Category Archives: Politics

Notes From a Quiet Hill 

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(Being various wry comments I don’t have the energy to write more about)

I have come to the conclusion that Donald Trump is the most destructive force to hit Washington, D. C. since the British burned the Capitol in 1815.  The East Wing, the Rose Garden, the Kennedy Center, a garish arch in the middle of the dignity of Arlington, the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, destruction of stately old trees in his quest for a golf course he doesn’t and won’t own—-

What vehicle best represents Donald Trump.?  A bulldozer, but it’s a close race with a manure spreader.

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Nothing like a 40 degree windy morning to make a convincing argument that summer’s gone.

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One of the loneliest sights at this time of year is a park board baseball diamond.

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Nancy and I don’t stock up on trick or treat candy and we often hide out when costumed urchins are going round and demanding people give them sugary rewards for doing nothing more than knocking on the door.  Sometimes we have gone to movies but the last time we did that, the sound was so loud that I turned to her midway through and said, “I can’t wait to see this on television so I can turn the volume down enough to know what they’re saying.”

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One year in college when my roommate and I forgot about Halloween and kids came knocking, we sent them away with the only thing we had.  Several moms and dads probably wondered later who gave them slices of baloney.

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We’ll be watching returns election night to see how far down the ballot the blue wave rolls in Missouri, particularly to see if the grassroots citizens eliminate the Republican two-thirds majority in one or both chambers.  Majorities are fine. Two-thirds promotes arrogance and laws that require rejection sometimes.

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My monthly guest column for the Jefferson City News-Tribune on Sunday refers to the ballot next Tuesday as a “Hypocrisy Ballot” because one proposed amendment asks voters to ban something another amendment proposes.

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If you were having trouble putting food on your table, would you open a 401K that will never benefit you.  Or your great grandchildren.  Or theirs?  That’s the sovereign wealth proposal, offered at a time when the state budget office is warning agencies to expect at least ten percent reductions in their budgets for the next fiscal year.

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Drove to Linn the other night for a River Region Library board meeting.  If I hadn’t traded in my points from Nancy’s grocery shopping for cheap gas a day earlier, I would have tanked up in Linn, where the prices were about twenty cents cheaper.

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Daylight Savings Time ends this weekend.  It began as a system to conserve coal during World War I. We borrowed the idea from England.  Why conserve coal?  Well, in those days our steamships were coal-powered. The trains that moved war materiel and troops were steam=powered and coal fired.

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As we grudgingly admit that summer is gone, we sometimes ponder the seasons as defined by author Kurt Vonnegut in a 1978 graduation speech at Fredonia College in New York. Four seasons, he said, make no sense.  We should have six.

To him, spring was May and June. July and August constitute summer. September and October are autumn. The next two months, November and December, are “Locking.” They are pre-winter but people start locking down to stay warm. Winter is January and February. Unlocking happens in March and April.

In a few days we will enter Locking. We’d probably fire up the fireplace for he first time if we could.  In our new place we just turn it on.  It has three speeds.  I’m not sure which is more exciting—our fire place or he YouTube videos of a fireplace.

The cats are fascinated by our fireplace, by he way.

MEMO 

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To: J.D. Vance

From: Me, concerned citizen

If you have not already started—although I am sure you have—you need to be thinking of how you would serve as the interim President of the United States until the 2028 elections and how you might deserve to be considered for an extension.

I am sure you have watched your boss’s deteriorating poll numbers and the inter-party defections, especially among those Republicans who hope to resurrect their own candidacies for the House or the Senate by turning on President Trump. Unfortunately, theirs seems to be a case in several instances of “Too soon old; too late smart.”

You are, I am sure, cognizant of the possibility that the blue wave will continue to build and have started thinking of what would happen if Democrats and some badly-disillusioned Republicans provide the needed votes to let President Trump transition to being a fulltime golfer.

What will you do or advocate doing to separate yourself from a President you have so slavishly followed for a couple of years but who now is a lead weight for the party?

You’re in a tricky position. You know you cannot be Trump 2.1 after the Original Trump is banished if you want the job fulltime in 2028 or not to face the same removal movement that deposed him sooner.  Two years is a short time to wash the Trump stain from your credentials and to create a new you-image.  You will inherit what is charitably called an international train wreck. You must be thinking how to end military and tariff wars without a total admission of grievous error but acknowledging serious mistakes for which you will accept no blame while emphasizing the things you will do to promote national and international healing.

Remember this: A mob, having enjoyed the thrill of hanging one, might not be satisfied with hanging only one.  The crowd might still be quite restless when you make the oval office your own. You must be thinking and assembling others from outside the present executive team who will find ways for you to look good digging out from under the rubble of this president’s disaster.

Renewing domestic and international trust and respect in such a short time might be beyond your best efforts, but it is important that you tell us what you will do if you are going to make sincere efforts and achieve some improvements.

If doing what you have to do means throwing Trump under the bus to join all of those he has thrown there, so be it. You must be prepared to show a major shift not only in ideology but also in style. You are, after all, the Hillbilly Eulogy guy, not the rich big city guy whose life experience has been far from your own and has no relation to the lives of most Americans.

You must be carefully lining up cabinet members who are not amateurs in their roles. Some of those replaced by the current administration might be good choices to return and be your guiding team. Start now to establish back-door relationships with Iran, China, North Korea, Russia and Israel that could be useful after you are sworn in as the successor to President Trump.

Make plans to dump the FCC Chair who seems all too willing to be the mini-Trump in the war against the media. In fact, you should announce as soon as you are in office that the war against the media is over, that you recognize the importance of a free and independent media, that the role of the media is not to be your friend and mouthpiece but to be an observer and when necessary be a critic.

Make your new Director of Homeland Security someone one with a Spanish surname and put ICE on ice.

Make a personal commitment to give late night talk show hosts something to talk about other than you. But understand that making fun of people in power is a very old matter of human nature. Poking fun at politicians probably began before written language was created.

Be strict with yourself about this: Nights are for sleeping. Days are for talking and acting. Do not try to mix the two. Remember that verbal temperance even in disagreement is more likely to engender respect than irrational attacks will.

If you wish to call someone a derogatory name, do it in your shower, not in public.

Find someone who knows and has the respect of and for the military to be ready with a mop, a broom, and a carpet cleaning system to replace Pete Hegseth. It should be someone who doesn’t measure military competence in terms of color, gender, or testosterone level. Before he goes, report on HIS testosterone levels.

Have somebody with some honor in the medical field replace Health Secretary Kennedy, who undoubtedly will complain he is a victim of a conspiracy. Admit he’s right and then vaccinate yourself from his influence.

