‘Impeach or not’ is a false choice

Bill Knight column for 8-5, 6 or 7, 2019

If the House would impeach President Trump, it would go to the Senate. There, GOP Leader Mitch McConnell and his Republican majority wouldn’t vote to remove Trump from office if he shot Ronald Reagan’s surviving kin live on Fox.

Why bother?

Petitions with 10 million signatures were presented to Congress in May; in Illinois, U.S. Reps. Sean Casten and Jan Schakowsky (who previously opposed impeachment) have joined some 114 House members favoring it; the NAACP convention on July 24 unanimously voted in favor of impeachment; the independent Quinnipiac poll shows 46 percent of Americans think Trump has broken the law since taking office; Special Counselor Robert Mueller recently repeated that his investigation didn’t exonerate the President and confirmed that Trump could be prosecuted if he weren’t President; and 1,000-plus former federal prosecutors, many Republicans, signed an open letter saying that Trump would be charged with multiple felonies if he weren’t President. (One of them, ex-U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance, said, “Based on my experience of more than 25 years as a federal prosecutor, if anyone other than a President committed this conduct, he would be under indictment today for multiple acts of obstruction of justice.”)

Incidentally, legal experts disagree. Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe, author of “To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment,” cited the Constitution (Article I, Section 3) stating, “The Party convicted [by the Senate in an impeachment case] shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment.”

That’s “be,” not “WILL be.”

On Capitol Hill, U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said the president “deserves impeachment … he’s violated the law six ways from Sunday.

“There can be no higher stakes than this attempt to abrogate all power to the executive branch, away from Congress and, more importantly, the American people,” said Nadler, a lawyer. “The choice is simple, We can stand up to this President in defense of the country and the Constitution and the liberty we love, or we can let the moment pass.”

NO! THERE’S A THIRD CHOICE.

OK, arguably, the republic is at risk. But Mueller’s probe seemingly reported something more pedestrian but potentially more powerful than Russian collusion: reasons to conclude Trump obstructed justice. Obstruction of justice occurs, prosecutors say, when something CAN be obstructed, there’s a LINK between it and a person’s attempts to do so, and that person KNEW of the connection.

More importantly, the violation’s statute of limitations is five years from the date of the crime.

So: the Judiciary Committee can still examine evidence, take testimony, deliberate and make its findings public, and they can do so announcing upfront that ITS INTENTION IS NOT TO IMPEACH but to turn over its proof of misconduct to authorities like the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, the office that prosecuted Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and Russian attorney Natalya Veselnitskaya and is investigating Trump’s inaugural committee, hush-money payments, Trump family actions with Deutsche Bank and more.

The Constitution assigns Congress the difficult responsibility of holding Presidents accountable, saying a President “shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” And Founder Alexander Hamilton in “The Federalist Papers” wrote, “The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust,” Hamilton wrote. “They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.”

Tribe said, “If this is not impeachable behavior, then for all time we will have established the precedent that the President can get away with anything.”

However: a U.S. Senate with 53 Republicans hasn’t shown a willingness to confront Trump.

“Our job is to protect the rule of law,” Nadler said, so allegations of crime must be proven, “serious” and it “cannot be seen to be partisan.”

It’s increasingly more patriotic than partisan. This spring, 11 conservative attorneys signed a letter saying, “The President’s conduct demonstrates a flagrant disregard for the rule of law.” One of them, George H. W. Bush’s Deputy Attorney General Donald B. Ayer, said, “It’s really kind of tyrannical. It’s un-American. It’s the sort of expansion of government power you would expect Republicans to worry about.”

America could be convinced Trump’s a crook.

Watergate hearings persuaded people that Nixon should be lawfully ousted. In January of 1974, 19 percent of the public favored removing him; by that August, it was 57 percent.

Apart from impeachment, holding anyone responsible for wrongdoing takes proof.

And prosecutors.

Marquis’ wit and whimsy nearly lost to the ages

Bill Knight column for 8-1, 2or 3, 2019

       Last week was 141 years since the birth of Don Marquis of Walnut, Ill., a place imparting on him a sense of whimsy evident throughout his writing.

