The Logan Act - law since 1799

President-elect (therefore private citizen) donald trump has again committed an impeachable offense.  Whether the cowardly republican controlled congress will step up and impeach trump for being in direct violation of a log standing law, is of course a different question.

Late last week, trump participated in a phone call with Taiwan's president.  The call was set up by former Senator Bob Dole, working on behalf of the Taiwanese Government per an article in the New York Times.  An excerpt from this article reads

"Former Senator Bob Dole, acting as a foreign agent for the government of Taiwan, worked behind the scenes over the past six months to establish high-level contact between Taiwanese officials and President-elect [d]onald [j]. [t]rump’s staff, an outreach effort that culminated last week in an unorthodox telephone call between Mr. Trump and Taiwan’s president.

Mr. Dole, a lobbyist with the Washington law firm Alston & Bird, coordinated with Mr. Trump’s campaign and the transition team to set up a series of meetings between Mr. Trump’s advisers and officials in Taiwan, according to disclosure documents filed last week with the Justice Department ......"

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/us/politics/bob-dole-taiwan-lobby-trump.html


My research shows that the word "unorthodox" is a kind treatment of this action; illegal is the proper characterization of trump's conversation with Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen. Per my research , I found the following in a Wikipedia posting:

The Logan Act (1 Stat. 613, 18 U.S.C. § 953, enacted January 30, 1799) is a United States federal law that forbids unauthorized citizens from negotiating with foreign governments.

§ 953. Private correspondence with foreign governments.

Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan_Act

The only question that I am not able to ascertain an answer for is, is the President-elect an official of the U.S. Government or is she or he a private citizen?  I discussed this with a work colleague, and he noted that the President-elect is not on the Federal payroll yet, therefore it seemed to both of us that the President-elect is not a government official and therefore is a private citizen.  Upon a solid search, on line, the only clarity I could gain was from a source called The Free Dictionary, as follows:

Noun

1.

private citizen - a citizen who does not hold any official or public position

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/private+citizen

So.......based on the legal assumption that the President-elect, and therefore trump, is a private citizen and not an agent of the U.S. Government, all of his conversations with foreign leaders are illegal per The Logan Act, unless he can show written documentation that the State Department or the current President of the United States has authorized trump to speak on behalf of the U.S.  trump cannot claim executive privilege, because he is not the chief executive right now.  trump cannot claim that presenting such documentation would be a breach of security because he is not an employee of the Federal Government and as such  has no claim for conducting foreign policy with out such documentation.

I am not the first person to explore this idea. In Washingtonian, a magazine published locally in D.C., Elaina Plott wrote an article on July 28, 2016 asking the question, "Did Donald Trump Violate the Logan Act?"  She concluded that the answer at that time was no, but he came close.  Today, is a different story.

The difference between a great man & an ass

Last night, I reached into the mailbox as I was walking into my house.  The quarterly magazine from George Washington University (GW) was there (my son goes to GW).  The cover had a simple photo of Harry Reid on the cover.  Turns out that Mr. Reid was a 1964 graduate of GW with his law degree.  I'm confident that you, the reader knows who Harry Reid is, but if you do not, Mr. Reid is a U.S. senator from Nevada (retiring in January).  Mr Reid has been the leader of the Senate Democrats for many years and has held the post of both Senate Minority Leader and Senate Majority Leader.

As I was reading the article about Mr. Reid, I saw the following photo:

   0

This, it turned out, is a photo of Harry Reid's boyhood home in Nevada.  I thought about the photo and the man that emerged from this structure.  As is often attributed to Confucius, 'a picture speaks a thousand words' or as Rod Stewart sang "every picture tells a story, don't it".

It occurred to me that I wanted to see the same picture for trump.  I found two photos and they are as follows:

  

What a difference.  Now, I'm not saying that the structure a person grows up in, is the determiner of a persons moral character or the metal of a persons spirit and soul, but I leave it to you, the reader, to draw your own conclusions as to the contribution these vastly different environments may have had on each person; one a man, the other an ass (in my opinion).

Lastly, I want to speculate a little bit.  I'm willing to bet (and I am not a betting man) that very few if any of trump's and bannon's supporters grew up in such an environment or find themselves in such an environment currently.  These people whine about how bad things are and how bad they, the white males in our country, have it..  I suggest that people who think this way and who take advantage of people that think this way, suck it up and live up to Senator Reid's example of building success out of humble beginnings, while remaining humble, with a strong and quality moral compass.

