Posted on December 5, 2023 by
Dick .
'Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That's my worldview.'"
Speaker Mike Johnson
Newly-minted Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has made it clear his actions are driven by his faith and looks to the Gospels to form policy positions. Echoing evangelical and Christian Nationalists ideologies, he …
Posted on August 15, 2023 by
Dick .
“Public confidence in the integrity of the Government is indispensable to faith in democracy; and when we lose faith in the system, we have lost faith in everything we fight and spend for.”
Adlai Stevenson
America’s 244-year experiment in representative democracy and the freedoms it has bestowed on its citizens has endured …
Posted on July 29, 2023 by
Dick .
“I hate prejudice, discrimination, and snobbishness of any kind – it always reflects on the person judging and not the person being judged. Everyone should be treated equally.”
Gordon Brown
For nearly a century, successive Administrations championed the expansion of the rights of disenfranchised Americans, whether based on gender, race, nationality, religion, …
Posted on July 27, 2022 by
Dick .
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;”
First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
Certain recent Supreme Court decisions have embraced high-priority political objectives of conservative, primarily Christian Right, activists; justifying their opinions on “originalism” and questionable interpretations of the First Amendment.
These range from …
Posted on June 27, 2022 by
Dick .
Be Careful What You Wish For
“Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.”
Margaret J. Wheatley
Last week, to the dismay of Democrats, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending a women constitutional right for an abortion. The Court’s …
Posted on May 24, 2022 by
Dick .
“Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.”
Justice Antonin Scalia – District of Columbia v. Heller (2008)
Only 21 weeks in to the year and the United States has witnessed 213 mass shootings, a staggering average of 10 per week … with 27 having taken place …
Posted on May 11, 2022 by
Dick .
“Liberty is the power to do everything that does not interfere with the rights of others: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of every individual has no limits save those that assure to other members of society the enjoyment of the same rights.”
Thomas Paine
If the recently released draft opinion …
Posted on February 27, 2022 by
Dick .
“To promote the general Welfare”
Preamble to the U.S. Constitution
In the wake of the recent Canadian trucker’s demonstrations in Ottawa, the conservative-leaning Great American Patriot Project has urged and recruited American truckers to participate in a “Freedom Convoy”, a copycat cross-county caravan to protest “the unscientific, unconstitutional government overreach in regards …
Posted on July 20, 2021 by
Dick .
“Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves.”
D. H. Lawrence
An imperative to the health and survivability of a democracy are both open, free and fair elections and public faith …
Posted on October 30, 2020 by
Dick .
“When people fear their government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty”
Thomas Jefferson
With just days before the 2020 election, the U.S. Supreme Court has twice within a week decided not to decide whether the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s ruling to require ballots postmarked on or before …
Posted on October 5, 2020 by
Dick .
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ….”
First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
Justices Thomas and Alito recently demonstrated ideology holds sway over their alleged “strict constructionist” view of the U.S. Constitution when they lambasted the religious liberty implications of the Court’s …
Posted on July 22, 2020 by
Dick .
“Respect for the law and protection of the integrity of the democratic process warrant the exclusion of illegal aliens from the apportionment base”
Donald Trump (July 21, 2020)
After being rebuked by the Supreme Court when he tried to have the 2020 census exclude undocumented aliens, President Trump has predictably sought new …
Posted on May 18, 2020 by
Dick .
“A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.”
Thomas Paine
During recent trips to a Honeywell plant in Arizona and an Owens & Minor warehouse in Pennsylvania both supplying Personal Protective Equipment, President Trump stood out by not using a face mask; showing disrespect …
Posted on September 19, 2018 by
Dick .
“It’s not the FBI’s role to investigate Ford’s claims”.
President Donald J. Trump
Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans seem committed to send Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court to the full Senate next week despite recent allegations he may have committed a prior sexual assault; and while thousands of pages of his …
Posted on December 12, 2016 by
Dick .
“Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.”
James Bovard (1994)
By the 2010 census, our nation’s population had grown to 308,745,538. Buried in that figure are changes in the populations of the fifty states. The Constitution mandates Congressional seats be apportioned …
Posted on February 24, 2016 by
Dick .
“Be careful what you wish for …”
Adage – author unknown
Supreme Court appointments can be a president’s most important and enduring legacy. While rarely registering on lists of voter concerns, the untimely passing of Justice Scalia has made such appointments toxic political fodder for presidential wannabees!
Under the Constitution, a president’s term …
Posted on January 16, 2016 by
Dick .
” the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better.”
President Obama (January 2016)
While President Obama lamented on the increasing polarization during his Administration, he needs only to look in the mirror. His demonizing those who disagree with him, unwillingness to compromise other than on his terms …
Posted on July 4, 2002 by
Dick .
“The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
Justice Louis Brandeis (1928)
The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be …