Author: admin

In February, 1950, Wisconsin senator Joe McCarthy, brandishing what he claimed was a list, gave a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia in which he declared that there were over two-hundred communists working in the United states State Department.

McCarthy would repeat this canard over the next few years changing the number of subversives to whatever captured his imagination.

He held numerous U.S. Senate hearings while he was chair of the Senate Committee on Government Operations during which he summoned targets of his suspicions to be grilled before the public about their suspected disloyalty.

He was a complete and total narcissist who was drawn to the publicity and media attention like a moth to a flame.

In 1953 he began an inquiry into suspected communists in the United States Army and singled out Irving Peress. Peress, a New York dentist, had been drafted into the Army in 1952 and promoted to Major the following year under the Doctor Draft law, which McCarthy had voted for. When questioned about his membership in the left-wing American labor Party, Peress invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and McCarthy demanded he be court-martialed.

Instead of court-martialing the dentist, his commanding officer, General Ralph Zwicker, granted him an honorable discharge. McCarthy told Zwicker that he was “not fit to wear his uniform.”

The following year, the Army charged that McCarthy had sought to pressure it into giving favorable treatment to one of his former aides.

Thus began the Army-McCarthy hearings in which the Senate Permanent Committee on Investigations began public and televised hearings which transfixed the nation. An estimated twenty-million viewers followed the proceedings over the next thirty-six days.

On the thirtieth day the Army’s lawyer, Joseph Welch, from Boston, demanded McCarthy produce the list of 130 “subversives or communists” that McCarthy had claimed were employed in defense plants. In reply McCarthy suggested that Welch investigate a young lawyer in his Boston law firm, Fred Fisher, who was a member of the National Lawyers Guild, a left-wing bar association.

Incensed, Welch replied, “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never gauged your cruelty or your recklessness….Let us not assassinate this lad, further, Senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you no sense of decency?”

When Welch finished, the gallery in the hearing room erupted with applause. It was the beginning of the end of McCarthy’s tyranny.

This past week, we saw the departure of the Deputy Director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe.

McCabe was a twenty-two year veteran of the nation’s pre-eminent law enforcement agency with an unblemished reputation until he drew the attention of Donald Trump.

Trump, who is as narcissistic as McCarthy, has been casting about for reasons to discredit the Mueller probe into his campaign’s collusion with the Russians during the 2016 Presidential campaign.

McCabe, who was appointed Deputy Director by James Comey, became Acting Director following Trump’s firing of Comey.

In his desperation to find a reason to question the impartiality and integrity of the FBI’s investigation into both the Russian meddling and the Clinton e-mail investigation, Trump seized on the fact that McCabe’s wife had been an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for a state legislative office in Virginia during 2015.

Jill McCabe accepted substantial contributions from the Virginia Democratic Party and Governor Terry McAuliffe’s super PAC called Common Good Virginia. (Full disclosure, Terry McAuliffe is my cousin.)

Trump now contends that because McAuliffe is a close friend and supporter of both Bill and Hillary Clinton, the investigations headed by McCabe are politically tainted and that the leadership of the FBI is corrupt.

A close examination of the facts underlying this claim reveal, that like most Trump claims, it has no merit.

At the outset, it should be noted that by the time McCabe became the Associate Director of the FBI in 2016, his wife’s campaign in 2015 had ended in defeat.

While the news outlets have been characterized the contributions coming from a close friend and supporter of the Clintons they have glossed over the fact that the contributions did not come from either Bill or Hillary Clintons PACs but from a PAC that McAuliffe established to try and elect a majority of Democrats to the Virginia Legislature. Hence, the name Common Good Virginia PAC.

Also under-reported is the fact that McCabe had the facts of his wife’s candidacy and the contributions vetted by the FBI, which saw no impropriety in the situation.

None of this matters to Trump or his supporters in the media on Fox News, Breitbart, Limbaugh and others who have ginned up his base with claims of corruption on the part of McCabe.

The end result of all this is that a good public servant had his career ended when Trump’s newly appointed Director, Christopher Wray asked McCabe to step down to end what he termed a “distraction.”

That Wray bowed to this pressure does not bode well for the independence of the FBI’s future investigation of Russian meddling or other matters that might arise from Trump and his various activities.

Not long ago, when events were not breaking Trump’s way, he lamented the absence of his long departed mentor, Roy Cohn.

Cohn was McCarthy’s chief counsel and right hand man.

He was instrumental in ruining all of the lives that he and McCarthy destroyed during their investigations.

Unlike McCarthy, it is not necessary to ask Trump the question “Have you no decency?”

We know the answer to that question.

It is evident from all that he says and does.

When I was growing up in the 1950’s Onondaga County was represented in Congress by R. Walter Reihlman, a Republican.

Reihlman represented the district for nine terms from 1946 to 1964.

During those terms, Congress met for no more than three and a half to four months per year in Washington D.C.

The salary went up from $ 10,000 to $ 30,000 during that period.

Clearly, it was not envisioned as a full-time position.

Since 1965, the salary has risen to 174,000 per year and Congress is almost continuously in session.

The position has turned into a full time position and we are now represented by career politicians.

