was in their best interests to try to capture St. Louis in 1780.  French citizens in Spanish St. Louis defeated that force in what is the westernmost battle of the American Revolution.

The Spanish government in control of what is now Missouri also invited another group to migrate here.

Americans.

George Morgan, a Philadelphia merchant and entrepreneur, was invited by the Spanish Crown in 1788 to create a colony on the west bank of the Mississippi River.  A couple of years later he created the town of New Madrid.

Some of the early American immigrants who came here were illegal aliens: Protestants, practicing a faith that was once illegal in Catholic Spanish Missouri.  Protestant ministers from the Illinois country used to cross the Mississippi under cover of night and provide services in darkened Missouri homes.

Tony concluded is column, “It is heartbreaking that officials would now look down on such immigrants — the latest chapter in another generation of an American journey. Once a year, the Musial Awards help remind us that it is our shared humanity that makes us great. This year, a big man from a small town in Missouri gave us the words that should echo in our heads, as we move from one political crisis to another. The solution that escapes us is more often than not to treat those with whom we disagree with respect and understanding.”

I want to add this from Vine DeLoria who wrote the best-seller decades ago, Custer Died for Your Sins: an Indian Manifesto:

“The understanding of the racial question does not ulti­mately involve understanding by either blacks or Indians. It in­volves the white man himself. He must examine his past. He must face the problems he has created within himself and within others. The white man must no longer project his fears and in­ securities onto other groups, races, and countries. Before the white man can relate to others he must forego the pleasure of denying them. The white man must learn to stop viewing history as a plot against himself.”

We wonder what Chris Dinkins would say to Bill Bradley.

Bill Bradley was and All-American as a college basketball player.  His example as an All-American in deed as well as in word is the value worth having. It is those who follow the Dinkins/MAGA ideal who are the aliens to the American spirit.

 

Sixty Years

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I still find it awkward to tell people, “Fifty years ago…..” and then tell them what I remember from that time.

Sixty years ago today, I had been the producer of the noon news at KOMU-TV.  I was in graduate school at the University of Missouri and working as a graduate assistant instructor in the radio newscasting class which also involved being the assistant news director at KFRU Radio, anchoring some of the student-wrtiten newscasts on that station (this was before the Journalism School created KBIA where some students get their first taste of broadcast newswritig and anchoring), so I couldn’t anchor at Channel 8.  So I produced the noon newscast that reported President Kennedy had gone to Texas to assure Texans that he was not going to dump Lydon Johnson as his running mate in 1964.

We left the station at 12:30, about the time shots rang out at Dealy Plaza in Dallas.

When I walked through the front door of the rooming house at 508 S. Ninth Street (now one of at least three houses in which I lived that are now gone), one of the guys upstairs shouted down, “Is that Priddy?”

“Yeah.”

“You getter get up here! The President’s been shot!”

The people upstairs had been listening to KFRU and had heard ABC’s Don Gardiner break in with the first word of the shooting.   Most commemorations of the event today focus on Walter Cronkite and CBS-TV.  But it was Don Gardiner, normally the morning news voice on WABC in New York, who interrupting a middle of the road music show from WABC that was fed down the network between network news programs.

(105) JFK’S ASSASSINATION (ABC RADIO NETWORK) (NOVEMBER 22, 1963) – YouTube

Gardiner’s first bulletin about 12:33 p.m. CST came from United Press International correspondent Merriman Smith who was in the fifth car behind the presidential limousine as it moved from Dallas’ Love Field toward the Dallas Trade Mart, where Kennedy was to deliver a luncheon speech.

Nick George, who is announced early in the broadcast as the New York Editor for ABC, later became a teacher at the journalism school and was an influential figure in the development of some early Missourinet reporters.

As you will hear, events unfolded quickly and the reporters—mainly Smith and AP’s Jack Bell .

In 1963, reporting from remote sites was, to say the least by today’s standards, extremely primitive.

The White House press pool reporter’s car had a radiotelephone in it, the only mobile phone available to the 58 reporters in the pool. Pool reporters rotated from the back seat to the front and it ws Smith’s day in front.  Smith grabbed the radiotelephone and dictated a FLASH (the highest priority item to go out on the wire service) to Dallas UPI Bureau rookie Wilborn Hampton, who typed it into the distribution teletype machine, showed it to his editor, Jack Fallon, who shouted, “Send it!”

