Nashville shooting prayer for action

"Chaplain Barry C Black said: ‘Lord, deliver our senators from the paralysis of analysis that waits for the miraculous'."

Chaplain Barry C Black, USN-Rear Admiral, Ret., was referring to the shooting at the Covenant Christian School in Nashville, Tennessee, on Monday, in which three nine-year-olds and three adults were killed. The shooter was killed by police.

Roll Call Congress: Thoughts and prayers not enough, Senate chaplain says after Nashville shooting. Chaplain Black urges lawmakers to 'try some different things'. 

Echo report published in Congress: Roll Call by Justin Papp:

YouTube recording here

"When babies die at a church school, it is time for us to move beyond thoughts and prayers. Remind our lawmakers of the words of the British statesman Edmund Burke: 'All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing'."

Senate Chaplain Barry C. Black has rarely espoused personal views during the nearly 20 years he has delivered the opening prayer, but on Tuesday his message was this: "When babies die at a church school, it is time for us to move beyond thoughts and prayers.”

Black told those hearing the prayer to remind lawmakers of the saying, "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing," a day after a shooter armed with two assault weapons and a pistol opened fire on the Covenant Christian School, in Nashville, TN, killing three elementary school children and three school employees.

The message was one of only a handful of times that Black, 74, the first African American and first Seventh-Day Adventist to hold the post, has spoken pointedly about issues from the Senate floor.

Black’s words are unusual, though not unprecedented, according to Howard Mortman, whose 2020, book, "When Rabbis Bless Congress: The Great American Story of Jewish Prayers on Capitol Hill,” delves into the history of the opening prayer in each chamber.

The Senate chaplain position was created in 1789, and is meant to be “nonpartisan, nonpolitical and nonsectarian,” according to the Senate website. Current events will, at times, seep into the prayer, Mortman said. But it’s uncommon for an issue to command an entire prayer, as the Nashville shooting did Tuesday. 

(Maine Writer:  Thank you Chaplain Black! Full Stop. Amen!)

“The chaplains are there to pray and not to vote. They don’t lobby; it’s not their role. They don’t give speeches. Their role is to be spiritual and aspirational in their messaging,” Mortman said. “It struck me as an observer of these prayers that this was an outlier. It was a strongly worded and pointed message.”

Chaplain Black, in an interview with Roll Call, didn’t disagree, though he cited a string of animated prayers he delivered during the 2013 government shutdown as evidence of his past forays into more targeted messaging.

“Save us from the madness,” the chaplain began one of his prayers at the time. “We acknowledge our transgressions, our shortcomings, our smugness, our selfishness and our pride. Deliver us from the hypocrisy of attempting to sound reasonable while being unreasonable.”

In addition, Black participated in the Hoodies on the Hill rally in 2012, in protest of the killing of Trayvon Martin.

At the opening of the second impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, in 2020, Black issued a political message of sorts, urging a kind of unity ahead of the attempt to remove Trump from office.

“As our lawmakers have become jurors, remind them of your admonition in 1 Corinthians 10:31 — that whatever they do should be done for your glory. Help them remember that patriots reside on both sides of the aisle, that words have consequences and that how something is said can be as important as what is said. Give them a civility built upon integrity that brings consistency in their beliefs and actions,” Black said at the time.

Rabbi Arnold E. Resnicoff, who has been a guest chaplain 19 times, said there are rules governing what chaplains can say in their prayers. Namely, prayers are not meant to be political statements.

“But I interpret that to mean prayers should not be partisan, taking one side or the other in a political debate, especially one side or the other in terms of a bill or resolution before the members,” said Resnicoff, who worked alongside Black when they were junior Navy chaplains and worked on his staff when Black became rear admiral and then Navy chief of chaplains.

Black seems to hew closely to those rules. He told The New York Times in 2013, that he was “liberal on some [beliefs] and conservative on others.”

Pressed on what kind of action he was urging, Black responded with an analogy.

“I see, to use the language of chess, a lot of stalemates, when it comes to attempting to do something constructive about mass shootings,” Black said. “And we’re moved each time — I believe sincere people are moved — and we give our thoughts and our prayers. But … you reach a point where you’re basically saying, when are we really going to step up our game?”

That question seems poised to continue going unanswered, with the response to the shooting split along predictably partisan lines.

Republicans, like Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, have zeroed in on the shooter’s identity as a trans woman. He and Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., sought on Twitter to link the attack to a “Trans Day of Vengeance,” planned by an activist group called the Trans Radical Activist Network for this week outside the Supreme Court.

During a floor speech Tuesday, Hawley announced plans to introduce a resolution designating the shooting a hate crime and called on the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to investigate it as such.

