Tag: Jeff Sessions

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

OK, Racist

Back in April, the Commercial Appeal‘s Daniel Connelly broke a story about Criminal Court Judge Jim Lammey’s reposting of numerous racist articles on his Facebook page. The repost that got the most attention was a column called “Stop With the Golems Already” by noted Holocaust denier David Cole. Cole called Muslim immigrants “foreign mud,” went on to denounce Jews for encouraging such immigration, and said they should “get the f—- over the Holocaust.”

Other anti-immigrant and racist articles that Lammey reposted were from alt-right websites, including Breitbart.com. He also posted a mugshot of a Hispanic man that claimed, incorrectly, that immigrants were responsible for more crimes than American citizens.

How did we learn all this? It seems Lammey accidentally made his Facebook page public. Oops. OK, Boomer.

Compounding the problem is the fact that Lammey is regularly called upon to render judgment on Hispanics and other immigrants in his courtroom.

The Tennessee Board of Judicial Conduct looked into the situation and issued a ruling this week that stated: “After a complete and thorough investigation, and under the limited and specific facts of this case, the Board acknowledges that there is no proof that you made any statements that were anti-Semitic, racist, or anti-immigration. … However, during the investigation it appears that some of your Facebook posts were partisan in nature, which is a clear violation of the Code of Judicial Conduct.”

In legal terms, this is called a slap on the wrist with a wet piece of linguini. And it’s appalling, frankly.

But Lammey’s actions pale in comparison to what was discovered about presidential advisor Stephen Miller this week. A cache of 900 emails between Miller and a former Breitbart staffer (who had a change of heart about her racist views) was released to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Simply put, the emails revealed Miller to be an unabashed white supremacist. In the emails, which were sent in 2015 and 2016 when Miller worked as an aide for former Alabama Senator Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions, he persistently urged Breitbart to publish anti-immigrant and white supremacist propaganda, pushing specific authors, articles, and racist screeds from alt-right websites.

Miller often referenced a Calvin Coolidge-era policy that lowered immigration numbers by using discriminatory eugenics-based quotas aimed at Italians, Poles, and other Eastern Europeans, who at the time were considered nonwhite and inferior.

Miller also sharply criticized the removal of Confederate monuments and flags after alt-right killer Dylann Roof murdered nine people in a South Carolina church. What a great guy.

In 2016, Sessions came to the White House as Trump’s attorney general, and for two years led the implementation of the administration’s immigration “reform” policies, which famously included a Muslim ban, a horrific (and ongoing) family separation policy at the Southern border, the mythical border wall with Mexico, restrictions on “sanctuary cities,” and other measures designed to reduce immigration from “brown” countries.

After Trump fired Sessions, his aide de Mein Kampf, Miller, took over and continued the administration’s assault on immigration — legal and otherwise — including such measures as deporting undocumented veterans of our armed services, doubling the cost to complete the process for obtaining citizenship, and petitioning the Supreme Court to reject the DACA program for undocumented immigrants who were brought into the U.S. as children.

When the news broke about Miller’s emails, 75 congress members and more than 50 civil rights groups called for his resignation. The White House responded by saying the attacks on Miller were “anti-semitic,” which, while unsurprising, takes a particular kind of gall.

Miller is unfit to hold public office. Every day he stays in the White House is a stain on this presidency. But in a world where most Americans are suffering from “scandal fatigue” and an ongoing impeachment process that’s dominating the news cycle day after day, Trump’s in-house nazi may get a pass.

Miller’s racist emails are the kind of thing that would, and should, get you fired from pretty much any job you can think of — except maybe a Criminal Court judgeship in Memphis.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The News From Hell: Keeping Up With DT

CREDIT: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Remember Brent Kavanaugh? Or was it Bart? Those noxious hearings seem so long ago, I can hardly remember. I seem to recall something about the rollicking activities of Bart and his bros P.J., Squi, and Tobin having a “drink until you puke” contest during Beach Week on a private island somewhere. In between alcohol-fueled episodes of bird-dogging teenage girls, Kavanaugh’s Krewe was directly responsible for the banning of beer on the beach because girls kept getting sand in their Schlitz.

It seems Burt may have received serious mental impairment from Beach Week, because 30 years later, he sat in front of a Senate sub-committee and continued to repeat the phrase, “I like beer,” as if it were some sort of alcoholic zombie mantra.