The New York State Legislature has evolved in the same way with the same result.

Proponents of full-time legislators will contend that it is essential because the issues that they deal with are more complex and require the acquisition of expertise.

In my view, this has resulted in a number of developments in the way Congress operates, none of them helpful.

I have observed many times that politics and public office attract people who couldn’t be successful at anything else.

Without naming names, over the course of my lifetimes I’ve seen people rise to the highest levels of power, who have had repeated failures in the private sector.

I’m not talking about the isolated business failure occasioned by an unexpected economic downturn but a track record of failures that defy expectation.

Nonetheless, when these people are elected to office and are repeatedly re-elected, they rise in seniority to genuine positions of power to which they cling desperately to.

The other failing that a full-time legislature has, is that it can result in officeholders who have never had a career doing anything else.

Two examples of this come right to mind and one is a Democrat and the other a Republican.

U.S. Senator and Democratic Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer, has been in public office from the moment he graduated from law school. Indeed, Schumer was so anxious to run for office that he never bothered to take the New York State Bar exam.

He went from the New York State Assembly to Congress to the United States Senate without ever having had a career outside of public office.

Another example of this trajectory is Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan.

Ryan went from being a congressional staffer to Republican campaign speech writer to another staff position until he was elected to Congress.

Unlike Schumer, he spent one year in the private sector where he worked as the marketing consultant at his family’s construction company as he ran for office.

Both of these politicians are what I call “doing life in public office.”

Neither of them can be said to have had the day to day experiences that people who build businesses or professional practices have.

They don’t know what it means to have to lay employees off or obtain a loan with payment obligations in difficult economic times.

They don’t know what it means to have to lay awake at night wondering if losses will turn to profits so that they can meet payroll, fund retirement accounts, or be able to meet medical expenses, children’s tuition or perhaps put food on the table.

“Doing life in public office” permits them to live in a cocoon where all their needs are met by salaries, staff, and all the other perks that comes with public office.

That leads us to the government shutdown.

I don’t think it is wise to ever shut the government down, no matter how noble the reason.

I am second to know one when I think the government should come up with a solution to DACA that allows those children who were brought to this country at an early age to obtain protected legal status and a path to citizenship.

Trump’s threat to deport these kids, if Congress does not enact a legislative solution, is one of the most callous and cruel threats I’ve ever seen.

Schumer’s decision to shut the government down and then to retreat from it after one day was simply stupid.

I’m not optimistic that, come March 5, we will not start to see deportations.

The only concession that Schumer obtained for his retreat was a promise from Senate Leader Mitch McConnell that he would allow “open debate” on the issue of the “Dreamers.”
”
There was no commitment that a legislative solution would be had.

Complicating this problem is that Ryan will not allow any measure to come up for a vote in the House of Representatives unless it is supported by a majority of the House Republican members.

That position forecloses the possibility that a bi-partisan measure, agreed to by moderate Republican members and Democrats, could ever be enacted.

That is the price that Ryan makes Americans pay so that he can hold on to the power of the Speaker’s position.

Schumer ended the shutdown after one day simply because he feared that it would hurt the re-election chances of some of his caucus members.

In sum, the nobility of the “Dreamers” cause was and is sacrificed for the political expediency and preservation of those who will not take a principled stand because they want to cling to their elected positions.

And that, is the problem of being governed by those who sre “doing life in public office.”

In 1855 my great-grandfather, James McGuire, arrived in New York from Ireland.

It was in the waning years of what has been euphemistically called the “Potato Famine.”

The “Famine” was, in reality, an exercise in what would be known today as ethnic cleansing.

Although the potatoes rotted in the ground year after year, there was more than enough other crops to feed the population.

Nevertheless, the British Government and their estate landlords in Ireland exported the produce and left the Irish population to starve.

Approximately one million Irish starved to death.

As an inducement to get the Irish tenant farmers off the land and out of the country, the landlords paid the ship passage for the tenants to emigrate to the United States and Canada.

Another million joined in this Irish diaspora.

The ships became known as “coffin” ships because the health and sanitary conditions were so deplorable that almost half of the passengers died enroute.

Donald Trump would have categorized Ireland, at that time, as a “shithole.”

After his arrival in New York, my great grandfather, a shoemaker, married, started a family and relocated to Syracuse in 1870 with my great-grandmother and their first born son.

It was here that my grandfather and the remainder of his siblings were born.

In 1881 tragedy struck the family.

My great-uncle, John Francis McGuire drowned in the canal.

My great-grandfather sank into an alcohol fueled depression and was never able to work again.

My grandfather, Charles McGuire, and his older brother, James K., were forced to leave school and work to support the family.

Charles, at the age of nineteen, opened his own insurance agency which did business in Syracuse for almost seventy-five years.

His older brother, James K., would be elected Mayor of Syracuse three times beginning in 1895 at the age of twenty-six.

He remains the youngest Mayor of Syracuse to this day.

James K. McGuire would, during his lifetime, establish and publish a newspaper, be a candidate for Governor of New York, author two books, Chair the New York State Democratic Party, become an influential leader in national politics and the Irish independence movement.

