King Charles III speech summary from an ethical point of view: "What's important to maintain our democracy"

Why did it take a visiting English king, King Charles, to remind Americans about why we are a democratic republic❓

Echo essay published in The Times Herald newspaper in Michigan.

But there he was, Britain’s King Charles III, reminding us in his speech before Congress of some of our historic and current principles that some seem to have forgotten.

In his address the king reminded us of our ties to Europe, how our allies there came to assist us after the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on our country and why Ukraine was so important to combat Russian aggression. And he expressed the need to protect nature given the shrinking polar ice caps.

But I was most impressed by his remarks about what’s important to maintain our democracy, ironically offered by the king of a country against which we fought to secure our freedom nearly 250 years ago. I believe protecting our democratic values, norms and laws are the most essential issues facing America, the key to our republic.

King Charles spoke about the rule of law as central to our country and his, referring us to his country’s Magna Carta, which was one of the sources for our system of government as well. England’s charter in 1215 was a foundational document forced upon King John to limit his power, protect feudal rights, establish such ideas as due process and trial by jury and protect against illegal imprisonment.

The king also told us: “Our common ideals were not only crucial for liberty and equality, they are also the foundation of our shared prosperity. The rule of law: the certainty of stable and accessible rules, an independent judiciary resolving disputes and delivering impartial justice.”

And King Charles called upon us to remember the importance of checks and balances in how the government functions, ironically not wanting a monarch here. It’s important to understand that he is head of state, reigning not ruling, in a constitutional monarchy.

It was a 30-minute concise speech about what’s really important in our republic and his constitutional monarchy. He spoke with clarity, empathy and humor — rare these days in our political discourse.

The king acknowledged the historic ties between the two nations: “Ours is a partnership born out of dispute, but no less strong for it, so perhaps, in this example, we can discern that our nations are in fact instinctively like-minded — a product of the common democratic, legal and social traditions in which our governance is rooted to this day.”

Listening to the king speak, I felt sad😔 that we seldom hear the same thoughts spoken by our political leaders but also a sense of relief to hear them spoken in a building where so often we hear petty and often nasty words. His speech felt like that of a seasoned teacher to his students, reminding them of why they were there in the first place.

I confess I had many personal emotions arising as I listened to the king’s speech. My father, born in Baltimore and thus a naturalized U.S. citizen, was nonetheless raised in England. Some of my family remained in the United Kingdom, and others moved to the United States.

I chuckled when the king quoted Oscar Wilde, a London-based writer of the late 19th century who said, “We really have everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language!” I often struggled to understand what my British cousins were saying and, of course, they sometimes laughed at my American utterances.

I also realized King Charles’ humor was touched with a serious comment about our respective democracies: “The Founding Fathers were bold and imaginative rebels with a cause. Two hundred and fifty years ago, or, as we say in the United Kingdom ‘just the other day…’”

It was the king’s way of reminding us of our relative new emergence on the historical scene and his country’s long traditions. Tradition means more than the institutions of government; it means also the values, norms and cultures that support democracies.

From members of my family in the UK, I learned that they sometimes thought of us as a fledgling democracy without yet being a fully functioning government with a long tradition. This keeps me humble but also hopeful that we still have much to learn in order to grow

John C. Morgan is an author and educator who writes about both personal and social ethics.

Donald Trump and maga Repubicans illegally use the National Guard to upstage law enforcement rather than support resources to help public safety

Echo opinion letter published in the Baltimore Sun newspaper, in Maryland:

Donald Trump made his clearest signal yet that signal yet that Baltimoree could be one of the next targets of his campaign against blue cities, warning that he is prepared to deploy federal law enforcement and National Guard troops under the guise of fighting crime. As someone who spent more than two decades in law enforcement, I share the president’s concern for public safety. 

Nevertheless, I also know from experience that Trump's (IMO "over reach") show-of-force approach is the wrong path, which risks fracturing public trust and making the city less safe in the long run. Now, the administration appears poised to bring its failed public safety playbook to Baltimore, Maryland. 

