Category: Uncategorized

During my career I’ve seen a fair number of, what I refer to as, “bad gene pools.”

In the two decades I spent as a criminal defense lawyer, I represented a number of defendants who seemed genetically unable to stay out of trouble.

During the almost two decades I spent as a judge in county court, I encountered the children and even grandchildren of people that I had represented early in my career.

Recently, however, I have become a believer in the theory that there is a “messy” gene.

I clearly possess such a gene.

I can live and work in the messiest, chaotic conditions.

At least one of my siblings, my brother Chuck, possessed it at one time. I can still recall sharing a bedroom with him and every Saturday morning my mother would pound on the door and demand that we clean our room. Chuck would lean against the door, holding it shut until she gave up in frustration and went away.

When I was in elementary school one of the nuns made me bring my father to school so she could show him how messy my desk was.

There was nothing more terrifying at the time than having to bring my father to school.

He came to the classroom, looked at the desk and told me to try and keep it neater.

I realized later that he had given me a pass because he realized I had inherited the gene from him.

Once, when I was in college at the University of Tennessee, my younger sister Jane came to visit. She was in the apartment for about half an hour, when she said, “Don’t you think you could have cleaned a little bit before I got here?’

“We’ve been cleaning for two weeks,” I replied. She seemed to take it in stride and we had a nice visit.

One of my earliest clients recalled my cubicle at the legal aid society. “You had these two huge piles of files several feet high on your desk,’ he told me. “I was always amazed that you never lost anything. You’d reach into the pile and pull out whatever we needed.”

That, of course, was the trick.

When I was in private practice, my law partner, Chris Wiles declared that I couldn’t buy a sofa for my office “because you’ll just pile things on it.” Eventually, he relented.

Two weeks after it was delivered, it was piled high.

Once while interviewing a prospective client, he looked at the several hundred pink telephone messages scattered across the floor of my office. At the end of the interview, he said to me, “I’d really like to have you represent me but I have one question. Did you call any of these people back?” “Most of them,” I answered.

There was the occasional puzzling moment, when I would open a client’s file and the client would give me a quizzical look about the shoe print that was on a letter in the file. For the most part, the gene didn’t interfere with my practice.

The gene manifested itself during the nineteen years I was in County Court.

My friend and colleague, Bill Walsh, was the opposite. He was a true neat freak. I think it was a carryover from his military career. There was a certain Felix and Oscar quality to our friendship.

In his final year on the bench, he said to me, “You should move into my office when I leave, it’s larger.”

“Are you kidding me,” I replied, “I’d have to run for another term just to get packed up for the move.” I stayed where I was.

Every couple of years, my staff would organize everything while I was on vacation. For months, I couldn’t find anything and was afraid to look. At the end, I started packing about six months before my retirement date. I just barely made it.

Last weekend my four-year-old granddaughter was out for dinner with my daughter, Meghan.

“I’d like to see my room,” she announced. “Her room” has the closets and bureaus where my clothes are kept.

Before she and Meghan went down to it, I forewarned, “It’s kind of messy.”

They disappeared for about ten minutes. When she came back up, she marched over to me, looked me in the eye and hissed, “Clean it up!”

Over dinner, she announced that she would like to come out for a sleepover soon.

Since those are very precious times, I’m happy to report that the room is now neat as a pin.

When I was growing up, my father would frequently remark that “telephones were to make appointments over.”

He was a City court judge for sixteen years and I think this observation was the result of his having approved wiretap applications for the various police agencies.
They were usually utilized in bookmaking cases, which he viewed as pretty harmless and were usually resolved by a guilty plea and a fine.

He might even accompany the fine with a stern warning that might be heeded until the next Super Bowl or World Series.

During my years practicing criminal law, I would often give the same advice to clients who immediately disregarded it.

One client that remembered the warning was heard to say on a wiretapped call, “my lawyer said we probably shouldn’t talk on this phone because it might be t-a-p-p-e-d.”

As I listened to that brilliant observation with him seated next to me in court, I looked over at him and said, “I-t –w-a-s.”

With the advent of cell phones, taping calls became much easier for police agencies since the cell calls weren’t being made over a telephone wire. That, however, didn’t stop my clients from having phone calls that they shouldn’t have.

As a judge I couldn’t help but be mystified by the jail inmates that would make calls from the jail to witnesses, relatives, family members and assorted other parties to discuss both past and future criminal activity only to be interrupted every few minutes by a robotic voice that reminded them that the call was being tape recorded.

As the evangelist, Billy Sunday, once observed, “God can forgive sin, but stupid is forever.”

All of these memories came flooding back to me this week as I watched Trump’s National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn’s stunning fall from grace.