Together, my grandfather and great-uncle were able to send their younger brother and sister to college at Notre Dame and St. Mary’s College in South Bend, Indiana.

In today’s world and in Trump’s prevailing view, it is likely that they would have not been Americans because they came from a country that he would view as a “shithole.”

Fifty years after this ethnic cleansing, what remained was still “a shithole.”

James K. McGuire traveled to Ireland many times during his life to aid the forces seeking independence from England.

One of the leaders in that cause, John Redmond, described Ireland at that time, writing,

“Dublin desperately needed prosperity. Ireland’s largest city and former capital ranked as the greatest urban disgrace in the United Kingdom. The census in 1911 listed Dublin’s population as slightly more than 300,000. The working class made up more than two-thirds of this number. A government report on Dublin housing conditions showed that 45 percent of the working class lived in tenement housing. Dwellings built for one family often housed several, usually with one family to a room. Dublin has more than twenty-thousand one- room tenement buildings the highest percentage of any city in Britain or Ireland. A large number of these places held as many as seven or eight people to a room. The most egregious example of overcrowding showed ninety-eight people living in a single house.”

My great-uncle visiting a few years later wrote,

“The writer has visited all the cities of America and many foreign cities. Of the large town seen, beyond a doubt the capital of Ireland is the poorest, the most squalid and miserable. The only interesting thing about Dublin are the ruins of its former greatness, the cemeteries, parks and decaying structures. There is scarcely a ripple in the Liffey aside from some boats from a brewery…”

He went on to describe Sligo as having,
“10,000 inhabitants old and poor the remnants of a stricken race. Sligo has nothing to show at the end of 900 years but the melancholy ruins of a once flourishing town, her aged men and women and their rags. Long since most of the stalwart youth have departed for foreign shores.”

Out of this British bred horror came immigrants to America who would become bankers, educators, clergy, writers, artists, musicians, captains’ of industry, public officials and even a President of the United States.

In Donald Trump’s world, my grandfather, great-uncle and those leaders and contributors might never have added to the culture, history or richness of what is America because they came from a “Shithole.”

Last month, I thought I had seen it all with the U.S. Senate candidacy of Roy Moore in Alabama.

Despite the multiple accusations of sexual misconduct bordering on pedophilia, the groper-in-chief currently ensconced in the White House endorsed Moore, dismissing the allegations by multiple women with the trite observation that “He denies them.”

Alabama is one of the most thoroughly red states and hadn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate in over four decades.

Nevertheless the stench surrounding Roy Moore’s life story was even too much for the State’s reliable Republican voters, who elected the Democrat, Doug Jones, a thoroughly dedicated former prosecutor who is above reproach.

My last memory of Roy Moore was him riding a horse to the polls on Election Day to cast his vote.

How often do you get to see a horse’s ass sitting on a horse’s ass?

Moore was a creature of the Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, who had vowed to recruit candidates to carry the alt-right banner into Republican primaries in 2018, topple incumbent Republican members who were loyal to Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, and oust him from that position.

Instead, Democrats have a real chance to take control of the Senate as the Republican majority has now dwindled to a two vote margin.

Moore was not Bannon’s only warrior in this inter- Nicene affair.

In Arizona, Senator Jeff Flake, a conventional Republican conservative could no longer stomach serving under Donald Trump and ended his own career in public service.

Having drawn Trump’s ire, Flake had become a target of Bannon, who had recruited a primary opponent for him in the person of Kelli Ward.

Ward, an osteopathic physician and former Arizona State Senator, had unsuccessfully challenged John McCain in a 2016 Republican primary.

When McCain was diagnosed with brain cancer this past year, she publicly called on him to resign from the Senate so that she could be appointed to his seat.

Her rationale for this position was that, as a physician, she was certain that he would die from the brain tumor.

Now, there is a real bed side manner for you.

Ward had been the frontrunner in the upcoming primary against Congresswoman Martha McSalley, a retired U.S. Air Force Colonel and the first woman to fly in combat once the restriction was lifted during the Gulf War.

Ward’s candidacy has now been upended by the entry of a new candidate in the race.

The new candidate is formerly convicted and newly pardoned Joe Arpaio.

Arpaio served multiple terms as Sheriff of Maricopa County surrounding Phoenix from 1993 until 2016 when the voters turned him out.

Like Roy Moore, who was removed from office twice for defying federal court orders, Arpaio has a disdain for the federal courts.

In 2011, Arpaio was enjoined by a federal court judge from engaging in racial profiling, ordered to stop detaining Mexican and other Latino people and unconstitutionally inquiring about their citizenship or immigrant status.

Three years later, after many court appearances and warnings from the Court which Arpaio ignored, he was convicted of criminal contempt by another Federal judge following a trial.

Arpaio’s tenure in office was marked by numerous civil rights suits involving conditions in the Maricopa County Jail.

Arpaio made inmates appear publicly in pink underwear, fed them a starvation diet while requiring them to watch the Food Channel, deprived inmates of essential medical care resulting in a number of deaths and incurred hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawsuits filed against Maricopa County for these practices.

In his spare time, Arpaio became a committed member of the “Birther” movement that questioned President Obama’s birth in this country.