Apparently unfazed by a recent federal court ruling finding that Trump acted illegally when he dispatched National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles this summer, federal agents and military personnel could soon flood into the city. History shows these deployments rarely reduce crime in the long term. They do, however, deepen divides between police and the communities they serve, casting law enforcement as an adversary rather than a partner and weakening the cooperation officers rely on to prevent and solve crime. In this environment, victims and witnesses become less likely to report offenses or assist investigations, making our job exponentially harder. This is not abstract theory. As a retired police major, I saw firsthand how fragile public trust can be, and how essential it is for effective crime prevention and deterrence. When law enforcement is perceived as an illegitimate or oppositional force, the public turns away. This is especially problematic in immigrant communities, where the separation between local police and federal immigration authorities may soon become less clear across Baltimore. As trust erodes, offenders exploit the resulting silence, leaving police with fewer tools to identify, investigate and deter crime. And this compromises safety for everyone.

The Trumpzi administration’s recent incursions into local policing also raise a troubling contradiction. Earlier this year, federal officials ended consent decrees with local departments, insisting Washington had no business dictating how cities run their agencies. Yet now, the same administration is directly interfering in local policing when it is politically convenient. This willingness to override democratically enacted policies sets a dangerous precedent that will almost certainly extend beyond Baltimore.
The frustration is compounded by the administration’s decision to dismantle federal grants for community-based strategies proven to reduce violence, including violence interruption programs, mental health crisis response, youth outreach and other supportive services. These efforts may lack the political punch of a city takeover, but in Baltimore and elsewhere, the evidence shows they save lives, reduce violence and strengthen the social fabric that prevents crime in the first place. The impulse to project strength in the face of crime is not imposed with an iron fist. Rather, it is earned through the consent of the governed, built on trust, and sustained through accountability. If the administration is serious about safety in Baltimore, it should support the city’s leaders, invest in proven community partnerships and provide police with the resources they need to build relationships — not tear them down.

Trump's threats now aimed at Baltimore are about more than one city. They reflect a broader politicization of public safety, which emphasizes rhetoric over evidence and props up a vision of policing that demands compliance through intimidation, rather than earning respect through integrity. If we continue down this path, the damage to our democracy — and to the legitimacy of law enforcement — will long outlast the current administration.

From Neill Franklin, a retired 34-year law enforcement veteran of the Maryland State Police and Baltimore Police Department. He was recruited in 2000 by the commissioner of the Baltimore Police Department to reconstruct and command Baltimore’s Education and Training Section. During his time with the Maryland State Police, he held the position of commander for the Education and Training Division and the Bureau of Drug and Criminal Enforcement. After 10 years of leadership, Franklin retired as executive director of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership in 2020.
The frustration is compounded by the administration’s decision to dismantle federal grants for community-based strategies proven to reduce violence, including violence interruption programs, mental health crisis response, youth outreach and other supportive services. These efforts may lack the political punch of a city takeover, but in Baltimore and elsewhere, the evidence shows they save lives, reduce violence and strengthen the social fabric that prevents crime in the first place. I understand the impulse to  project strength in the face of crime. But real strength is not imposed with an iron fist. It is earned through the consent of the governed, built on trust, and sustained through accountability. If the administration is serious about safety in Baltimore, it should support the city’s leaders, invest in proven community partnerships and provide police with the resources they need to build relationships — not tear them down.

The threats now aimed at Baltimore are about more than one city. They reflect a broader politicization of public safety, which emphasizes rhetoric over evidence and props up a vision of policing that demands compliance through intimidation, rather than earning respect through integrity. If we continue down this path, the damage to our democracy — and to the legitimacy of law enforcement — will long outlast the current administration.

Neill Franklin is a retired 34-year law enforcement veteran of the Maryland State Police and Baltimore Police Department. He was recruited in 2000 by the commissioner of the Baltimore Police Department to reconstruct and command Baltimore’s Education and Training Section. During his time with the Maryland State Police, he held the position of commander for the Education and Training Division and the Bureau of Drug and Criminal Enforcement. After 10 years of leadership, Franklin retired as executive director of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership in 2020.

 

First Amerndment rights are protected for all Americans by the U.S. Constitution and that includes Jimmy Kimmel

Echo opinion letter published in the Maryland, Baltimore Sun newspaper :

Freedom of speech, meaning freedom from governmental regulation of ideas or interference in declaring those ideas, is a bedrock principle of constitutional democracy. 