The all night benders, the shit-faced stupors, along with the alleged sexual assaults, are just the qualities many fine people look for in a Supreme Court Justice. I heard Thurgood Marshall was known to butt-chug some suds while attending keggers at Howard University Law School. I don’t know for sure but many people are saying that. He shouldn’t worry. I understand that Thurgood Marshall is getting more popular every day. He and Frederick Douglass rented a loft in D.C. where they have “brewski orgies” every weekend. Bruce Kavanaugh is still waiting for an invitation.

REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Jeff Sessions

Trump got his frat-boy “fixer” onto the Supreme Court just in time to quash any pesky subpoenas he might receive to testify before the special counsel. Weren’t the tumultuous Kavanaugh hearings supposed to be the major issue for the Republicans in the mid-terms? Oops. As usual, Trump had to change the subject to make it all about himself. He told his rabid cultists to “pretend I’m on the ballot,” and they did. Either voters believed his racist and maniacal rantings about the caravan filled with ISIS terrorists and horny “big, strong men” walking from Honduras to your town to have their way with your women and spread exotic diseases — or you believed the truth.

Fox News even featured an ex-ICE agent who said the migrants were bringing smallpox, leprosy, and TB, even though smallpox was eradicated in 1980. According to President Norman Bates, Democrats are evil people who “don’t care about crime and want illegal immigrants to pour in and infest” the nation. When Nancy Pelosi objected to the reference of migrants as “animals,” Trump responded by stating that she “came out in favor of MS-13.” Miraculously, when the election was over, the caravan vanished from the news, except for Trump’s stunt sending 5,000 troops to spend Thanksgiving in West Texas eating turkey and dressing from an MRE pouch.

Trump’s post-election press conference was the most graceless, combative, and condescending yet. Words can’t compare with the YouTube video you should see for yourself. His singling out of CNN’s Jim Acosta as, “A rude, terrible person [who] shouldn’t be working for CNN,” was only the beginning of the cratering of decency. After the press berating, the unforgivably recused Jeff Sessions only lasted an hour. Trump left it to General John Kelly to do the firing. This was expected, but before Trump flew off to France, he installed his pool boy as acting attorney general. The lackey’s name is Matt Whitaker, who looks like a bouncer in a biker bar, but was actually a huckster for World Patent Marketing, a fraudulent invention promotion firm that scammed clients out of $26 million dollars, including the doomed investments from their marketing outreach program for veterans. The FTC shut the company down in 2017 citing “threats, intimidation, and gag clauses,” and froze their assets. Now who doesn’t deserve a job in the White House after that? Especially since Whitaker wrote in USA Today that Hillary should be indicted and appeared on CNN advocating for limitations to the Mueller probe. It’s become obvious that in the lame-duck session, the cornered Trump will do as much damage as possible before the new Congress comes in and demands to see his birth certificate, so expect more Brownshirt rallies.

Cable news pundits assert that Democrats should feel elated for taking back the House, but this election left me disgusted. I’m dismayed that nearly half the country thinks that this sociopath’s blatant racism, sexism, and fear of the “other” is all right by them. This was the most vile, repulsive, and racist campaign in my lifetime, and that was just in Tennessee. The former “image consultant,” Marsha Blackburn, embraced every Trump atrocity, and then some. Her television ads were a disgrace. Sure, Phil Bredesen stepped on his dick with the whole Kavanaugh business, but I naively believed enough people thought he was a good enough governor to be elected. He wasn’t just beaten, he was slaughtered, proving that fear-mongering works among the rural folk. Our little corner of Tennessee was a blue canoe in the midst of a redneck sea. Trump has pledged a “war footing” if the Democrats begin investigating his abuses, meaning nothing gets done for the foreseeable future.

There hasn’t been one calm day since this duck-tailed Colonel Parker clone took office. California is currently experiencing the deadliest fires in its history, on top of the 12 people slaughtered in a bar by a twisted gunman with an illegal extended magazine. Trump has yet to utter a word. He has, however, announced the winners of this year’s Presidential Medal of Freedom awards, including right-wing Justice Antonin Scalia, baseball legend Babe Ruth, and home-boy, Elvis Presley. At least he doesn’t have to worry if they’ll be showing up for the medal ceremony.