Don’t be afraid to keep some of the competent people President Trump accidentally appointed to top positions. Would Rubio be more effective without Trump above him?  Of course, letting him stick around leaves him poised to be one of your challengers in the 2028 primaries.,

Prepare a list of executive orders to immediately roll back Trump’s plans for—

—-well, just about everything he has proclaimed.

Be thinking about the points you will earn with the public by cancelling the EgoArch, by restoring a sane board to the Kennedy Center, and announcing you are ending all efforts to etch the name Trump on any buildings he did not earn the right to rename, which would be none.

And restore the proper names to one of the Great Lakes and to The Gulf.

You’ll need to emphasize that you are not trying to erase President Trump’s name from history but are restoring our history to its accurate place in telling  ALL of the nation’s story, including his. Do not volunteer to speak at the dedication of his presidential museum and lie-brary.

Unsticking yourself from Trump might be difficult because of the tar baby he has been. But you need to give it your best efforts. Otherwise, your long-term future in what is left of the White House will be brief.

Retire attack dogs such as our Senators Schmitt and Hawley to a political kennel. You don’t need their kind to be distracting the public from the good works you do to restore a modicum of confidence in our country.

When President Trump was elected in 2016 without my approval, I was among the many who hoped he would grow into the office. But he has proven accurate an observation President Woodrow Wilson made: “Every man who takes office in Washington either grows or swells, and when I give a man an office, I watch him carefully to see whether he is growing or swelling.”

President Trump is an example of one who swelled excessively and constantly. And look what it got him. Hire people who won’t be afraid to tell you before it’s too late that you’re looking a little puffy.

Good luck with your contingency planning. Do not be wasting time in making preparations. Your future is at stake, by 2028 if not sooner.

Citizen Bob

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Execution UPDATE  UPDATE  UPDATE

President Trump has overruled our offensive Defense Secretary and says there will not be a publicly-broadcast of the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan.  He still will be shot to death but not with a worldwide audience watching.

While there are some parts of the world that think it’s a mistake not to make the execution public, most not only don’t want the death penalty at all.

The Death Penalty Information Center reports only 17 countries executed people last year, up from a record low fifteen in 2024.

Four countries (Japan, South Sudan, Taiwan, and the United Arab Emirates) resumed executions after a hiatus, while two countries (Oman and Syria) which carried out executions in 2024 did not in 2025. Of note, the United States was the only nation to execute people in the Americas for the 17th consecutive year.

In addition to Iran, which carried out at least 2,159 executions in 2025, significant increases were recorded in several other countries. Saudi Arabia carried out at least 356 executions, exceeding their historic high of 345 executions in 2024. Together, Iran and Saudi Arabia accounted for 93% of all executions worldwide. Egypt (13 to 23), Singapore (9 to 17), Yemen (38 to 51), and the United States (25 to 47) all approximately doubled their prior year execution totals, and Kuwait nearly tripled (6 to 17).

Paralleling global trends, the increase in the United States was attributable to a regional rise in executions in Florida, which accounted for nearly half of all executions. Amnesty International notes that this rise in U.S. executions occurred as “officials at the federal level and in some states promoted inflammatory and flawed narratives on the death penalty and its effect on crime, advocating for an increase in its use.”

Both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia were global outliers in execution methods with the use of nitrogen gas asphyxiation and beheadings, respectively. As in previous years, the 2025 execution total does not include the thousands of executions estimated to be carried out annually in China, regarded as the world’s leading executioner. Both China and Vietnam classify data on the death penalty as a state secret. Restrictive state practices in North Korea, Laos, and Belarus also result in little to no information being available for those countries.

President Trump maintains Hasan deserves the several bullets that will be coming to him and admits to having some misgivings about cancelling the public event.  However,

“Nidal Malik Hasan, a former U.S. Army Major turned traitor, is a very bad and evil man, who killed 13 people, including a pregnant soldier, who died, along with her unborn son, and injured, very seriously, 32 more innocent people. Barack Hussein Obama’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) intercepted electronic communications between Hasan and the radical Yemeni-American cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki. When reviewed by his FBI terrorism task force, investigators concluded that Hasan’s emails were not a threat. This assessment of the Obama Administration’s actions was later considered to be a key intelligence failure. With all of that being said, I think streaming the execution for all to see might have been a strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like Hasan but, many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device. He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed. That said, the execution may be viewed in person by the immediate families of the victims, if they so choose. They deserve to witness JUSTICE! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

Trump’s obsession with blaming President Obama (and his constant cheap shot mentions of his middle name) is well over-stated.

NPR’s Mark Memmott reported in November, 2009:

Author Jerome Corsi, who was among the group that “Swift Boated” Sen. John Kerry during the 2004 presidential election and more recently penned The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality, has another eye-catching story at the conservative World Net Daily website.

The headline reads: “Shooter Advised Obama Transition; Fort Hood Triggerman Aided Team On Homeland Security Task Force.”

And the story begins with this:

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the alleged shooter in yesterday’s massacre at Fort Hood, played a homeland security advisory role in President Barack Obama’s transition into the White House, according to a key university policy institute document.

Here’s what NPR national security/intelligence correspondent Tom Gjelten tells us about Corsi’s conclusion:

This claim is so exaggerated as to be without merit.

Nidal Hasan was one of 308 people whose names appear on a list of “participants” in a series of public roundtable meetings organized by the “Presidential Transition Task Force,” a project of the Homeland Security Policy Institute (HSPI) at George Washington University. Hasan was not himself a member of the Task Force.

Frank Cilluffo, the HSPI director, says the participants’ list, published as an appendix to the Task Force report, was no more than a tally of those people who RSVP’d to a notice of the roundtable meetings, which took place between June 2008 and February 2009. “Hasan joined as a member of the audience,” Cilluffo says.

When Cilluffo saw a picture of Hasan, he remembered him making a public comment during one of the roundtable meetings. “I had to cut him off, because he was going on too long,” Cilluffo says. He says he can not recall what Hasan was saying.

Corsi’s report, by the way, does something of a U-turn about midway through. “While the GWU task force participants included several members of government, including representatives of the Department of Justice and the U.S Department of Homeland Security,” he writes, “there is no indication in the document that the group played any formal role in the official Obama transition, other than to serve in a university-based advisory capacity.”

And an “editor’s note” attached to Corsi’s story after its publication says “Hasan is being reported as a participant in the GWU Homeland Security Policy Institute’s Presidential Transition Task Force, not as a member, noting the group was a university think-tank, not part of the Obama administration official transition team.”