Flynn’s demise is, ostensibly, the result of having lied to Vice-President Mike Pence, when he assured the Vice-President that he did not discuss the lifting of sanctions on Russia imposed by the Obama Administration for their hacking and interference in the recent Presidential election during a pre-inauguration telephone call with the Russian Ambassador to the United States.

What seems mind boggling about Flynn’s conduct is that he apparently didn’t know that America’s intelligence agencies routinely monitor and record conversations being had with and by foreign officials on unsecured telephones, despite having held the post of Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Flynn’s legal problems aren’t likely to end any time soon.

It’s illegal for a private citizen, which Flynn was at the time of the telephone calls, to negotiate with a foreign government. While Flynn is unlikely to be prosecuted for that, he apparently lied to the FBI when confronted about the telephone calls.

Lying to the FBI is a felony carrying a prison term.

Trump, for his part, is not alarmed about any criminal conduct Flynn may have been engaged in.

Instead, he has asked the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute those inside the government and intelligence community that leaked the existence and content of Flynn’s telephone calls.

In Trump’s world that investigation is far more preferable than a full and complete investigation into which of his campaign officials knew about and were a party to the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton Campaign e-mails in the run up to the election.

The Administration is barely a month old but mark my words, not too far down the road, someone is going to ask that famous question.

What did the President know and when did he know it?

I’m betting that Trump will not like the answer.

Seven years ago I had a complete knee replacement of my right knee.

While I’m glad that I had it done, it did change some things.

I can no longer run and kneeling has its challenges but the biggest change came in flying anywhere.

After sitting in Kennedy Airport in New York City six years ago, watching a clock tick down on my flight departure, while waiting someone to wand me, I vowed that I’d never fly to any destination that I could drive to.

I’ve followed that plan ever since then.

I tried to fly to Washington, D.C. this year and learned that TSA had not improved their screening of joint replacements one bit.

So, I’m back to driving.

I was reminded of the wisdom of this plan as I watched the implementation of Donald Trump’s Executive Order restricting travelers from seven Muslim countries from entering the United States.

The countries that were selected for the ban were curious ones. The list did not include Saudi Arabia which was the home of the majority of the 9/11 hijackers.

Indeed, it didn’t include any of the countries that these hijacker originated from.

It also didn’t include Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Lebanon, Kuwait or Russia, all countries that were home to all of the terrorists who committed attacks inside the United States after September 11, 2001.

It didn’t include Turkey, which for years was a gateway for ISIS fighters entering Syria.

It didn’t include Dubai, which, like Turkey is the home of a Trump Hotel.

Indeed, it didn’t include any Muslim country that has a Trump property located in it.

I’m sure that is just a coincidence.

Like most of the actions taken since the Trump Administration has taken office, the travel ban was rolled out in chaotic fashion.

Announced on a weekend, the various agencies which had to implement it were caught by surprise and had little or no guidance on who was covered under it.

Green card holders who are permanent residents were prohibited from returning home.

Scientists that had visas and were working on potential medical breakthroughs were refused entry.

In some instances the order had potentially lethal consequences in which Muslims who had aided U.S. troops during the Iraq war and the campaign against ISIS, at great peril to themselves and their family members, were turned away at foreign airports.

Reaction from Congressional leaders varied from condemnation by Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Chuck Schumer, to criticism from Senate Foreign Relations Chair, Bob Corker, to silence from Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell to support for it from House Speaker Paul Ryan.

Legal challenges to the ban abounded with lawsuits being filed by opponents in cities all across the country. In the State of Washington, a federal Judge enjoined enforcement of the ban nationwide and some of those who were excluded were allowed entry into the United States.

Trump, in typical Trump fashion, lashed out at the judge, referring to him as a “so-called” judge, accusing him of putting the country in peril” and placing blame on him for any attacks that might happen.

It wasn’t the first time that Trump has gone after a judge.

During the presidential campaign he maligned the impartiality of an American born judge of Mexican descent, after he ruled against Trump in a civil suit over his ongoing fraud known as Trump University.

This past Thursday, a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the injunction issued by the “so-called” judge, once again, prompting Trump to criticize the court for being “political” claiming that our “security is at “risk today.”

Echoes of the late Senator Joe McCarthy could be heard across the mall.

I’ve never understood the logic of Trump’s strategy of attacking judges who rule against him while the matter is still in the courts.

His own nominee for the vacant Supreme Court seat Judge Neil Gorsuch, described Trump’s attacks on the judiciary as “demoralizing” and “disheartening.”

One would think that Trump would recognize this as a signal that his strategy is not furthering his position and, perhaps, emboldening the judiciary to assert its independence and authority as a co-equal branch of government.

A reading off the 27 page opinion of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upholding the injunction against Trump’s travel ban, makes it clear that the judiciary does not agree that Trump’s executive actions are unreviewable or beyond their reach.