He even sent deputies from his office to Hawaii, at tax payer expense, to prove that the country’s first African-American President was illegitimate.

It was in that endeavor that he bonded with Trump.

Last year, Trump issued his first and only pardon.

He pardoned Arpaio before he was sentenced for the criminal contempt conviction.

In announcing his candidacy for the United States senate, the eighty-five year old candidate said he would like to bring “new Ideas” to Washington and support Trump’s agenda.

This past week, Trump voiced his opinion about Haitians and the nations on the continent of Africa.

We know what he thinks about Mexicans and others from Latin countries.

It will be a disappointment to Arpaio, but someone should tell him that his “new ideas” already reside in the White House.

I sometimes wonder whether Trump and Bannon found these candidates in the bar depicted in the movie “Star Wars.”

Ten I wonder whether they all met in that bar together.

During the past three months, there has been a steady drumbeat of criticism of Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 election from forces all across the right wing spectrum.

Republican members of Congress have tried to cast doubt on Mueller’s impartiality and integrity.

Devin Nunez, the Republican Chair of the House Intelligence Committee has repeatedly tried to frustrate the committee from issuing subpoenas and interviewing witnesses, when he hasn’t been funneling information obtained by the Committee to the White House.

This is the same Nunez who was supposed to recuse himself from the investigation earlier this year after being caught slipping Trump information.

On the Senate side, Judiciary Chairman, Charles Grassley, has declined to advance legislation that would insulate Mueller from being fired.

Congressman Francis Rooney of Florida has called for a purge of the senior officials at the FBI.

Congressmen Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows, the Freedom Caucus chair, have called on Attorney-General Sessions to resign so that Trump can appoint a new Attorney-general who could fire Mueller.

Both seem oblivious to the fact that any replacement of Sessions would require Senate confirmation during which this issue would be fully explored.

The Rupert Murdoch Empire has been united in seeking Mueller’s dismissal.

The Wall Street Journal has called for Mueller to be replaced, despite Mueller having removed a senior FBI agent he determined was biased against Trump as soon as he learned it.

The Journal further contends that because Mueller led the FBI for twelve years, he can’t be impartial when it comes to investigating the firing of James Comey.

That may be the first time that leading the nation’s premiere law enforcement agency is a disqualifier from public service.

The Fox News commentators have been particularly rabid in the pursuit of Mueller.

Sean Hannity, who concedes that he is no reporter, has railed nightly against Mueller, Deputy Attorney-General, Rod Rosenstein and anyone else remotely connected to the probe.

Perhaps the most vitriolic has been Jeanine Pirro, star of the “Judge Jeanine” Show.

Watching her, one would never realize that in addition to being the former district attorney of Westchester County, she was an actual judge in the New York Court System.

Bug eyed, she has ranted that FBI officials should be “taken out in cuffs” and the FBI “needs to be cleansed.”

It’s hard not to wish that someone from the network would come up behind her and lace up the back of her jacket during her broadcast.

Mueller has thus far secured guilty pleas from two individuals from the Trump campaign add indicted two more.

This week, however, there was a development that sheds new light on the substance of the probe.

The founders and owners of GPS Fusion, the organization that hired Christopher Steele to prepare a dossier on Trump’s Russian business activities published an op-ed piece in the New York Times demanding that their testimony before three congressional committees be made public.

They recounted how they were initially hired by a Republican donor and the Washington Free Beacon to pursue this line of investigation. Ultimately the expense of the investigation was picked up by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

They denied demanding a pre-ordained conclusion from Steele and have disclosed thatTrump had extensive business relations in Russia and that there was collusion between the Russian Government and the Trump campaign to secure his election.

They laid out that the Steele dossier was not what triggered claims of collusion but rather corroborated allegations of collusion that came from within the Trump Campaign.

Interestingly, they urged the committees to examine Trump’s banking records from Deutsche Bank.

While none of the committees have taken this step, reportedly Mueller has, which may explain why the drumbeat for his dismissal has suddenly gotten so loud.

They decried the selective leaking of portions of their testimony by Republican members of these committees, which is why they demanded their full testimony be released.

This would seem to support disclosure of something that should have been made public a long time ago.

I am referring to Trump’s tax returns.

Clearly, they would reveal what business relationships he has with Russia and whether his previous denials are truthful.

They would also reveal to the American people whether his claims that he would be hurt by the tax overhaul are true.

The continued canard that he can’t disclose them because “he is under audit” is one that only Kellyanne Conway and Sarah Huckabee Sanders believe.

Justice Louis D. Brandeis once said “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”

There is another saying that is also timely.

“Put up or shut up.”

That time has finally come.

In December 2015 I retired from the New York State Court System after nineteen years as a County Court judge and acting Supreme Court justice.

I had been a lawyer for twenty years before that and had decided to retire from all legal activity and do the reading, writing and traveling that I had always wanted to do.

Throughout 2016 I realized some but not all of these goals and was intending to do more in 2017.

To my complete surprise, I received a telephone call from Mayor Stephanie Miner in November asking whether I would be willing to come out of retirement during 2017 and be the City of Syracuse’s attorney during her last year in office.

