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You know you’re in trouble when one candidate for president encourages violence as a response to free speech and honest journalism, and some people cheer

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

Right after the U.S. Constitution established the three branches of government to provide checks and balances it immediately identified the next most important protections for American society: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”  In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers meant to make it clear that the people enjoyed freedom to live their lives on their own terms (within limits), and that the people (as a whole) were the superiors of the servants who staffed the government.  The people are free to say what’s on their mind and to share that information with others, and to call into question the words and ideas of their chosen and aspiring leaders.  And free to do so without retribution from the government.

Our most recent former president is hardly the first politician to have an adversarial relationship with American journalists; no president or any other government official enjoys being called out for flat-out lying or for bending the truth to his or her benefit.  But most don’t carry a crazy expectation that the free press is there to merely transcribe their words for posterity: he’s the only one I can remember who has, seemingly quite seriously, called for violence against anyone who criticizes him or fact-checks what he says.

Donald Trump told a crowd on Sunday that he wouldn’t mind if someone shot at the news media present at his rally here, escalating his violent rhetoric at one of his closing campaign events where he repeatedly veered off-message.

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Trump’s latest comments about the media underscored his embrace of violent language, days after he received blowback for suggesting former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney would not be such a “war hawk” if she went into combat and had guns “trained on her face.”

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Trump has also used violent language for hecklers at his rallies. In 2016, after someone interrupted a Las Vegas rally, Trump told the crowd: “Here’s a guy throwing punches, nasty as hell, screaming at everybody else,” then added, “I’d like to punch him in the face.”

In Iowa during the same campaign, he encouraged supporters to “knock the crap” out of potential hecklers. And last month, at a California rally, Trump suggested that a heckler would later get “the hell knocked out of her.”

Houston Chronicle columnist Chris Tomlinson puts a finer point on the problem:

More than 100 times since 2022, Trump has threatened to punish people who disagree with him, according to a tally by National Public Radio. He calls journalists the “enemy of the people,” anyone who disagrees with him “evil” and says critics are an “enemy within” more dangerous to the nation than Russian President Vladimir Putin or Chinese President Xi Jinping.

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“I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people,” Trump told Fox’s Sunday Morning Futures. “It should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by the National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”

The MILITARY used to “handle” his internal enemies?  Just what the hell does that actually mean?  Well, according to his supporters and his campaign, it’s just campaign rhetoric.

Supporters assure me that we have nothing to fear from another Trump presidency. The Republican nominee is only engaging in campaign hyperbole; he will not execute any of these plans.

I’m unsure how you vote for a candidate whose comments the public should not take seriously. (emphasis added) If we shouldn’t believe Trump will put millions of immigrants in camps and jail his opponents, then why should we think he will impose tariffs and promote tax cuts?

What’s serious, and what’s balderdash?

No other candidate in American history has run for office expecting voters to psychically divine his or her authentic policies. Conservatives excoriate Kamala Harris and Tim Walz if they put one word out of place, but they excuse everything Trump says or does.

I don’t object when people who are dissatisfied with the way the country is being run turn to a candidate who I disagree with, even when I disagree on a long list of topics.  I try not to demonize my fellow citizens who make a different choice from me; that is their right, and it doesn’t make them evil.  I do hope that all Americans look at the full picture in considering which candidate to support, and I don’t mean looking for a candidate with whom you agree on every single thing…hard to believe that’s possible, for any of us.  That full picture means considering policy positions, and your perception of the candidate’s belief in the fundamental norms of American society and the American system of government.  And of their basic, inherent honesty.  And wondering, are they in it for America or are they running to advance themselves…or to be able to corruptly abuse the system to keep themselves out of prison?

Many of the Republicans who have endorsed Kamala Harris have made plain in doing so that they do not agree with her, politically, on much of anything.  Nevertheless, their concern for the full picture and their knowledge of this Republican candidate have led them to choose against their party this time.