UPI sent it out at 12:34:

“DALLAS, NOV. 22 (UPI) – THREE SHOTS FIRED AT PRESIDENT KENNEDY’S MOTORCADE TODAY IN DOWNTOWN DALLAS.”

As the word went out and Gardiner started his broadcast, Smith was crouched in the front seat of the car while the AP’s bell was beating on his back and demanding, “Give me the goddamn phone!”  But Smith wouldn’t give it up and continued to give information to the bureau.  “On a story of this magnitude,” Smith later said, “I was not about to let it go until I new the office had it all.”

It took six minutes to get to Parkland Memorial Hospital. Smith gave the phone to Bell who called the Dallas AP burau—and couldn’t get through.  Smith ran up to the presidential limousine where he saw Texas Governor John Connally wounded. “I could not see the president’s wound. But I could see blood spattered around the interior of the rear seat and a dark stain spreading down the right side of the president’s dark gray suit.”

Smith turned to Clint Hill, the Secret Service officer who was in the followup far and ran to the presidential limousine, jumped on the back and shielded Mrs. Kennedy with his body as the car sped to thehospital, and asked, “How bad was he hit, Clint.”

“He’s dead, Smitty,” said Hill.  Smith dashed into the hospital, took a telephone from a room clerk and started dictating the information you will hear Gardiner pass along to listeners that day. Most of what you hear Gardiner reporting is based on Smith’s coverage.

UPI ran another FLASH at 1:35 that Kennedy had been declared dead.  AP was two minutes behind.

The event was an important one for radio and particularly for television.  For the first hours, the story belonged to radio.  Newspapers already had gone to press for their afternoon editions. Several put out bulleting editions.  But in the early going, the story belonged to radio.

We had no satellites to relay the story as it unfolded.  There were telephones and wire services and that was all there was. Television relied on film that had to be shot and developed, mostly black and white (because color television was just beginning) and often not even processed as positive images.  We would shoot silent negative film and the television control room could electronically reverse the polarity of the film and the viewers saw black and white pictures.

KFRU’s newsroom was in the Columbia Tribune building at 7th and Cherry Streets (it’s partly a candy store and partly a restaurant now) because the station was half-owned by the Waters family that also owned the Tribune.

The main studios were out on the eastern business loop.  In Studio A, the main studio, a slver pipe rose up behind the control board and curved toward the announcer’s position.  The pipe contained wiring that was hooked to a small red light.  That was the network bulletin light.  If the network wanted to break in on programming, that light would come on and the board operator was immediately to flip a switch that put the network on the air. When that light came on, the board operator that day, perhaps Bill Younger who worked the afternoon shift threw that switch.

I quickly walked the four or five blocks to the KFRU newsroom to huddle with Eric Engberg, the news director and fellow graduate student—-Eric later had a long career as a CBS correspondent—and we started planning local reaction stories to run when the network broke away from its coverage for its local stations to report.

I was sent out toget reaction from Senator George Parker and Representative Larry Woods.

ABC did not break until Monday morning before coming back to broadcst the funeral.

I got to know, to a lesser degree in most cases but in a greater degree in one case, some of thosewho brought us the news that day.  Nick George, for example, became an acquaintance.

The one I knew best is the one who broke the news of Kennedy’s death on national television.  Eddie Barker was the news director of KRLD-TV and radio in Dallas that day and was at the Trade Mart preparing a broadcast of the Predident’s speech.  Word already had reached him that something had happened in the motorcade and moments late the motorcade roared past the mart.  He went on the air, broadcasting what he could learn.  One of his friends who was at the mart was a doctor at Parkland who went to a telephone and called the hospital emergency room where an acquaintance told him the president was dead.

Eddie’s friend saw he was “struggling to maintain a coherent broadcast with the limited information availability,” walked over and whispered into his ear, “Eddie, he’s dead.”

“The words sent a cold chill running down my spine. I didn’t want to believe them, but the source was too good.  I then made a decision that has caused a lot of comment in the years since that strangely brilliant Friday afternoon.  I told an audience that included the whole CBS network that a reliable source had confirmed to me that President Kennedy was dead.  What I didn’t know was tht my shocking report caused a lot of anxiety at cBS News Headquarters in New York,” he recalled in his autobiography, Eddie Barker’s Notebook several years later,  Shortly after that, Walter Cronkite told viewers, “We just had a report from our correspondent, Dan Rther, in Dallas that he has confirmed tht President Kennedy is dead.”   There still had been no official confirmation.