Many Democrats, including Sen. Christopher S. Murphy of Connecticut — who shepherded a 2022, bill that expanded background checks for certain gun buyers and tightened red flag laws, among other things — used the shooting to push again for an assault weapons ban.

“The upside of assault weapons is just not worth the carnage,” Murphy tweeted Monday, claiming that mass shootings dropped significantly during a 10-year federal assault weapons ban that expired in 2004.

But, Chaplain Black didn’t comment on the merits of either approach. But the impasse is no longer acceptable, he said.

“I'm thinking about experimenting until you find something that you can document, empirically, as working,” he said. “It took Edison more than 2,000 attempts to find the filament for the incandescent light bulb. We need to try some different things.”

Donald Trump has been involved in a litany of crimes and FINALLY an indictment

Opinion echo published in The Boston Globe by Erwin Chemerinsky:

The indictment of a former president of the United States is unprecedented. But Donald Trump is unprecedented. There is much to be worried about in setting a precedent for the criminal prosecution of a former president. But it would be much worse to conclude that anyone, including the president, is above the law.

The indictment by a New York grand jury follows many years of investigation. In fact, the matter went to the US Supreme Court in 2020, which emphatically ruled that a president has no immunity from a state grand jury investigation.

The indictment accuses Trump of violating New York state laws in connection with a 2016 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels in exchange for her staying silent about her affair with Trump. Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen has stated that he paid Daniels $130,000 at Trump’s direction. Cohen has said that he was reimbursed the money during Trump’s first year in office, with Trump signing checks in between official government business.
The indictment accuses Trump of overseeing the false recording of the reimbursements in his company’s internal records. The records falsely stated that the payments to Cohen were for “legal expenses.” The indictment alleges that this also violated New York’s campaign finance laws.

That means that the grand jury concluded that there is sufficient evidence that Trump committed a crime and should stand trial for it. Of course, he could choose to plead guilty instead. But otherwise, he will be tried and a jury will decide whether he broke the law.

No former president has ever been indicted. There is reason for concern that this opens the door and will inspire Republicans to look for a way to indict President Biden and future Democratic presidents after they leave office. Other countries have seen exactly this pattern, where new officeholders criminally prosecute their predecessors.

Already, Republican leaders have decried this indictment as political. House majority leader Kevin McCarthy sent a tweet describing this as “an outrageous abuse of power by a radical DA who lets violent criminals walk as he pursues political vengeance against President Trump.” Representative Elise Stefanik of New York said that Democrats have reached “a dangerous new low. Knowing they cannot beat President Trump at the ballot box, the Radical Left will now follow the lead of Socialist dictators and reportedly arrest President Trump.”

But despite these attacks and the worry of what precedent this might set, New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg did exactly the right thing in pursuing the indictment of Trump. The core of the rule of law is that no person is above the law. If Trump committed a crime, he should be indicted and prosecuted for it. The alternative, which is far more frightening, is to say that once a person has been elected president there is a lifetime “get out of jail free” card that provides full immunity from all criminal charges.

There are only two relevant questions in evaluating the Trump indictment: Did the grand jury have sufficient reason to believe that Trump authorized the payment of $130,000 to Daniels in exchange for her remaining silent about their sexual relationship, as she and Cohen allege? And if so, is there sufficient reason to believe that this violates New York law, including in the fraudulent way it was recorded and not reported under campaign finance laws? If the answer to both questions is yes, and from all that is known it appears so, then the district attorney and the grand jury were completely justified in the indictment.

Some may feel that this is too minor a crime to warrant prosecution. Certainly compared to other Trump offenses, including inciting the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, and grossly mishandling classified documents, this seems less significant. But more trivial crimes than this are prosecuted every day without outrage. The first case I argued in the Supreme Court involved a man who was sentenced to 50 years to life for stealing $153 worth of videotapes.

I disagree with those who dismiss as minor Trump’s alleged crime in paying off Daniels and fraudulently concealing it. Trump was using his corporation’s wealth to keep the American people from learning unseemly information about him in the context of a close presidential election. His disregard of the law should be held accountable.

Indeed, what makes Trump different from other presidents is his disregard of the law in so many ways. He is under criminal investigation for other matters and may be indicted for them. Thus, indicting Trump is essential to send a message to all: No one, not even a former president, is above the law.

Erwin Chemerinsky is a professor of law and dean of the Berkeley School of Law at the University of California.

Republicans worship guns over the lives of innocents including children and Christians

Vote all Republican gun idolatry worshippers out of Congress!

"Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, dismissed President Biden’s calls for an assault weapons ban as 'tired talking points'.”