Randy Haspel writes the “Recycled Hippies” blog.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Steve Miller Ban

CREDIT: REUTERS | Leah Millis

What would you call a nation that separates children from their immigrant parents and warehouses them in abandoned Big Box stores behind chain-link fences? What do you call a regime that institutes a “zero tolerance” policy for immigrant families fleeing violence, political upheaval, and poverty in their own countries? What does it say about the law when the attorney general quotes Bible scripture to justify the administration’s gestapo tactics while grinning at the camera? And what do you say about a national leader who demands that all followers of a global religion be banned from entering the country?

It used to be verboten for any responsible person to compare our democratic republic with Nazi Germany. But how do you avoid the comparison, when two Texas public defenders testify that some parents were told by U.S. Customs agents that their children were being taken “to be bathed” and were never returned? Reporters have told of nursing babies taken from their mothers; the screams of parents following the realization that their children were gone; and the tears of refugees who presented themselves at proper border crossings seeking asylum but instead were hustled off into criminal custody.

I saw a documentary about children torn from their parents’ arms once, only it took place in 1939 and I had to read the subtitles because it was in German. This is no longer the home of the brave and the land of the free. It’s the home of the intolerant and the land of the incarcerated. I don’t know about you, but I want my country back.

REUTERS | Leah Millis

Stephen Miller

Always looking to deflect his assholism on to someone else, Trump tweeted in his own ungrammatical way, “Democrats can fix their forced family breakup at the Border by working with Republicans on new legislation, for a change.”

He’s lying. No law requires this.

During the influx of mothers and children from Central America in 2014, the Obama administration attempted to detain families with Immigration and Customs Enforcement until their cases could be adjudicated, which was administrative rather than criminal detention. Even then, a federal judge ordered a stay for confined asylum seekers and ruled that families could be held in detention for only a short period of time — usually 20 days. And children were not taken from their parents.

In Trump’s America, immigrants are taken into federal criminal custody, thus transforming their children into unaccompanied minors who are then whisked away to one of 200 immigrant detention centers all across the fruited plain. Presidential Chief of Staff John Kelly claimed that children and their parents would be separated “in order to deter more movement along this terribly dangerous network. The children will be taken care of — put into foster care or whatever.”

Or whatever.

Currently, the government has opened a “tent city” near El Paso, Texas, to house 360 minors in 100-degree heat, with plans to construct numerous such “cities” across Texas. They are also actively looking at military bases to house immigrant children. Even conservative pastor Franklin Graham said it was “disgraceful.”

It only figures that a corrupted corporatocracy like the United States would eventually cough up a hairball like Donald Trump, but you’d have to look far and wide to find a Jewish Nazi like Stephen Miller. A far-right icon, Miller is a senior advisor to the president at the age of 32. Born into a liberal Jewish family in Santa Monica, California, Miller is a descendant of ancestors who fled the pogroms of what is now Belarus. His conversion to conservatism took place after reading Guns, Crime, and Freedom, a screed against progressive ideas and criminal justice reform written by National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre.

While at Duke University, quasi-Nazi and white nationalist Richard Spencer claims he mentored Miller, although Miller disavows knowing Spencer. Miller’s first D.C. gig came as spokesman for Minnesota’s moron Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who said in 2014 that American Jews “sold out Israel” by voting for Obama, and apologized in Jerusalem only last week for her calls for converting “as many Jews as we can” because “Jesus is coming soon.”

In 2009, Miller became advisor and communications director for then-Senator Jeff Sessions. In an interview with Breitbart News, Sessions praised the National Origins Act of 1924 which restricted immigration from Eastern Europe, saying, “It was good for America.” The irony was lost on Miller.

Miller followed Sessions into the White House, where his white nationalist views meshed perfectly with the new administration. After cozying up to the incendiary Steve Bannon, Miller invited the writers and editors of Breitbart News to the White House to discuss immigration. He played an integral part in Trump’s illegal travel ban and was a crusader for restricting refugee resettlement and immigration from Muslim countries. He even wrote Trump’s “American Carnage” Inaugural speech.

His initial appearance on national news was notable for his assertion that “the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.” A recent New York Times article said, “Mr. Miller was instrumental in Mr. Trump’s decision to ratchet up the zero tolerance policy.” Senator Lindsey Graham opined, “As long as Stephen Miller is in charge of negotiating immigration, we are going nowhere.” 

I don’t know the conditions that create a self-loathing Jew. If Miller was oblivious to the darkest chapter of the 20th century, you’d have thought he’d at least seen Schindler’s List. 