“I tell you, I have never voted for a Democrat, but this year, I am proudly casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris,” [Liz] Cheney said at a Harris campaign event in Ripon, Wisconsin. In an attempt to persuade swing voters, she pointed toward former President Donald Trump’s actions on January 6, declaring that anyone “who would do these things can never be trusted with power again.”

“Donald Trump was willing to sacrifice our Capitol, to allow law enforcement officers to be beaten and brutalized in his name, and to violate the law and the Constitution in order to seize power for himself,” Cheney said as the event’s audience cheered. “I don’t care if you are a Democrat or Republican or an independent, that is depravity and we must never become numb to it.”

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I have hope. Is that misplaced?

Pat Ryan 2 Comments

Sometimes this blog receives comments which deserve space to breathe.  This one is from an old friend of mine: Pascal Piazza and I met on the first day of the 9th grade, at our alphabetically-assigned lockers in the hall of the 300 building of Houston’s George W. Strake Memorial Jesuit College Preparatory for Young Christian Gentlemen (which, of course, we were).  Since then he became a respected lawyer, and has been admitted to practice in all Texas courts including the state’s supreme court, the Supreme Court of the United States and the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and enough federal district courts and bankruptcy courts in this part of the world to make your eyes bug out.  He’s been generally and repeatedly frustrated by some actions and inactions of the Supremes in recent cases (you’ll recognize which ones), and finally took it out on his keyboard.  PR

To the Honorable Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States:

As a citizen, a retired attorney of 40 years, and a native Texan, I adopt the personal privilege to comment, in a colloquial manner, on two potentially very divisive issues which, when resolved by the application of the plain text of the Joint Resolution Annexing the State of Texas and the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, respectively, need not be divisive and will restore the rule of law.  Both issues are easy to decide.  The parties may try to complicate them, but y’all can follow the easy, established, and time-honored path.

It’s About the Joint Resolution Annexing the State of Texas.

You will be asked by attorneys acting for the Governor of Texas to allow Texas to implement certain means (e.g., installing razor wire or deploying roving private militias) to try to prevent undocumented persons from crossing into Texas through its southern border of the Rio Grande, and further to prevent the U.S. from entering land along that border or to interfere with or remove the mitigating means, solely on the grounds of Texas’s perceived “right of public defense.”  Curiously, y’all will be asked to rule on this issue by the same Texas officials who’ve already suggested they don’t have to comply with any of your rulings that they do not like, because they elevate their perception of the sovereignty of Texas over all else.  There is, however, no need for the issue of Texas’s perceived right of public defense to escalate into accelerating tensions, to revive the nullification doctrine, or to precipitate something worse.  Instead, y’all sit at the forefront to show that Texas, like all states and persons, has the right to redress in the courts under the rule of law, and to remind the state that Texans are known for living up to their word of honor regardless of party affiliation or political persuasion.  Y’all have an easy task before you; only you can make it difficult.  Here’s a path to the easy way instead of the hard way.

The U.S. and Texas, by mutual consent, defined the right of public defense back in 1845, at the time the U.S. annexed Texas by means of a joint resolution of the U.S. Congress which was accepted by the Republic of Texas.  That right of public defense was an integral part of the unambiguous text of annexation.  Y’all need only follow that text without gloss.

Joint ResolutionThe text of the Joint Resolution Annexing Texas to the United States provides that Texas cedes to the U.S. “…all public edifices, fortifications, barracks, ports and harbors, navy and navy-yards, docks, magazines, arms, armaments, and all other property and means pertaining to the public defence belonging to said Republic of Texas.” [Emphasis added]  It does not say that Texas cedes “all other property and means pertaining to the public defence” only when Texas agrees with federal policy.  It does not state that Texas can craft its own public defense.  Texas was not given a veto power.  Texas was not given a right to repudiate or breach the plain terms, which vest all property and means pertaining to public defense to the U.S., whether listed or not.  Texas consented to these terms.

Let’s then give these words their plain meaning.  When it comes to providing for the public defense, the U.S. solely may determine whether to install razor wire or take it down, whether to use mobile militias or not, whether to enter the lands along the border or not, where or how to intercept persons crossing the border, whether to administer medical care or not, and whether to implement or pursue particular actions that Texas wants pursued.  You resolve this issue by giving effect to the plain text and thereby ensuring the fully intentional, consented-to, and coordinated sovereignty of Texas and the U.S.