That is truly comforting.

In a related development, the Westminster Dog Show is going to create a new category this year.

Best in Lap Dog.

Trump is going to enter Paul Ryan.

The latest nomination for a seat on the United States Supreme Court continues a process filled with ironies that started in 1987 with the nomination of Robert Bork to the court by President Ronald Reagan.

Bork was a very prolific writer who had authored countless law review articles which often espoused controversial positions on social issues, sometimes using incendiary language

Armed with this paper trail, the Senate Judiciary Committee, made up largely by Democrats, examined Bork about his views concerning the right to privacy, the Voting Rights Act, the First Amendment and censorship and other subjects. By the time the hearings ended, Bork’s views were portrayed as clearly outside the mainstream. Bork’s nomination was rejected by the Committee and the full Senate.

This started a trend in which Presidents sought nominees with little or no published academic record and who would steadfastly refuse to discuss any issue that might come before the Court. One such stealth candidate was David Souter nominated by President George H.W. Bush. While Souter had little in the way of published views, he turned out to be much more moderate than Bush or other conservatives bargained for.

The ultimate stealth candidate was Clarence Thomas, who couldn’t recall ever discussing Roe v. Wade or the topic of abortion with anyone in his whole life.

Thomas evolved into a stealth justice, asking only two questions during the quarter century that he has been on the Court.

Ask yourselves, how many people would hire a lawyer to represent them in court, who has asked two questions in court in twenty-five years?

Now days, a Supreme Court nominee provides less information than a criminal who has been given a Miranda warning.

In addition to having no views publicly expressed, the trend has been to nominate judicial candidates who are younger and younger, capable of serving on the high court for decades. Administrations of both parties have succumbed to this desire.

At age 49, Neil Gosruch is the youngest Supreme Court nominee in 25 years. We have decided to sacrifice life experience on the altar of longevity.

One of the ironies that Gorsuch’s nomination highlights, that is peculiar to Republican Administrations, is that the nominee must be an “originalist” or “textualist” in the mold of Antonin Scalia. Scalia’s approach to constitutional interpretation dictated that the Constitution had to be interpreted according to the intention of the Framers without regard to considerations that arise as society evolves.

In short, it has no more relevance to the present age than the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Gorsuch’s nomination mirrors those of John Roberts, Samuel Alito and, to a lesser extent, Clarence Thomas.

They all fit the pattern of young Republican apparatchiks, who have served in a prior administration, have left no paper trail nor willing to give any hint about what their views on the monumental modern societal issues that might come before court. Despite their youth, they all cling to a view that the Constitution must be interpreted in the light of events that occurred over two hundred years ago. No one questions their intelligence or academic credentials but it does resemble a judicial replay of the Boys from Brazil.

I remember a Supreme Court that was composed of giants like Earl Warren, William O. ’Douglas, Thurgood Marshall, John Harlan and even Lewis Powell and John Paul Stevens in later years. People who brought a wealth of experience to the court from a variety of worlds.

It reminded me of an exchange that was said to have occurred between Lyndon Johnson and Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn. Johnson was recounting the academic and business backgrounds of John F. Kennedy’s cabinet members and described them as the “best and the brightest” the nation had to offer.

Rayburn is said to have replied’ “That might be true, Lyndon, but I’d feel better if one of them had run for sheriff once.”

Now that, would be something to hope for here.

Ask any lawyer involved in the criminal justice system about cases that mark you for the rest of your life and they can tell you the name immediately.

One such case that I was involved in was the murder of Katy Hawelka in 1986. Unlike most of the cases I took, this was one in which I didn’t represent the defendant.

I represented the victim and her family.

Her mother came to our office in September of 1986 in the weeks following the murder of her daughter.

The monster who murdered her, Brian McCarthy, had been arrested and charged with her murder. Her mother wanted me to monitor the court proceedings and advocate for her daughter and the family to insure McCarthy didn’t escape being held responsible.

Katy was a 19 year-old second year student at Clarkson. She was a very kind, intelligent, talented and beautiful individual who would have contributed much to the world in life, had she been allowed to live.

On the night of August 28, 1986, she was beaten, raped and strangled by McCarthy in a horrific attack that must have seemed an eternity to her. He left her so badly injured and damaged that she was unrecognizable to her family. She lingered, suffering from those injuries, for several days in a Watertown, N.Y. hospital before succumbing from the beating.

McCarthy ultimately pled guilty to Murder in the Second Degree in St. Lawrence County Court and was sentenced to twenty-three years to life in the New York State Correctional System.

During his prosecution, Katy’s mother told me that she wouldn’t have wanted him put to death because she wanted him to have to think about what he had done to her daughter every day for the rest of his life.