Jimmy Kimmel’s suggestion that the killer of Charlie Kirk* was acting on behalf of the MAGA movement was stupid, thoughtless and wrong. However, Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr’s ham-handed attempt to punish Kimmel for his careless remark was worse (“Kimmel’s suspension is the latest display of Trump’s growing power over the US media landscape,” Sept. 18).

And worst of all was ABC’s bending of its corporate knee to Carr and his master, Donald Trump, by indefinitely suspending Kimmel. What have we come to? Have we forgotten the moral foundation and express dictate of the First Amendment that many people consider the most important words in the Constitution? How would Carr respond if asked whether or not he agreed with this view of freedom of speech: “I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it?”

From Ben Rosenberg, in Baltimore Maryland

*Check out my own opinion about this subject on my substacks

Donald Trump and maga Republicans are enabling an illegal federal takeover calling for "war" on American citizens

Meanwhile, endless wars in Isreal, Gaza and Ukraine wage on when Donald Trump falsely claimed he could end them all "on day one".  So, here we are on September 8th, at day 231 into the Trump autoracy and our nation is at war with Donald Trump.  His public opinion polls are tanking but his cruelty continues.

Armed troops at the Washington Monument❓ This is not normal❗

Wake up America❗⏰Your front yard has been militarized. Yet residents and visitors there hardly pay the troops any mind.

Not what Washington is supposed to look like.

(Kent Nishimura / Getty Images)

Echo opinion published in the Los Angeles Times by Jackie Calmes*

It’s the (not-normal) normalization of excessive federal force under Donald Trump, just seven months into his autocratic reign.

America’s Front Yard is what the National Park Service calls the National Mall, the grassy expanse that knits together the neighborhood that’s home to the U.S. Capitol and the iconic monuments to Presidents Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt; veterans of World War II, Vietnam and Korea; and Martin Luther King Jr.

For decades I jogged here (one morning literally running into Jimmy Carter, long gone from the White House). I introduced friends and family to the Mall’s delights and the museums that open onto it. 

I attended festivals, concerts and Fourth of July fireworks displays. On a gorgeous, sunny Labor Day this year, I returned. And for the first time, I saw armed, camo-clad soldiers among the tourists.

As I left the World War II memorial, five soldiers emerged nearby, marching in single-line formation to join about two dozen more beside three vans under trees near the Reflecting Pool. At the pool’s opposite end, nearer the Lincoln Memorial, another dozen soldiers milled. Tourists mostly ignored the shows of force, except for the two park policemen on horseback along separate sides of the Reflecting Pool. Tourists wanted photos with them.

As I approached the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, five more soldiers circled a statue dedicated to women who served in Vietnam. The men studied the sculpted figures and read the inscriptions — just like tourists.

“They’re bored,” a park ranger told me. “They’d rather be home with their families.”

I and most Washingtonians (8 out of 10, according to a mid-August poll for the Washington Post) also would rather have them home with their families, wherever home is. Six states headed by Republican governors, ever-eager to please Trump, have sent hundreds of National Guard troops to supplement those from blue Washington, who, unlike in the states where governors hold sway, are under the president’s direct command.

Heading to a restroom on my way to the Tidal Basin and Jefferson Memorial, I passed three hulking black SUVs. Despite their darkened windows, I could vaguely make out men inside. Only the vehicles’ license plates identified them: “DHS,” Department of Homeland Security, the tip of Trump’s antimigrant spear. Perhaps these secret agents were awaiting a dispatcher’s call to nab another Latino delivery driver or raid another restaurant’s kitchen to drive up the numbers for Trump’s immigration crackdown.

What you see out in the open — 2,200 uniformed soldiers and additional federal agents patrolling the nation’s capital — is bad enough. It’s what you don’t see, or can’t identify, that’s more disturbing in the land of the free. Like masked agents in unmarked cars stopping and searching residents without evident reason, as videos on social media regularly capture.