The Times reports that over the last six weeks, an estimated 12,000 children have been separated from their families. One immigrant from Honduras killed himself in custody after being separated from his wife and child. With Josef Goebbels wannabes like Miller advising the president, the time has come to decide whether the United States will retain its status as a beacon of liberty to the world or become just another “shithole country.”

Randy Haspel writes the “Recycled Hippies” blog.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Take a Pass On Pot Criminalization

Before U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions decided last month to lead the Department of Justice in a crusade against marijuana, ending a lenient policy on the enforcement of federal pot laws, why didn’t anyone tell him that’s not such a great idea nor would it be very popular?

Not only is this move a step in the wrong direction and against the will of most Americans (61 percent based on a CBS News poll done last year), it’s a waste of time. And not just because people should be able to roll a j and enjoy it every now and then, but because, contrary to what Sessions has inferred, cannabis is not the devil and it’s not all that dangerous. It’s actually got some proven benefits with few drawbacks.

Alzheimer’s, PTSD, and Parkinson’s are just a few of the conditions that research has discovered marijuana can help with. But the number-one benefit of the sticky plant might be its ability to alleviate chronic pain.

Jeff Sessions

Chronic pain is something the National Institutes of Health says affects about 100 million Americans and leads thousands of doctors to prescribe dangerous and often addictive pain-killing (and mind-numbing) opioids. And when the pills run out, that doesn’t necessarily mean the brain and the body are done with the drug, sometimes causing people to turn to the streets to find their fix — a recipe for disaster.

According to the Center for Disease Control’s latest numbers, 48,000 people died from opioid-related incidents in 2016 — 48,000! That’s more than 10 times the number of U.S. troops that have been killed in Iraq since 2003. Opioids include anything from prescription painkillers to heroin to synthetic drugs like fentanyl (a drug that can be 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine).

Well, guess what? Marijuana doesn’t kill. Marijuana can help. In fact, the Drug Enforcement Administration reports that there are no recorded overdose deaths related to cannabis. And in states that have legalized medical marijuana, the number of opioid-related overdose deaths has decreased by just under 25 percent, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association.

In a memo last month, Sessions said the purpose of returning to the previous policy of enforcing federal marijuana laws is “to disrupt criminal organizations, tackle the growing drug crisis, and thwart violent crime across our country.”

The drug crisis? Wait, there’s a pot crisis? I had no idea. There’s a few crises in this country, and I wouldn’t say the growing, selling, or use of weed is one. There might be a drug crisis in this country, but marijuana is far from the root of that problem.

Also, wouldn’t legalizing the plant cut down on these criminal organizations and violent crimes that Sessions speaks of? There’d be a smaller need to smuggle weed, kill for it, or illegally obtain it if it were legalized and widely accessible.

It’s unlikely that the change of policy will really have much effect, as the cannabis industry, both medical and recreational, is booming, with momentum, in 29 states and the District of Columbia. Also, the decision to crack down on the federal laws is still left up to local U.S. Attorneys, and many of them aren’t seeing eye to eye with Sessions on the issue.

Still, it seems like a waste of time and of potentially scarce government resources to pursue prosecution for cannabis offenses. There’s bigger fish that the DOJ could be frying, like working to fix the actual drug crisis surrounding opioid use, or perhaps the broken justice system or the mass incarceration of one in four black men in this country (which is exacerbated by strict marijuana possession laws in some states).

There’s research, numbers, and evidence that show marijuana is not the enemy, so why are Sessions and others still stuck on 1970s legislation? When will marijuana be removed from the DEA’s list of Schedule I drugs with the likes of heroin, LSD, and Ecstasy?

We’d be better off to just let the people puff, puff, pass in peace. Because good people do smoke weed, Jeff.

Maya Smith is a Flyer staff writer.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Where the Truth Goes to Die

CREDIT: Reuters | Joshua Roberts

Have we ever lived through an era when more lies were being foisted on the American public by their own government than now? Sure, we had Watergate, and the Vietnam years were filled with lies from several administrations. And, sure, governments have always covered up things they didn’t want the public to know. But I don’t believe there’s ever been a time in our history like what’s happening now, where we are told bold-faced, easily disprovable prevarications by our own president and his enablers on a daily basis.

Trump lies so brazenly and so frequently that The New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, Politico, and several other media organizations have set up webpages to track them. Trump’s tweets are in a class by themselves, filled with falsehoods, exaggerations, bluster, and (increasingly) transparent fear, as Robert Mueller’s Russian investigation begins to out the collaborators in his administration.