GREAT NEWS......Protest really does work

Back to a focus of this blog; "what works".  Protest works!  Yesterday evening we received news that confirmed that protest works. The Army Corps of Engineers announced it will look for an alternate route for the Dakota Access Pipeline to cross under Lake Oahe in North Dakota.  Lake Oahe is actually part of the Missouri River.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe started protesting months ago at the site where the pipeline was set to be constructed under the lake.  Other protests have joined them at a steady rate and a small town formed at the site.  The protesters were prepared to stay through the difficult winter months in North Dakota, most in tepees and tents.  Other protests occurred nation wide in support of the Sioux tribe. An example of the nation wide protests, occurred at a  'lay down' protest in Philadelphia, right in Center City at 17th and Market, a few blocks west of City Hall.

The action that may have tipped the scale, was the arrival of many hundreds, over a thousand, former armed forces members.  The bulk of these arrivals started on Thanksgiving weekend and continued throughout the past week.  Local & North Dakota state police were starting to take actions to remove the protesters at the protest site,  There was some violence including shock grenades, water cannons and rubber bullets.  The goal of the former armed forces  members was to place themselves between the protesters and those that would attempt to remove them, thereby forming a human barrier.  These men and women held true to the oath they took when entering the armed forces; to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic".  In this case a domestic threat to ".....the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances" (first Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, 1791).  A great debt is owed by all Americans to these brave veterans and in fact to all of the protesters involved.  They have stood for nothing less than the Constitution and ultimately the stewardship of our planet.

Please know that this is a battle that has been won, but not the 'war'.  The Army Corps of Engineers is re-opening the investigation to identify an alternate site for this pipeline to proceed under the Missouri River.  Furthermore, trump is on record as recently as last week, as favoring the completion of this pipeline.  Note that the company constructing this pipeline is Energy Transfer Partners, and  as reported by the New York Times, "[m]r. [t]rump owns stock in the company building the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, but he has said that his support has nothing to do with his investment" (horse shit!). 
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/04/us/federal-officials-to-explore-different-route-for-dakota-pipeline.html?_r=0

As was noted by Dalas Goldtooth (lead organizer for The Indigenous Environmental Network), "We are asking our supporters to keep up the pressure, because while President Obama has granted us a victory today, that victory isn't guaranteed in the next administration."  This blog whole heartedly agrees with this way of approaching protests on all fronts as trump becomes the lead U.S. administrator; keep up the pressure!

jeff sessions

The research into jeff sessions has been more difficult than into steve bannon.  sessions is. albeit a known bigot, also a career politician and as such speaks in ways that make him hard to pin down.  The only true way to fully understand his level of bigotry is to read the legislation that he has voted on and the effects those pieces of legislation either have had if passed or would have had if passed.  This is a process too large for this blog to undertake, although i have read some pieces of legislation he has been involved with.  Instead i am choosing to look at three time periods along the way from his earlier days until 2015.

In 1986 jeff sessions was nominated to a Federal Judge position.  The senate, responsible to advise and consent for judicial appointments was controlled by Republicans at the time & the choice was made by Ronald Reagan.  The Senate Judicial Committee was controlled by Strom Thurman, nobody's liberal, And yet sessions was not approved by the Judicial Committee.  Two of the republicans on the committee voted against the nominee making the vote 10 to 8.  This is noteworthy due to the fact that sessions was only the second judicial nominee in the last 48 years from that point in time to be rejected.  The committee had "reasonable doubts" over Sessions' ability to be "fair and impartial." The nomination was withdrawn on July 31, 1986.

Some of the reasons for this decision were based on reported comments that sessions had made, prior to his nomination, and are listed below:

   - “The NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Operation PUSH and the National Council of Churches were all un-American organizations teaching anti-American values.”

  - Organizations like the NAACP “force civil rights down the throats of people.”

  - “I thought those guys [the Ku Klux Klan] were OK until I learned they smoked pot.”
         - Author's note - this was supposedly a joke, according to sessions

   - “You know the NAACP hates white people; they are out to get them. That is why they bring these lawsuits, and they are a commie group and a pinko organization as well.”