Either way, Trump’s takeover of the District of Columbia using National Guard troops and federal agents from the DHS, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and from the FBI and other agencies — together with his threats to Chicago, Baltimore and other cities — amount to “creating a national police force with the Trump as its chief,” as a federal judge proclaimed this week in ruling against troops acting as cops in Los Angeles.
“Why is the National Guard still around❓” an exasperated Senior District Judge Charles R. Breyer (brother of retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer) demanded last month during a trial in the L.A. case. “What is the threat today? What was the threat yesterday or two weeks ago that allowed it? I’m trying to see whether there are any limits, any limits to the use of a federal force.”

Those were my questions in Washington as well, during my Labor Day stroll and a drive through downtown and various higher-crime neighborhoods.

That same day, Trump boasted on social media that, three weeks into his policing of the nation’s capital, Washington is “NOW A CRIME FREE ZONE.” Yet he’s vowed to keep boots on the ground beyond a legal 30-day limit next week, which would require Congress’ assent.

The fact is that Washington, like any city, still has crime, though the rate was at a 30-year low before Trump’s executive order Aug. 11 citing a nonexistent “crime emergency,” and it’s fallen more since then, as Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser has acknowledged. The issue isn’t whether there is crime that needs to be policed. It’s who does the policing. In America, that’s historically been the states and local jurisdictions — unless, as federal law requires, they prove incapable of doing so. Which they haven’t.

If more police is an answer to crime, as Bowser and most mayors of either party would agree, then Trump should quit cutting federal funding — Washington is short a full $1 billion in this fiscal year — and instead do what former President Clinton did amid high crime in the mid-1990s: increase money to states and cities to hire more local cops. That helped in Clinton’s time, if not so much as he liked to claim.

What’s worse is that Trump’s bid to take charge in U.S. cities extends mostly to states led by Democrats, despite high or higher crime in red state cities including Memphis, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Louisville, Jackson and Birmingham. Sending red-state troops to police unfamiliar blue cities can only exacerbate polarization. So does a president who spurs on those troops and agents by denigrating U.S. cities as “unsafe and dirty and disgusting” (Washington), “hell holes” (Chicago and Baltimore) and “terrible” (L.A.).

This is not normal, not in America’s front yard or anywhere else in this nation. Nor will it ultimately be accepted, as Trump takeovers spread and protests expand with them. I fear this is just what the Great Divider wants: an (evil💀👿)excuse to dispatch even more troops- just because he can.

*Jackie Calmes is an opinion columnist for the Los Angeles Times in Washington, D.C.

Creaating cheap political stunt in Arlington National Cemetery Section 60 does not end well for Donald Trump

Trump owns the Afghanistan debacle

Scenes from the final days of America's two decades in Afghanistan.

Echo opinion letters published in The Washington Post (Democracy Dies in Darkness) 🌒

Although it is true that the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan could have been done with somewhat more effectiveness, but no termination of an operation of this scope could have been done easily.

Evacuees crowd the interior of a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III transport aircraft, carrying some 640 Afghans to Qatar from Kabul, Afghanistan, August 15, 2021. U.S. Air Force/Air Mobility Command Public Affairs: KABUL, Afghanistan

President Joe Biden showed true courage to take an action that neither of his predecessors was bold and principled enough to complete. Yes, we unfortunately lost 13 U.S.😥😯 troops to a bombing at the Kabul airport’s Abbey Gate during the pullout, and 170 Afghan citizens died.

How many soldiers would we have lost if we stayed in Afghanistan? How much military resources would we have consumed if we stayed❓ The actions the president took should have been taken under Presidents Barack Obama or Donald Trump. 

Neither had the courage. Let’s not tear President Biden down for his action in Afghanistan. Let’s give him credit for taking us out of a situation we most likely should never have been in.

I wish Democrats would confront Trump on this issue and directly ask him why he didn’t withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan as he promised.

From:  Howard Pedolsky, Rockville Maryland

Dear Editor:  Military leaders must speak up❗

I am grateful to those in past Republican administrations and campaigns who have finally endorsed the Democratic candidates for president and vice president. Retired military leaders must follow the lead of retired four-star Gen. Larry Ellis and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

Former guy Donald Trump’s past comments about veterans and his recent stunt at Arlington National Cemetery should make it abundantly clear that making him commander in chief is wrong and dangerous. This should be apparent to all, but Trump’s poll numbers say otherwise.