Nashville citizens shrine mourns the massacre of three innocent children and three adults in the Covenant Christian School mass shooting.  But Senator Cornyn says nothing can be done? #IDTS

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Shooting Prompts a Shrug in Washington, as G.O.P. rejects pleas to act.  President Biden said he had reached the limit of his powers to act alone on gun violence, and needed Congress to respond. Republicans said they had already done all they were willing to do.

Reported in The New York Times another massacre where children were slaughtered in their Nashville classrooms by Anni Karni.  

WASHINGTON, DC — The mass shooting at a Christian Covenant elementary school in Nashville this week generated a broad shrugging of the shoulders in Washington, from President Biden to Republicans in Congress, who seemed to agree on little other than that there was nothing left for them to do to counter the continuing death toll of gun violence across the country.

But while President Biden’s stark admission on Tuesday that he could do no more on his own to tackle the issue was a statement of fact that aimed to put the burden on Congress to send him legislation, like the ban on assault weapons he has repeatedly championed, Republicans’ expressions of helplessness reflected an unwillingness, rather than an inability, to act.

Their answer to Mr. Biden’s plea was as blunt as it was swift, as lawmaker after Republican lawmaker made it clear that they had no intention of considering any additional gun safety measures.

“We’re not going to fix it,” Representative Tim Burchett, Republican of Tennessee, told reporters on the steps of the Capitol just hours after the shooting that massacred three children and three adults in his home state. “Criminals are going to be criminals.”

Shrine for Nashville Tennessee victims of a mass shooting massacre at the Covenant Christian School.

(In other words- "evil is as evil does". I don't think Scripture has  supported such apologist and enabling nonaction!)

The right wing extremist Burchett said he saw no “real role” for Congress to play in reducing gun violence, and volunteered that his solution to the issue of protecting his family was to home-school his children.

Likewise, Senator Mike Rounds, Republican of South Dakota, said Congress had done enough.

“When we start talking about bans or challenging the Second Amendment, the things that have already been done have gone about as far as we’re going with gun control,” Mr. Rounds told CNN.

Last year, Congress passed a narrow, bipartisan compromise that enhanced background checks to give authorities time to examine the juvenile and mental health records of any prospective gun buyer under the age of 21, and a provision that for the first time extended a prohibition on domestic abusers having guns to dating partners.

The bill was the first major gun control legislation that Congress had passed in decades, but it addressed only a small set of issues designed to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people.

At the time, Republicans like Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, noted that supporting the measure was necessary to win back suburban voters, who broadly support some changes to the nation’s gun laws. But even then, proponents conceded that the bill did not signify a political shift on gun restrictions; rather, it was a measure that went precisely as far as Republicans were willing to go in strengthening gun laws, and one pushed through only by a fleeting political coalition that would soon dissipate.

Several of those Republican supporters have since retired, and the House is now in the hands of G.O.P. leaders who have no intention of allowing gun safety legislation to reach the floor.

“Gun violence is uniquely an American problem because of lawmakers who refuse to act proactively to prevent it,” said Christian Heyne, the vice president for policy at the Brady: United Against Gun Violence organization, who noted that House Republicans this week had originally scheduled a committee vote to weaken the government’s authority to keep short-barreled rifles off the streets. “Our lawmakers should be working to strengthen our gun laws, not weaken them,” he said.

But even the Republicans who championed the law enacted last summer showed no desire to take any further action.
Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, who served as the lead Republican negotiator on that bill, dismissed Mr. Biden’s calls for banning assault weapons as a set of “tired talking points.”

What common sense gun reform looks like.

“I want to see the bill we just passed get implemented,” he said. One of the provisions of that bill provided funding for states to enact so-called red-flag laws that allow authorities to temporarily confiscate guns from people deemed to be dangerous. But Tennessee does not have a red flag law, and would not benefit from federal funds to implement a law that Republican state lawmakers are not willing to consider.

Donald Trump is irresponsible in his Waco display as the Hitler reenactor

Trump is stoking the fires of Waco (Editorial)

Echo opinion published in the Houston (Texas!) Chronicle:

(Just my opinion but the word "waco" and the name of the place in Texas, seems to be synonymous.)

Branch Dividian cult flag in Waco Texas

On a sultry Sunday afternoon in August, 1980, the Republican nominee for president of the United States chose the Neshoba County Fair outside the little town of Philadelphia, Miss., for his first major campaign speech. 

Ronald Reagan — “appearing in an open-necked shirt and red clay-stained shoes,” a local reporter noted — assured a mostly white crowd that day that he was a firm believer in “states’ rights,” an oft-used code in the South in those days for racial segregation and discrimination.