Throughout my life, I have known many public officials at all levels of government.

They have been Presidential candidates, U.S. Senators, Governors, Congressional Representatives, State Legislators and every Mayor of Syracuse during my lifetime.

I’ve known Stephanie Miner for twenty plus years.

I have often said of her, that she is one of the few public officials that has sought public office solely for the purpose of bettering the lives of those whom she serves.

Faced with a decision which could be popular or unpopular, she will always decide to do what she believes is right without regard for how it will affect her popularity or electability.

It didn’t take me long to accept her invitation and join her administration for the last year.

During this past year, I was amazed at how much she had been able to accomplish in two terms.

The Hotel Syracuse, which had been vacant for decades was reopened as part of her economic development initiative.

Under- utilized and vacant commercial buildings were converted to condominiums with 745 residential units added since 2010 enjoying a ninety-nine percent occupancy rate.

Hotels opened in the Armory District and the Redhouse Performing Arts center was relocated from West Street to the vacant Sibley’s building on Salina Street.

A land bank was established which acquired almost 1,500 tax delinquent properties that were either marketed to new owners, generating $ 880,000 in annual property taxes, or demolished if beyond repair.

A Municipal Violations Bureau was enacted to more expeditiously handle housing and code violations.

The mayor implemented Say Yes to Education which led to $ 7.3 million dollars in scholarship money that enabled 3,000 Syracuse City School District graduates to attend college.

She moved the Joint School Construction board to fully renovate four City schools.

These were simply some of the successes of her eight years in office.

Yet, none of these were highlighted in the recounting of her two terms as Mayor by the local newspaper.

Instead, they chose to portray her as negative, combative or an obstacle to development.

For over thirty years, the paper has covered disagreement between public officials with an intellectual vacuity that is both breathtaking and predictable.

When two or more public officials have a disagreement involving policy or philosophy, you can count on the newspaper to bemoan or chastise the fact that there is disagreement without ever analyzing the merits or correctness of the position of the parties to the disagreement.

Thus, in this instance the paper allowed its “guest columnist” to paint the Mayor as a negative obstructionist.

What they forgot, or didn’t think was important to disclose, was the fact that the “guest columnist” was her first mayoral opponent, whose philosophy and views were overwhelmingly rejected by city voters.

To support his critique, he cited the Mayor’s opposition to the DestiNY tax agreement, the City’s litigation with Cor Development over the Inner Harbor Development, and her strained relationship with the Wizard of Oz in the Governor’s Mansion.

So, let’s take a closer look at each of these issues and see what the “guest columnist” either left out or failed to see.

If one recalls the DestiNY tax agreement, it will be remembered that a court ordered the Driscoll Administration to give the Pyramid Companies a thirty year Payment in lieu of taxes agreement for a multi-phase expansion of its mall, which already had a fifteen year tax abatement agreement.

After it obtained its agreement and completed the first phase of the expansion, the company announced it would build nothing more.

If there is someone out there who still thinks that was a good deal, there is a guy named Ponzi who would like to meet you.

The City’s litigation with Cor over the Inner Harbor stemmed from Cor’s reneging on its commitment not to seek a payment-in-lieu of taxes agreement and obtaining one from the Onondaga County industrial Authority.

At this writing Cor’s officials are scheduled to stand trial for, among other crimes, lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

One might want to factor that circumstance into deciding whether the City or Cor was truthful about the issues in their litigation.

The Mayor’s falling out with Cuomo stemmed from her public dissent about one of his policy proposals.

In typical Cuomo harebrained fashion, the Governor proposed that cash-strapped cities defer making their required pension contributions until future years when they would be required to make them along with interest payments for the unpaid years.

If that isn’t the classic politicians strategy to “kick the can down the road” for future generations to deal with, I don’t know what is.

Enraged by her public dissent, Cuomo and some of his local supporters, engaged in the kind of petty punishments that are typical of him and all too common today.

As the newspaper’s “guest columnist “noted Cuomo chose to locate those projects that are part of the “billion dollar” upstate economic revitalization in the suburbs, outside of Syracuse.

That means we didn’t benefit from the Film Hub which has sat empty since it opened and has no tenant on the horizon.

We also missed out on the Led light bulb manufacturing plant that Sorra, the company it was being built for, walked away from.

The Film Hub was the subject of litigation between Cor and the State, after Cor was paid fifteen million dollars to build it and was leasing it back to the State.

The Sorra lighting plant which was built for 90 million dollars, also by Cor, sits vacant. It will now have another fifteen million dollars spent on it in the hope it will make it attractive to another tenant.

As one who got a real up close look at bribery, extortion and corruption during the Alexander probe, it is clear to me that these projects are designed for nothing more than to generate bribes, kickbacks and political contributions.

It is no surprise that the “guest columnist” missed all of this, apparently still smarting over his electoral defeat by the Mayor.

The Mayor has a significant number of accomplishments including keeping the City solvent in the most difficult economic times, which will be her legacy when the history of these times is written.

They were apparent to me although I was a member of the Administration for only one year.

It does surprise me that the only newspaper in town, charged with reporting on civic affairs, either chose to ignore them or missed them entirely.