A quintessential part of leading is setting an example. It is now (💥beyond ❗)  time for respected military veterans, including Trump’s former Homeland Security secretary and chief of staff John F. Kelly, to make it plain to all what a danger a second Trump presidency poses and to make a commitment to do whatever it takes to make sure that does not happen. The only way to show the full depth of that commitment is to endorse Vice-President Harris and Governor Walz.

From Jill Leiner, Baltimore, Maryland

Mass shootings continue while Republicans block humanitarian efforts to enforce gun safety

More preventable gun violence destroys America's July 4th celebrations!  "It seems like everyday...."????  In fact, it is happening every day!  Opinion letter below published in the Missoulian newspaper in Missoula Montana: 

Ten dead, 38 wounded in three US mass shootings: July 4 (Reuters) - Ten people were killed and 38 wounded in mass shootings in Philadelphia, Baltimore and Fort Worth ahead of the Fourth of July holiday, officials said, prompting a fresh call from President Joe Biden to pass gun control legislation. (Reported by Kanishka Singh and Raphael Satter)

• In Fort Worth, three people were killed and eight wounded in a mass shooting after a local festival to mark the U.S. Independence Day holiday, police said on Tuesday.
• In a separate mass shooting in Philadelphia on Monday evening, five people were killed and two were wounded, including a 2-year-old boy and 13-year-old boy, both of whom were shot in the legs, when a suspect in body armor and armed with an AR-15 opened fire.
• The Monday night shootings came a day after two people were shot dead and 28 others injured, about half of them children, in a hail of gunfire at a neighborhood block party in Baltimore.

Dear Editor of the Missoulian:  It seems like every day I turn on the news and there is a new mass shooting reported. 

My partner Mary will say, "isn't that awful," and I will reply "yes, it is awful." Then the next day there is another mass shooting and another "awful" exchange. I would recommend that Americans act like ostriches and put their heads in the sand — no hearing, seeing or reading about our country's daily slaughter. 

National legislation should be adopted creating one network, such as C-SPAN, to report on mass shootings. Other national networks, such as NBC, CBS and FOX, would be prohibited from reporting on the mass shooting carnage. This new network would be known as the Mass Shooting Network-America (MSN-A). The funding for MSN-A would be accomplished by instituting a 25% surcharge on the sale of every gun and bullet sold in the United States. Such a surcharge would create huge funds for MSN-A to report on the shooters and their victims. 

Personally, I would be an ostrich, never watching MSN-A. I would watch the "good news" from the other networks, such as the war in the Ukraine, pandemics and global warming. No more "awful" conversations with Mary. From Randy Harrison, Missoula Montana

James Webb telescope legacy teaches with stunning perspective about our dusty origins

George Will* at his essayist best! His echo essay succinctly captures the spirit and the astounding abundance of science projected by the spectacular James Webb Space Telescope. Published in The Washington Post.

The Webb Space Telescope is telling humanity the history of everything

BALTIMORE ― At the Space Telescope Science Institute, on the Johns Hopkins University campus, a constant torrent of data pours in from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, enabling cosmologists to write ancient history. Not the history of the Greeks and Romans, who lived a mere blink ago. Rather, it is the history of everything.

Everything began, cosmologists currently think, with a bang — the Big Bang; if it does not deserve to be a proper noun, what does? — 13.7 billion years ago. All the material in the universe, including us, is — literally — stardust (cue Nat King Cole’s rendition), meaning residues of the explosion. The light gathered by Webb’s mirrors expands our knowledge of how stars form. And perish: This is not going to end well.

Launched 13 months ago, Webb is orbiting 940,000 miles away. With its 18 mirrors and its five sunshield layers unfolded, it is a tennis-court-size engineering masterpiece.

Jupiter has a lot going on, with massive storms, intense winds, auroras, and severe temperature and pressure extremes.

To function, each mirror must, after being hurled into space on a shuddering rocket, retain this exquisite precision: If each mirror were the size of the continental United States, each should not vary more than 2 inches from perfect conformity with the others.

Furthermore, the mirrors left Earth the “wrong” size: They were designed to contract in space to achieve a precise shape at the temperature out there: minus-388 degrees Fahrenheit.