Reagan happened not to mention that seven miles from where he was speaking, three young civil rights workers had been kidnapped and murdered 16 years earlier by a Ku Klux Klan gang that included the county sheriff. Debated to this day is the question of whether the candidate’s paean to states’ rights, combined with his failure to mention the martyred trio, represents an early example of what has come to be called dog-whistle politics — in other words, conveying a subtle message for those with ears to hear, while maintaining plausible deniability.

Waco version of the Ku Klux Klan- terrorist white men without the hoods.

Some historians suggest that a campaign scheduler made a mistake by sending the candidate to Philadelphia, and Reagan was reluctant to disappoint his Mississippi audience by backing out. 

Others maintain that the former two-term governor of California, a first-time presidential nominee but an experienced politician, was pursuing his own “southern strategy” by showing up in a place associated with all-out resistance to civil rights.

When Donald Trump went into Waco (Texas) on Saturday (March 25) evening for the first major campaign event of his 2024, reelection quest, dog ears were not the only ones twitching. Trump doesn’t do subtle; dog-whistle messages are not his style. The more apt metaphor is the blaring air horn of a Mack 18-wheeler barreling down Interstate I-10.

The former guy once upon a time president arrived in Waco during the 30th anniversary of the disastrous cult Branch Davidian debacle, a two-month-long siege by the ATF, the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies culminating in a fire storm that killed 74 people, including 21 children. What happened at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco on April 19, 1993, was the deadliest day in FBI history. (Additionally, four ATF agents and six Branch Davidians lost their lives on the first day of the 51-day siege.)

The GOP-friendly city of Waco — Trump won McLennan County by more than 20 percentage points in 2020 – has every right, of course, to host a former president, the leading contender for the 2024, Republican presidential nomination, but “Waco,” the symbol, like “Philadelphia, Miss.,” the symbol, means something else entirely. “Waco” has become an Alamo of sorts, a shrine for the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, the Oath Keepers and other anti-government extremists and conspiracists.

What happened near Waco helped spawn what Fort Worth writer Jeff Guinn calls a “legacy of rage” in his new book about the Branch Davidian siege. The Northeast Texas Regional Militia of Texarkana erected a granite headstone at the site that reads as follows: "On February 28, 1993, a church and its members known as Branch Davidians came under attack by A.T.F. and F.B.I. agents. For 51 days the Davidians and their leader, David Koresh, stood as a cult, proudly." As Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh put it, “Waco started this war.”

The former guy Trump led a song of sedition in Waco Texas on March 27, 2023. A despicable display to instigate anti-democracy.

Trump is an Adolf Hitler reenactor.

Thirty years later, the anti-government paramilitary groups feeding off lies about the “deep state” and a stolen election periodically visit the modest, little chapel on the site of the sprawling, ramshackle building that burned to the ground. Although the Branch Davidians had nothing to do with anti-government conspiracists, chapel construction was funded by loud-mouthed conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

Militia members and conspiracists know exactly what Trump’s Waco visit symbolizes. They have heard him castigate the FBI and the “deep state,” particularly after agents searched for classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. How they’ll respond to his remarks, particularly if he shows up as the first former president in American history to face criminal charges, has law enforcement in Waco and beyond taking every precaution. What he says will likely set the tone for the presidential campaign to come. Every American should be concerned.

The Trump campaign insists that the candidate’s visit during the Branch Davidian anniversary is purely coincidental. A spokesman said the campaign was looking for a site away from the big cities but close enough to Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, Houston and San Antonio to draw a crowd. The Waco Regional Airport and an expected crowd of 10,000 or so fit the bill. Of course, Temple or Belton or Killeen (home to Fort Hood) would have fit the bill, as well — without the weight of symbolism.

Trump alerted his followers that the feds were coming to get him with an all-caps alert last Saturday morning on Truth Social, his social-media site: “THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK. PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!”

His call to arms echoed his “Be there, will be wild,” exhortation a few weeks before January 6, as well as his “fight like hell” screed on the Ellipse, shortly before several thousand insurrectionists took him at his word, marched up Pennsylvania Ave. and sacked the Capitol.

The Proud Boys and other anti-government extremists with a propensity for violence took him seriously on that ignominious day. They might do the same in Waco.

Although Trump's predicted arrest did not take place, he appears to be close to facing criminal charges in Manhattan, where District Attorney Alvin Bragg may bring charges involving an allegation that the former president attempted to hide a hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels, an adult-film actress with whom he allegedly had a sexual encounter. The $130,000 payment would be in violation of federal election laws. Trump denies the encounter.