So, he begins with a sure-to-shock conclusion — that Hasan played a “homeland security advisory role” in the transition. Then, at a point in the story that many readers won’t reach or hear about, Corsi reverses course.

NPR is not, as we all know, a source of information for our president.

Some cynics might be surprised Trump passed up a golden opportunity to market the Official Donald J. Trump Execution Rifle. As with the Trump Bible, it could be issued in various editions, one of which would be the “Pete Hegseth edition.”

The sad thing is that a lot of people would buy the things. We wonderful if one of the weapons that will be used someday will be on display in the Trump Liebrary and Museum.

At least we are spared the sad spectacle of this event being streamed into our homes and into too many children’s cell phones.

The Descent into Barbarism

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Two more stories about executions have made headlines in recent days for different reasons.

The story of the botched execution in Tennessee reminds us of a botched execution in Missouri. The other story is about plans for a public execution—the livestreaming of a firing squad carrying out a federal death sentence.

Before we get to the story of a botched Missouri execution, I have to get something off my chest about Pete Hegseth’s plans for a public firing squad for Fort Hood killer Nidal Hasan who murdered 13 people and wounded thirty others in the 2009 Fort Hood shootings. If Hegseth gets his way, the internet will show the public the firing squad execution at 1 p.m., our time, on December 3. Something to watch while we’re having lunch. President Trump has okayed the first military firing squad execution since the execution of Private Eddie Slovick in 1945 for desertion.

I cringe even at giving you the time and date of Hegseth’s planned public spectacle.

I covered 22 executions.  All were accomplished with heavy overdoses of three drugs. Missouri now uses one giant overdose of just one drug, as has been used in recent botched executions in other states. It seems to have worked here.

It should be no surprise that Hegseth, an oily testosterone waving narcissist, wants a public execution. Apparently he thinks his self-righteous outrage about a man who killed thirteen members of the military should be displayed by letting ghoulish viewers see a man be shot to death.

It smacks of the old-time executions in the counties when large crowds gathered—some executions even sold tickets to them—with children to watch someone drop through a scaffold floor.  It was a social occasion, presumably an object lesson particularly for the children in the audience.

That’s what Hegseth wants with his sordid plan. He said on a television show last week that people need to see the execution because they have to understand serious crimes merit “serious consequences.” Is there anybody who does not understand that if you kill someone, you will not face “serious consequences?”

We suspect Hegseth wants a public execution to show how tough HE is. It’s an execution that is more about him than it is about the man who will die and his victims.  Death by testosterone.

If he’s so hot to have this done, why doesn’t he be part of the squad?  If our president thinks it’s such a great idea, why doesn’t he join him. After all, one is the commander in chief of all of our military forces and the other head the department that oversees all of them?

And just think how impressive President Trump’s weapon would look in his presidential iebrary.

Former Labor Secretary, now blogger and podcaster Robert Reich asks whether the firing squad will teach any watchers a lesson or will it “just degrade our sense of being human beings.?”  He refers to Hegseth’s plan as “cruel,” and “public sadism” and “barbarism.”

How excited do you think they would have been if they’d watched Christa Pike’s execution. Firing squad executions are over in an explosive second. Her struggle would have been a much better show.

Ultimately, public revulsion of public hanging carnivals led to Missouri and other states taking over executions from local jurisdictions  and holding them within prison walls with only the media, prison officials, and some friends of the person in the gas chamber or in the electric chair or on the gurney in the drug-execution chamber looking on.

The last public execution in this country is believed to have been a hanging in Kentucky in 1936.

Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber who murdered 167 people and injured 684 more with the 1995 blast at the Murrah Office Building died on a gurney at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana in 2001. Ten members of the media looked on as did some people he had invited to watch. Some survivors of the bombing saw it on closed circuit TV inside the prison because there wasn’t enough room in the citizen witness area.

McVeigh killed more than ten times more people than Hasan did yet died with as much dignity as an executed mass murderer could expect.

There are those who think Hasan’s public execution will put this country in the same category of two countries we consider cruel, barbaric, and cradles of terrorism. Amnesty International counted seventeen public executions last year. Eleven were in Iran.  Six more were Taliban events in Afghanistan.  Trump and Hegseth want to lower our nation to that level.

Death is not a circus. Executions are double tragedies.  The first is the death of the victim(s) and the grief of their families and friends, memories and longings that never completely disappear.  The second is the death of the killer, a recognition that a person threw away their life long before they threw away their future.

I sometimes caught myself wondering as I watched the drugs flow into the veins of those 22 men what turned that person on the gurney into what he became. When did he or she make the choice to live a life that turned out to be wasted, a life most remembered for its end than for its worth.

And then I watched them die and sometimes I wondered where they went at that instant.

In the end, they died alone. And no matter how awful their crimes, their death was not some kind of public spectacle nor should it ever be. Justice is too precious to be cheapened by people like Hegseth and Trump.  It is not a game show. It is not an ultimate firing.

Having seen as many executions as I have, do I believe in capital punishment? I am not alone in thinking some crimes are so heinous that the perpetrator forfeits his or her own right to life. But I also sometimes think spending every day waking up to the smell of Lysol or some similar disinfectant used in institutions, living among many who have nothing more to lose, going to a menial job every day, hearing a steel door lock behind you every night, never walking down a street, never having a beer with friends or seeing your grandson play a football game or your granddaughter being a bride, never seeing anything beyond an electrified fence, and eventually knowing the few family members you ever see all have died is better.

Christa Peck spent ninety percent of her thirty years in solitary confinement. Death was to be her only relief, her only escape.

I was interested in what my reaction would be when I watched my first execution.  My reaction was no reaction at all.  I watched a man go to sleep, went back to my motel and filed my stories for the next morning’s newscasts, and then I went to sleep, too, and I did not dream. The next morning I came back to my newsroom and went on with my life as if I had not been up most of the night in Potosi.

Reporters often report on things they wish they didn’t have to report about. Sometimes it’s the events of a life. Sometimes it’s the event of death. The plans of Trump and Hegseth might be the most despicable things this administration has thought up—-and that’s saying a great deal.

I think we’ll save the botched Missouri execution story for another entry. I’m not feeling too well after telling you these stories.

Would Somone Explain to Me—- 

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—-exactly what are “traditional Christian values?”

A lady at a convenience store I like to visit from time to time was wishing the other day that our nation would return to “traditional Christian values.”

“I wish somebody would define them,” I responded.

As I’ve said before, not many of us would want to live under the “Christian Values” that our sainted Pilgrim fathers and mothers came here to practice.