The wavelength of light is “stretched” as the universe expands; hence the analysis of light can date the light’s source. Above the filter of the Earth’s atmosphere, Webb has already gathered light that has taken more than 13.4 billion years to reach its mirrors, light from the earliest galaxy yet confirmed: It formed only 350 million years after the Big Bang.

The U.S. lunar expeditions, the last of which was in 1972, were feats of individual bravery and engineering ingenuity. They were, however, without the scientific fascination that has driven space exploration since the discovery in 1965, that the universe is permeated with background radiation. This seems to confirm the Big Bang theory.

Scientific propositions are, however, testable and hence theoretically falsifiable, so even familiar ones are contingent. The Big Bang theory postulates that the universe was inflated from a microscopic speck in a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second, at a temperature of trillions degrees centigrade. And is still expanding.

If so, Copernicus’s supposed impertinence — demoting Earth (and us) from the center of the universe — was, we now know, nonsensical: There is no center in an expanding universe without an edge. 

Astronomer Adam Frank says Webb, which was expected to support the Big Bang theory, has revealed “the existence of galaxies so old that the very origins of the universe have instead been called into question.” As has, some say, the theory of an expanding universe. Not so, says Frank:

For most of the previous 2,500 years, the universe was considered timeless and unchanging. 

Even by Albert Einstein, who, Frank says, “assumed that the universe now must look like the universe a trillion years in the past and future.” By proving that galaxies formed before they had previously been expected to exist — “just a few hundred million years after the cosmic expansion began” — Webb has done what, Frank says, science should do, which is “force us to confront false assumptions we hadn’t even known we’d made.” Doing so, he says, the telescope has confirmed the essence of the Big Bang theory: “cosmic evolution.” The universe has a history. As we learn how to write it, we learn about our place in it.

Earth is “biophilic” — conducive to life — only because the Big Bang led to molecules of water and atoms of carbon, which are necessary for life. They need not, however, have been included in a post-Bang universe. For some theologically inclined people, this fact means that we are not a cosmic fluke but a cosmic imperative.

Our sun, however, will expire in approximately 5 billion years. About when our wee Milky Way galaxy with its 200 billion stars will collide with the nearby Andromeda galaxy. The universe, as portrayed by the light that Webb gathers, is breathtakingly beautiful and unimaginably violent.

Blue Beautiful Glowing Andromeda Galaxy with Stars

Earth is biophilic only somewhat (volcanoes, earthquakes, viruses, etc.), and only briefly, as measured by the cosmos’s clock. But what distinguishes us from trees and trout and every known (so far) thing in the universe is what Webb exists solely to satisfy. The Webb Space Telescope speaks well of us precisely because it has, and needs, no justification beyond the purity of its service to curiosity.

*George Will writes a twice-weekly column on politics and domestic and foreign affairs.

Sainthood petition during Black History Month - Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange

Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange statue in St. Mary's Seminary Chapel in Baltimore.

Link to my blog about advocating for her cause for Sainthood is reported on the Let's Write blogspot:

Order of black nuns founded in 1829 by Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange; a stone monument marks the spot where Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange established the Oblate Sisters of Providence.

Lange encountered difficulty as a free black woman in Maryland, a slave-holding state and as a French-speaking Catholic.

610 George St.

One of Baltimore's many fascinating, oft-forgotten stories is that of Elizabeth Clarissa Lange, a Haitian woman born in the late 1700s who eventually settled in Baltimore, where she ran a school in her home. That school became the St. Frances Academy Baltimore School for Colored Girls in 1828, and in 1829 Lange, along with three other women of African descent, became nuns. Later that year, Sister Mary Elizabeth Lange helped found the Oblate Sisters of Providence, which, after Pope Gregory XVI's 1831 approval, became the first Roman Catholic order for women of African descent. A monument to this pioneer stands in Perkins Spring Square Park, near where she first started the Oblate Sisters.

Elizabeth Lange (1784-1882) was born in Santo Domingo (now the Dominican Republic), to a Jewish merchant father and a mulatto mother. After an uprising in Haiti, the family fled to Cuba, and eventually to Baltimore, where they settled in a home near Fells Point in 1813.

Mother Lange was 98 when she died in 1882. 

In 1991, the Oblate Sisters and the Archdiocese of Baltimore, with the approval of the Vatican, began the process that could make Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange a saint. A letter writing petition to advance this cause has been launched in Baltimore. See my blog link above for more information. 

