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From 1900 to 1906, an Irish immigrant named Mary Mallon cooked for eight families in the New York City area. Seven of them contracted Typhoid fever. In 1907, Mallon was quarantined involuntarily until 1919 when she was released on the condition that she seek employment in a profession other than a cook. Between 1910 and 1915, Mallon violated her condition of release and returned to cooking. More typhoid infections followed and she was taken into custody by the New York City authorities and was quarantined for the next twenty-three years until her death in in 1938. She infected a total of fifty-three people, three of whom died. She went down in history forever known as “Typhoid Mary.”
We know, from the tape-recorded interviews with Bob Woodward, that Donald Trump has known since at least February that the lethality of the Covid-19 virus. He knew that it was airborne and that it affected people of all ages.
Despite that knowledge, Trump led the American people to believe that the virus was “no worse than the flu,” “would disappear like magic,” would disappear in the warm weather” and all sorts of lies and myths. He peddled all sorts of bogus remedies including injecting bleach and inserting ultraviolet light through the body orifices. He dismissed the medical experts’ prescriptions to reduce the transmission such as wearing masks and social distancing. He falsely promised a vaccine by election time. Unhappy with the advice he was receiving from renowned epidemiologists, he surrounded himself with quacks and charlatans who would tell him what he wanted to hear and bolster his lies and myths as he tried to wish the pandemic away.
As the virus mushroomed in cases, he left it to the states to procure their own medical supplies, ventilators and personal protection equipment crating a nightmarish economy in which the state officials found themselves bidding against each other, against foreign countries and contracting with grifters who often took their money and provided shoddy product or simply disappeared.
Against the advice of the medical and scientific community, he urged states to reopen their economies. Republican Governors DeSantis, Kemp, Ducey, Abbott and other, like lemmings, followed his lead and quickly saw the rate of infection and death in their states rise.
In search of adulation, Trump returned to the campaign trail and held massive rallies where little or no face masking or social distancing occurred. They became known as “super spreaders.” He held mini “super spreaders” at the White House, packing people together on the lawn of the White House and the Rose garden to celebrate his renomination and the nomination of a candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court.
As recently as last week, he stood on the debate stage in Cleveland, Ohio and mocked Vice-President Biden for wearing a mask on the campaign trail and holding small, socially distanced events.
As all of this unfolded over 208,000 Americans died and 7,000,000 were infected with Covid-19 and remain at the mercy of its sequelae.
On Friday, we learned that Trump, his wife, and a growing number of his White House staff and campaign staff have contracted the virus.
At this writing, Trump is a patient at Walter reed Hospital and is being treated by the best medical doctors in the country with the latest medicines and experimental treatments.
He is receiving far better treatment than the millions of American who are infected and those who died because of his lies and failure to lead.
In the midst of this his campaign has announced that that Vice-President Pence, the next person in line to the Presidency, will travel to Arizona on Thursday to hold another large, in-person rally which with no social distancing and no requirement that masks be worn.
If the Trump campaign and the White House are both stupid and reckless enough to do this, I propose that Trump be immediately discharged from Walter Reed Hospital and sent home with a bottle of Clorox Bleach.

My oldest brother, Jim, died this past July 30. He was seventy-six years old. He didn’t die from Covid-19 but nevertheless he died alone.
He was a patient in a skilled nursing facility. His death was sudden and unexpected. The only solace I can find in it, is that he went peacefully and painlessly. He didn’t endure the agony of a long painful debilitating decline but I wish that my other brother, Chuck, and I had been able to see him, be with at the end and able to say goodbye.

We hadn’t been able to visit him since March 13 when the ban on visits to nursing facilities and nursing homes went into effect.

After that, the high point of his day was a deli sandwich that one of the family or friends would drop off at the facility. In a matter of weeks, all food parcels were forbidden and the only pleasure that he had was prohibited.

I didn’t begrudge the prohibitions on visiting and food packages, we were in the worst and most dangerous pandemic in my lifetime and although I’m not a Cuomo fan, I thought he handled the crisis as best as anyone could.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the telephone provider that we arranged, instead of sending us the bills, began calling him at the facility and demanding payment. Since he had no way of making the payment, he would call me and tell me the amount they wanted. I would mail a check to the provider with the telephone number in the memo portion of the check. The check would be cashed but his account was not getting credited and they claimed that they had no record of his payment. Eventually, they cut off his ability to make outside telephone calls which was his only lifeline to family and the outside world. Chuck proclaimed it the cruelest situation he could imagine.

I spent an entire day on the phone with the provider trying to straighten this mess out. They kept insisting that they had to know the account number and I explained that since we had never received a bill that no one knew the account number Even though I provided them with the telephone number and the dates and check numbers of the payments they had received, they maintained there was nothing they could do to ameliorate the situation. Finally, completely exasperated, I made a formal complaint to the New York State Public Service Commission. That got the attention of the executive staff of the provider in New York and the situation was resolved by the end of the week and his outgoing service was restored.

As the weeks turned into months and his isolation continued, I began to order the latest books concerning politics and public figures so that he could pass the time feeding his addiction to all things political. Apparently, because the books were coming in the mail, there was no problem with his receiving them. Along with the unfolding presidential election, it gave us something current to discuss in our telephone calls. Chuck would spend an hour each day reminiscing with him about past events, experiences and humorous memories they shared.

On July 30, he was gone in an instant. I can only take solace in the fact that he went peacefully and painlessly. Nevertheless, he was gone without either one of us being able to offer him support, comfort or getting to say goodbye.

While the Irish are renowned for our wakes, calling hours in the middle of this pandemic were out of the question. We had a funeral service in which social distancing and masks were required and a brief grave-side service with similar precautions. A celebration of his life will have to come later.