In 2011, McCarthy became eligible for parole. His applications for release have been denied by the Parole Commissioners three times. He has had hearings in 2011, 2013 and 2015. Each time he has had a hearing Katy’s family has appeared and opposed his release. Thousands of people who knew her and didn’t know her have signed petitions opposing his release.

He is scheduled for another hearing on March 2nd of this year.

Katy’s family will be forced to relive this nightmare again.

I have read and reviewed the transcripts from McCarthy’s 2011, 2013 and 2015 parole hearings and have found he has lied multiple times to the board of Parole.

During the 2011 Board appearance McCarthy claimed to have attended a hockey game with Katy. He claimed to have met her on a walkway later that night and that they were both under the influence of alcohol and agreed to have consensual sex. He then claimed that she became angry and violent and attacked him because of his inability to perform sexually. He claimed to have hit her once and she died from striking the pavement. He denied strangling her.

His account of their encounter and her death is a complete fabrication.

McCarthy’s crime was a stranger to stranger encounter.

Katy Hawelka was a complete stranger to him and he was a complete stranger to her.

She did not attend a hockey game that evening with him nor was there a hockey game that night.

Walker Arena, where hockey is played, was filled with computers scheduled to be delivered to incoming students the following day. Katy had been out with friends that night, one of whom agreed to walk her home because of an ankle injury she had suffered. Regrettably he parted ways with her before she made it to her residence and that is when she encountered McCarthy.

During the course of the rape and assault, McCarthy struck her and kicked her while wearing his work boots. He repeatedly smashed her head into the wall of Walker Arena. That sound echoed throughout Walker Arena and was so loud that the security guards inside thought someone was trying to break in and went to investigate.

That was when they found her, badly beaten clinging to life.

While McCarthy claims to have been intoxicated by alcohol and drugs, professing amnesia about his actions and motivation, the Potsdam Police found him hiding nearby, covered with blood. He had the presence of mind to try and fabricate an account of being assaulted by another party and presented himself as a victim, along with Katy.

While he professes to think about her every day and has goals which include repairing the “hurt” he caused the “victim’s family”, it is obvious that he hasn’t given the victim any thought whatsoever.

Indeed, he doesn’t even know her name- repeatedly referring to her as “Kim Avadikian.”

Kim Avadikian was one of the security guards at Clarkson University who discovered Katy after McCarthy had beaten, raped and strangled her.

During the criminal court proceedings, Katy’s mother told me she didn’t want McCarthy executed because she wanted him to have to think about what he had done to her daughter every day for the rest of his life.

Clearly, he hasn’t thought about her at all.

During that same appearance, McCarthy lied to the Parole Board about having had a prior “intimate relationship” with her.

During his next appearance before a Parole Board in 2013, McCarthy tried to claim that his prior account of the assault being a single blow, was the product of a “blackout” although the police investigation revealed he attempted to portray himself as having been a victim of an assault evinces cognitive awareness and presence of mind on the night of the crime.

During his 2015 appearance, McCarthy finally admitted that he didn’t know Katy but, again, lied to the Parole Board, claiming he was unconscious when the police discovered him on the night of the attack.

While discussing his claim of rehabilitation, he was asked “Where does the victim fit in?” He replied “I was going to ask which victim, there is more than one. “ This exchange reveals a stunning and callous level of narcisstic self-absorption to the degree that he believes himself to be a victim.

In these three appearances before the Parole Board, McCarthy has repeatedly lied to the Board about the viciousness of his attack.

He has slandered Katy in death by continuing to claim they had a prior intimate relationship.

He has sought to minimize, rationalize and excuse his conduct by claiming to have been in an alcohol, drug induced state contrary to what the police investigation revealed.

For the past nineteen years, I was an Onondaga County Court Judge and an Acting New York State Supreme Court Justice, who presided over thousands of felony level criminal cases and the annual reviews of civilly committed sex offenders pursuant to Article 10 of the Mental Hygiene Law. Because I was a member of the State Judiciary, I was prohibited from commenting about McCarthy during his prior parole appearances. I retired from that position on December 30, 2015.

I now no longer have that restriction and plan to offer my opinion to the parole Board.

It’s not a difficult or complicated one to understand.

He remains an unreconstructed, un-rehabilitated sociopath, who is a danger to women everywhere.

I have never asked the readers of this blog to do any more than read, think about and hopefully enjoy what I have written.

If you would like to take a step toward keeping this monster in prison, then please go to the link to the petition that is just below last week’s post “Milestones” on this page and add your name to it.

If you would like to do a little more, write a letter to the Parole Board, addressing it to;

Senior Parole Officer
Marcy Correctional Facility
9000 Old River Road
P.O. Box 5000
Marcy, New York 13403-5000

It’s been thirty years since Katy Hawelka was murdered.