Racism is an evil Donald Trump diversion tactic

Trump’s Twitter Attacks Are Backfiring
President Trump seems eager to divert attention from impeachment and investigations, but distractions work only if they distract.

Echo opinion published in The Atlantic by David A. Graham

If former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony to the House last week wasn’t the clear victory that many Democrats had hoped it would be, there are indications it didn’t go as well for President Donald Trump as he and his allies have claimed either. (In my opinion, the instant replays reported in the media after the Mueller testimony served to reinforce obstruction of justice incidents and emphasized how corrupt the Trump administration was in trying to cover up evidence.)

The first sign of things not going well came on Friday afternoon, when the president gave a series of nonsensical sound bites to reporters, saying that Barack Obama had ruined the White House HVAC system and calling for an investigation of how Obama, the author of a critically acclaimed memoir and a former president of the United States, got a book deal.

As it turned out, this was merely a warm-up for what was to come: a scorched-earth racist rant against Representative Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat, and his district in Baltimore. The rant has extended into a third day and now also targets Al Sharpton, who Trump claims hates white people. 

Not since the fall of 1814 has there been such a concerted assault on the Charm City from the south, but don’t expect any national anthems to be written about this battle.

Even without the example of Trump’s fusillade against the “squad” of Democratic congresswomen earlier this month, this routine is by now familiar. When faced with a series of headlines that he doesn’t like, Trump endeavors to change the subject, by whatever means necessary.

It’s reminiscent of the old parody motivational poster that reads, “The beatings will continue until morale improves.” Or, in Trump’s case: “The tweeting will continue until the chyrons improve.” In the past, this has worked well for Trump. His ability to change the subject has managed to prevent sustained attention on some of the biggest scandals of his political career. But there are limitations to this tactic, as the oxymoronic poster suggests, and they may be emerging right now.

You don’t have to look hard to see what Trump was upset about. Even though Mueller’s testimony to the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees was short on dramatic sound bites, and the infernal “optics” debate seemed to favor Republicans in the first day or so, it became clear by week’s end that this wasn’t the death knell for investigations that the GOP had hoped it would be. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn’t come around on impeachment, but Democrats also showed they were not going to drop the matter and move on. The chairs of the two committees, Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff, seemed perhaps more resolved to move forward after the hearings.

On Friday, some Democrats said they were conducting an impeachment investigation—while hastening to add that didn’t mean that actually impeaching Trump was a foregone conclusion. 

And on Thursday, in the move that drew the president’s fury, Cummings’s Oversight Committee approved subpoenas for White House communications from the senior advisers Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, as well as the former strategist Steve Bannon.

There are several reasons to question the efficacy of Trump’s distraction here. The first is that it means that a piece of good news for the president Friday afternoon, a Supreme Court decision that allows the Trump administration to begin work on a wall on the southern border while litigation continues, has been largely overlooked.

A second is the same as the point that I and many others made after Trump’s attack on the squad: Exploiting racial tension has been a successful strategy for Trump and many other politicians, but open racism is, in addition to its moral repugnance, a risky electoral ploy.

Third, and perhaps most important, a distraction works only if it distracts. Trump has successfully turned the conversation to his tweets about Cummings, but he has not turned it away from impeachment. In fact, he’s deepened his problems: As of yesterday, 107 House Democrats back an impeachment inquiry, up from the mid-90s last week. That’s almost half the caucus. Non–House members, including Patty Murray, a top Senate Democrat, have also voiced support.

This is in part a testament to Cummings’s standing inside the caucus. There have been tensions between more establishment Democrats and the squad since the start of the Congress—notably between Pelosi and the foursome. When Trump attacked them, Democrats rallied against him, but they may have hesitated to line up too loudly behind the rabble-rousers. 

Cummings, however, is a 23-year House veteran, a committee chair, and former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. 

As my colleague Peter Nicholas notes, he was also a Democrat who was willing to work with the White House, so Trump’s attack shows that he’s willing to go scorched-earth even on members who are far more restrained than Ilhan Omar. The president may have underestimated the extent to which Democrats would rally around Cummings.