We do hear so many demands that our nation return to them but none of those, especially in political circles, who suggest our country is failing because it has abandoned those values has ever clearly justified their interpretations of them.

I have a copy of a 3×5 card from an organization in the 1920s that listed its core Christian values.  They weren’t bad except one of them was white supremacy.  The Christian organization circulating that care was, of course, the Klan.

In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus tells his disciples, “Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of everyone else. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

There seems to be in some quarters a misunderstanding of that verse by many of those who religiously support our president who, from this quiet hill, seems to fall well short of the qualities He spoke of.

This entry might stir some heated responses in the box below.  So, fire away.

A good minister friend of mine, John Bennett, thought the Old Testament prophet Micah captured those values in thirteen words.

“To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”

In the Gospel of James, we learn that the “pure and faultless religion” requires us to “to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world”

Isaiah told us, “Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.”  Verses in Deuteronomy and in one of the Psalms say the same thing.

And Zechariah says God said, “Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.”

All of those sound pretty good from here.  However, I think all of us can think of at least one prominent person revered by certain religious elements who falls well short of that.

It would be interesting to have a reaction from the self-proclaimed faithful Bible reader who lives in what is left of the White House to those descriptions or what we’re posting next.

One of many places on the internet explaining TCVs is beliefnet, the place where I found an article by Lauren McKeithen, a contributor to the page and to other information sources.

“10 Christian Values and how to Live them.”

A value or ethic is a principle or standard about what is important in one’s life. Therefore, Christian values are the principles that a follower of Jesus Christ holds as necessary, the principles of life that Jesus taught.

Christian values don’t change over time. They are consistent from generation to generation since their foundation is found in God’s Word, the Bible.

Worldly values include wealth, power, pleasure, revenge, fame, vanity, and status. These are the most important things to people who perceive no power or purpose beyond themselves

Worldly values promote jealousies, resentments, and conflicts among people following the objectives of Satan.

The Christian values taught in the Bible are often the opposite of worldly values: kindness and respect for all people instead of power; humility instead of status; honesty and generosity instead of wealth; self-control instead of self-indulgence; forgiveness instead of revenge.

Christian values promote peace and goodwill among people following the purposes of God. We will never achieve perfection in this life, but those who strive to obey God often find a sense of joy and peace that no worldly rewards can match. Here’s a list of Christian values emphasized in the Bible.

Worship God.

One day, a religious leader asked Jesus which commandments were most important. Jesus replied in Mark 12:28-30 by saying, “The most important one is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”

The Hebrews of Old Testament times tended to lapse into worship of pagan deities and statues of animals or other objects. Still, anything that takes the place of our devotion to God becomes an idol or false god.

That idolatry is forbidden by the first of the Ten Commandments. Jesus particularly singled out the love of wealth as a false god, and other Bible passages mention greed, covetousness, arrogance, gluttony, and pride as equivalent to idolatry.

In today’s world, many things compete against God for our devotion. These are some things that are not necessarily bad in moderation but can become modern-day idolatry if we let them become too important to us, like attention to material possessions, the pursuit of wealth, and excessive devotion to self.

If you need ideas on how to worship God, here are 18 ways to worship God.

Be kind to everyone.

After saying “Love the Lord your God” is the most important of the commandments, Jesus continued, “The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these,” as seen in Mark 12:31.

The English word “love” has many different meanings, but the Greek word agape, used in the New Testament, is commonly known as “Christian love.” It means respect, affection, benevolence, goodwill, and concern for the welfare of the one loved.

Jesus’ Golden Rule is, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

We should not say or do anything unless we can answer “Yes” to the question, “Would I want that said or done to me?” Neither should we fail to do the good things we would expect of others.

Be humble.

Humility or being humble is a quality of being courteously respectful of others. It is the opposite of aggressiveness, arrogance, boastfulness, and vanity.

Acting with humility does not in any way deny our self-worth. Instead, it affirms the inherent worth of all persons.

Humility is needed to live in peace and harmony with all persons. It dissipates anger and heals old wounds, and allows us to see the dignity and worth of all God’s people. Humility distinguishes the wise leader from the arrogant power-seeker.

Be honest.

Honesty and integrity are held as fundamental values throughout the Bible. Any deception to gain an advantage or harm someone else is prohibited by the Ten Commandments and other Bible passages.

Deception may be by lies, cheating, innuendo, or failing to tell the whole truth. It is all too common in advertising, business, politics, and everyday life.

We must strongly resist the temptation to engage in any form of theft, cheating, deception, innuendo, slander, or gossip.

Rationalization is a form of self-deception. We convince ourselves that sinful actions are justified to achieve a good result, but this is another form of dishonesty.

Holiness is living by the commandments, not reaching an outcome. In Biblical teaching, the ends do not justify the means.

Live a moral life.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 says, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.”

Jesus gave a list of actions that constitute immoral uses of the body: evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, arrogance, and foolishness.

The apostle Paul gave similar lists. We often think of morality in terms of sexual sins, but according to Jesus, slander, greed, covetousness, deceit, and arrogance are equally immoral.

Be generous with time and money.

The Bible tells us to share generously with those in need, and good things will come to us in turn. Each of us has something to offer to someone in need.

We can give our money and our time to charity, be a friend to someone sick or lonely, do volunteer work or choose a service-oriented occupation. We may give unselfishly of our time to our spouse, children, or parents.

This idea doesn’t mean we are obligated to share our time or money with people who are not in need but want to use or abuse us, as described in 2 Thessalonians 3:10-12.

Don’t be a hypocrite.

If there was any group of people that Jesus couldn’t stand, it was hypocrites.

The Pharisees of Jesus’ time were a religious and political party that insisted on the rigorous observance of Biblical laws on tithing, ritual purity, and other matters. At the same time, many of the Pharisees forgot the true spirit and intent of the law and became self-indulgent, self-righteous, snobbish, and greedy.

That led Jesus to tell the Pharisees that they appeared righteous on the outside, but they were full of hypocrisy.

It is not the things we say that truly matter. It is the things that we do. If we claim to be Christians but do not let Jesus’ teachings guide our lives, we are nothing but hypocrites.

Don’t be self-righteous.

No one is perfect; we are all sinners in one way.

Living a moral life means taking responsibility for controlling our behavior. If we say or even think we are better than people we consider to be sinners, we are guilty of the sin of self-righteousness.

It is not our right to look down on, criticize, judge, condemn, or try to control other people. Judgment is to be left to God.

In Matthew 7:1-5, Jesus said, “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make, you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.”