She should never be forgotten.

Brian McCarthy should never be forgotten either.

My friend and former law partner, Ben Wiles Jr., turned 100 this past week.

That’s right 100.

I have known Ben for almost forty years. In 1979, I was working as a staff lawyer at the Frank H. Hiscock legal Aid Society and was musing aloud about starting my own law practice.

Ben’s brother, Dick Wiles, was a family friend and mentioned to my father that Ben and his son, Chris, had an empty office in the State Tower Building that they might be willing to rent. Dick was a great guy who was extremely civic minded, volunteering to Chair the City of Syracuse Zoning Board for years until Mayor Lee Alexander persuaded him to accept an appointment to the City’s Common Council. He reminded me of the Roman official, Cincinnatus, who in times of crisis would leave his plow to lead the Roman Empire.

I knew Chris slightly from Democratic politics and made an appointment to stop and see them. After making some small talk, Ben told me that they did have an office which belonged to another lawyer but that I could rent it. When I asked why the other lawyer didn’t need it, he told me that he just used it as a place to come in and read the newspaper. I’ve come to appreciate that concept. Thus, began a relationship that would endure and I would cherish from that day to this one.

I shortly discovered that Ben and Chris did work that differed greatly from mine. They were representing clients involved in real-estate transactions, estate work and corporate practice that I didn’t understand. If it was a tax question I never would.

I was representing clients in traffic and civil litigation and a large assortment of criminals in a court appointed capacity. On my first day in the office the secretary we shared asked if there was anything she should do differently. “Hide your purse,” I told her.

Both Chris and Ben were possessed of a great sense of humor and loved hearing about the various escapades that my criminal clients got themselves into. Chris took particular delight in greeting them in the waiting area with the question, “Aren’t you in jail yet?”

Over time we began to trade work on our respective files. They would help me with a real-estate closing or drafting a last will and testament and I would resolve the traffic matters and occasional criminal case that their client might get themselves into. The arrangement worked so well that we decided to form a partnership.

Chris also had an arrangement with an older lawyer, Tom Dyer, in which they shared an office in Marcellus. Tom made it clear that, partnership or no partnership, I wasn’t allowed to use the office in Marcellus because he feared that the crime rate would go up if my clients came there.

One of our most memorable cases involved representing the head zookeeper of a Louisiana zoo who was charged along with a group of other zookeepers with conspiracy to smuggle a Harpy eagle in to the United States. Since we were court appointed, Ben kept asking how there could be an indigent zookeeper? I didn’t have an answer for him. Once the case was dismissed, he wanted to know how he could express his gratitude. Chris and I told he could get us a parrot that could talk.

“What are you going to do with the parrot?” Ben asked. “We thought we’d put it in the waiting area and let it talk to the clients about legal fees,” I answered. “How are you going to feed it on the weekends? “he asked. “Claude, the elevator starter could feed it,” Chris volunteered. “You’d be better off having the parrot feed Claude,” Ben answered.

In the end our newly freed, indigent zookeeper client told us that he couldn’t find one “that wouldn’t chew our arms off.”

One of the beauties of being in partnership with Chris and Ben was that none of us ever knew what the other one was working on. It also meant that no one was looking over anyone’s shoulder or complaining about their productivity.

If you were a fan of the television show, Boston Legal starring William Shatner and James Spader, you know that every episode ended with the two of them sitting on the balcony of their law office, smoking a cigar and drinking scotch at the end of the week. That was how the week ended at Wiles and Fahey each Friday. We’d sit in the corner conference room at the end of the week, with the windows open, a cigar lit and a beer cracked, because we couldn’t afford Scotch, and laugh and catch up with each other.

We shared our victories and losses, celebrated births and weddings, grieved over the people we lost during that period together.
Chris and Ben were there for me though the various political races, giving me the time to fulfill my need for public service including the very dark period after the 1993 Mayoral primary,without ever complaining.

I remain blessed to have them in my life.

Happy Birthday Ben!!!!!

May you live 100 more.

It has been over two months since Donald Trump won the Presidency.

I had written quite a lot about the election and the danger that I believed Donald Trump posed if elected, both domestically and on the world stage.

In the interest of fairness, I decided to withhold any commentary about what kind of administration he might assemble and the direction it might take until I saw the people he would name to serve in his administration.

Looking at his cabinet choices and White House staff positions named so far, I’m afraid that the fears I held about what kind of administration he would preside over, are coming true.

While Abraham Lincoln assembled a “Team of Rivals,” Donald Trump is assembling a Team of Deplorables.