But it goes beyond the president. Way beyond. Trump, in fact, has created a thriving growth industry of prevaricators who are paid to reiterate and/or explain his many falsehoods and misstatements.

It began in the first week of his presidency, when the president sent out press secretary Sean Spicer, who proclaimed that Trump’s Inaugural crowd was the “largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period.” It wasn’t, of course, not even close, but Spicer persisted, even berating reporters who dared point out the obvious evidence to the contrary. “Who you gonna believe,” Spicer seemed to be saying, “the facts or President Trump?” That moment set the tone for Trump’s entire presidency, thus far.

In the ensuing weeks, Spicer’s daily press briefings became a sideshow, as the beleagured spokesman attempted to spin his boss’ misinformed tweets and daily blather into some semblance of reality. He eventually became a running joke on Saturday Night Live.

But Spicer was only the first of many to sell his soul — or, at least, his integrity — for Donald Trump. Since then, the list has become a lengthy one, and is growing each week, as the Russian plotlines unfold.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who took over Spicer’s role as chief presidential explainer and apologist, is a much better liar. Not that she’s more believable; she’s just more comfortable at spewing bullshit with conviction and attitude. Spicer at least tried to be likeable.

The truth is, anyone in this administration who wants to keep their job has to be willing to lie for their boss. For example, at Trump’s direction, Vice President Mike Pence spent tax-payer money to fly across country to a football game just so he could walk out during the national anthem. Pence’s soul (such as it is) has long been sold.

And let’s not forget Kellyanne Conway, perhaps the most enthusiastic liar ever to appear on the national stage. Or Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who’s lied to Congress twice to protect his boss (and his own butt). And there’s Trump’s chief of staff, General John Kelly — once perceived as a beacon of truth and integrity in this administration — who’s now been outed as someone willing to make up lies for his boss, and defend them, even after they’ve been disproven.

It’s gotten to the point where it’s difficult to name someone in this adminstration who hasn’t been caught in a lie. Go ahead, see if you can think of someone. Tom Price? Betsy DeVos? Steve Mnuchin? Scott Pruitt? Ryan Zinke? Wilbur Ross? All cabinet members who’ve been outed as liars. Steve Bannon? Jared Kushner? Mike Flynn? The list is seemingly endless.

This is the biggest crowd of liars ever assembled in any single administration. And that’s not counting media sycophants like Sean Hannity — and Fox News, which has morphed into some sort of crazed branch of state media.

It’s been said that the truth will out. And I have enough faith in the American system to think that it will eventually, even with this bunch. But if I said I was confident it would happen soon, I’d be lying.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Trump Effect

CREDIT: John Poltrack | Dreamstime

President Trump, with his low approval ratings, chaotic White House, and health-care failure, might as well be on the ballot in three elections before the end of the year.

In Alabama, Republicans running to fill the Senate seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions are staging a red-state referendum on Trump, who won the state by almost 30 points last November. But the president is dividing his Alabama supporters with steady attacks on one of the state’s favorite sons: Sessions.

Trump is also at the center of two gubernatorial races — in Virginia and New Jersey. Trump lost both states in the presidential election. Democrats now delight in stirring up their base by putting Trump’s face on every Republican opponent.

John Poltrack | Dreamstime

Chris Christie

The question in Alabama, however, is which candidate for the GOP nomination is the most pro-Trump.

Luther Strange, the Republican appointed to hold the seat until the December general election, is running as a GOP primary candidate who “strongly supported our president from Day 1.”

He is attacking one opponent, Mo Brooks, for saying during the presidential campaign that Trump voters would come to “regret” backing the billionaire. Brooks supported Senator Ted Cruz and blasted Trump as a “serial adulterer.”

A poll made public last week found Strange leading the race with 33 percent of the vote; another pro-Trump candidate, former judge Roy Moore, with 26 percent; and Brooks in last place with 16 percent.

Brooks has offered to drop out of the race if Sessions wants to resign his post and run for his old seat again. The primary will be held August 15th, with a possible run-off in September.

In the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races, the polarizing dynamic around Trump is different: Democrats are stigmatizing their GOP opponents as Trump acolytes.  

Virginia’s Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam, the Democrats’ nominee, is running an advertisement calling Trump a “narcissistic maniac.”

“I stand by what I said,” Northam said at a debate held earlier this month. “I believe our president is a dangerous man. I think he lacks empathy. And he also has difficulty telling the truth, and it happens again and again.”