At 1:37, our time, CBS news editor Ed Bliss—and other of those I came to know well—gave Cronkite the AP bulletin that Cronkite is often seen reading to his audience when the story is recounted on TV today.

Dan Rather is often credited with passing along the first word of Kennedy’s death. Rather, who was the new chief of the CBS New Orleans bureau, had been on the other side of the railroad overpass west of Dealy Plaza, closer to the Trade Mart, when the motorcade flew past  He ran to the Dallas CBS bureau and started working the phones to Parkland Hospital. The doctors all were busy but an operator told him two priests were in a hallway nearby.  One of them told Rather, “The President has been shot and he is dead.”  Rather, his The Camera Never Blinks, said he asked, “Are you certain of that” and the priest, who was there to perform the last rites, respoded, “Yes, unfortunately, I am.”

Rather called Barker and told him what he had.  Eddie had just talked to the doctor.  They did not know that three people at CBS, New York were listening on the broadcast loop that had been set up for Barker’s broadcast of the speech. Before Rather could tell those listening, Barker, in his broadcast that he thought was only local in Dallas, announced a source from Parkland had told him the president is dead. Rather chimed in, “Yes, yes, that’s what I hear, too.  That he’s dead.”

It wasn’t official.  But CBS radio and television went with it.

It was only a short time later, as you will hear if you listen to the ABC account, that it was reported a Dallas policeman, later identified as J.D. Tippett, had been shot and killed.  And within a few minutes, a suspect named Lee H. Oswald had been picked up.

The night police reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram had slept late that day but rushed to the office when he heard of the shooting.  The newspaper started printing special editions that were snapped up by the public as soon as they hit the streets. “Inside the city room it was bedlam,” recalled then-CBS correspondent Bob Shieffer in his book, This Just In.  When word came that Oswald was going to be held in the Fort Worth jail, Schiefer dashed there and was present when Oswald was brought in.

“Early in my police reporting days, I learned a truck from the cops. People will sometimes blurt out the truth if they are surprised by the question, so I jumped in front of the handcuffed suspect, who was between two detectives, and shouted, ‘You song of a bitch, why did you do it?’”

‘”Well, I didn’t,’ he said as the cops hustled him into the lockup.”

Schiefer was just settling in back at his newsroom desk when the phone rang. A woman asked him if someone could give her a ride to Dallas.  Schiefer responded heatedly, “Lady, this is not a taxi, and besides, the president has been shot.”

“I know.  They think my son is the one who shot him.”

“Where do you live?” Schieffer. “I’ll be right over to get you.”

On the way to Dallas, said Schieffer, she seemed more concerned about herself than about the death of a president. “She railed about how Oswald’s Russian-born wife would get sympathy while no one would ‘remember the mother.’”

When Oswald’s wife and mother heard the news, they had the presence of mind to get a lawyer, John Thorne. Police placed the family in protective custody.  Several weeks later, Eddie Barker called Thorne and expressed an interest in interviewing the Marina, how a widow. Thorne, who Barker did not know, surprised him by saying, “She watches you every evening nd I’ll be glad to ask her.”  The interview was arranged during which time she told him in her Russian-accented English, “I think Lee shoot Kenedy.”

Don Gardiner died in 1977.  Bob Schieffer, 86, is a podcaster— “Bob Schieffer’s ‘About the News’ with H. Andrew Schwartz.”—retired as the host of Face the Nation in 2015 and embarked on a singing career.  Eddie Barker died in 2012.

Dan Rather is 92 and still likes to stir the stuff.  He was fired from CBS in 2006 after some reports using unauthenticated documents to report on President George W. Bush’s Vietnam War-era service. After working on the cable channel now known as AXSTV for several years. Rather joined the Youngturks YouTube channel and five years ago began writing a news letter called “Steady,” on Substack.

All of those you hear in the ABC coverage are gone now.

Merriman Smith committed suicide in 1970.  Some say he was despondent about the death of his son in Vienam and perhaps suffered from PTSD from witnessing the Kennedy murder. Jack Bell died in 1975. Clint Hill is 91 and is the last surviving person to be in the presidential limousine that day.

At Jefferson City radio station KLIK that day, news director Jerry Bryan checked the UPI wire just after climbing the stairs to the third-floor newsroom in a pre-Civil War building on Capitol Avneue and checked the UPI machine before going home to lunch.