His choice for Attorney-General, the far right, racist dingbat, Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions, who represents Alabama in the United States Senate is a signal of what is to come. Sessions was one of the few judicial nominees in history to be denied confirmation by the U.S. Senate because racist remarks and views he held while a U.S. Attorney in Alabama during the Reagan Administration. His record on voting rights can be summed up in an episode where he indicted individuals that were registering African-Americans to vote in Alabama while he was U.S. Attorney. The jury hearing the case returned an acquittal in a matter of hours.

He has nominated Congressman Tom Price from Georgia to be Secretary of Health and Human Services. Price wants to repeal Obamacare immediately and strip the 20 million people who now have health care of their coverage. He is anti-choice, anti-LGBT and, along with Paul Ryan, would turn Medicare into a voucher system rather than a single-payer system.

His nominee for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, is an enemy of public education. Married to an heir to the Amway fortune, DeVos and her husband are the deepest pockets of Republican Party contributors in the state of Michigan. She championed vouchers and charter schools in an effort to starve the public schools in Michigan. When her campaign to expand charter schools in Detroit resulted in academic performance disaster, she resisted any attempt to remedy the situation legislatively.

Trump’s choice for Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, former presidential candidate, Ben Carson, will preside over an agency, notwithstanding his previous admission that he lacked the experience to run a cabinet department and has no background whatsoever in the issues the department must address.

Former Texas Governor, Rick Perry, is nominated to head the department of Energy. During the 2012 Republican primaries, Perry advocated abolishing the agency on the occasions he could remember its name.

Trump’s choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, is a “climate change denier.’ Pruitt has made it his career to sue the agency he has been nominated to run on behalf of the oil industry while he was Attorney-general of Oklahoma. He has been known incorporate oil company opposition arguments verbatim into his court filings and position papers on behalf of the state of Oklahoma.

The nominee for Secretary of Labor, an agency whose mission is to protect workers, is an opponent of an increase in the minimum wage and a rule that would make more employees eligible for overtime pay. Andy Puzder is the CEO of the parent company that owns Hardees, the fast food restaurant chain. Ironically, it was the fast food workers who were in the forefront of the successful campaign to raise the minimum wage to fifteen dollars per hour.

The two most deplorable choices do not require confirmation by the United States Senate.

Trump has chosen retired General Michael Flynn to be his National Security Adviser. Flynn apparently earned trump’s loyalty by leading Trump supporters in chants of “lock her up” about Democratic Presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, at the Republican National Convention and at various events on the campaign trail to the embarrassment and chagrin of other military leaders both active and retired.

Flynn was fired from his position as Director of the Defense intelligence Agency because of his inability to work with others in the intelligence community. Part of the problem was he felt he was entitled to his own set of facts, whether true or untrue, which his colleagues called “Flynn Facts.”

Flynn has a demonstrated inability to be able to distinguish “fake news” from real news. During the campaign he often retweeted fake news stories that were obviously fabricated including one alleging that Clinton, former President Bill Clinton and others were involved in sex rings involving pedophilia. Flynn’s son, who was employed by the Trump Transition Team and slated to be his father’s assistant, was fired after an incident that occurred in a Washington, D.C. pizza parlor. The incident involved a gunman taking over the establishment and firing a gun, while claiming to “investigate” a fake news story that the restaurant was the site of a child sex trafficking ring. Once order had been restored and the fake news story debunked, Flynn’s son took to his twitter account to declare that the fake news story was true until proven otherwise.

Needless to say, common sense and good judgement isn’t part of the Flynn Family’s genetic makeup.

While the lack of these characteristics might be excused in many cases, having a National Security Adviser, who lacks them, making decisions about war and peace and possibly nuclear Armageddon is a bit disconcerting.

The other appointment that should send a shiver up the spine of every American is that of Stephen Bannon as Senior Counselor and Chief Strategist in the soon to be Trump White House. Bannon was a founding member and Chief Executive of Breitbart News, the anti-Semitic, anti-Gay, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, racist, sexist, xenophobic news organization which is a haven for Klan leader, David Duke, neo-Nazi’s and a wide assortment of hate groups. It appears that at long last America has its own native Joseph Goebbels.

One can only wonder what strategies will be employed.

We are about to inaugurate the fourth President in our history who has lost the popular vote.

His mission should be one to unite us rather than divide us.

These choices don’t do that.

America deserves better.

Last month, just before Christmas, I went to view a photography exhibit at the Whitney Center on the campus of Onondaga Community College.

The exhibit was one from the National Archives titled “Picturing Nam.” it was a collection of fifty photographs from the Vietnam War taken by photojournalists, military photographers and ordinary G.I.s. They were taken in the villages and jungles of Vietnam during the span of 1965 to 1975.

Some of the photos were color, others were black and white. All of them were haunting.