These and other comments attributed to sessions, which were integral in his rejection as a Federal Judge, can be read in an article in the Washington Post.  The article is very even handed and includes jeff sessions' explanations to these comments and his description of their veracity.  see the following link:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/12/02/jeff-sessionss-comments-on-race-for-the-record/?utm_term=.dda38e88c844

Another valuable link in reference to sessions' history, including the failed judicial nomination is at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Sessions#Failed_nomination_to_the_district_court

On June 5, 1986, the Committee voted 10–8 against recommending the nomination to the Senate floor, with Republican Senators Charles Mathias of Marylandand Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania voting with the Democrats. It then split 9–9 on a vote to send Sessions' nomination to the Senate floor with no recommendation, this time with Specter in support. A majority was required for the nomination to proceed.[33] The pivotal votes against Sessions came from his home state's Democratic Senator Howell Heflin of Alabama. Although Heflin had previously backed Sessions, he began to oppose Sessions after hearing testimony, concluding that there were "reasonable doubts" over Sessions' ability to be "fair and impartial." The nomination was withdrawn on July 31, 1986.[21]

Moving along in sessions time line, it is 1994. sessions is now the Attorney General (AG) for the state of Alabama. he was AG for only two years before running for and becoming a Senator for Alabama in the U.S. Senate. In those two years, one of the most telling actions on his part was his fight to preserve Alabama's so called 'separate and unequal' education law.  

After the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case in 1954, the state of Alabama passed an amendment to the State's Constitution, to stop school funding on a statewide level.  School districts were left to fend for themselves financially, with the obvious and intended consequence that schools in rich areas (white of course) would be well funded and schools in poor regions of the state (black of course) would be poorly funded.  Thus the State of Alabama would lay waist to the most vulnerable citizens, poor black children.

The ACLU (American Civil liberties Union) brought a case to the Alabama court system challenging this amendment. After three years (the case started prior to sessions becoming the State AG) Judge Eugene W. Reese, of the Alabama Circuit Court found the law to be illegal.  sessions led the battle against the decision, claiming that Reese had overreached his authority.  

In 1997 (after sessions was no longer the state AG) the Alabama Supreme Court upheld Judge Reese's finding that the state's educational inequality was unconstitutional.  For a more thorough read on this episode, see:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/opinion/jeff-sessions-other-civil-rights-problem.html?_r=0

Now we come to just last year, 2015. This one is simple. sessions wrote and published what he titled Immigration Handbook for the New Republican Majority.  The stated conclusion is as follows:

The immigration debate can be reduced to three essential questions:

 - Is America a sovereign nation that has the right to control its borders and decide who comes to live and work here? 

 -  Should American immigration laws serve the just interests of the country and its citizens?

 - And do those citizens have the right to expect and demand that the laws passed by their elected representatives be enforced? 

If we believe the answers to these questions are “yes,” then we have no choice but to fight—and to win. Why were we elected, if not to serve the people who sent us here?

The full text can be read at:

https://www.sessions.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/67ae7163-6616-4023-a5c4-534c53e6fc26/immigration-primer-for-the-114th-congress.pdf

My answer to mr. sessions is as follows, from the famous American poem, The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus in 1883 :
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Layers of euphemisms, call a spade a spade!

I live in a small town in Pennsylvania.  It is the quintessential picture of small town America.  Tonight is our town's Christmas tree lighting celebration in the middle of the borough.  It is the oldest continuous tree lighting in the country, 104 years.  Right next to the tree is 'Santa's' house, where at scheduled times up until Christmas kids come to visit Santa.  The borough is a compact cozy, well kept town, and everything I need is within a few blocks.  For the most part it is as ideal a place to live as anyone could wish for.

It is also representative of many non-urban and non-suburban towns in Pennsylvania.  The population is mostly white.  In this neck of the woods folks are predominantly of German decent.  This is not to say that there is something wrong with these facts, they are simply that, facts.  Just like anywhere else, there are good people and bad people.  Caring people and bigots.  Informed people and misinformed or uninformed people.