He picked up the telephone and called the on-air studio down on the second floor and started telling listeners what Merriman Smith was sending him. He continued to report via telephone until station engineer Ed Scarr put together enough cable to run a microphone from the studio up two flights of stairs and down the hall to the newsroom so Jerry had a microphone. The station operated only during daylight hours in those days and did not have a national network.  Bryan was the Don Gardiner of Jefferson City that day until the station signed off at 5:30. A reel-to-reel recorder in the newsroom was set up to turn on automatically during the “Missouri Party Line Show” when a phone call came in from a listener. Bryan’s call to the studio triggered the recorder, which had a large reel of tape on it.  His early coverage that day was recorded, by accident, and still exists.  Jerry resigned in 1967 and became the press secretary to Governor Hearnes and now lives in St. Louis.

His assistant news director, who had come to Jefferson City from KFRU at the start of 1967 replaced him.  His memories, which have been shared at length with you in this entry, remain vivid–as do the memories of many.

Walter Cronkite, who died in 2009, was a native of St. Joseph, Missouri. He attended the unveiling in 1999 of  bronze bust in the Hall of Famous Missourians. There were two speakers at that ceremony that evening—Governor Carnahan and me.

The next day, he was introduced in the House and in the Senate and made brief remarks.  The press corps in the senate was seated at a table on the floor to the right of the dais and when Walter walked in, we made him sit at the press table with us.

For the next fifteen years that I covered the Senate from that table, I always made sure that when a new reporter joined us at the table, I made sure that person knew that was Walter’s chair they were sitting in and they were expected to do him honor with their reporting.

Before Walter Cronkite became the icon he became at the CBS Evening News desk, he had a program on Sunday afternoons called You Are There, during which historical events were portrayed.  He always finished the broadcast by proclaiming,

“What sort of a day was it?  A day like all days, filled with those events that altered and illuminate our time. And you were there.”

November 22nd started “like all days.”  But it was filled with events that altered and illuminate our time.

And I was “there.”

A Slightly Warped Sense of Humor

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If reporters didn’t have a warped sense of humor, we probably couldn’t do what we do.  Humor, even dark humor, helps us deal with the often tragic, often weird, often absurd things and people we have to cover.

Perhaps that’s why I used to have a series of offbeat posters that I changed monthly at my desk in the Missourinet newsroom.

These posters, from a company called Despair, Inc., are the opposite of the supposedly inspirational posters found in many workplaces.  Beautiful pictures with some saccharine sentiment beneath them.

The folks at Despair turn that concept on its head.

I suppose this could be seen as a blatant plug for this company’s products.  Actually, it’s more of a paen to the creative folks who tell us that we shouldn’t take ourselves too seriously.

We badly need those who try to tell us that.  We wonder if a sense of humor can be found in our today’s politics. Everybody is so blasted serious—-and for those of us who abhor all of the divisiveness in our system today—-Good Lord, we have reached the point of physical confrontations in the hallways of the House of Representatives in Washington to an instigated near-brawl in the Senate committee hearing—there is no shortage of seriousness. One of my reporters once told me, “They have it all backwards. They take themselves seriously, not their jobs.”

We need a Will Rogers IN the government, the guy who remarked:

“The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected.”

“This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when a baby gets hold of a hammer.”

“The more you read and observe about this politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other.”

“I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.”

“On account of us being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does.”

“If all politicians fished instead of speaking publicly, we would have peace in the world.”

Or Mark Russell, who used to entertain us at the piano, on PBS from 1975 into 2004, whose death last March 30th escaped our notice.  He was 90.   He was introduced once by someone who noted, “Before there ws a John Stewart or a Stephen Colbert, there was Mark Russell.”

That was 2018, when Russell told the audience, “I’m not going to do any new political humor. Why?  Because there’s no material.”

He once asked about the Adopt A Highway program, “If a gay couple adopts a highway, will the highway grow up straight?”

The difference between Republicans and Democrats: “A Republican says,’We’re in a recovery.’  A Democrat says, ‘You shouldn’t enjoy it.’”

“A fool and his money is a lobbyist.”

Here’s a compilation of some of his performances:

Bing Videos

The story is told of the day in 1862 when Abraham Lincoln called a special meeting of his War Cabinet.  When the members filed into the room, they found Lincoln reading a humor book. He laughed as he shared a story from the book. When nobody else laughed, Lincoln read another story. Again, no response. Lincoln looked at his cabinet and asked, “Gentlemen, why don’t you laugh?  With the fearful strain that is upon me night and day, if I did not laugh, I should die, and you need this medicine as much as I do.”