There is no need to look beyond that plain text defining the public defense.  But the plain text of the remainder of the sentence defining the public defense affirms that the exclusive grant to the U.S. was intentional and was an essential part of the unique compromise that secured the required votes for passage of the Joint Resolution for Annexation after the prior Treaty for Annexation never could be ratified by the Senate.  Texas exclusively granted the U.S. the means and property rights for public defense in exchange for Texas keeping its public lands (and what would be multiple millions of dollars in oil and gas royalties) to pay off its debts.  Texas is the only state that was allowed to keep its public lands.  The U.S. gave up ownership of the public lands in Texas.  Those lands would yield multi-millions of dollars in revenue from the oil and gas found there.  Those lands could be sold off generating significant revenues, as was the practice in 19th century America.  President Polk won election over Henry Clay in 1844 based upon his vision of westward expansion into the valuable lands of Texas, which he felt had been squandered by Spain and then Mexico.  The U.S. received the right of public defense in exchange.  That is what is at issue now.

The then-new state of Texas understood the plain meaning.  I understand that the parties to an agreement cannot define meaning by how they perceive the meaning, but the first post-annexation Texas Constitution instructs y’all that Texas understood that the plain terms mean what the plain terms mean.  That constitution confirmed that the sovereignty of Texas over its soil was secure, except for what it ceded in the Joint Resolution for Annexation or otherwise in the U.S. Constitution.  It knew that the property and means of public defense, by consent, vested in the U.S.

Therefore, under the text of the Joint Resolution for Annexation, Texas occupies a unique position.  It should now – as all true Texans do – stand on its word, even if it is a handshake deal.  Of course, there is much more here than just a handshake.

Y’all will hear that Texas has some natural or inherent right of public defense.  Regardless of whether such a right does or does not exist, Texas ceded it to the U.S. when the state was annexed in 1845.

Y’all may then ask whether Article I, Section 10, clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution grants Texas some right of public defense in case it is ever invaded, whether the U.S. consents at the time or not.  Well, under Texas’s unique position, the text of the Joint Resolution for Annexation still is the starting point.  In addition, the text of Article I, Section 10, clause 3 does not mention public defense, does not mention any of the means that Texas wants to implement or adopt, does not provide that Texas can exclude the U.S. from areas occupied by Texas, does not provide that Texas can interfere with the conduct of the U.S., and does not permit Texas to breach the compromise (which a true Texan would never do).  Texas appears before y’all bound by its agreement and by the consent of Texas and the U.S. as to how the public defense plays out.  Today, Texas assumes that this is a situation where there is no consent by the U.S., yet Texas and the U.S. consented in 1845 for the U.S. to have exclusive power over public defense, whether there is an invasion or not.  Texas cannot repudiate that consent to try to go back on its word.

Some have even suggested that Texas would never have entered the Union had it known, or could have foreseen, that it did not preserve a right of public defense or could not use all land and other means for public defense.  Well, that’s what Texas did – in writing.  In Texas, we stand on our word.

It’s About the Eligibility Requirements in the U.S. Constitution

Let’s start by applying the text of the 14th Amendment as written.  Do not apply some theory of construction.  Do not apply fears of political reprisals.  Do not adopt a result and then read the words to yield your desired result.  It does not make a difference who may be ruled eligible or ineligible.  If the issue were the age of the candidate in question, you would consider only the text; y’all would not consider who the candidate is or whether your ruling would upset or even enrage the masses.

This led me to read opinions offered by distinguished retired federal judges covering the entire political spectrum based upon the text of the 14th Amendment.  How is it that these numerous distinguished federal district court judges have followed the text and find that the 14th Amendment does apply to determine eligibility?  The answer is that they followed the plain text.  Your questions to the parties during oral arguments last week indicate y’all may not agree with those opinions; I hope that your questions were meant to test the attorneys, and do not reflect your belief of what the plain text actually means.