This value does not deny the right of governments to maintain law and order and collect taxes. Jesus and other New Testament leaders supported the authority of civil governments.

Don’t retaliate.

Jesus said there is no place for hatred, holding a grudge, revenge, retaliation, or getting even in the life of a Christian, described in Matthew 5:38-40 and Matthew 5:43-45.

Holding grudges and seeking revenge are never appropriate responses to a perceived wrong. Resentment destroys the grudge-holder with bitterness, and revenge only escalates hostilities.

Jesus told us we must reconcile with our adversaries, forgive their transgressions, and let go of the anger that may tempt us to commit an act of revenge.

Forgive others.

Matthew 6:14-15 tells us, “If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.”

God is merciful and forgives our sins and failings. In the same way, we must be compassionate and forgive other people who sin against us or do us harm.

Romans 12:9-10 tells us, “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.”

God is evident in His Word how to apply each of the Christian values He holds dear. Christians can tell if they hold to the values God holds dear by how they treat others.

As we read God’s Word, we know God better and understand His purpose for us in the world. We learn the values He holds dear, and we also grow to love those values. The Holy Spirit works through us to spread God’s love through good works, leading others to eternal life through Jesus Christ.

Well said. Anybody care to differ?

The Reactions 

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The reactions to our junior senator’s monstrous gaffe last week as he thought he had skewered former special prosecutor Jack Smith have been creative, critical, mean, tough—

—and, frankly deserved.

There might not be a more popular way to express an opinion today and express it to everyone you see on the street, at eating places, at sporting events—you name it—than the t-shirt. Even in our smaller towns, there’s likely to be some one who makes t-shirts to order.  Our junior senator became instant t-shirt fodder last week when he became the “got” in “gotcha.”

I wonder if the company is going to sent one of these to the Senator.  He’s tall, about 6-7, and kind of husky. An XL, VL (very long) would probably cover the most territory although it won’t cover that part of his anatomy that was exposed at the hearing.

Social media has had a field day, of course. AI has added a new depth to the ridicule opportunities. Creative juices have become gushers on various platforms. This one showed up on our Facebook page.

These things get circulated around and I am afraid I don’t know who had the original thoughts so I can’t tell you the names of these creative people. These probably are just a small example of the images created in the wake of the implosion. Most of them also showed up on our Facebook page.

I wonder if the senator, to show that he has a sense of humor about himself, will fame a few of these and put them in his office in the Russell Senate Office Building near the Capitol. He hasn’t been able to admit he made a giant mistake that will haunt him for a long time. But if he won’t admit he did a lot of damage to his future political credibility, maybe he can regain some PR points by displaying how much fun he has allowed others to have at his expense.

Don’t you wish you could have been a mouse in the corner when he and his staff got back to the office and closed the door after that hearing?

Here is what happens when a bag of political dirt explodes in your face.  Your faithful observer knows from some non-political experience of dropping the bag while emptying the canister of our whole house vacuuming system. My dirt, however, washed off fairly quickly.  The Schmitt dirt will require a huge amount of scrubbing, and even then—–

Maybe someone was thinking a song from a Stephen Sondheim musical, A Little Night Music—

Isn’t it rich?
Are we a pair?
Me here at last on the ground
You in mid-air
Send in the clowns

Isn’t it bliss?
Don’t you approve?
One who keeps tearing around
One who can’t move
Where are the clowns?
Send in the clowns

Just when I’d stopped opening doors
Finally knowing the one that I wanted was yours
Making my entrance again with my usual flair
Sure of my lines
No one is there

Don’t you love farce?
My fault, I fear
I thought that you’d want what I want

Sorry, my dear
But where are the clowns?
Quick, send in the clowns
Don’t bother, they’re here

Isn’t it rich?
Isn’t it queer?
Losing my timing this late in my career
And where are the clowns?
There ought to be clowns
Well, maybe next year

Our president might be able to straighten things out the way he straightens out a lot of things—by renaming them.

Chris Clark and Kyle Cheney headlined their story on Politico, “Eric Schmitt pins down Jack Smith — as a Caitlin Clark fan” and went on: “Sen. Eric Schmitt thought he caught Jack Smith in a lie. Instead, he outed him as a fan of former Iowa Hawkeyes star Caitlin Clark.”

Perhaps we should lighten up on our junior senator a bit.  A long time ago I was in doing some research at the University of Iowa and during a lunch break I went past a t-shirt store that featured one kind of like this

Self deprecating humor can lower the temperature a bit.  I had a t-shirt that I bought in Columbia that read: “Missouri.  It’s not that bad.”  So far there has been no such humor from our junior senator, though.

Senator Schmitt isn’t the only prominent Missourian whose dreams of national importance went up in smoke in an instant because of an ill-timed word or an ill-timed action or something that wasn’t supposed to become public but did.  We’ve seen it happen several times on our political turf in Jefferson City.

However, as rocky as our political history is, we have not reached the level of my home state where I once saw a t-shirt such as this one.

About eighty percent of the license plates issued in this country are made by prison inmates. Missouri is one of the states that has that system. We understand our inmates could make license plates for other states, as some other states do. But we know of no public record indicating them do.

There are some states who get their plates made in Canada. So far, license plates have escaped Trump tariffs.

I think this is probably enough for a while about Senator Schmitt. Already, he’s old news.  And I imagine he hopes to stay that way for a while.

 

The Dirtbag

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The Eric Schmitt we saw a couple of days ago making a fool of himself in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing grilling former special counsel Jack Smith is not the Eric Schmitt I remember from my days covering the Missouri Senate.  That Eric Schmitt was intelligent, respectful of the rules and of other senators on both sides of the aisle and knew what he was talking about.

He was elected State Treasurer and when Attorney General Josh Hawley went to Washington, Schmitt was appointed to move across the street to replace him.  He caught whatever political virus Hawley left behind.  I’ve said before that he left the best part of himself in the Capitol.

He apparently now bathes in Trump Kool-Aid.  The day that a prominent Republican consulting firm tried to start a boomlet for him as J.D. Vance’s running mate in two years, Schmitt turned his inner attack dog loose and in a matter of minutes proved why we do not need to see him one breath away from the presidency, assuming fellow Kool-Air bather Vance is picked to head the ticket.

You’ve undoubtedly seen the video of his smug, misguided attack of Smith and his charge that Smith had gone to Atlanta to meet with Fulton County Prosecutor who had admitted she and one of her associates had been associating too closely, a relationship that eventually led to the dismissal of 13 co-conspiracy charges she had filed against Donald Trump.  He’d even gone to an Atlanta Hawks NBA game while he was there, said Schmitt.