Whatever Bragg decides about bringing charges will be controversial. Legal experts and political observers with no ties or allegiance to Trump have questioned whether the Daniels imbroglio, one of multiple investigations involving the former president, is worthy of indictment.

“The problems are manifold,” Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post wrote in a recent column. “New York state law makes it a crime to falsify business records — for example, listing hush-money payments as a retainer — but that is only a misdemeanor. It could rise to the level of a felony charge if prosecutors could show that Trump ordered falsification of records to conceal another crime. But would ‘another crime’ need to be a federal offense, or would a state offense be sufficient?”

While the merits of the Daniels case are debatable, there should be no controversy about castigating an American presidential candidate encouraging extremists among us. In a deeply divided nation, a nation under stress, incitement should be cause for exile from public life.

Go to Waco, we suggest. Go to Waco to take in Baylor football and basketball, and the Armstrong-Browning Library on the Baylor campus. Marvel at a fossil herd of Ice Age mammoths and enjoy a forested municipal park along the banks of the Brazos and Bosque rivers, sample Chip and Joanna Gaines’s ever-expanding Fixer Upper empire. Don’t bother with a bombastic, bullying candidate inclined to incitement and bent on “retribution.” His appearance is ample reason to stay home.

Jim Jordan thinks with his ass

Echo opinion published in The Washington Post by Jennifer Rubin: 

Political commentator who writes opinion columns for The Washington Post.

"Following DeSantis’s lead, Georgia lawmakers proposed a law that would allow a body they largely control to fire locally elected prosecutors."

MAGA Republicans, devoid of policy solutions and addicted to performance politics, act as if their House majority invests them with the power to rove the landscape to spot MAGA victims, skewer their enemies and defend their political allies. That’s not their job! 

Moreover, as we are seeing with their attempt to intimidate Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in his investigation of defeated former president Donald Trump, it’s a gross abuse of congressional power.

For starters, Congress has no business meddling with any ongoing investigation at any level. In response to an outrageous letter from House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) demanding Bragg testify about a case under consideration by a New York grand jury concerning New York law, Bragg’s office wrote, “Consistent with these constitutional obligations, the DA’s Office is cognizant of the Justice Department’s consistence policy ‘of not providing Congress with non-public information about investigations.’ ”

Jim Jordan desecration: "First, they came for your guns. Then, your gas stoves. Then, your gas cars. What’s next?" Stephen King: "You!"

Bragg’s office made the constitutional case succinctly:

Congress is not the appropriate branch to review pending criminal matters. As the Supreme Court noted in Watkins, “Congress [is not] a law enforcement or trial agency. These are functions of the executive and judicial departments of government.” 354 U.S. at 187. “[T]he power [of Congress] to investigate must not be confused with any of the powers of law enforcement; those powers are assigned under our Constitution to the Executive and the Judiciary.” Quinn v. United States, 349 U.S. 155, 161 (1955).

Congress is not a supercharged prosecutorial supervisor. In our system of separation of powers, the duty to investigate and prosecute rests with the executive branch, either at the state or federal level. Attempts to politicize prosecutions and turn prosecutors into lackeys of right-wing legislatures is a dangerous trend that strikes at the heart of the impartial administration of justice and the rule of law.

But it’s not only Congress that is seeking to abuse prosecutorial independence.

In Florida, for example, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) removed Hillsborough County prosecutor Andrew Warren for, among other reasons, decrying abortion restrictions and bans on gender-affirming care. (Warren won on the merits but was denied reinstatement in federal court on 11th Amendment grounds; he has appealed to the Florida state Supreme Court and to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.)

Following DeSantis’s lead, Georgia lawmakers proposed a law that would allow a body they largely control to fire locally elected prosecutors. As the Center for Constitutional Litigation’s Robert Peck wrote in a Bloomberg Law post, “The new law would render blanket statements about a prosecutor’s unwillingness to prosecute certain crimes to be a form of misconduct. A primary concern of the bill’s proponents is opposition to criminal prosecutions under Georgia’s so-called fetal heartbeat law that restricts abortions to approximately six weeks.” Again, this attempted legislative infringement on the executive branch violates the separation of powers and tramples on the right of voters to select district attorneys who adopt the priorities they think are important.

Just as Georgia prosecutors and Florida prosecutors have every right to prioritize cases the voters want prosecuted (e.g., violent crime), Bragg and the people who elected him can choose to pursue public corruption and other white-collar crime free from interference from lawmakers.

Jordan’s attempted power grab not only violates the separation of legislative and executive power, but also runs roughshod over the 10th Amendment, which Republicans invoke at the drop of the hat to shield states from federal regulation and interferences. Jordan’s letter is a blatant violation of New York sovereignty (and the interests of Manhattan voters who elected Bragg).