Some advocates will claim that the president, whose position is defined in the U.S. Constitution, is not an “officer.”  However, the U.S. Constitution, at Article II, Section 1, states that the executive powers shall be vested in the president who holds his office over a four-year term.  The dictionary defines an officer as one who holds an office.  Therefore, the president is an officer as he holds the office of the president.  Yet, some of your questions indicated that you may have a problem accepting this syllogism.  Hopefully, you exercised your right during questioning during oral argument to test ideas rather than reveal your own conclusions.  The text of the 14th Amendment covers a person seeking to be “… a Senator or Representative in Congress, or an elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States.”  [Emphasis added]  The text, therefore, covers one who seeks to hold a federal office which, constitutionally, includes someone wanting to be the president.  This wording in the 14th Amendment does not amend the other Constitutional text that defines the president as the holder of an office (i.e., an officer).

Y’all selectively like to cite portions of the Federalist Papers or other outside writings of the Framers to try to change the otherwise unambiguous meaning of the text of the Constitution.  Please stick to the text when it is unambiguous, as in the case of the 14th Amendment, so that the inquiry ends there.  The other words of the Framers are interesting historically and allow us now to assess how brilliant they were, but those words do not comprise the text of the U.S. Constitution.  It is the text of the Constitution that matters, not what any Framer may have wanted to include in the text but failed to win approval for.  Y’all cannot import into the text of the Constitution any words which the Framers failed to include.

Public policy cannot be the tail that wags the jurisprudential dog.  If you want to make policy, then run for office.  Otherwise, honor your oath.  Your failure to honor your oath will cause more dissension and disruption to this country than following the text.  I was taught on the first day of my Constitutional Law class that y’all like to make public policy.  Just because y’all have done it before does not justify doing it anymore.

Some advocates have asked questions about states trying to impose requirements on the federal election.  Colorado and Maine are simply applying the eligibility requirements as they already exist in the U.S. Constitution.  They could do it, and have done it, regarding the minimum age to be the president.  I again hope you were just asking questions during oral argument and not revealing your conclusions when there was a perceived concern for the states trying to impose state requirements on a federal election.

A majority of the Justices currently claim that unstated rights and conditions may not be imported into the text.  So, where is the textual basis to claim that the 14th Amendment’s eligibility threshold requires Congressional action?  One opinion by one U.S. Supreme Court justice sitting as a circuit judge does not make a consensus or anything but one opinion.

The same majority of Justices also currently claim that the text of the U.S. Constitution, including the 14th Amendment, must be construed based upon the meaning of words in 1787 and 1868, respectively.  If so, the consensus of distinguished historians is that the 14th Amendment does apply as Colorado and Maine have held.  Y’all can’t ask to consult history but then reject the consensus of historians.  Y’all still should just stick to the unambiguous text.

Some advocates feign the downfall of judicial process through a fear of a multiplicity of state-based lawsuits if states seek to apply the text of the 14th Amendment.  So, does this mean that states should not seek to enforce the text of the U.S. Constitution when it applies to the duties of the states?  Could not the states seek to enforce the minimum age eligibility requirement?  When did filing suits seeking to apply the 14th Amendment become a bad thing?  Under this argument, should former Vice President Pence not have certified the last presidential election results because it led to 60 some-odd lawsuits?

Thank you.

–Pascal Paul Piazza

Fundamental dishonesty

Pat Ryan 1 Comment

It wasn’t a “driveway moment” because I wasn’t in my driveway, I wasn’t sitting in the car listening to the radio to hear the end of a story that had sucked me in.  No, I was still on the road headed home from the grocery store when I heard two words that broke through and provided some clarity of mind, finally, amid the onslaught of distressing rulings from the Supreme Court of the United States.

Just a week ago, the court’s six “conservative” justices ruled that a program in Maine that subsidizes tuition for certain private schools in rural areas of the state cannot exclude religious private schools from the program.  Two days later the same six found that a New York law placing strict limits on carrying guns in public violates the Second Amendment.  And the day after that, those same six members not only found that a Mississippi ban on abortions after just 15 weeks was constitutional, they went the extra step and overturned the nearly 50-year old precedent of their own court that established a woman’s right to an abortion.