And after that, he showed the cabinet the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation.

And so we need people like those at Despair who turn our contemporary cares on their heads with their demotivational posters.

There’s one I wish was available in my working days.  It shows a stack of papers and the poster is entitled “Media.”  The text reads, “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies right to our faces.”

I think I’ll buy that one for the good folks in today’s Missourinet newsroom

Take the 25th 

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Something to ponder.

If Donald Trump becomes an imprisoned felon after winning election, can he become President?

Yes, even if he is inaugurated in his cell. Then we have to wonder if he will pardon himself before beginning his inaugural address to the smallest audience in inauguration history.

Ah, but there could be mischief afoot.

Let’s see if we can start a conspiracy theory.  We are not attributing it to anyone famous.  We’ll leave that to others because a conspiracy theory won’t work unless somebody famous is leading an organization behind it.

We are going to try to stage this so that anyone trying to pin it on the Left will have to acknowledge that there are quislings* also involved on the Right.

The only qualifications to become President of the United States are in the U. S. Constitution—that the person be at least 35, a natural-born citizen and a resident hee for at least fourteen years .  There is no morals clause in the document.

Congress could pass a Constitutional Amendment banning a convicted felon but that will take a two-thirds vote of both chambers of the Congress  and ratification by three-fourths of the states, a tall order to get done before inauguration day, 2025.

The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits anyone who has engaged in rebellion or insurrection against the United States from holding any office. But none of the 91 charges against our former president specifically accuse him of “engaging in rebellion or insurrection.’ Whether a case for insurrection-by-association can be built is being tested in some courts now.

We’ve never had a president who has a felony conviction. They’ve done all kinds of other things (fought in wars, impregnated mistresses, hanged someone, etc.,) and suspected of others, but they’ve never been convicted of a felony.

Convicted felons can serve in Congress. State laws might keep them from voting for themselves back home or from having guns, but the Constitution has no ban on them serving, either.

And that brings to the 25th Amendment.

Suppose Trump is convicted. And suppose he is elected.

The New Congress will have convened a couple of weeks before inauguration day. Let’s assume the D’s have regained control.  Here is what the 25th Amendment says about a president’s inability to serve:

Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department [sic][note 2][7] or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

Now we get to the conspiracy theory:

The Vice-President is sworn in before the President is.  Always.  This person is the key to the entire drama. This person is in cahoots with those who want the former president to keep putting a golf ball into a plastic cup on the other end of his cell.

Look at the first section of the amendment which says that the VP and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments (the cabinet) or of such other body as Congress by law may provide transmit to the leaders of the Senate and the House a written declaration that the President can’t do his job…..

Immediately upon the imprisoned President finishing his oath, a committee created by a Congress controlled by the other party submits a declaration against the President before he can sign his own pardon. The VP takes over and the inaugurated president remains in his cell.

Now, the next section comes to the fore.  The imprisoned President immediately files a letter that declares “no inability exists” and, therefore, he shall resume the duties of the office UNLESS the VP and a majority of the cabinet OR that special committee that wrote the original declaration maintains the President still cannot perform his duties from a prison cell. The Congress by a two-thirds vote can declare the president, indeed, still can’t perform his duties and the Veep will remain in charge and the replaced president remains in his cell.

This is, of course, only a layman’s reading of the amendment and it is likely there are first-year law students who could demolish this idea.

But look, this IS the age of conspiracy theories.  I smell a television mini-series opportunity here.

The weakness in this idea is that Trump will pick a running mate who would throw him under the bus as he threw Mike Pence under the bus, and that voters will turn both houses of the Congress decidedly blue and the D’s will successfully connive with the R Veep to pull this off.

So it might not be practical in the real world.

But I still maintain it might make a riveting TV miniseries.  There would have to be a role for Kevin Kline and another for Kiefer Sutherland and one for Martin Sheen  and others for Tea Leone. Michael Douglas, and Anette Benning.

And what would we call it?

Go back to the top of this column.

*From time to time we try to throw in a word or phrase that we can use to teach a little lesson in language and in history.  Vidkun Quisling, a World War II leader of Norway who was a Nazi collaborator and who tried unsuccessfully to take over the government and end resistance to the invading Nazi Army. He formed a second, puppet government supported by the Nazis, and was involved in the shipment of Norwegian Jews to concentration camps in occupied Poland.  He later was convicted of high treason, among other crimes, and was executed by firing squad in October, 1945.

His name is considered a synonym for “traitor.”

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