There was a color photograph of a young Marine, who appeared to be barely 18 years old, taken near Da Nang in August 1965. He had the faraway look of someone who had already seen too much and would never forget what he had seen, much as he might try to. You couldn’t help but wonder whether he had survived his tour or became one of the earliest of the 57,000 plus who would give their lives.

There was a color photograph of an Infantry Company in the midst of a “search and clear” mission of the kind that my friend Larry Hackett would tell me about after he survived his combat tour and before he was killed by Agent Orange, the defoliant used by our government with no warning to the troops.

Indeed, there was a color photograph, taken in 1966, of an aircraft spraying Agent Orange as part of what was called “Operation Pink Rose.” 255 flights in which 255,000 gallons of Agent Orange were used to defoliate portions of the country. It was deemed to be a “limited success.”

The exhibit had a photograph of Napalm exploding a Vietcong structure south of Saigon.

A photograph titled “Ambush” captured a scouting operation caught by surprise in February 1968 and the body of a dead Marine killed at the beginning of the fire fight.

Photographs depicting different aspects of the life and death of a Vietnam tour were part of the exhibit, ranging from a Catholic priest saying Mass on a Fire Base, to an aerial view of a bombing run over North Vietnam, to surgery and other medical care being provided on a ship off the coast.

It depicted GI life from the mundane reading of a newspaper by a GI who was a member of the Ist Air Cavalry on the Cambodian border to the hollow-eyed expression on the faces of Marines observing one of their own getting First-Aid during the Battle of Hue.

This wasn’t the first photography exhibit about the War in Vietnam I had gone to see.

Almost twenty years ago Larry and I had driven to Rochester see an exhibit entitled Requiem which displayed the work of 135 photographers who had been killed in the war. There were many more photos in the exhibit than the 50 I recently viewed at the Whitney Center.

In some cases the photographs were taken from the last roll of film that the photographer was shooting when he was killed. That fact coupled with the devastation and carnage displayed in the photographs made the images even more haunting.

The exhibit was later published in a book also entitled Requiem. Unbeknownst to me, Larry bought the book.
A decade later, after he had died from cancer caused by his exposure to Agent Orange, his wife Alice gave me the book. It remains one of my most prized possessions.

After viewing the exhibit at the Whitney Center this past month, I opened Requiem again and leafed through its pages once more.

I thought about the many veterans who die from Agent Orange, kill themselves because of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and other maladies resulting from their combat sacrifices.

It occurred to me that we are very fortunate that we have the photographs from these exhibits and books because, as a nation, it seems that is the only way in which we remember them.

One of the truly great experiences in being a grandfather is getting to attend those performances that captivate grandchildren during their earliest years.

My granddaughter is four this year and for the last two years I have gone to Sesame Street Live and Disney on Ice.

The first one we went to was Sesame Street Live, which was performed at the Landmark Theatre.

I have a special affection for the Landmark because I remember when it was Loews movie theatre, when I was growing up.

In fact, it was one of five movie theatres in downtown Syracuse along with the Paramount, RKO Keith’s, the Eckel and the Cinema.

Every week, my friends and I would take the bus downtown to go to a movie. It really didn’t matter what the movie was or whether it was any good. We had other ways to amuse ourselves.

About a half hour before the movie was to start, we would stop into the pet section of W.T. Grant’s Department Store, which was located in the 400 block of South Salina Street and but a bunch of miniature turtles.

If the movie was boring or we were bored, we would go up in the balcony and drop them on the people sitting below and wait for the reaction. The reaction could, sometimes be pretty loud and dramatic.

On a few occasions, Grant’s was out of miniature turtles and we had to buy chameleons, a small lizard that changes colors. Sort of like some politicians.

Trust me, when I tell you that dropping a small lizard on someone in a darkened movie theatre produces a louder more dramatic reaction.

When I ran for mayor of Syracuse in 1993, we had a fundraiser in the Landmark and I promised my supporters that if won the race, we’d have a celebration in the Landmark and they could drop lizards on people.

My daughter, Kate, who was seven at the time asked me, “Why were you dropping lizards on people?” “Because they were out of turtles that day,” I replied.

But I digress.

There is something magical about watching little ones, who have seen the Sesame Street or Disney characters on television suddenly see them live on stage. The Sesame Street characters would come down off the stage into the aisles and dance with the little ones to their delight.

My daughter, Meghan, bought Claire a helium balloon and tied it to her wrist. For the rest of the performance I held my breath, hoping that the balloon wouldn’t come loose and fly away, breaking Claire’s heart. It didn’t and the afternoon was a delightful one.

We’ve gone to Disney on Ice twice and are scheduled to go again on Saturday.

Last year, Meghan had a college roommate, her husband and little boy, Jack, go with us.

They had a number of toys that spin and gave off colors in the dark.

Claire, who is a big fan of Minnie Mouse, sat on the edge of her seat through the whole performance.