The reply from Bragg’s office to Jordan’s letter aptly made this point. “The Letter’s requests are an unlawful incursion into New York’s sovereignty. Congress’s investigative jurisdiction is derived from and limited by its power to legislate concerning federal matters. … The Constitution limits Congress’s powers to those specifically enumerated; and the Tenth Amendment ensures that any unenumerated powers are reserved to the States.” Moreover, Bragg’s office argued, “To preserve the Constitution’s federalist principles, the District Attorney is duty bound by his constitutional oath to New York’s sovereign interest in the exercise of police powers reserved to the States under the Tenth Amendment.”

If Bragg oversteps his authority, New York courts and juries will protect the interest of defendants, be they the former president or not. And if his priorities don’t address the concerns of the voters who sent him there, they can vote him out.

Would there ever be a time to bring a local prosecutor into testify under oath to Congress? Certainly, but not on a pending matter and not on an issue of state law.

Congress first would need a valid legislative purpose. 

In Trump v. Mazars USA, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling that Congress had a “valid legislative purpose” in demanding tax documents from Trump’s accountants:

Congress has no enumerated constitutional power to conduct investigations or issue subpoenas, but we have held that each House has power “to secure needed information” in order to legislate. … Most importantly, a congressional subpoena is valid only if it is “related to, and in furtherance of, a legitimate task of the Congress.” … Furthermore, Congress may not issue a subpoena for the purpose of “law enforcement,” because “those powers are assigned under our Constitution to the Executive and the Judiciary.”

Valid legislative purposes for a hearing at which local prosecutors might testify could include, for example, amendment of federal voting rights laws (e.g., testifying about threats to voters and poll workers), police reform (e.g., testifying about police abuse in their jurisdiction) and revision of drug laws or funding of anti-addiction programs (e.g., testifying to the strain on courts posed by nonviolent drug abusers). In other words, local prosecutors can assist Congress as fact finders and experts in policy matters over which Congress has jurisdiction.

If a local prosecutor arrests President Biden after leaving office for spurious reasons? If a U.S. attorney indicts Hunter Biden without probable cause? Congress would have no authority to investigate, haul the prosecutors into a hearing room and demand answers. Those matters would get resolved by other branches and levels of government.

It doesn’t matter if Jordan and his cohorts actually believe Bragg is abusing his office. It doesn’t matter if Bragg actually were using poor judgment in exercise of his prosecutorial discretion. It is not Congress’s job to “fix” these things. Congress is confined to its limited constitutional role. 

That, too, is what we call the “rule of law.”

P.S. on Twitter:  Jon Stewart totally rejects the notion Trump shouldn't be indicted because doing so would make him a 'martyr': We either have the rule of law' or we don't. https://

History of vaccines prepares to respond to the inevitable next pandemic

Cutting-Edge science makes live saving vaccines. 

But will everyone benefit?

An opinion echo published in The New York Times by Barney Graham. Dr. Graham helped develop the COVID-19 vaccines while at the National Institutes of Health.

As a physician-scientist who spent nearly 40 years studying viruses and immunity, I can speak to the scientific advances that made rapid COVID-19 vaccine development possible. 

Barney Graham MD

Senior Advisor for Global Health, Equity, Clinical Trials, Physician, Immunologist and Virologist. 

In fact, I oversaw the work at the National Institutes of Health’s Vaccine Research Center that provided the basis for designing and evaluating the initial COVID-19 vaccines and antibodies.

If anything about the pandemic is remembered as positive, it will be how science ‌was applied to rapidly produce medical countermeasures‌. ‌

But despite the scientific successes, I have doubts about our ability to deal with the next pandemic threat as readily as we dealt with COVID-19 — even if it is a better-known virus like influenza. Case in point, we had a monkey pox vaccine and antiviral drug before that recent outbreak, but by the time they were deployed, thousands of people were infected.

We entered a new era of ‌‌vaccine science, but can we ‌apply our extraordinary technical capabilities toward the goal of improving public health?

As a researcher, my time encompassed both the long history of vaccine research and the race to develop a vaccine for COVID-19. Some people expressed concern that the COVID-19 vaccine development process was too fast, but the story can be told as either a one-year sprint or a 40‌-year story of scientific advances.

The scientific process is, after all, incremental, and new advances build on many prior discoveries. Ultimately, the process is intended to achieve a better approximation of the truth. In biology, I think of it as looking through a dark glass and peeling back layer after layer, gradually revealing the underlying reality. In that sense, science is a faith exercise because it is searching for evidence of things unseen. Scientists imagine what could be true and then invent approaches to show whether what we envisioned is right.