Smith said he recalled going to a University of Maryland women’s basketball game to see Caitlin Clark and her Iowa Hawkeyes. And Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, whose staff rapidly learned there had, indeed, been a game in Maryland that night, quickly suggested that Schmitt didn’t know the difference between the Atlanta Hawks and the Iowa Hawkeyes.  It was one of the greatest political takedowns in memory, a “My Cousin Vinnie” moment for real.

Republicans on the committee wanted to get Smith to admit he had behaved unethically and illegally by meeting with Fani Willis on the day her affair was revealed.

When Schmitt found himself waist deep in it, he refused to back down. He slogged ahead and accused Smith of perjury and showed an incredible lack of maturity for a U. S. Senator by calling Smith “a total dirtbag.”

At the end day, Trumpist GOPers had failed to ruffle Smith enough to get him to make him admit what they wanted him to admit—that he had meddled in Willis’ affairs, more legal than personal, and had weaponized the Justice Department. And if anybody should know about weaponizing the Justice Department, it’s Republicans.

The Republican witch hunters spent the day beating up on Smith but in the end none of the hunters disputed his findings.  Their efforts to undermine his professionalism in securing indictments against the president were an embarrassing failure. It might be said they never laid a glove on him.

“The didn’t even talk about the report,” observed California Congressman Ted Lieu.  “They didn’t dispute that Donald Trump engaged in a conspiracy to try to get fake electors and fake documents to overturn this election.”  He called the stuff Republicans were saying, “idiotic.”

Did Schmitt, caught with his political pants entangling his ankles, apologize for his mistake.  Oh, no.  Later he told CNN he had not made a mistake. “Who knew Jack Smith was a Caitlin Clark fan?” he blithely deferred.

When another interviewer told him there was television footage showing Smith at the game in Maryland, he retorted, “Great. Well, then, he was at the Hawkeyes game.” But he wouldn’t admit he was wrong in the hearing.

On the “Charlie Kirk Show” later, host Andrew Kolvet praised Schmitt, who responded, “Here’s the thing — my job is to ask the questions. He’s already — and if that’s what his answer is — then that’s what his answer is….The purpose of today is just to get him to answer a bunch of questions.”

Bee  Ess.  His job, the committee’s job, was to get facts.

Smith had them and spoke them and he made our junior senator a fool. Schmitt claimed Smith perjured himself. He didn’t. His description of Smith as “a total dirtbag,” a startling act of discourtesy and juvenile behavior.  He shouldn’t stay up so late at night taking name-calling lessons from our president.

He’s going to be a star on Saturday Night Live this week.

Some might think the dirtbag was not the one at the witness table.

Columbia Missourian editorial cartoonist John Darkow—-the best of his kind in Missouri and among the best in the whole country jumped on Facebook with his commemoration of the great inquisition.

Don’t expect any apologies from Senator Eric Schmitt. There are plenty of sycophants who will pat him on the back for becoming the class clown at that hearing. It takes some doing to make Josh Hawley look like the grownup in our senatorial delegation.  But for that one day, Schmitt rose, or sank, to the occasion.

Even when Klobuchar proved  Schmitt didn’t know what he was talking about, he snarled, “I stand by that statement.”

We should all hope the rest of the people in our country don’t judge Missourians on the basis of our Senators. Really, we should assure them, we normally are intelligent beings.

I want to know who kidnapped the Eric Schmitt that I knew and replaced him with someone that I don’t recognize.

(Picture Credit—some clever person on the internet. It’s not the only one mocking Schmitt; Darkow on Facebook.)

Sunshine Patriots and Summer Soldiers

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There is only one way the average citizen can stand up to Donald Trump and his increasingly repressive acts:

Vote against any candidate who either supports his administration or who lacks the courage to speak against it.

We will lose some good Republican office holders in November not because they are incompetent but because they are silent.  As Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense in 1776:

Voters should evaluate their candidates with much greater thought and care this time, more than any time we have experienced. They and the state and the nation will be well-served by allowing their inner Independent to emerge and evaluate each candidate on both sides of the ballot with thought and concern.

We do not advocate wholesale rejection of the Republicans.  A Democrat might have less to offer to voters and should not be elected solely because that candidate has a D above their column. Likewise, individual Republicans should not be solely evaluated because of voter hostility toward the President. Think. Evaluate.

At the same time, this is no time to be a summer soldier and a sunshine patriot.  There must be a strong message from the citizens of this country that blind loyalty to Donald Trump carries a cost.

We have lived through the completely unnecessary election disaster that his demand for another Republican congressional district has caused with the Secretary of State turning himself into a pretzel trying to defend his actions and his party’s decisions supporting Trump’s wishes.

If I was a Republican candidate for the General Assembly, whether as a new person running for a House seat or a House member hoping move up to the Senate, I would look at the overwhelming rejection of two GOP amendments in August, the dropping survey figures for the President and for our Governor, the furor over congressional districts, and sense that approval of Republican proposals on the November ballot might not go well and I would carefully consider what kind of lawmaker I will promise to be—

—and then hope I get a chance to keep that promise, knowing that in just two years as a State Representative I will have a record no matter what I say I am for in this election.

This is a time for candidates on both sides of the aisle to honestly evaluate who they are. It is not enough for a Democrat to run on the concept that he or she is not a Republican.  It is not enough for a Republican to remain silent about current times and issues or to deny what they have done to contribute to them.

This is a time to start over for some, perhaps many, of our lawmakers to convincingly promise not to be who they have been and for others to be specific about what they want to do that will be better than what has been done.

It is not true that in politics a leopard cannot change his spots. Whether that leopard can be convincing in trying to do so is for voters to decide.

It is American to vote back and forth on the ballot.  We are living the danger of determining fitness of office only on the basis of an R or a D.  Do not be afraid to cross party lines. Your vote is secret. Only you will know. Voters must exercise their conscience when their party’s candidate will not exercise his.

Whether voters realize it or not, the future of our state is very much in their hands in November.

We voters should keep in mind the words of Lincoln in his address to a joint session of Congress in 1862:

“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.”  What was good  advice for Congress at the start of the Civil War is good advice for the electorate today. These are dangerous, historic, times and we must remember, as Lincoln also said 164 years ago, “We cannot escape history.”

For generations we have failed to recognize the value of what we have obtained too cheaply and esteemed too lightly.

A President who has no loyalty to this nation and its people but only to himself is an albatross around the necks of many candidates who have not or will not stand apart from him and in their silence sanction the evil that he is and that he does.