This morning, I was at the deli I always go to, a couple  of blocks away.  I walk my black lab there and then hang out to talk with neighbors and other members of the community that I see there frequently.  This morning, there was a woman at the deli with her terrier.  I see her often, but had never met her husband in the eight years I have known her.  I asked her if she was ok with nazis, she said no.  I asked her if she was ok with the kkk, she said no.  I asked her if she'd heard of steve bannon.  She replied she'd heard the name before, but didn't really know who he was.  I explained that he will be trump's chief whitehouse strategist and that he was strongly and vocally endorsed by the kkk and the american nazi party.  This alarmed her (as it should).

She then asked her husband if he knew who steve bannon was, to which he said yes.  I asked him if he was aware of his being strongly endorsed by the kkk and the american nazi party.  He immediately pointed out, and truthfully so, that bannon is member of neither organization.  I agreed with him, and pointed out that if he has received those endorsements he must be philosophically in synch with those organizations.  He noted that bannon is nothing more than a spoiled white kid (bannon is in his late fifties, maybe sixty).

The problem with these answers is that if most Americans either don't  know who he is or dismiss his philosophical underpinnings, then bannon will be given the power, by default, to do as he pleases.  It starts when he is labeled as 'alt-right'.  I'm willing to bet that a large number of Americans do not know that 'alt-right' means 'alternate right'.  Well that's not so bad, right wing and left wing are the two accepted ends of our political spectrum.  'Alt-right' is strongly associated with 'white nationalism'.  Now this is starting to sound a little bit racist, but after all, it is nationalism.  We all love our country, right?  There must be a problem with you, with anyone who is not nationalistic; that means you don't love our country.  'White nationalism' is obviously a thinly veiled way of saying 'white supremecist', which is now pretty bad stuff.  Lastly, let's call a spade a spade; a white supemecist whether they belong to these organizations or not, strongly supports the kkk and the american nazi party.

This is a common tactic for people with philosophies that they know are not ok.  In there gut, they know it is not acceptable.  Maybe it's acceptable to them, but they know in their hearts that it is not ok with the majority of our society, including white folks.  So, what do the do, they try to dress it up, they use many layers of euphemisms  to attempt to make their philosophies palatable, ok.  This distraction, this misdirection cannot be allowed to move forward.  Based on what I just noted above, the simple equation is that the alt-right equals bigotry in its wort forms, the kkk and the american nazi party.  Anyone who considers themselves to be 'alt-right' and does not like the characterization I just painted, should strongly consider not aligning themselves with the alt-right.

A personal note

Dear Reader,

I'm using today's post to step back, for a moment; to ask all of you for help.  America's people are sharply divided.  The boil in the American body has risen to the surface and must be lanced.  The lance could very well be wielded by a bigoted and violent portion of our population.  We, the majority who do not share that hatred, need to, must, bind together as one if we are to stand a chance of saving the beautiful country that we have inherited, helped to build and have it continue on the path to a "more perfect union".

I am very thankful to the core readership that this blog has gained over its first few weeks.  Now, I am asking you to help this blog reach more people, more minds.  I do not delude myself into thinking thinking that what I write will have some large over-arching effect, but my goal is to have as many people as possible read this daily blog in the hope that it will help foster the conversation that must be had and the solidarity of purpose that must occur if we are to be successful in resisting, stopping, what trump has planned and already set into motion.

As yesterday's post pointed out, the newly created position of chief white house strategist has been assigned to steve bannon.  bannon is vocally suppported by nazis and the kkk.  This is a person who will be speaking directly to trump and whose job it will be to formulate strategies for placing policies in motion.  As I researched bannon, my mind easily saw a nazi regime forming, Germany in the 1930's all over again, the fourth reich.   In Germany in the 1930's, there were voices that recognized and spoke against the abhorrent society that was being built and were met with dismissal & derision.  I expect the same reaction to what I am writing. I expect people to say 'oh don't be silly, you're crazy, you're an alarmist'.  Well, I don't think that I'm any of those things.  I have a firm grip on reality and the reality I see, if those of us who are sane and moral do not act in concert, is precisely that; a nazi regime.  The only differences are that America has a solid constitution guiding us and that we are the strongest country on the planet.  The constitution may save us, the strength of our country in the wrong hands can certainly destroy us.