            “He was parodist, historian, poet, clown, fable writer, satirist, reporter and teller of tales,” said E.B. White. “He had everything it takes, and more. No one who ever read Don Marquis has forgotten him.”

            Today, unfortunately, too few have read him.

            A newspaper columnist and more, Marquis spoofed pretensions, especially through fictional foils Archy (a free-verse poet reincarnated as a philosophical cockroach) and Mehitabel (a dancing cat and reincarnation of Cleopatra).

            Marquis’s often-bittersweet humor flourished despite sorrow: the unexpected deaths of his children and two wives, the burden of caring for two sisters, and illnesses that incapacitated him in his 50s.

            Marquis graduated from Walnut High School and attended Knox College in Galesburg for one term. He left Knox – where alumni included columnists Eugene Field and George Fitch – a year before Carl Sandburg started there. Marquis didn’t feel like he fit in and returned home.

            Working in a drug store, chicken farm, as a railroad hand and teacher, a Census Bureau clerk and printer, Marquis started in journalism in Walnut, where his first newspaper jobs were at weeklies; he set type and wrote a column.

            After writing news, editorials and ads, laying out pages and even running the press and wrapping newspapers in small-town Illinois, Marquis sharpened his skills in cities. In Washington, he contributed to the old Washington Times but couldn’t get hired (however, while briefly working for the government he studied art). Following a stop in Philadelphia, where he wrote for local papers, Marquis in 1902 moved to Atlanta and wrote editorials and covered theater for the Atlanta News until 1904, when he defected to Joel Chandler Harris’ Atlanta Journal. After joining Harris’ Uncle Remus’s Magazine as associate editor, Marquis in 1909 moved to New York to work for a news service, then as a rewrite man for the American before jumping to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle as a reporter. In 1912, he joined the New York Sun, where he launched his column “The Sun Dial.”

            Marquis became popular and respected, writing essays, poetry, fiction and scripts along with pieces for magazines including the New Yorker and the Saturday Review of Literature. He produced five novels and dozens of collections of verse and essays, plus the 1932 play “The Dark Hours,” about Jesus’ final days, starring Henry Fonda on Broadway.

            His fans ranged from novelist Frank Herbert (“Dune”) to Theodore Roosevelt, but all his writings were overshadowed by his journalism – especially columns featuring Archy and Mehitabel. (Michael Sims’ 400-page “Annotated Archy and Mehitabel” from 2006 remains in print.)

            “The creation of Archy was part inspiration, part desperation,” commented White (who described columnists as “men who are hoping their spirit will soar in time to catch the edition”).

            A mouthpiece for witty sneers, Archy lived in a world of fear and violence. He was an alter ego – a literary device used by journalists from Harris (Uncle Remus) to, more recently, Mike Royko (Slats Grobnik). Mehitabel, a promiscuous cat, fancied herself an artiste, commenting on current events, even as Archy mocked poetry.

            Marquis’s columns were mild social criticism, and his verse ranged from zany burlesque to graceful lyricism. Throughout his career, Marquis mixed the madcap and melancholy. He had substance and a flair for strong characters, a light tone and real zeal, and a talent for blending classical material and contemporary mores.

            “Don Marquis was a kindly man who did not fear enmities, but he was a satirist, and he could bring down a stuffed shirt on the wing with the best of them,” wrote fellow New York columnist Heywood Broun. “And when he was of a mind he could and did land punishing punches behind the ear.”

            In 1922, Marquis moved to the Tribune, where his column was named The Lantern, and he retired from daily journalism in 1925.

            After a series of strokes, he died crippled and almost penniless 12 years later, but his last writing effort, “Sons of the Puritans,” was a straightforward, semi-autobiographical novel published in 1939.

            “It was the fate of Don Marquis, the master of comedy, that his life was overlaid with tragedy,” wrote famed newspaperman Stanley Walker. “He laughed much, but in his heart, he was a mystic, a somber, brooding poet.”

            Perhaps White summed up the loss for those who came after Marquis: “The new generation of newspaper readers is missing a lot that we used to have,” he recalled. “Buying a paper then was quietly exciting, in a way that it has ceased to be.”

Some Republicans silent or timid on racist rants

Bill Knight column for 7-29, 30 or 31, 2019

Deadly race riots raged in Chicago 100 years ago this week, but it seems that some Illinois politicians haven’t learned enough from history to resist returning to those Bad Ol’ Days.

