My Letter to the American Bar Association

miriam

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Sunday February 16, 2020 · 12:23 PM PST

2020/02/16 · 12:23

Gavel, the Constitution and scales of justice.

Judy Perry Martinez, President

The American Bar Association

321 North Clark Street

Chicago, Illinois 60654

February 16, 2020

Dear Madame President;

I wish to protest the failure of the American Bar Association to publicly condemn President Donald Trump's assault on the rule of law.

The ABA's statement of purpose reads: The mission of the ABA is to be the national representative of the legal profession, serving the public and the profession by promoting justice, professional excellence and respect for the law.

Please explain how your association’s shameful silence regarding the president's continued attacks on judicial independence, the intelligence community, and the articles of the United States Constitution, advances your mission of respect for the law.

How does your lack of response fulfill the mission of promoting justice when the president threatens sitting judges? When he vilifies dedicated civil servants who obey the law and answer subpoenas, only to be vengefully removed from their positions,

How does it comport with your mission of respect for the law when the president misappropriates the Department of Justice to function as his personal law firm, and the Unites States Attorney General as his personal lawyer? When, with this relationship, he can dictate who he wants investigated and who he does not. When he can punish his political enemies and reward his financial supporters and indicted cronies, all with no objection from your association.

The ABA website directs under the heading Rule Of Law that you: Hold governments accountable under law. What effect will your abrogation of that ABA directive have on this country, particularly on its young people? To what effect your failure to hold the president accountable in his contempt for the rule of the law?

As much as any other of this nation's institutions, the ABA by its own mission statement has the duty to speak out when the president announces "I can do whatever I want," and thus assumes the mantle of monarchy. If you continue to answer this authoritarian conduct with silence, it can only be assumed that you do not disapprove it.

I am by profession a historian. I can say with little fear of contradiction that history will judge you harshly for not forcefully condemning the destruction of our democracy's rule of law.

Yours truly,

Miriam _________

If any of you feel moved to raise your voice to the ABA, below are two contacts. The ABA website also has a “Contact Us” email option.

Teresa Schmid, Director of the Center for Professional Responsibility (312-988-5294)

Mary McDermott, Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility (312-988-5310)

WHY Mueller must, MUST testify

miriam

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Wednesday June 12, 2019 · 3:05 PM PDT

2019/06/12 · 15:05

Mueller announced that if called to testify he won’t say anything different from what was in his report. But that’s good. In fact, that’s great! That’s all I’m asking for, because it will be shiny brand new information to the vast majority of Americans. A study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that Americans spend an average of 16.8 minutes a day ( 0.28 of an hour) reading for purposes other than school or work. And Americans watch more than 7 hours of television per household per day.

I wish someone would gift wrap those figures and give them to Nancy Pelosi. Because right now she has it backwards. She wants hearings before a call for impeachment. But the hearings are going nowhere. With the Trump administration’s effective obstructive tactics of delay, delay, delay we will land on Mars before a relevant, age-wrinkled or long-bearded witness staggers into the House hearings.

People will watch open hearings as they did the Watergate spectacular. That’s crucial, because given our current culture, the Mueller Report could be twice as compellingly written as a John Grisham thriller—but it doesn’t matter if fewer than 1% of the country is going to read it. Why read it when FOX News and even the credible networks will give you what they think you should know in easy to absorb soundbites?

Instead of Mueller taking 10 or 15 minutes to tell this nation that he wants no more to do with our national emergency, he could have told us what the investigations revealed about the president’s obstruction of justice. Why he concluded those 10 episodes of obstruction broke our laws. But no, we got the Sphinx. In other words, a riddle most of America won’t bother to solve.

It’s breathtaking when even without Mueller’s testimony there are 41% of registered voters who support Trump’s impeachment. And there is no valid reason for him not to testify. If he doesn’t, Nancy Pelosi can continue to play a high stakes political poker game with the United States Constitution.

Remembering Louise (Slaughter)

miriam

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Saturday March 17, 2018 · 1:06 PM PDT

2018/03/17 · 13:06

We called her Louise. In western New York that was the only name needed to immediately identify her. Everybody knew her and most of us loved her—which is why she was elected for 16 terms of office. Born in Kentucky, she never quite lost that mild southern accent or a husky contagious laugh. My initial experience with her was in the nineteen-nineties when my first book was published. My editor had sent Louise an ARC (advance reading copy), but I didn’t know it until the day the book came out—and there was a wonderfully unique quote from Louise on the back cover. A few months later I met her for the first time at a Women’s Rights Memorial celebration in Seneca Falls. And saw her at following ones every year. She attended almost every Woman’s Rights event in our historic area and became a role model for thousands of western NY girls. We’ll never know how many she influenced to “go and be the best you can be.” The last time I saw her was election day 2016 at Susan B. Anthony’s grave. Like the hundreds and hundreds of women and girls who visited Anthony’s grave that day to show our gratitude, she expected Hillary to win.

A few springs ago, my neighborhood (on a cul-de-sac) was being flooded every time it rained by the BIG, historic Irondequoit Creek we live on. Hadn’t happened before. Town engineer told us to suck it up and get used to it—climate change was to blame. (It’s the only time I’ve heard a Republican town official even acknowledge climate change.) Louise heard about it. And within 48 hours of that, trucks and bulldozers and steam shovels arrived to clean out a thoroughly debris-clogged arch beneath an expressway bridge under which the creek flowed. This after months of us being told by town and state engineers that it would be another 18 months before they might be able to get at it. Louise got things done! Ours is just one small neighborhood, but she was there for us.