The Republican candidate, former RNC chairman Ed Gillespie, who is roughly tied with Northam at 44 percent support in the polls, countered that the Democrat’s attack would make it more difficult to work with Trump on behalf of Virginia.

Gillespie has already been torched by Trump politics. Despite a big money advantage, he came within 1.2 percentage points of losing the GOP primary to Corey Stewart, a diehard Trump supporter who accused Gillespie of not being loyal to the president. Now Gillespie needs to make sure Stewart’s Trump-loving voters turn out for him in November. But he also has to appeal to moderates and independents in a state Hillary Clinton won by five points.

Trump is also a major factor in New Jersey’s gubernatorial race, where Clinton won by 14 points. The difficulties Republicans face there are ratcheted up due to incumbent Governor Chris Christie’s rapid fall in the polls. Christie was also a strong, public voice for Trump.

Those factors are hurting GOP nominee Kim Guadagno.

A July Monmouth University poll found Democrat Phil Murphy leading Guadagno, 53 percent to 26 percent, with 14 percent undecided. Guadagno has tried to distance herself from Trump. After the infamous tape where he was heard bragging about being able to grab women by their genitals, Guadagno declared she would not vote for Trump.

“No apology can excuse away Mr. Trump’s reprehensible comments degrading women,” Guadagno wrote on Twitter. “We’re raising my 3 boys to be better than that.”

Democrat Murphy has turned his campaign into part of the “Resist” Trump movement. He promises that when he is governor, New Jersey will be “a state where we draw a line against Donald Trump.” Murphy, President Obama’s ambassador to Germany, has suggested there are parallels between Trump’s rise and the rise of Adolf Hitler in 1920s Germany.

“I’m a modest student of German history,” Murphy told voters at a town hall earlier this year. “And I know what was being said about somebody else in the 1920s. And you could unfortunately drop in names from today into those observations from the 1920s.”

Elections in odd-numbered years are often a harbinger of the following years’ midterm elections. When Republicans Christie and Bob McDonnell won the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races in 2009, it foreshadowed the Tea Party-wave election of 2010. When Democrats Jon Corzine and Tim Kaine won those races in 2005, it foreshadowed the Democrats’ takeover of Congress in 2006.

Currently, Democrats hold a 48-39 percent lead over Republicans in the Real Clear Politics polling average when voters are presented with a generic choice for congressional elections.

As Virginia and New Jersey go, so goes the nation?

Juan Williams is a FOX News political analyst. He writes for The Hill, where a version of this column first appeared.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

The Russians Are Coming

There was a package addressed to me on our front porch the other day. This is not an uncommon occurance at our house in this, the age of Amazon. I’ve even been surprised by something I ordered and forgot about — perhaps after a couple of cocktails. Like 12 pounds of Benton’s bacon, or that $14 Larry Dahlberg bass fly that appeared one day. And we shall never speak again of the blue folding deck chair.

So, anyway, I opened the package, not sure what to expect, and found a DVD (so practical!) of the old movie The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming. I was momentarily puzzled, but then I realized it had to have come from my Trump-loving Arkansas friend, Maurice Lipsey. The note inside confirmed it — something along the lines of, “nothing new to see here.”

Maurice, a former Memphian, sent me a big safety pin after Trump won last November, and urged me to find a “safe space.” And he’s sent a couple other gag gifts in recent months, all poking fun at my misery and frustration with the idiot currently serving as our president.

On Maurice’s birthday, I sent him a video of a woman singing “Happy Birthday” in Russian.

But, unlike his hero, Maurice isn’t an idiot. He’s truly a great guy, even if his politics aren’t, in my opinion. I’ve known him for 12 years or so, ever since I started going over to fly-fish at his place, Fat Possum Hollow, on the Little Red River. Maurice has built a dozen or so nice cabins on the stream, practically in the shadow of Sugar Loaf Mountain. I go for a long weekend every couple months or so. It’s my happy place.

After a day on the stream, most of the visitors end up in Maurice’s “bar” in his barn, drinking beverages and talking fishing, Grizzlies, Tigers, Memphis, Razorbacks, and who knows what else. It’s a nice way to wind down in a place where you don’t have to drive home — and Maurice has a great jukebox. If it gets down to the two of us, late of an evening, we might venture into politics, where we will cordially but vociferously disagree on just about everything.

