Even Donald Trump Should Have Due Process

(Note: This post includes crude language that I rarely use. I believe it is needed here.)

Here is section one of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The emphasis is mine:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

In America everyone gets due process. That’s right there in the Constitution. We make sure those accused of crimes — murder, rape, child abuse, treason, even terrorism, or ANY other crime — are accorded opportunity to defend their innocence. 

Every human being under the jurisdiction of We the People of the United States has a Constitutional right to due process. That even includes that most despicable man who occupies our presidency.

Yes, even Donald Trump. We know Donald Trump is a criminal. He was found guilty of 34 felonies and was found liable for many frauds and even a sexual assault. I am personally convinced that most of the MANY allegations of Trump’s frauds, sexual abuses, and other crimes are true. They fit with the behavior patterns we have watched play out in public over the last half-century or more. But EVEN Donald Trump gets due process in America. He has gotten and will get his day in court for defending himself against criminal allegations. To deny even the loathsome Mr. Trump his due process would be untrue to the pledges I have made nearly every morning of my teaching career. You know the ones to the republic for which our flag stands. It would be unAmerican.

So it is also unAmerican to support the arrests of other people without due process and their rendition to a concentration camp in El Salvador. This is intended to terrorize refugees and immigrants. This is a fascist tactic. This is unConstitutional. This is wrong on every level.

This scene is not from a gulag in the Soviet Union or a concentration camp in Nazi Germany; this is a scene staged by the President of the United States acting, supposedly, on the behalf of We the People of the "The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave,"  

To see uncharged, unconvicted, people — who have had no legal representation, no hearing before a judge or jury, no due process — shackled, shaved, bent, prodded, shoved, slapped by representatives of We the People of the United States is nauseating. Are some or even most of them guilty in Venezuela and/or the US of some crime? Probably so. But do we know that? No we don’t. And I’ll bet my next Social Security check that there’s at least one absolutely innocent person in the hell that Donald Trump and the assholes who support this infernal tactic have established. (I do not use crude language often, but sometimes it is demanded by the magnitude of evil needing description.) 

If there is a literal hell and if anyone could actually deserve it, few would come closer to deserving it than those who support this outrage. But even though I believe that, I STILL would demand, even for those I have labeled “assholes," due process.

 

Gleaning Facebook: Little Bitties & the General Welfare

 

The beautiful spring weather brought crowds to Ridge Ferry Park!

This little fellow flew before I could focus good... oh, well. Cicindela sexguttata, six-spotted tiger beetle, I think.

Visit the city of Rome Trail system plans online:
ftp://ftp.romega.us/Planning/Rome-Floyd%20Trail%20Plan.pdf
Above is the Chieftains Trail section near Chieftains Museum.

It is great to see what good use is being made of this wonderful park paid for by all of us for all of us. If the Tea Party and Georgia Republican Party have their way we can kiss these kinds of things goodbye. They are closing State Parks and cutting the remaining ones to the bone. (My students will not have tour guides at Etowah Mounds next year.)
The GOP has forgotten that Ben Franklin believed in public libraries and public postal service, that Teddy Roosevelt championed public parks and public healthcare and fought robber barons and monopolies, that US Grant saved Yellowstone for all of us, Benjamin Harrison, TR, and Woodrow Wilson worked to save the Grand Canyon, Franklin and Jefferson both contributed to the Library of Congress. That Jefferson spent $15 million to expand the country to twice its size then commissioned a scientific expedition to study the new purchase. And Truman saw that the general welfare of OUR country was wrapped up in our Alllies' recovery from WWII and authorized the Marshall Plan.
There is nothing unAmerican about all of us working together for the general welfare.  
And BTW if the City of Rome commissioners have their way, the wetland across from this park will be filled in along with the duck pond, Burwell Creek will be actually destroyed and replaced by a man-made channel (ditch) farther toward Riverside, then our public land will be sold for a song to private developers, and a new strip-shopping mall will be built splitting the city's civic center/Jackson Hill area from the rest of our central park (Ridge Ferry). Grrrrrrr!!!!!! Let's stop these folks from messing up this area for our children and grandchildren!

Sun, Oostanaula, mud, bike tracks --- the concrete Riverwalk is under the mud.

Cherry blossums

For ourselves and our posterity

President Obama has broken with the policies of the last administration that, I believe, eroded our national reputation and our liberties. He has tried very hard to accomplish this with bipartisanship and without rancor. Some will argue that he has not gone far enough.

But is any executive action by the current President enough?

Aesop said: "Affairs are easier of entrance than of exit; and it is but common prudence to see our way out before we venture in." I have lived to see our country enmeshed in two mistaken wars. I have seen mistakes repeated. I have heard more than one American President mislead the people. We have found ourselves sometimes in murky catacombs where the exits were all steep, slippery, and guarded by dangerous trolls. How can we ensure that the mistaken and/or illegal policies of past administrations do not stand as precedent for some future administration that finds itself in a dark place?

I believe:

• the last administration approved and used torture;
• they blatantly ignored law;
• they misled the nation and the world in their conduct leading to the war in Iraq.
• their actions, however noble or ignoble the motivation, did more harm to our nation than any foreign enemy could.