Midway through it, I heard her ask Meghan, “Can I have a snow cone?” “You don’t need a snow cone,” her mother replied. “Please can I have a snow cone?” she begged. No, you’ve already had popcorn.” “But I want a snow cone.”

I, being a complete sucker for anything she wants, leaned over and said to Meghan, “Get her a snow cone.” Meghan said, “I can’t get her a snow cone because Jack will want one too.” “I replied,” So, get Jack a snow cone and I’ll pay for that one too.”

The snow cone had a plastic holder that was a Disney character and couldn’t have cost any more than nine cents to make.

Meghan held up her hand when the snow cone guy came by and handed her two snow cones.

“How much do I owe you?” I asked the snow cone vendor. “Twenty-four dollars,” he replied.

Now I know what the term captive audience really means.

When the show was over both kids left with the empty snow cone holders.

I’m hoping that they’ll leave them to someone in their Last Will and Testaments someday.

We went out for pizza after the show. The waitress in the restaurant overheard us talking about “Disney on Ice” and volunteered that she was taking her little boy to see it the next day.

“Stay away from the snow cones,” I advised her.

This year, Meghan and Claire went to see the show again. Terri and I weren’t able to make it.

“Buy her a snow cone,” I told Meghan, “and I’ll pay you back.”

Last night Meghan texted me a photo of a very satisfied four-year old happily eating a snow cone.

I’m pleased to report the price didn’t go up.

It didn’t go down either.

In 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act which allowed the United States government to forcibly remove all Native-American tribes from the lands they occupied in Florida, Georgia and other southeastern states.

The Cherokee Nation and members of other tribes brought suit against the removals on the ground that they were sovereign nations to whom the laws of the states did not apply.

The cases went to the United States Supreme Court which, in an opinion signed by Chief Justice John Marshall, agreed with the tribes. This led to Jackson’s infamous observation that “Chief Justice Marshall has rendered his opinion, now let him enforce it.”

Despite the fact that the Indian Removal Act mandated that the government negotiate removal treaties with the tribes, fairly, voluntarily and freely, it was ignored.

The forcible removal of the tribes began with the Choctaw Nation. The United States Army threatened to invade and members of the Nation were forced to walk, some in chains, through the winter weather of 1831 without food, supplies or other assistance from the government to the lands set aside for them in Oklahoma. Thousands died along the way and one of the tribal leaders gave the journey the name, “the Trail of Tears and Death.”

The next tribe to be removed was the Creek Nation. On their forced march, 3,500 of the 15,000 people perished due to the conditions.

The Cherokee Nation was divided over whether to negotiate a treaty for compensation for their lands or to resist. By 1838, only 2,000 members had moved and the Van Buren Administration dispatched 7,000 Army troops to force the removal. The members of the tribe were forced into stockades at gunpoint while white settlers looted their homes.

During the course of this forced march of 1,200 miles, disease and starvation took the lives of 5,000 Cherokee people.

During the past four months the Standing Rock Sioux, members of other tribes and supporters have been camped in North Dakota protesting the Dakota Access pipeline which threatens their water supply and ancestral burial grounds.

Hundreds have been arrested and law enforcement have used rubber bullets, tear gas, pepper spray and water cannons in sub-freezing temperatures in an effort to break up the protests and drive them from their encampment.

Last week, the protesters appeared to win a victory when the Army Corp of Engineers announced they would not approve an easement to complete the pipeline under the Missouri River and requiring the pipeline to be rerouted.

The decision by the Corp of Engineers was criticized immediately by Speaker of the House of Representative and human amoeba, Paul Ryan, who tweeted that it was “big government decision making at its worst” and that he was looking forward “to putting the anti-energy presidency behind us.”

The Company building the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, immediately went to court in Washington, D.C. to challenge the decision.

I suspect this victory will prove to be a pyrrhic one and short-lived.

Until very recently the President-Elect, Donald Trump, was an investor in Energy Transfer Partners.

The Company’s Chief Executive, Kelcey Warren, donated over $ 100,000 to Trump’s campaign.

Next month, as President, Trump will be able to order the Corp of Engineers to reverse its decision and allow the pipeline to be completed.

As I write this, I can’t help but ponder what America’s reaction would be if Energy Tranfer Partners proposed constructing a pipeline through Arlington National Cemetery or the battlefield at Gettysburg?

How would we react, locally, if they proposed building one that ran under Skaneateles Lake or through St. Agnes or Oakwood Cemeteries?

The sound and the fury of the protests would be deafening.

We would be demanding that our elected officials, at all levels, reverse this outrage.

And we don’t even have a treaty that protects us.

Shakespeare, once wrote; “What is past is prologue.”

I fear that we are about to witness that again.