As the saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished.

Happy New Year!

A couple of weeks ago I was in New York City visiting with my daughter Kate and her husband, Ben.

Kate produces commercials for an internet firm and Ben, a very talented actor, is pursuing his career options in the theatre.

Kate is the child who, like me, was bitten by the political bug that seems to be part of the Fahey-McGuire gene pool.

In the years between college and graduate school, she had the privilege of working for Mayor Miner as her scheduler and got an up close and personal education about politics on all levels.

Like me, she possesses a very dim view of the current occupant on the White House.

What I learned, on a walk with her through lower Manhattan, is that she has a very real fear about the future of the country under Trump.

“Do you think the country can survive him?” she asked me.

“Sure I do,” I replied.

The country has weathered more serious crisis I pointed out to her.

We managed to break free from England in the Revolutionary War.

We almost broke apart during the Civil War.

We managed to last through two world wars and get through the Great Depression in between them.

All of that occurred before I was born, I reminded her.

During my lifetime, we navigated our way through Vietnam, which was my first experience with friends and high school classmates being sent off to fight in a distant land with many of them returning home in body bags.

As that war was coming to a close, we experienced Watergate and the criminal investigation of the Nixon Administration ending in his resigning from office.

I told her how fears ran very high during that crisis, that he would defy the other branches of government adding additional uncertainty to the outcome.

In the end, however, the rule of law prevailed and the nation endured yet again.

We talked about the attack on September 11, 2001 which supplanted the assassination of President Kennedy as the defining moment the nation has experienced during my life time.

I assured her that, as bleak as things seem right now, our history and spirit is greater than any one man.

As I think about our conversation and all of the events we recounted during it, I began to consider all of the great figures who came and went and the way we adjusted to their passing.

My parents told me how stunned they were at the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt as World War II was coming to a close.

After leading the country out of the Great Depression and through Pearl Harbor and the war, they couldn’t imagine having another president and also wondered if the nation would survive.

I saw how devastated they were by the murder of John F. Kennedy and how the country came to a standstill during the days that followed as he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

I remember how numb I was at the murder of Martin Luther King.

It seemed that just as that was wearing off, Robert Kennedy was assassinated and I began to question what kind of society we had become.

I began to think of the passing of people in my life.

When my mother passed away at the end of 1991, my sister, Jane, was less than a month away from giving birth to my nephew Conor.

At the conclusion of her funeral mass, Father Ahern looked at Jane and told us that the Irish have a saying, “One goes and one comes.”

This past Easter Sunday my younger sister Mary died unexpectedly.

A week or so later, my daughter, Meghan, announced she was expecting her second child.

One goes and one comes.

At this writing we await the imminent arrival of Jane Diana.

I’m confident that her life will be filled with promise, happiness and joy.

Secure in that belief, I know that the world will go on, we will endure whatever crisis we encounter and, as always, America will thrive.

Merry Christmas.

Last Tuesday night was a bad night for Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore.

It was a bad night for his puppet master, Steve Bannon.

It was a bad night for Donald Trump.

I suspect that the next meeting between Trump and Bannon will have all the characteristics of what would happen if you tied two sewer rats together by the tail and dropped them into a closed barrel.

Sorry about that visual.

This was the second time that Trump put his political reputation on the line in the Alabama Senate race.

It is also the second time that voters, in perhaps the deepest red state, rejected his call for support.

Trump, who never takes responsibility for anything that goes wrong, claimed to be prophetic in predicting Moore’s loss.

While not unexpected, this spin stands in sharp contrast to his left-handed endorsement of Luther Strange in the Senate primary in which he declared, “I may have made a mistake in endorsing Luther Strange.”

When I heard the “endorsement,” I couldn’t help but wonder if Trump didn’t have some tacit understanding with Bannon in which Trump really preferred Moore.

Once he lost the primary to Moore, Luther Strange may have thought Trump’s endorsement was a mistake too.

In the immediate aftermath of Moore’s primary victory, Trump delivered a perfunctory and long distance endorsement of Moore.

What became increasingly strange was Trump’s actions after the allegations of sexual predatory behavior by Moore arose.

There was nothing innocuous or ambiguous about what Moore was accused of.

A number of women came forward to describe how Moore sought them out for sexual activity when they were as young as fourteen years old and he was a district attorney in his thirties.

One of his victims even produced her high school year book, in which Moore had inscribed a message to her.

One would have thought, that given his own history of being accused of this kind of behavior, Trump would have viewed the Moore campaign as the third rail.

Instead, he had his all- purpose prevaricator, Kelly Anne Conway, float a trial balloon suggesting that Moore’s support for the Trump tax bill was more important than avoiding sending a child molester to the United States Senate.

Trump followed suit within days declaring that it was paramount that a Republican be sent to the Senate by Alabama voters even if he might be a sexual predator.

He went further accusing Democratic candidate, Doug Jones, as a liberal who was “soft on crime.”

This last accusation was patently ridiculous in light of Jones history as a United States Attorney prosecuting and convicting Eric Rudolph a terrorist and serial bomber, as well as the Ku Klux Klan leaders that had bombed a Baptist church in Birmingham killing four African-American little girls four decades before.