Over the past 15 years, technologies have emerged that have taken us through several more of these layers of understanding in biology, vaccines and immunity. The precision with which we can see structures of proteins — the building blocks that allow cells and viruses to function — and measure immune responses is stunning.

The time from when the SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences were available to when the first vaccines were authorized and injected into humans was about 11 months. Typically, vaccine development is measured in decades.

Forty years of research ‌‌into how to make an H.I.V. vaccine ‌‌helped make rapid COVID-19 vaccine development feasible. These tools and others led to breakthroughs ‌that directly informed COVID-19 vaccine development in 2020.

‌Still, I am concerned that our social order and national and global governance systems are not keeping pace. Having next-generation vaccine technology without adequate systems for implementation and distribution to all people is a waste.

We can be much more prepared to predict or potentially avoid future pandemics, but we must be more intentional. This includes building better systems for local and global pandemic response coordination and making long-term investment in basic research to generate the information ‌needed to develop ‌‌vaccines, antivirals and diagnostics. There should be a much more comprehensive global surveillance program in areas with high biodiversity to identify emerging threats earlier.

And ‌‌leaders of high-income countries ‌‌must understand that it’s in their best interest to facilitate and build the capacity for vaccine research and manufacturing in low- and middle-income countries. There is an opportunity, with the advent of mRNA, to establish the capability for local ‌‌scientists to find solutions for regional diseases before they become global threats‌‌. This would also provide much-needed surge capacity during public health emergencies of international concern. ‌

The capacity to immunize everyone around the world in six months during a pandemic is an extraordinary challenge. Failure to do so in the COVID pandemic is part of the reason we suffered through successive waves of new variants. This will require cooperative effort on the part of governments, philanthropists, academic institutions, nonprofit organizations and privately held companies.

After more than two decades of service, I retired from the federal government in 2021. While my career was focused on the biology of viruses and immunity, the pandemic revealed disabling problems related to vaccine access and trust.

Therefore, I decided to join the faculty at Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta to be a senior adviser for global health equity.

Morehouse School of Medicine is one of the United States’ historically Black medical colleges, because health equity is an integral part of its mission. It’s well positioned to influence vaccine access through advocacy, policy reform and the creation of a new generation of global health experts. It’s also an ideal place to work on building trust in science by involving more diverse investigators in discovery and achieving a deeper public understanding of biology.

We just lived through the deadliest pandemic in a century. It’s prudent to consider what has happened, learn from it and ‌‌decide how the world — and our part in it — should operate.

Millions of lives and trillions of dollars were lost. Health and wealth disparities widened. Biology became politicized. We are left with ‌the burdens of long COVID and a mental health crisis. I was inspired by the effort and sacrifices made by health care providers and essential workers 

to keep us going, and I am hopeful because amid the despair and uncertainty I saw many acts of caring and generosity.

In 1896, William Osler, a founder of Johns Hopkins Hospital, wrote: “Humanity has but three great enemies: Fever, famine and war; of these by far the greatest, by far the most terrible, is fever.” We now have technologies that give us a chance to better prepare, manage‌ and possibly avoid future pandemic threats. ‌

In today’s world, infectious diseases can spread around the globe in a matter of hours. A problem anywhere is a potential problem everywhere, and it is in everyone’s best interest ‌to recognize and solve regional problems ‌‌before they become global ones. It will take all of us, using all the talent and resources we have, working together to avert the tragedy of future pandemics.

Barney Graham helped develop the COVID-19 vaccines while at the National Institutes of Health. He’s now a professor of medicine and microbiology, biochemistry and immunology and a senior adviser for global health equity at Morehouse School of Medicine.

Donald Trump is keeping himself out of prison by running for president! WWWTP?

Echo opinion letter published in Bakersfield.com, a California newspaper serving Houses Speaker Kevin McCarthy's (Republican) Congressional district (California District 20:  Bakersfield, Clovis, Frazier Park, Hanford, Kernville, Lake Isabella, Lemoore, Mojave, Ridgecrest, Taft, Tehachapi, and Visalia)

Trump cult parade

To the Editor:  As hard as I have tried, it is impossible for me to understand, ever since he actually got elected president in 2016, what it is that allows people to just completely ignore all of the crimes Donald Trump has been suspected of committing for years. 

Donald Trump is a bully and no matter what he does, that would see any of the rest of us average citizens in jail years ago.

The only reason Donald J. Trump is running for president again is he thinks it will keep him out of jail. I do not understand how (the Trump cult victims) Kevin McCarthy can say the things he says with a straight face. 

