Moral not Constitutional Crisis

Pop quiz:

How many times does the word “privacy” appear in the US Constitution?

What US President said: “This man is black. We can all see that. But can we also see as easily that which is equally true: that he is the only true hero in this room? Now, if he were white, he wouldn’t be standing before this court fighting for his life. If he were white and his enslavers were British, he wouldn’t be standing, so heavy the weight of the medals and honors we would bestow upon him. Yet, if the South is right, what are we to do with that embarrassing, annoying document, The Declaration of Independence? What of its conceits? “All men created equal,” “inalienable rights,” “life, liberty,” and so on and so forth? What on Earth are we to do with this?”?

Who wrote this veritable truism: “Our Constitution is color-blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens The humblest is the peer of the most powerful.”?

What English writer offered the following opinion: “We want fewer and better children” not “ill-bred, ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens that you inflict upon us.”?

Who offered this thought: “Sir, there are two passions which have a powerful influence in the affairs of men. These are greed and avarice; the love of power and the love of money.”?

Which US Presidents refused to take a salary while they were in office?

Answers at the end of this post.

Trump Part Deux is a target rich environment. We address below several of the ongoing tempests in the Federal teapot. Fasten your seat belts!

Before digital clocks we had clocks with hour and minute hands and it was said that if such a clock was broken it was still correct twice every day. Today the functional equivalent is that even CNN can be accurate once in a great while. At last they are correct on one point…Trump has managed to precipitate a Constitutional crisis…in Ukraine. The diminutive Volodymyr Zelensky, dictator in training, managed to create an existential crisis with respect to future of Ukraine. Zelensky should not disrespect a US President when he is not tall enough to get on the Cyclone Roller Coaster on Coney Island.

Gone are the shrill cries that Trump is an existential threat to democracy. It has been replaced by the accusation that Trump is provoking a “Constitutional crisis”. On CNN recently Scott Jennings, playing the role of Custer, asked one of the ventriloquist dummies who were assembled to attack all things MAGA, to identify the Constitutional crisis that was the punctuation at the end of every sentence. The benighted Democrat summoned up all of his grandiloquence and told Jennings he was not going to provide a “civics lesson” for Custer. Translation: I never thought you would actually ask me to provide proof of what I just said you big bully.

We have had several real Constitutional crises in our 250 years of nationhood. The secession and Civil War was by far the single biggest threat to the American dream. The election of 1876 was a lesser crisis but the result set back any progress with respect to civil rights for 75 years. The Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education rekindled the divisions that were the prelude to the Civil War. These were crises. The election of Trump does not even rise to the level of kerfuffle or contretemps…except in the fever swamps of the left.

Your tax dollars at work: DOGE uncovered $101 MM in DEI (Synonym for DEI: Peter Principle) contracts awarded by the Department of Education. It would be instructive to know (a) who awarded these contracts; (b) who was awarded the contracts; and. (c) what was accomplished as a result the contracts.

We have had, from time to time, potential Constitutional crises. In the 1930s the ever petulant Franklin Roosevelt hatched a plan to pack the Supreme Court because the justices refused to provide Constitutional air cover for his dirigistic (and unconstitutional) legislative agenda. It was a temper tantrum not a crisis. In the 1830s the Supreme Court ruled that the claims of the Cherokee tribe (ancestors of Elizabeth Warren…NOT) to land in Georgia were valid. Jackson famously responded to John Marshall’s ruling: “Now let him enforce it!” In the aftermath our first Democrat President forcibly removed some 60,000 people of the five “civilized tribes”: The Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw and Choctaw, from the states of Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and Florida to points west. Jasmine Crockett, former village idiot levitated to Congress, will soon be calling the deportation of criminals illegally in our country as Trump’s Trail of Tears.

Your tax dollars at work: The EPA has generously donated two billion of our tax dollars to an organization connected to the world renowned environmental scientist Stacey Abrams. It was done through the Inflation Reduction Act’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund to Power Forward Communities. Extra credit if you can explain what that fustian title means! The Agency also contributed $6.97 billion to Climate United, a national investment fund supporting solutions that tackle our nation’s toughest economic and environmental problems. Money well spent although it would be interesting to discover where all the funds actually went.

The usual pack of laughing hyenas in Congress are fighting hammer and cycle to oppose any diminution of the money being shoveled into NGO burn pits. Every entrenched elected official participates directly or indirectly in this taxpayer fleecing. The nameless bureaucrats who dispense the funds are, just like Elon Musk, unelected, but that point seems to elude our willfully ignorant media.