Moore, for his part, largely stayed off the campaign trail in order to avoid questions from the press about the allegations made by his accusers.

Trump repeatedly justified his endorsement of the predator by repeating, over and over again, that Moore denied the accusations which continued to mushroom.

In doing so, Trump was clearly trying to inoculate Moore with the same “defense” that he asserted when even more women accused him of sexual assault during the 2016 election.

What Trump didn’t count on was the tidal wave of sexual assault reports that have deluged the fields of show business, media, politics and government and have ensnared Democrats, Republicans, liberals and conservative men alike.

The cry from women all across America that “we’re mad as hell and not going to take it anymore” has fallen on Trump’s deaf ears.

Even after spending almost twenty years as a judge in a criminal court, and having thought I had seen it all, I have to say that I never dreamed I would see the day that an apparent level two sex offender would endorse an apparent level three sex offender for a U.S. Senate seat.

In addition to his predatory sexual history, Moore revealed his true character in an interview in which he proposed abolishing all of the amendments to the Constitution following the Tenth Amendment.

Slavery would no longer be abolished, Due Process and Equal Protection would no longer be guaranteed, voting guarantees for all races would no longer exist, popular election of U.S. senators would be abolished (considering the results of the election, I can understand why Moore would be for this), women would no longer be guaranteed the right to vote, and the poll tax could be re-imposed.

Trump justified his support for the predator by declaring that Moore supported Trump’s ”agenda.”

It looks increasing like Trump supports Moore’s agenda too.

Trump, Bannon and Moore have an interesting shared view of the future.

Fortunately the voters of Alabama did not share their views nor have any appetite for sending a deviant to the United States Senate.

At this writing, Roy Moore has not conceded defeat, claiming among other things, that the large African-American voter turnout was riddled with fraudulent voters.

Sound familiar?

Trump is ready to move on, declaring that Moore should concede.

God sees.

If only for this moment.

One of the enduring principles of our democracy is that no man is above the law, including the President of the United States.

That was reinforced three times throughout our history during the presidencies of Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.

Johnson was impeached on purely political grounds arising from his actions during reconstruction.

Nixon was on the verge of impeachment for his role in the Watergate burglary and cover-up when he resigned.

Clinton was impeached for lying about his affair with an intern during a deposition in a civil lawsuit.

The experiences of Nixon and Clinton are particularly instructive and relevant to the current situation unfolding in the nation’s capital today.

The Special Prosecutor, Robert Mueller, is investigating Russian involvement in the 2016 Presidential race and related matters.

One of the matters involves Trump’s firing of his National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn, for ostensibly lying to the Vice-President about his contacts with Russian government officials during the transition period.

In the immediate aftermath of Flynn’s firing, Trump allegedly requested FBI Director, James Comey, to forego investigating and prosecuting Flynn.

When Comey demurred, Trump fired him too.

As a result of the firing, Rod Rosenstien, the Deputy Attorney-General appointed Robert Mueller as Special prosecutor.

Mueller has moved quickly, either indicting or obtaining guilty pleas from a number of Trump campaign officials, the most recent being Flynn.

Flynn was allowed to plead guilty to a single felony count of making false statements to the FBI and has entered a cooperation agreement with the Special Prosecutor that requires him to truthfully disclose all that he knows about any crimes or collusion on the part of those who were involved in the Trump campaign and may now be a part of the Administration.

This latest development led Trump’s lawyer, John Dowd, to offer the very curious opinion that Trump cannot obstruct justice because, as President, he is the chief law enforcement officer of the nation.

Dowd maintains that Trump is entitled to direct the Justice Department to initiate any prosecution he desires and discuss any prosecution or potential prosecution that may arise.

Dowd is joined in this position be Harvard law Professor, Alan Dershowitz, who has become a Fox News pundit and a legend in his own mind.

Other than Dowd, the only one who thinks this legal position has merit is Dershowitz, the remaining legal community believes that it doesn’t pass the laugh test.

To Trump and his defenders, this position is important for several reasons.

If Trump cannot be charged with obstruction of justice, then his exercise of the pardon power to absolve those who might be criminally responsible for what has occurred, cannot be a predicate to a charge of obstruction of justice.

No one would argue that the President doesn’t have the power to pardon law breakers, but the premature exercise of that power to thwart an ongoing criminal prosecution or investigation most certainly could support an obstruction of justice charge if, the pardon was issued to shield law breakers who might cooperate in the probe.

We need to look no further than the impeachment articles that were voted by the House of Representatives during the Nixon proceedings to see that there is precedent for charging a president with obstruction of justice.

Nixon chose not to test that theory and instead, resigned.

The other corollary position that Trump’s lawyers seek refuge in, is the belief that Trump cannot be criminally charged while he is in office, before being convicted in an impeachment trial in the Senate.

It’s fair to say that there is a division of opinion on this subject in the legal world.

There is nothing in the Constitution that explicitly shields a sitting president from criminal prosecution.

This concept is implicitly rooted in the fact that the Founding Fathers provided that a President may be removed from office if convicted in an impeachment trial of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

It is generally well settled that these terms encompass offenses that may be criminal in nature as well as criminal.