Trumpziism will destroy America. Trump must be stopped!

McCarthy and his right wing Republican Congress don't care about really getting any important work done for their constituents. Instead, they are wasting our tax dollars on investigations such as the weaponization of the Department of Justice.

The fact is this:  The only administration that has ever tried to control the DOJ is the Trump administration! During his time in office, Kevin McCarthy and all the rest of the Republican Party allowed him to get away with anything he did. No matter what he did and the clear evidence of his guilt, they let him off every time and after what he did on January 6, 2021.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy should tell us: Did he or did he not swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States, not the Constitution of Donald J. Trump?

They keep saying this is all unprecedented. Well, that makes total sense since America has never had a person like Trump for president until Trump.

From Laura M. Halford, Bakersfield, California

Maine Writer Post Script:  I echo Ms. Halford's query!  What is wrong with this picture (WWWTP)?  Trump is a criminal. Full stop!

Republicans support fake news like Nazis believed propaganda during World War II

Echo opinion letter published in The Roanoke Times, a Virginia newspaper:

https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/propaganda_at_home_germany

Dear Editor:  I'm appalled by the #FakeNews #FoxNews Tucker Carlson's lies about the January 6th insurrectionist riot.

If you shot 41,000 hours of video of Germany invading Poland in 1939, you could select out video clips of German soldiers walking along without firing their weapons.

Fox News is a propaganda spewing fake news source! The anchors at FOX might easily "sprechen sie Fox".

You could claim they entered the country only as peaceful tourists — and that the nefarious forces of the oppressive Polish government had orchestrated a lie.

There's a catch, though. The only people who would believe you would be those who already sympathized with the Nazis (aka Trumpzis?).

Hallo! Sprechen sie Fox?

From Eric Nolan, Roanoke Virginia

Republicans working hard to be right wing creepy

Echo opinion letter published in The Columbian newspaper.

Ever since Ronald Reagan declared that “government is the problem,” the Republican Party has been hard at work to make it so. The attempted insurrectionist coup on January 6, 2021, and the fiasco in the House of Representatives trying to elect an extremist right wing speaker are two glaring illustrations about the Republicans' determination to undermine and, eventually, destroy democracy.

The conspiracy theories and accusations that Democrats are “the enemy” and not so subtle urging to their right wing fringiest members to take action inserts a whole new level of creepy to their cause. They embrace white supremacists, nationalists and anarchists as tools to wield against the government and blatantly idolize dictators the likes of Hitler, Putin, Erdogan and Pinochet. It appears the goal is to become exactly that.

The incoming legislators — if they can ever agree on a leader — have only one agenda: to investigate the Biden family, the January 6 committee members and anyone else they can scapegoat while doing nothing to improve the lives of Americans. 

Plans to eliminate Social Security, Medicare, public schools and all social safety nets are the next extremist targets.

The Republican Party may not be dead yet, but it certainly seems to be breathing its last breaths.

By Sandra Edmonson, Vancouver

Elise Stefanik is a Trumpzi cult alumni. New York District 21 voters deserve better.

Echo opinion published in the The Daily Gazette in Schenectady, New York:

Right wing Rep. Elise Stefanik is more concerned with her own ambitious political agenda than at least waiting to see if an indictment is even handed down.

Elise Stefanik is a Trumpzi cult alumni

In the long run, she cares nothing about the people she serves. She stated, “Knowing they cannot beat President Trump at the ballot box, the Radical Left will now follow the lead of Socialist dictators.”

Uh  HELLO?— but, Trump was beaten at the ballot box;  but if memory serves me, Ms. Stefanik (delusional) believes that Trump did win.

"Shame, shame, shame on you Elise" aka the Lady Macbeth of the Congress.  Ambitious Elise!

The Manhattan District Attorney is investigating Trump for falsifying business records in the first degree with the intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal another crime — in this instance a violation of strict campaign finance laws.

It makes me wonder, if the name of the person being investigated was Smith or Jones and was a Democrat, what her reaction would be then.

"I am still blown away by the complete reversal of her opinion of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. Numerous articles have been written basically asking, “What happened to Elise Stefanik?” Well, it’s obvious, for Stefanik, power, fame and ability to raise hoards of money override duty to the country," North Country Public Radio.

Trump would like nothing better than to become the autocrat of the United States. He is doing the same thing he did in the 2020, election, making statements about things that are not yet true to stir the Trump loyalists.

Stefanik has encouraged protest if and when Trump is arrested.  Hypocrite! Way to go! That’s right, let’s have another January 6th.

So, Ms. Sefanik, how about worrying about the people you represent and what they need?

Deborah Bender, Schoharie, village in New York State