I also believe:

• the last administration believed it knew best what was good for our country and, in that certitude, arrogated to itself the power to ignore FISA, Geneva conventions, and the Constitution;
• prosecution of the former President, Vice President, or Secretary of Defense, however richly deserved, would further divide the country and possibly, God forbid, result in an acquittal which would make the precedent even stronger.

Some will consider it mean-spirited to point out the mistakes of the last administration now that it is gone. While I admit to anger at times with the conduct of those folks, I have no interest in "rubbing their noses in it". I have tried on the Limb, from the beginning -- with occasional missteps, I'm sure -- to deal realistically with the issues, to avoid name-calling and ad hominem attacks, to stay away from assigning motives in favor of evaluating words and actions. Sometimes I have rewritten posts three or four times to edit out the anger that I don't deny feeling. I certainly do not want our country further divided. At nearly 62 my time here grows short and I yearn for comfortable, friendly, easy relationships. I hate confrontation. I actively hate confrontation.

But our liberty is always only one generation removed from extinction. Our nation has certainly had more articulate and more effective champions but never a more sincere lover. I desperately want my generation to leave our children and grandchildren an America where it is crystal clear basic national principle that:

• the President must follow the law even in wartime;
• though We the People need our servant, the President, to control certain war powers, declaring a never-ending "War" on a tactic does not give the President unlimited or unending powers;
• Americans don't torture;
• Americans recognize self-evident, universal, Creator-endowed, unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;
• if we compromise our principles in response to terrorism, the terrorists have succeeded;

So I ask again: How can we, with the least upheaval and unpleasantness, insure that past mistakes are not repeated? How do We the People, in this generation, provide for the common defense, insure domestic tranquility, AND secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity?

Joy!

This day, that has been anticipated by your host on the Limb for so long, has come and nearly gone. Words cannot adequately convey the joy with which I greet it. Anyone who has visited the Limb since it sprouted in November of 2005, knows how fervantly I have wished an end to the mistakes of the last eight years.

But when I wrote that first post I never dreamed that this day would bring the degree of joy that it has. Not only do we have a Democratic President who has already begun rebuilding our nation's reputation and the integrity of the executive branch, but he is a person of uncommon ability, eloquence, and vision. And he has, merely by his election, made spirits soar for folks who dared not dream that one of their own could lead our nation. What a light shown in the eyes of my minority students today as we watched that wonderful patriot, who happens to be African-American, speak of us of taking responsibility again. He challenged us to "...put aside childish things."

"...greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted -- for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame."

And how reassuring to me were his words specifically reminding us that his obligation is not just to provide for the defense of the living but also to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.

"As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our founding fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations."

I have shed tears of joy today. There are those who would mock my tears as tears of naive adulation. They are mistaken. I recognise that, like the icy Delaware that faced Washington and his heroes in 1776, we have daunting challenges before us. There may yet be Valley Forge winters to come. But also like those men who braved the river and the Hessians and the Redcoats, we have a leader of strong ethics, fierce determination, cool intelligence, no wish to be king, and absolute loyalty to the American cause. That gives me great joy and hope.

Protect and Defend

On Tuesday next, Barack Obama will place one hand on the Bible Abraham Lincoln used in 1861 and raise the other as he becomes the 43rd person (44th President -- Cleveland counts twice) to officially recite the following oath, in accordance with Article II, Section I of the U.S. Constitution:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

I have been disturbed to hear the current occupant of the White House repeatedly misstate the President's first duty. And I have heard others accept that misstatement. I have even heard Barack Obama dangerously simplify the President's duty to "protect and defend".

I certainly want the President of the United States to do all that is ethically and morally in his power to protect and defend the lives of me and those I love and all Americans. But that is NOT his first duty. His first duty is to the Constitution of the United States. I hope that if it ever came to such a choice that I would give up my life for the Constitution. Despite the horrors of the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the burning of Washington, DC in 1814, or the evil murders and destruction in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and New York in 2001, those events did not damage the Constitution of the United States.

Others can belittle us. Others can mock our traditions. Others can terrorize us. Others can kill us.

But only Americans can destroy our freedoms.

Very few established institutions, governments and constitutions ... are ever destroyed by their enemies until they have been corrupted and weakened by their friends.

-Walter Lippman, journalist (1889-1974)

I have no great need to rub George Bush's nose in his failures at this point. He is headed day after tomorrow for Crawford, Texas and political oblivion. Barack Obama has made it plain that he wants to heal the nation's wounds by looking forward, not back. I support him in that.

But it is also of the utmost importance that he take that oath seriously. One of the most pressing duties before him is to make clear that even the President must respect the the law. That Americans do not torture. That the last administration was in error when it put protecting against terror above protecting the Constitution.

I trust Obama to use his power in legitimate ways. But some day there will be another President. What precedent will that future President follow when our people are again victimized, as we eventually will be, by foreign evil? Will he or she be tempted to sacrifice our freedoms for physical security?

Protect and defend? Yes! By all legitimate means. But protect and defend the Constitution first.