Andrew Johnson’s articles of impeachment included no criminal offenses.

Nixon’s articles of impeachment, as noted, included obstruction of justice charges.

Clinton’s articles of impeachment also included obstruction of justice charges as well as perjury.

It has been reported that the Nixon Special Prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, had prepared legal briefs that supported the principle that Nixon could be charged criminally while in the White House.

It has also been reported that Robert Mueller has done the same.

In the legal case involving Clinton and Paula Jones, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Clinton was not shielded from civil litigation while he was President and that is what led to his lying under oath about the affair with Monica Lewinsky.

The Trump team, aware of that ruling, hastened to settle as many civil cases pending against him prior to the inauguration.

I am of the opinion, that if a president cannot be shielded from civil litigation while in the White House, there is an even more compelling reason not to shield him from criminal prosecution, including obstruction of justice, in whatever form it occurs.

If the Dowd opinion were to be validated, we would be in very dangerous waters.

Trump could pardon those who might be a danger to him at will.

He could meet with and strategize with any witness, subject or target of the probe, even if that amounted to suborning perjury.

He could fire the special prosecutor and terminate the investigation.

He could initiate criminal investigations and prosecutions of anyone he perceives as having wronged him.

He could make good on his favorite chant, “lock her up.”

It would amount to his becoming a government of one.

Throughout this past year, we have heard Trump proclaim that any criticism or negative story about him or his administration is “fake news.”

His criticism of the various news outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post and particularly CNN is unending and, frankly, juvenile.

He labels the New York Times as the “failing” New York Times even though it is, by all accounts, quite healthy.

His distaste for CNN apparently knows no bounds.

A proposed merger between AT&T and Time-Warner appears to be in jeopardy owing to a Justice Department lawsuit to block the merger.

The opposition by the Justice Department is, at first blush, baffling since the Administration prides itself on and trumpets the fact that it is “anti-regulatory.

Moreover, the Chief of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division is on record as declaring that there is nothing about the merger that troubles him.

One of the considerations in approving the merger is to require Time-Warner to divest itself of CNN.

While the Justice Department is not supposed to be at Trump’s beck and call, it appears that Sessions is about to bow to Trump’s pressure as penance for recusing himself in the Russian Election Meddling probe that resulted in the appointment of a Special Prosecutor.

Apparently, they have embarked upon a strategy that if you cannot beat CNN than kill it.

Trump surrounds himself with an assortment of “communications” staff.

Kelly Anne Conway should have a polygraph machine permanently grafted on to her.

Sara Huckabee-Sanders is paid handsomely by the American taxpayers to lie to them every day.

As the Roy Moore campaign for the Senate seat from Alabama continues to unfold, we get to witness an ever evolving Trump.

First, he was content to let the people of Alabama decide.

Next, he and Kelly Anne declared that Moore’s Democratic opponent is a liberal who was “soft on crime.” An interesting assessment of a man who successfully prosecuted the KKK leadership for bombing a church and murdering four little girls decades before and Eric Rudolph who bombed a women’s health clinic and the Centennial Olympic Park in Georgia.

Confronted with the pedophilia accusations Moore faces, Trump dismisses them because “he denies them.”

The same way he denied the admissions he made about his own conduct on the Access Hollywood Tape and the scores of women who accused him of sexual assault.

Indeed, in his latest iteration of the tape, Trump now claims it’s not really his voice on the tape, notwithstanding the fact he admitted it was last year and apologized for it.

Don’t be surprised if you see Trump on the campaign trail with Moore before the December election.

Into this cauldron, now comes James O’Keefe, a right-wing gadfly who specializes in making false and misleading videos to embarrass various organizations and public officials.

O’Keefe rose to fame by publicizing a heavily edited video of interviews he had with Acorn officials in an effort to damage and undermine the work of that anti-poverty organization.

He pled guilty to a crime when he unsuccessfully attempted to tamper with the telephone system in Senator Mary Landrieu’s office, trying to substantiate a claim that she ignored constituent phone calls.

He unsuccessfully attempted to tie National Public Radio officials to Islamic terrorism with another heavily edited and doctored tape.

This week he attempted to discredit the Washington Post’s investigative reporting of Roy Moore, by sending an employee to meet with reporters from that paper with a false story about Roy Moore impregnating her at age fifteen and then arranging for an abortion.

O’Keefe’s strategy was fairly simple and straightforward.

If the Post reported the story and it proved to be false, then the Post would be discredited, Moore’s accusers would be undermined and O’Keefe and Trump’s preferred pedophile candidate would be elected to the U.S. Senate.

Unfortunately for O’Keefe, the Washington Post reporters were suspicious of his phony plant’s story and uncovered O’Keefe’s plot to discredit their reporting.

The name of O’Keefe’s organization is Project Veritas.

He should consider changing the name to Project Falsitas.

Where does this organization get its funding?

Well, we could start with the ten-thousand dollar contribution it received from the Donald J. trump Foundation.

That is not “Fake News.”

I’m betting you won’t hear Trump talk or tweet about it.