Our preachers tells us it is never to late to repent and it is never too late to respect the truly penitent. That’s a good point to think about in the voting booth.

History will measure us severely by the choices we make in November.

(Image credit: libquotes.com)

Snipers and Drones?

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Building a triumphal arch overlooking Arlington Cemetery is not enough of an abomination. Our President has not surprisingly found a way to make it worse.

Snipers???  It will house snipers????

Drones?????

Ammunition stockpiles???

What the Hell has prompted him to turn his arch celebrating military triumphs into a mini-fortress or, as he has put it, “a top grade Military Complex.”

He says it’s being done as a matter of national security (which is his excuse for a lot of stuff, isn’t it?) and after a “strong request” from the military.  Could we know who in the military made this strong request?

Will he have ICE snipers up there picking off suspected illegal immigrants as they cross the Arlington Memorial Bridge?  Will drones launched from his arch blend harmoniously into the routes of airliners on their final landing approach to Reagan International Airport?

We wonder when his demented mind will realize the arch would be a good checkpoint to make sure only American citizens of at least three generations are allowed in or out of Washington.  Additionally, officers could block anyone crossing the bridge into the city if there are signs in the back seat or trunk protesting his ongoing fevered dream of defiling the Kennedy Center by putting his name on it. That number might even be much larger these days than the number of dead legal or illegal immigrants.

If it also is to serve as Fortress Trump, perhaps it would be better located at Outpost Hegseth, the Pentagon, and where appropriately the new Hegseth Boulevard could pass through it.

The National Park Service, which one might suspect in normal times would object strongly to this idiocy, instead is equivocating.  It says the arch would affect several historic sites near Arlington National Cemetery including the cemetery’s historic district, the Washington and Lincoln monuments, the Jefferson Memorial the Capitol Mall, and others.

But NPS says it’s okay to go ahead with the arch as long as there are “mitigations,” such as an archaeological investigation before any digging is done. vibration monitoring near the bridge, and a plan so that funerals and wreath-laying ceremonies will not be disrupted—and some new interpretive web pages would help, including one that discusses “the history and significance of triumphal arches.”

We heard last week the digging had started. Forget any archaeological investigations.

There goes the idea of putting it at Outpost Hegseth.

The arch is to have three golden statutes on top of it. A big statue of Lady Liberty will be flanked by two gold eagles that are to represent national pride and strength.

At least the big statue is not of himself.

I really hope these entries are never read to him by anybody. I hate to think I would give him the idea.

The urge to suggest the eagles be replaced by Loons is something I am repressing.

Oops.

A Nation of Laws 

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The spotlight on our court system has been glaring in the last few weeks as the dispute about our congressional districts has intensified and, as we write this, might be in its final throes. Nationally we have a President and his supporters who have launched strong personal attacks against judges at all levels who disagree with their aims.

Our legal system requires attorneys to represent even the worst of us as well as the best and judges who must find justice from within the passionate arguments on behalf of each.

The annual meeting of the Missouri Bar and Judicial Conference held in Kansas City last week featured a luncheon address by Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice W. Brent Powell. We think his remarks alluding to our times and the judiciary that is immersed in the issues of our times are appropriate to pass along. They are being passed along in hopes we might better understand the role our court system must play, particularly in divisive and threatening times—and how we as those lay people might be better served if we lived by those principles, too.

Powell began by readministering the oath of admission attorneys take upon joining the Missouri Bar, allowing them to legally practice law. One of those in the audience with his right hand upraised was his father. We have done some very light editing for context.

Taking our solemn oath places us in a distinct position of honor and responsibility. Honor, because of the prestige our profession holds in our society – and responsibility, because as attorneys, we are entrusted to tend to the vast legal needs of our fellow citizens and community.

I find it especially fitting to reaffirm our oaths now, 250 years after our nation declared its independence from England. Lawyers played a vital role in that monumental event. Nearly half the colonists who signed the Declaration of Independence were lawyers; many lawyers were elected to serve in the Continental Congress; and lawyers were instrumental in drafting our constitution and shaping our nation’s government. For this reason, our profession is a living bridge, linking us to a time when our founders transformed revolutionary ideals of self-governance and democracy into a new government for a new nation. 

Our oath…carries forward the same promises our founding lawyers drafted into our Declaration of Independence and constitution. One of those lawyers was John Adams, who famously proclaimed our nation would be a “government of laws, not of men.” This simple proclamation defined who we are as a people: bound together – not by a monarch or politician – but by the laws enacted through our own self-government. We, as a people, agree to be governed and abide by this law because the law emanates from ourselves. This is our social contract enshrined in our federal and state constitutions, ensuring the rule of law – not autocrats or tyrants – govern our way of life. 

But we all must recognize what Adams and our legal predecessors understood: for our government to survive and thrive, the rule of law – this foundation on which we all coexist – must be guarded continuously and preserved purposefully. Recognizing the importance of this civic virtue, Benjamin Franklin famously remarked we have a republic, if we can keep it. This responsibility – the responsibility to preserve our republic – falls to us and all our brothers and sisters in our profession… 

One of the first and paramount obligations our oath places upon us is to support the constitution of the United States and the constitution of the state of Missouri. This dual allegiance protects the grand experiment of federalism and the balance of governmental power our founders envisioned. Together, those constitutions establish a system of governance balancing authority between federal and state sovereigns and among three branches of government. They also preserve for all citizens the right to self-governance and guarantee their individual rights. 

This balance of governmental authority rests on a precarious fulcrum. The power reserved for our citizens, and the rights guaranteed to them, can easily be overlooked and abused. The scales can also be tipped – improperly shifting power among government authorities. Our oath requires us to safeguard this delicate balance, ensuring neither the people’s rights nor the authority bestowed upon each of our three branches of government are trampled or ignored. This is our collective role in a constitutional republic built on checks and balances.

But today, we face threats – threats from those who seek to detract from the ideals of our republic and to undermine faith in our sacred institutions – including our legal profession and our courts. Unfortunately, some of these threats originate from within our own ranks. We must respond to these threats as our founders responded to the tyranny of an autocrat. It is incumbent on all of us as lawyers and judges to rise up and defend our constitutions and the rule of law. 

We must vigorously and emphatically advocate the values of our republic by educating our fellow citizens about how laws are passed, how courts work, how judges make decisions, and how we are bound by these laws and court decisions – even when we may legitimately disagree with them. We owe our allegiance to the constitution and the law, not to our personal or political preferences – even, and especially, when doing so conflicts with our own views and beliefs.