But that’s the thing — we’re cordial. I recognize that he’s a sentient American with the right to hold whatever (misguided) political views he wants to. He treats me the same. Yes, we make fun of each other’s politics, but we don’t call each other names, and we end the evening with a hug, as friendly as when we started. We need more of that kind of interaction in this country. Maybe somebody somewhere will even change somebody else’s mind.

Through talking with Maurice and a couple of other friends, I sort of get how some folks can find Trump appealing. They believe — as Trump, his allies and supporters, and the official state media (Fox News) would have us believe — that the Russia stuff is all made up, just sour grapes; that the Fake News media and the Deep State and Hillary Clinton are conspiring to bring down a great American president. Lots of people buy into that narrative and believe it with all their heart. To which I say, “Really?”

I believe, on the other hand, that the autocratic, strong-man cult that is being promulgated by Mr. Trump will eventually be brought down by the rule of law and the investigation of multiple nefarious Russian political and business connections. I believe Jared Kushner was in on this up to his little eyeballs, as were Paul Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., Carter Page, Mike Flynn, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, all of whom have publicly and repeatedly lied about their meetings and interactions with Russians. Innocent people don’t do that.

And I believe Trump is trying to “bad vibe” and insult Sessions into quitting, so he can name a loyalist toady to that supposedly independent position — a loyalist who will fire special counsel Robert Mueller. I believe we are headed for a Constitutional crisis in the coming months, as all this shakes down.

But no, I don’t believe the Russians are coming. I believe they’re already here.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

On the Record

Last week, the Flyer‘s Toby Sells reported that the Gannett Corporation, which owns the Commercial Appeal, was refusing to pay severance to 23 former employees the company had laid off in April.

Memphis Newspaper Guild president Daniel Connolly said current employees had hung signs around the newspaper’s offices that read, “Shame on Gannett — Pay the Severance.” Connolly added that the Guild had filed a union grievance and federal complaints with the National Labor Relations Board.

Let’s forget for a moment that it’s likely, given the Trump administration’s track record on such matters, that the National Labor Relations Board offices are completely empty and that the agency’s head is a former coal mining CEO. The fact is, Gannett holds all the cards and will do exactly as it pleases with its money and its dwindling number of human resources.

On Monday, Gannett announced that it would sell the CA‘s iconic headquarters building at 495 Union and seek smaller office space elsewhere (in Memphis, theoretically). That will take care of those pesky signs, at least.

My theory is that the editorial staff will meet at Cafe Eclectic at 8:30 each morning, then go work from home. I mean, how hard is it to put out an 18-page daily paper with six local stories, anyway? Just kidding. Sort of. It is, however, becoming increasingly clear that Gannett sees the CA‘s future as digital, and the paper product is suffering because of it.

Whether in print or digital, we need great Memphis journalists. And we need for them to be treated fairly, not like replaceable factory widgets. In fact, we need journalists, now more than ever.

Just look at what’s happening in Washington, D.C. The Senate outlawed television journalists from interviewing Senators outside the Senate chambers last week. There is no reason for this, unless it’s to make it easier to keep the American people in the dark. Or unless you believe South Carolina Senator Tim Scott’s explanation that television cameras could catch the PIN numbers of senators at the Senate ATMs. (That’s actually true. Scott’s PIN is 4267. Go try it.)

It’s all so absurd.

Even Tennessee Senator Bob Corker acknowledged that the optics weren’t great: “I understand, in tandem, that it’s maybe not so good” to restrict press access while health care is drafted privately. Ya think, Senator? What a profile in courage.

Meanwhile, as Republicans were behind closed doors creating a bill that will reportedly take away health care for 23 million Americans, greatly restrict and reduce Medicare and Medicaid benefits, put lifetime caps on insurance company pay-outs, and provide huge tax breaks for the rich, the White House began denying reporters the ability to use cameras or recording devices in certain press conferences.

Listen, folks, when our government officials start restricting the press, it’s for a reason: They don’t want you to know what they’re doing. They want to have deniability. If interviews and press conferences aren’t recorded, it’s much easier to claim you were misquoted by the Fake Media™. It’s much easier to claim, as Attorney Jeff Sessions did approximately 6,724 times in his Senate testimony last week: “I do not recall …” The reason he didn’t flatly state, “I didn’t do that …” is that he knows there may be recorded evidence that will counter his conveniently faulty memory.