She was a trailblazer. In Congress she was the first ever female chair of the Rules Committee. Her degree in microbiology meant our Great Lakes environment was always on her mind. At age 88 she was still a smart, articulate, energetic, immensely warm, and funny woman who put her constituents first. She was a perfect example, and then some, of what a congressional representative should be. Always available to us, she put her constituents first. The world today looks a little more drab to me without Louise in it.

Is This Where Congress is Hiding?

miriam

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday August 12, 2017 · 10:45 AM PDT

2017/08/12 · 10:45

Isn’t it past Time for us to ask what our congressional employees are doing to protect us, their employers, from the madman in our White House? Actually, scratch ‘ask’—we should be demanding to know. Where are they? Somehow a quiet summer vacation under the rocks doesn’t seem quite appropriate when the wannabe Terminator in the oval office keeps screeching about fire and fury. Why isn’t the word IMPEACH on every set of congressional lips from dawn ‘til dusk? What the hell do they think the Founders intended by writing that article? Comic relief?

The impeachment capability was designed for just such an occasion as this. When we have a faux John Wayne trashing our Constitution, cuddling up to our foremost long-time adversary, calling everyone but his daughter provocatively nasty names, threatening our free election process, and scaring the children. What point is there in having an impeachment article if you congressional folks aren’t going to use it? If you think it’s too much like work, then use Article 25. It’s hard to believe you Democrats aren’t at least loudly suggesting it as an alternative to the nuclear war this would-be emperor is promoting. C’mon Congress, do your job! Rid us of this unbalanced, dangerous impediment to pursuing things like, you know, life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. That’s what you’re there for.

Mystery of the Oil (with clues)

miriam

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday May 24, 2010 · 11:59 AM PDT

2010/05/24 · 11:59

With oil still gushing beneath the Gulf waters, can someone give a rational explanation for what's contained in this article in the New York Times?

Can somone solve the following mystery: Whom did we elect to govern in the best interests of America and its people? To keep the country secure from enemies without and within?

Clues to this mystery's solution below.

miriam

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday December 06, 2007 · 1:32 PM PST

2007/12/06 · 13:32

Media Channel dot org reports:

The latest National Intelligence Estimate concluding that Iran discontinued its nuclear weapons program four years ago has claimed one casualty: CNN has postponed speculative documentary "We Were Warned — Iran Goes Nuclear."

This is all the illumination we need, thank you, to clearly see that our access to information has been taken over by the Bush administration.

miriam

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday December 01, 2007 · 11:08 AM PST

2007/12/01 · 11:08

In the beginning....I didn't think the fact that a candidate was female would make much difference here at kos. But multiple, daily anti-Clinton diaries and comments have convinced me otherwise. Hillary Clinton is the sole recipient of repetitive comments like: "I hate Hillary Clinton." "I will never vote for Clinton no matter what." How many comments have you seen that read: I will never vote for Barak Obama? I hate Chris Dodd? Bill Richardson is a bitch.

Why such venom is directed only at Senator Clinton is a phenomenon it's time to discuss. But first, take a jump back in time with me.

miriam

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday February 10, 2007 · 11:51 AM PST

2007/02/10 · 11:51

Many, if not most, of us fear an imminent U.S. strike on Iran. The current signs are ominous and we feel helpless to stop it. But I think a case can be made that a move to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney, and to impeach him now, might greatly lessen the threat of this potential catastrophe.

Why impeach Cheney before Bush? The garbage that's spilling out all over the streets of Washington these past days is Cheney's garbage, not lil' George's. It is Cheney and the neo-cons who are pushing an attack on Iran, not George. I doubt George knows where Iran is.

Follow me here and I'll give you my reasons.

miriam

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday January 14, 2007 · 1:41 PM PST

2007/01/14 · 13:41

Our Constitution's balance of power provisions have taken a huge hit under Bush: first is the amassing of unprecedented power by the executive; the second is the reduction of the legislative role to simply that of an advisory group.

And now the administration is secretly undermining the judicial branch.

I will delete this diary if someone else has covered this. If not, please follow me over the fence.

miriam

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday December 30, 2006 · 7:14 PM PST

2006/12/30 · 19:14

Please correct me if I'm wrong here (and I'm sure someone will) but isn't an implicit job description for the Office of President of the United States the responsibility to lead the country in the direction of its best interests? As opposed to, say....fiddling around? And wouldn't the obvious role of "A Decider" (or, for Bush purists, The Decider) be to decide?

Does anyone else find it morally reprehensible, even, perhaps, criminally negligent, for the current Commander-in-Chief to be tromping around a brush-sprouting Texas "ranch", entertaining various visitors, cowering from tornadoes with tax-payer funded Secret Service protection, and not leading or deciding a bloody thing?

During Bush's two-month, carefree hiatus-from-responsibility (it must be carefree--he avows he doesn't even lose any sleep) we've rather quickly managed to approach the 3000 total number of American soldiers killed in Iraq, and added how many to the countless others wounded and permanently maimed? How many more Iraqis killed if the deaths are averaging over 400 a day? How many of our handful of remaining allies are dead?

RSS

My Letter to the American Bar Association

WHY Mueller must, MUST testify

Remembering Louise (Slaughter)

Is This Where Congress is Hiding?

Mystery of the Oil (with clues)

CNN = Corrupt News Network; Iran Provides Proof. UPDATE

Venom, Viciousness, and Vitriol....but why?

Can We Stop Cheney's Attack on Iran? Here's How.

New Dangerous Judicial Subversion by Bush

Fiddling while Baghdad Burns