The separation of church and state.  The rights to privacy, and to safety, individual liberty, and self-determination.  The targets of this Supreme Court and the “conservative” movement in general couldn’t be clearer.  With each new Republican-appointed justice on the court, and each new ruling by the new majority, they demonstrate their mission to remake America as a paradigm of Christian nationalism.  It seems clear that the decades-long mission to destroy the secular society that has grown up since World War II just can’t be denied, not even when the inconvenience of the facts gets in the way.

It was Nina Totenberg on the radio reporting on the ruling in favor of the high school coach who insisted on holding a prayer circle at midfield after football games, and Justice Neil Gorsuch’s opinion scolded the school district:

“Here, a government entity sought to punish an individual for engaging in a personal religious observance, based on a mistaken view that it has a duty to suppress religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech. The Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of discrimination. Mr. Kennedy is entitled to summary judgment on his religious exercise and free speech claims,” Gorsuch wrote.

The three dissenters said that account of the facts blinkered reality (emphasis added). Writing for the three liberals, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that Kennedy’s prayer was neither private speech, nor benign. She pointed to the fact that the coach conducted a media blitz leading ultimately to the field being stormed and students being knocked down. And she said “schools face a higher risk of unconstitutionally ‘coerc[ing] … support or participat[ion] in religion or its exercise’ than other government entities.”

“This decision does a disservice to schools and the young citizens they serve, as well as to our Nation’s longstanding commitment to the separation of church and state,” Sotomayor wrote. “Today’s decision elevates the rights of a school coach who voluntarily accepted public employment, over the rights of students required to attend public schools and who may feel obligated to join in prayer.” In doing so, Sotomayor claims, the court gives “short shrift” to the constitutions ban on state entanglement with religion.

University of Virginia law professor Douglas Laycock usually files briefs siding with religion advocates. But not in this case. He called Monday’s ruling, “fundamentally dishonest” and pointed to the third sentence of the Gorsuch opinion, which characterizes coach Kennedy’s conduct as “quiet isolated prayers,” stating, “They weren’t quiet and they weren’t isolated. They were leading the students in prayer, and to say that’s okay undermines all the school prayer cases.” By that he means Supreme Court decisions barring teacher- or student-led prayers in public school classrooms, and ceremonies like graduation.

It was like a fire alarm went off inside my head: “fundamentally dishonest.”

Yes—the fundamental dishonesty of these justices, and of the Christian religious extremists who have been fighting the secularization of American society for generations!  They have had a winking understanding with a certain segment of America: anything is permissible—the end justifies the means—when it comes to returning America to be the Christian country we all “know” it should be, including lying under oath in order to gain positions of power.  Don’t believe me?  Look at the video of the confirmation hearings over the years of the “conservative” justices now on the court: is it just a coincidence that when the Senate Judiciary Committees asked these nominees about Roe v. Wade, these individuals had the same answer, in virtually the same words, words meant to leave the impression that they believed in the doctrine of stare decisis in general and specifically for this case?  I think not.

In a concurring opinion on Dobbs, Justice Clarence Thomas says the quiet part out loud about using the wedge they perfected in overturning Roe to take aim at other precedents that guarantee other rights to Americans.

“In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,” Thomas wrote on Page 119 of the opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, also referring to the rulings that legalized same-sex relationships and marriage equality, respectively. “Because any substantive due process decision is ‘demonstrably erroneous’ … we have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents.”

Just coincidence, right, that the other cases on his mind are the ones that guaranteed the rights to same-sex marriage, and same-sex sex, and the use of birth control.  BIRTH CONTROL!?  He wants to return to a time when the use of birth control by married couples in the privacy of their own home could be and was prohibited by states?  Who can even imagine such a thing?

I know who…so do you.  And I don’t take any comfort—at all—in the protestation from the other five “conservative” justices that “[n]othing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”  When there is fundamental dishonesty, I have doubts.