There’s a reason journalists want to put people “on the record.” It’s not just a phrase. It’s one of the key Constitutional safeguards of our way of life. The first sentence in the First Amendment says: “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.”

There’s a reason it’s the first.

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News News Blog

Memphis to Receive Support for Fighting Violent Crime

Memphis is one of 12 cities in the country that will receive federal help with fighting violent crime.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced today that Memphis, along with 11 other cities will join the newly-formed National Public Safety Partnership (PSP).

Formed by the Department of Justice in response to President Donald Trump’s Executive Order challenging the agency to reduce violent crimes nationwide, the PSP will provide the means for increasing federal support for state, local, and tribal law enforcement officials and prosecutors.

The partnership, which will specifically focus on reducing gun crime, drug trafficking, and gang violence was announced today at a national summit organized by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety.

The summit brought together local, state, and federal law enforcement for discussion on how to support and replicate previous successful efforts of reducing violent crimes.

“The Department of Justice will work with American cities suffering from serious violent crime problems,” Sessions said. “There is no doubt that there are many strategies that are proven to reduce crime.”

Sessions says the Justice Department will use data-driven strategies that will be “tailored to specific local concerns.”

The partnership is also intended to help each of the selected communities increase their own ability to fight crimes.

Director of the Memphis Police Department Michael Rallings says he is pleased that Memphis was chosen to be one of the 12 cities in the partnership and looks forward to continuing the police department’s pursuit of reducing violent crimes in the city.

“We asked for assistance; now, we are seeing a promising commitment that will be beneficial to the Memphis Police Department and the city of Memphis,” said Rallings. “It is always a good day when the men and women of the Memphis Police Department receive additional resources to better serve our community.”

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News The Fly-By

A Sessions Session

U.S. Attorney Jeff Sessions didn’t say anything during his Memphis visit.

That is, the content of his speech here didn’t make any headlines. But that speech did send a shudder through the criminal reform community, who fear a time-travel return to a “lock-’em-up” approach to prosecuting criminals.

To run the elephant out of the room, Sessions did not mention Russia. Reporters were not allowed to ask questions. Sessions’ route through the building to his car was blocked by very-serious-looking security personnel (and, yes, they had those earpieces and talked into their wrists).

Spickler (left) and Sessions (right)

Sessions knows criminal prosecution. Before he was U.S. Attorney and a Senator, he served as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama and served as that state’s Attorney General. For that time, Sessions gave himself some credit Thursday for the crime reduction wave that has gripped the nation.

“Yes, we’ve had 30 years of declining crime,” Sessions said. “I’d like to think what we did with tough sentencing, and tough prosecution, and the work we did laid the groundwork for a longtime decline.”

But, he warned, “[Crime] is up again.” He said the nation has had three consecutive years of increases. The murder rate, he said was up 11 percent over last year, “the biggest increase since [1968].” Memphis, he noted, broke its homicide record last year.

He pointed to the Sycamore Lake Apartments in northeast Memphis, where two men were murdered last week and seven people were murdered in 2014.

“Imagine what it does to good people and families that must live every day as hostages in their own homes, facing potentially deadly violence just to walk to the bus or avoiding certain gang-controlled territory just to get to work,” Sessions said.

For them, Sessions promised a return to a tough-on-crime approach to sentencing and prosecution with “severe consequences.” Sessions called the approach “common sense.”

“A lot of criminal justice reform is simply the application of logic and common sense,” said Josh Spickler, executive director of Just City, a Memphis-based criminal justice reform advocacy group. “Almost all of Sessions’ policies run completely counter to this.”

Spickler said, for example, that Sessions would have local law enforcement crack down on those with small amounts of marijuana, “resulting in even more arrests, more supervision, more jail cells, and more costs, with no evident benefit to public safety.” That would crowd the already-crowded Shelby County Jail, he said.

Sessions’ ideas will “cost local taxpayers many more millions of dollars in additional law enforcement officers, corrections officers, and jail cells,” Spickler said.

Rep. Steve Cohen said in a brief speech Thursday that Sessions’ speech sounded like “something out of the ’50s or ’60s.” He said Sessions talked tough on crime, but he “didn’t talk at all about the costs of crime.”

“There’s a smart way to attack crime, and there’s a dumb way to attack crime,” Cohen said. “The dumb way is to return to the era where we failed because we locked up so many people at $30,000 a year. The only people that are happy about [Sessions’] approach is the private prison industry who make money out of people’s miseries and crime.”