For this reason, the trust endowed in us is extraordinary. Individuals trust their doctors with their health and wellbeing. They trust their accountants and bankers with their money and financial security. And they trust architects and engineers with the soundness of the structures and products they design and build. But they trust lawyers and judges…with the systems and institutions to provide the just and fair society in which we all live. 

This trust is immense and carries with it an equally somber recognition – that we must continue to earn that trust every day, through every action we take and every word we speak, to prove to our fellow Missourians we lawyers can carry the weight of their trust.

How we prove we are worthy of this trust is demonstrated in the words of our oath. We promise to maintain the respect due to courts of justice, judicial officers and members of our profession. We promise to conduct ourselves with dignity. We promise never to mislead a judge or jury by any artifice of false statement of fact or law. And we promise to conduct ourselves in accordance with the rules of professional conduct.

Stated simply, our oath as lawyers instructs us to always act with the dignity and uprightness our profession demands. It applies not only inside conference rooms and courtrooms but in the community as well. Being a lawyer is not just a job; it must be who we are and what defines us as professionals. If we act dishonorably, we cannot expect anyone else to honor our legal institutions and the rule of law. If we act dishonestly, we cannot be surprised when others treat our laws and courtrooms with disrespect and disdain.

Never forget it was tyranny of a monarch an ocean away that led the colonists to declare our independence, but history is full of lessons of tyranny reemerging and thriving when citizens lose faith in justice and the rule of law. Citizens rely on us as lawyers and judges – as professionals sworn to uphold the law – to make justice happen every day in every community in our state. Every transaction and every trial conducted fairly and openly reinforces the foundation laid in 1776. In this way, our profession – and our professionalism – are critical to preserving public trust in government.

But professionalism does not require grandiose deeds or acts – and can be accomplished in quiet, effortless ways. We must seek to solve disputes, not create them. We must act with grace, honor, and a moral and just purpose. We cannot let zealous advocacy devolve into malice, acrimony, vitriol, meanness, or nastiness. And in a world in which it is increasingly difficult to tell fact from fiction, and hyperbole from downright lies, it is essential we – as lawyers bound by a common oath – never, ever forget we are bound to tell the truth. Your reputation as an individual lawyer – and the reputation of our entire profession – depends on never letting advocacy get in the way of truth.

I don’t need to tell you that we live in a divided nation and state. This is not a new phenomenon, but technology provides new ways to divide us. Spurred by misinformation, disinformation, and the echo-chamber traps our social media algorithms build, the discord and viciousness in our society has invaded our schools, our churches, and even our family living rooms and dinner tables, where divisiveness was ordinarily absent…

We don’t have to sacrifice our beliefs and values. But we must listen to one another … including those with whom we vehemently disagree. We must show empathy … especially when doing so is uncomfortable. And we must care for others … particularly those we may find distasteful or disdain. These are important lessons I learned from my dad. And it’s what our oath requires of us.

Another lesson I learned from my father is a shared commitment to service. Our oath commits all of us, as a profession, to serve others. Our oath requires us to practice law with consideration for the defenseless and oppressed. This ending to our oath is deeply rooted in our history, as both lawyers and as Americans. Our Declaration of Independence boldly proclaims all people are created equal. Throughout history, it has fallen on lawyers – and judges – to bridge the gap between this founding ideal and the realities in which we live. Because for too many, this promise remains unfulfilled.

The promises secured for us in the Declaration of Independence and our constitution are only as strong as our profession’s ability to deliver them. But today, some of those promises are beginning to collapse around us. Half of Americans think our legal system offers two systems of justice: one for those with money or connections, and one for everyone else. We struggle to provide quality legal services to people in every corner of our state at rates people can actually afford. More than three-quarters of our fellow citizens don’t know where to turn for legal help and they believe they must go to court, draft contracts, probate estates, or get divorced without a lawyer – because they can’t afford one.

With the rise of AI, we must be concerned about pricing ourselves out of our own profession. Everyone in this room understands the value of an attorney in shepherding clients through their legal issues, both inside and outside the courtroom. But a short hop online illustrates the folly of this belief. The internet offers any number of AI “solutions” to address legal needs. But the world-wide web is also full of cautionary tales of what happens when a lawyer or self-represented litigant relies too heavily on AI to “help” them with a case. An AI solution may look like help, it may sound like help, but the whole thing might just be a hallucination. And the types of legal issues people face in their everyday lives – contract disputes, family law issues, probate matters, and other civil disputes – are far too important to be left to hallucinations. People deserve human lawyers like you to assist them with their legal needs.

Make no mistake: AI is here to stay. Every year, every month, every day, and every second, AI continues to revolutionize how things are done, in ways we struggle to comprehend. But we cannot just stand idly by, because others will fill any gap we choose to ignore. Our rules of professional conduct require us to remain vigilant and do our homework – including learning about new technology that may scare us at times. 

We also need to do some soul-searching, as a profession. More than ever, the rise of technology requires us all to remember our oath to serve others for the benefit of those in need of affordable legal services. We owe it to our fellow Missourians to demonstrate our value; embrace technology tools appropriately to enhance the services we provide the public; and keep the crucial role of human lawyers intrinsically involved in providing legal services to those who need it…

Our duty is to our clients and the public at large, not our individual concerns. None of us should let personal success make us apathetic toward the needs of our fellow citizens. Instead, we should use our education and privilege to serve others. But giving of oneself – abiding by our oath as lawyers – is not easy. It means devoting our lives to others, overcoming our inherent desire to improve our own condition. I confess, I struggle with this. It’s hard to live up to such a high standard, and far easier to find comfort in serving my own needs and desires. 

Fortunately, I have been so very blessed to see my father modeling what being a lawyer is truly all about – diligent, ethical, and honorable service … to his clients, to his profession, and to his community. Throughout his decades of practice, he was a strong advocate, but he also knew how to disagree without being disagreeable, and how to build bridges through compassion and kindness rather than sowing seeds of dissention. In a nutshell, he fulfilled our solemn oath every single day. Let’s all strive to be a lawyer like my father.

If I can ask one thing of all of you – just one thing – endeavor every single day to fulfill the oath you reaffirmed this afternoon. By fulfilling our solemn oath, we can build upon the blueprint of the Declaration of Independence and our constitutions, ensuring the rule of law and our way of life endure for the next 250 years. If we do this one thing, then I have faith and hope the stability of our republic and civil society will be sustained. And you, I, and those who come after us will all be better off because of it.

We appreciate Chief Justice Powell’s remarks, not just in reference to what lawyers and judges should be and should do, but in the kind of citizens all of us should strive to be.

(Photo credit: The Missouri Bar and Google Images)