PLEASE, share this blog with all of your "friends" on social media, ask them to do the same, and so on.  Also, PLEASE comment on postings.  A conversation needs to be had.   If we act as one, we may not stop all of the immorality that is being planned by trump and bannon,, but "we must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately" (Benjamin Franklin).  If we do not 'hang together', our fates will be catastrophic.


Thank you,

Bill

steve bannon - proposed chief white house strategist

It's time for this blog to start looking at the appointments that trump has made to run the upcoming administration.  I'll start with steve bannon, the former head of Breitbart News.  When he took over, after the founder's death, he shifted the paper further to the right.  he is a murky individual, who is not easily pigeon holed.  his mind set can be surmised by the people that support him, people who have worked with him and his own quotes from various sources.

Ben Shapiro, a former employee at Breitbart as an Editor at Large, and who now hosts a conservative radio talk show, is quoted as saying "Bannon is a sinister character.  He is a vindictive, nasty figure, infamous for verbally abusing supposed friends and threatening enemies,” Shapiro wrote. “He will attempt to ruin anyone who impedes his unending ambition, and he will use anyone bigger than he is – for example, [d]onald [t]rump – to get where he wants to go.”

Another former colleague of bannon's, Julia Jones, recounted a conversation she once had with him to reporter Scott Shane.  The following is an excerpt from that article:

Ms. Jones, the film colleague, said that in their years working together, [m]r. [b]annon occasionally talked about the genetic superiority of some people and once mused about the desirability of limiting the vote to property owners.
“I said, ‘That would exclude a lot of African-Americans,’” Ms. Jones recalled. “he said, ‘Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.’ I said, ‘But what about Wendy?’” referring to [m]r. [b]annon’s executive assistant. “he said, ‘She’s different. She’s family.’”

My take on this last entry is, sounds like a nazi to me!  Speaking of nazis (great segue), david duke, former head of the kkk, strongly supports bannon.  In an interview with CNN, duke said:

“You have an individual, [m]r. [b]annon, who’s basically creating the ideological aspects of where we’re going. And ideology ultimately is the most important aspect of any government.”

At an alt-right conference in Washington, D.C. richard spencer, a neo nazi, was reported by the New York Times as having:

"railed against Jews and, with a smile, quoted Nazi propaganda in the original German. America, he said, belonged to white people, whom he called the “children of the sun,” a race of conquerors and creators who had been marginalized but now, in the era of [p]resident-elect [d]onald [j]. [t]rump, were “awakening to their own identity.” "

spencer praises trump's choice of bannon as a "wonderful thing." . It's a mutual admiration club; bannon descibes spencer as the alt-rights leading "intellectual".

Now to bannon's mind set as described by his own language. In The Atlantic he told a gathering of conservatives in Washington in 2013:

“I think anger is a good thing. This country is in a crisis. And if you’re fighting to save this country, if you’re fighting to take this country back, it’s not going to be sunshine and patriots. It’s going to be people who want to fight.”

I would note that in reference to this quote, bannon is correct in a sense.  The United States is being fundamentally changed by these people.  We, the decent people of this country, no matter what our religious or political stripes, need to use whatever emotion we can access to motivate us to oppose this administration and fight the people who will be running it.  If anger is one of those emotions, use it, peacefully and constructively.

The next quote is really revealing.  he was quoted as saying by a writer for The Daily Beast, when he had a conversation w/bannon at a party in 2014 (to which bannon later said he did not recall the conversation):

“I’m a Leninist. Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal, too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”

Lastly, this guy feeds on hate.  In my opinion, hate is an emotion that is part of the human condition and therefore needs to be recognized by each person in themselves, but way to extreme to be acted on.  Also, there are many blades of grass in our country and I refuse to believe that the majority of people in our country would subscribe to the following. bannon wrote about Republican leaders in a 2014 email exchange with a Breitbart News editor. The emails were obtained by The Daily Beast:

“Let the grassroots turn on the hate because that’s the ONLY thing that will make them do their duty."
This is the person that will have the ear of trump, along with neo-nazis and kkk members. And let's make one thing clear, very clear, the label 'white nationalist' is nothing more than a euphemism for white supremacists, nazis and kkk members!

This all reminds me of the poem written by Martin Niemöller, a prominent Protestant pastor who opposed the Nazi regime. He spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps. 

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.