Democracy must have choices and multiple political parties, and I long admired and sometimes voted for U.S. Reps. Paul Findley and Ray LaHood, U.S. Sen. Chuck Percy, President Dwight Eisenhower, State Rep. Dave Leitch and Gov. Jim Edgar. A hero in the Watergate era was Congressman Tom Railsback, the Moline Republican (for whom Ray LaHood worked for five years before becoming House Minority Leader Bob Michel’s aide) who voted against President Nixon.

However, I see today’s GOP and wonder whether those past Republican leaders were outliers or naïve.

The option is shock and shame about 21^st century GOP leaders.

This stems from recent belligerent tantrums by President Trump, who on July 14 attacked four progressive Congresswomen of color to “go back [to] places from which they came,” followed within hours by an ugly “Send her back!” chant by a Trump-rally mob, and then a July 19 “Jihad Squad” graphic post by the Illinois Republican County Chairmen’s Association depicting the same elected House members as terrorists.

In Illinois’ 18^th District where I live, Congressman Darin LaHood (Ray’s 51-year-old son) issued mild rebukes, commenting after the hostile tweet, “It is not the language that I would’ve used” and following the rally chants, “That’s not what I think is the right strategy. However, I think it’s a reflection of the real concern by many people in my district.”

“Strategy”? Blaming constituents?

Darin apparently never reacted to the provocative Facebook post (no one from his District and Washington offices replied to requests for a comment). His complacency, if not complicity, is disappointing, demonstrating timidity or more concern for Trump’s approval than for decency.

About Trump, George W. Bush appointee to the National Counterterrorism Center and former CIA Director John Brennan, said, “Until so-called Republicans put nation above party and condemn his vile rants, this crisis will only get worse and more dangerous.”

Some Republicans did denounce the racism: Texas Congressmen Will Hurd and Pete Olson, respectively, called the tweets “racist” that should be disavowed; Congresswoman Lisa Murkowski of Alaska described Trump’s comments as “spiteful”; ex-Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake characterized the language as “vile and offensive”; and even arch-conservative Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst admitted it was racist, and current House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said such criticisms have “no place in our party and no place in this country.”

In Illinois, GOP Congressman Adam Kinzinger said such chants are “wrong and would send chills down the spines of our Founding Fathers.”

Progressive evangelical Christian Jim Wallis agreed, saying the angry comments “are offensive to our founding ideals, … un-American, illegal, a sin and antithetical to the teachings of Jesus.”

Such judgments aren’t startling. After all, Trump’s long-time attorney Michael Cohen and one-time casino partner Jack O’Donnell both say the President is a racist.

However, as writer Mike Tomasky said, “Republicans don’t fail to object to Trump because they’re afraid of his base. They refuse to stand up to Trump because they like what he’s doing.”

So overlooking destructive, divisive politics, policies and practices is OK if it means fewer regulations, Right-wing judges, a border wall, and an economy enriching the wealthy, even if the GOP betrays its tenets of fiscal restraint, law and order, family values, and recognizing Russia as a dictatorship?

What a price! Even Michel “was always the most loyal of Republicans but never a politician comfortable with the usual dissembling or blind partisanship,” Jack Germond and Jules Witcover wrote in 1993.

Therefore, I have five questions for my Congressman:

* If Trump’s attacks aren’t racist, what would be?

* If “go back” or “send her back” are condoned by this President, would comparable comments from a Democratic President be alright?

* By not condemning Trump’s comments, aren’t you making them acceptable?

* Since the Census Bureau predicts that whites will be a minority starting in 2045, how do you expect the Republican Party to survive?

* And since you earned a degree from John Marshall Law School and worked as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for five years, how do you reconcile this statement from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Anti-Discrimination Laws: “Examples of potentially unlawful conduct include insults, taunts or ethnic epithets such as making fun of a person’s foreign accent or comments like ‘Go back where you came from’ ”?

Ex-U.S. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates commented, “Those who could have stood up but cowered instead bear equal responsibility for the vile devolution of our country’s values.”

Years from now, who’ll look back and think, “Sure, Trump was a racist, but he cut taxes for the elite…”?