The spark of Trump’s fury at Cummings matters too. Setting aside the bile about Baltimore, what Trump is angry about is the subpoenas. No president likes being subpoenaed, but they are a well-established tool of Congress. I wrote in May that the more Trump stonewalls congressional investigations, the more likely it is that Congress acts. Members of the House may flinch at hauling Trump up for impeachment on obstruction of justice related to the Mueller report, or other causes, seeing political peril for themselves, but once Trump starts infringing on their prerogatives as a body, members start getting fired up.

When the president throws this kind of over-the-top tantrum about the Oversight Committee’s tactics, he’s falling into just this trap. His attack on Cummings is designed to change the focus, but he’s actually zooming it in.

Louisiana call for Donald Trump to declare an opioid addiction a crises

Where is Donald Trump's emergency on opioids? An echo opinion from the Monroe, Louisiana newspaper "The News Star".

This editorial published in The News Star should become an echo in all our nation's newspapers! Kudos to the editorial board and authors.  This epidemic is killing our nations' young people.

Amid much fanfare last October, Donald Trump declared that the nation's opioid crisis was a “public health emergency” and spoke movingly of losing his older brother to alcohol addiction. 

That 90-day declaration is set to expire, and while some promising plans are taking shape, the federal follow-through is falling far short of what is needed.

About 1,000 people in America are dying each week from this epidemic, and the time is long past for the president to mobilize “every appropriate emergency authority,” as he promised on Oct. 26, 2017.

Among the missing pieces:

Key players

Can you name the nation's "drug czar", the person who is designated to lead the fight against the opioid epidemic? Probably not, because there isn't one. The Office of National Drug Control Policy, a high-profile White House office that should coordinate a government-wide strategy, still has no permanent director, the person often known as the drug czar.

The office is run by an acting director, after Trump was forced to withdraw his first nominee. In part because the office has so many vacancies, a 24-year-old former campaign worker, with an inflated résumé and no obvious experience in drug policy, recently rose to be the deputy chief of staff, The Washington Post reported Sunday. The president initially called for slashing that office’s budget by 95% and resuscitated it only after a bipartisan uproar in Congress.

Meanwhile, the president hasn't nominated someone to run the Drug Enforcement Administration, the agency that enforces the nation's drug laws.

More money

While the administration says it has spent or allocated more than $1 billion on the opioid crisis, huge chunks of the funding were provided under laws passed in 2016, before Trump took office.

For example, $485 million distributed last April under what the White House calls “the newly created State Targeted Response to the Opioid Crisis,” was authorized in the 21st Century Cures Act signed by President Obama in December 2016. As for fresh resources, the best a White House spokesman could offer was this: “We will continue discussions with Congress on the appropriate level of funding needed to address this crisis.”

That's not exactly the rallying cry for resources one expects in an emergency. Trump’s 2018 budget request to Congress for everything from prevention and treatment to law enforcement called for a paltry 1% increase over Obama's last budget for drug control.

Promised initiatives

Trump promised “really tough, really big, really great advertising” to prevent people from abusing drugs in the first place. 

Nothing on that yet. Nor is there any noticeable movement on a key part of his Health and Human Services Department's five-point strategy, which touted targeting "the availability and distribution of overdose-reversing drugs.”Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who headed Trump's opioid commission, told USA TODAY that his top priority was getting naloxone, the major overdose antidote, into the hands of every first responder in the nation. This week, HHS failed to answer repeated questions about what, if anything, is happening on that plan.

Health commissioners in cities and states hardest hit by the opioid scourge were optimistic about the emergency declaration, which some say gave the crisis the national visibility it has long needed. But the federal follow-through? Not so much.

“There has been no effect for those of us on the ground,” says Baltimore Health Commissioner Leana Wen, whose city lost 694 people to overdoses in 2016. One of her biggest needs: more naloxone. Public Health Commissioner Rahul Gupta of West Virginia, which has the highest rate of overdose deaths in the nation, also hoped for a “surge in resources” that has not materialized.

It's unclear whether the administration plans to extend the emergency declaration.

Trump said in October that under his administration's initiatives, the number of addicts "will start to tumble downward over a period of years," and that "it will be a beautiful thing to see."

We hope so, because so far the opioid epidemic continues to look very, very ugly.