Here is a Swiftian “modest proposal”…term limits for every member of Congress. There are ten House members who are over 80 years of age. Ten members of the 118th Congress have served for 40 years or longer. This does not include Maxine Waters who calls into question the argument that no one could possibly have a single digit IQ. As many members of Congress are motivated by greed and avarice we need to destroy their incentive to cling tenaciously to the reins of power. How about limiting tenure to a total of twelve years in the US Congress and, as an further inducement to go back home, the elimination of the Congressional pensions? Rotating fresh faces with fresh ideas…food for thought.

And yet our willfully ignorant media turn a blind eye to the continuing failure to take meaningful steps to heal the racial divide in this country. It is a continuing crisis and it is perpetuated by inaction in Washington, largely Democrat inaction. They choose to “fix” the problem by calling people names.

The Brown v. Board of Education decision was a call to arms with respect to Civil Rights for Black Americans. President Eisenhower aggressively pursued the desegregation not only of schools but also our social institutions. In 1956 138 Democrat members of Congress signed the so-called Southern Manifesto which decried the actions driven by the Brown decision that “encroach upon the reserved rights of the States and the people”. Meaning, of course, the white people. Perhaps the Democrats of 2025 should focus on addressing the future of the Black community instead of grandstanding at the State of the Union address. That the entirety of the Congressional Democrat Senators and Representatives sat on their hands when a 13 year old cancer survivor was recognized for his personal courage and became a Secret Service agent was a surreal moment. If a Democrat President had recognized a 13 year Black child and the Republicans did nothing the air would have been filled with KKK comparisons.

The most expeditious way to begin the healing is to ensure that public schools provide a quality education to all students. In major US cities Black students lag behind white students in academic performance. Why are we sending millions to foreign countries to promote DEI and provide transgender protections when those funds could be used to make our inner city schools the best in the world? Stop the social re-segregation such as Black commencement ceremonies and high school proms. This sort of behavior is reminiscent of what happened in Germany in the 1930s with respect to the Jews…isolation and calumniation. We have lost opportunities in the past so maybe we need a course correction. Recommended reading: Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and Its Legacy.

Step one is under way…the new Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, has announced that the responsibility of quality education will be returned to the states. As Mao famously said: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with but a single step.”

Your tax dollars at work: DOGE has canceled $660 million worth of real estate leases under the GSA for facilities that were not being used. Knock, knock…anybody home? And Trump cut $400 million from grants to Columbia University because they are tolerating violent anti-Jewish protests.

You have to admire the leftist media and their ability to diminish the qualifications of those appointed by Trump. Dan Bongino, the new #2 at the FBI, was endlessly described as a “podcaster”. His career in law enforcement was dutifully ignored. Waiting for some well qualified appointee to be described as a “former McDonald’s employee”.

Climate change fun fact: In 1900 there 1.6 billion people on planet Earth. By 2000 that number had grown to 6.17 billion inhabitants every one of them exhaling CO2. Is it any wonder that CO2 levels have increased?

Answers to the Pop Quiz:

How many times does the word “privacy” appear in the Constitution? Not once

What US President said: “This man is black. We can all see that. But can we also see as easily that which is equally true: that he is the only true hero in this room? Now, if he were white, he wouldn’t be standing before this court fighting for his life. If he were white and his enslavers were British, he wouldn’t be standing, so heavy the weight of the medals and honors we would bestow upon him. Yet, if the South is right, what are we to do with that embarrassing, annoying document, The Declaration of Independence? What of its conceits? “All men created equal,” “inalienable rights,” “life, liberty,” and so on and so forth? What on Earth are we to do with this?”? John Quincy Adams arguing before the Supreme Court in the Amistead case.

Who wrote this veritable truism: “Our Constitution is color-blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens The humblest is the peer of the most powerful.”? Justice John Harlan’s “Great Dissent” in Plessy v. Ferguson

What English writer offered the following opinion: “We want fewer and better children” not “ill-bred, ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens that you inflict upon us.”? HG Wells describing the hopes and dreams of Margaret Sanger

Who offered this thought: “Sir, there are two passions which have a powerful influence in the affairs of men. These are greed and avarice; the love of power and the love of money.”? Benjamin Franklin at Constitutional Convention

Which US Presidents refused to take a salary while they were in office? Washington and Trump