At this writing we have over six million Covid-19 cases and in excess of one-hundred eight-five thousand deaths. We are witnessing a failure of leadership at the national and state levels of catastrophic proportions. While some states like New York have flattened the curve, others such as Florida, Georgia, Texas and Arizona have thrown caution to the winds and are seeing their death tolls rise. At this rate, scientific experts project that over three-hundred thousand of our fellow citizens will die by December 1st. This estimate doesn’t include people like my brother who, because they are quarantined, will die alone.

The English clergyman and poet, John Donne, proclaimed that there is a certain democracy in death; “Death comes equally to us all and makes us all equal when it comes.”

That may be true but I pray it doesn’t come to those who are alone.

Throughout the past three years, during the Mueller investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, Trump has repeatedly asked “Where is my Roy Cohn?”
For those of you who don’t know who Roy Cohn was, he was Trump’s lawyer throughout his career as a developer and up until his death in 1986. He was generally regarded as one of the sleaziest, vicious and unethical lawyers that the American legal system ever produced.
Cohn rose to prominence during the 50’s decade as counsel to U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy and enabled McCarthy in his often-bogus senate investigations into the loyalty of Americans which produced little in concrete evidence but terrorized and destroyed the reputations, careers and lives of many. Cohn and McCarthy’s targets weren’t just selected because of their suspected political beliefs, they were responsible for many gay men being fired for government service and routinely tried to silence opponents by spreading rumors that they were gay.
Following his departure from government employment, Cohn practiced law in New York where he represented Trump, Rupert Murdoch and various organized crime figures. During the decades of the 70’s and 80’s Cohn was charged with professional misconduct three times and indicted by the U.S. Government for financial improprieties involving New York City contracts. He was acquitted of those charges. In 1986 he was disbarred from the practice of law after he misappropriated a client’s funds, lied on a Bar application and tried to pressure a dying client to change his will to make himself a beneficiary.
In 1984 Cohn was diagnosed as suffering from AIDS. Perhaps because of his earlier persecution of gay men, he chose to remain in the closet while accepting experimental treatment in clinical trials of AZT. He died in 1986.
Throughout the Mueller probe, Trump would frequently disparage his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, for recusing himself from the Russian probe which led to the appointment of Robert Mueller. He would insist that Presidents Kennedy and Obama had Attorney Generals in Robert Kennedy and Eric Holder that would personally protect them, all while lamenting “Where is my Roy Cohn?”
To be sure, Jeff Session was no Robert Kennedy or Eric Holder. In coordination with his former protégé, Steven Miller, they implemented a policy of separating immigrant children from their parents on the Texas border and maintaining them is substandard detention facilities. Some of the parents were deported without their children and a number of their children may never be reunited because their whereabouts are unknown.
In 2019 Trump appointed William Barr to be Attorney General.
Since his appointment, Barr is attempting to get the Affordable Care Act nullified before the U.S. Supreme Court despite the fact we are in the midst of a pandemic that has killed over 80.000 Americans to date.
Barr withheld the Mueller Report for almost a month so that he could publicly misstate its findings and create a false narrative that it exonerated Trump despite its stated conclusion to the contrary.
Barr has opened investigations into the origins of the Russian election meddling investigation despite his own Justice Department Inspector General’s conclusion that no impropriety occurred at the inception that casts doubt on its legitimacy. Barr has repeatedly sought to discredit IG’s finding.
Barr intervened in the yet to be sentenced, Trump crony Roger Stone case, undermining the sentencing recommendation of the career prosecutors who tried the case and resulting in their withdrawal from the case. Following this move by Barr over two-thousand present and former Justice department employees signed a letter calling for him to resign.
In a series of political Jiu jitsu moves, Barr maneuvered the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Jessie Liu, out of her position and installed his own aide, Timothy Shea, as the interim U.S. Attorney. Following Shea’s appointment, Liu’s nomination for Deputy Counsel at the Treasury Department was withdrawn and she left government service.
Shortly after his interim appointment, Shea signed the reduced sentencing recommendation in Roger Stone’s case despite also having signed the original seven to nine year recommendation. Need one wonder whether it is Barr or Shea calling the play?
As I write this, Barr has directed Shea to drop the criminal case in which Trump former National security Adviser, Michael Flynn, is awaiting sentencing. It will be remembered that Flynn pled guilty not once but twice to lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian Ambassador, Sergey Kislyak involving the sanctions imposed by the Obama Administration for that country’s meddling in the 2016 election.
In true Lewis Carroll Through the Looking Glass reasoning, Barr has determined that the lies were not material to the investigation and it should have been closed without Flynn being interviewed. This of course ignores the fact that by lying about the conversations, Flynn made himself a potential target of Russian blackmail that could put the security of this country at risk. Barr has also conveniently ignored the fact that part of Flynn’s plea agreement included an agreement not to prosecute Flynn for failing to register as an agent for the Government of Turkey while trying to arrange for the rendition of a Turkish cleric living in Pennsylvania at the behest of the Ergodan government.
Rule 48(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure does not permit the Government from dismissing an indictment without the approval of the court. Judge Emmett Sullivan who is presiding over the Flynn case has scheduled court proceedings to determine whether he will consent to a dismissal. He has appointed the highly regarded John Gleeson, a former Federal prosecutor and Judge to act as a devil’s advocate to probe the issues and motivation underlying the government’s motion to dismiss.
Additionally, Judge Sullivan has invited interested parties to file amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs for guidance of the wisdom of a dismissal. Lawyers representing the two-thousand plus employees that called for Barr’s resignation following his intervention in the Roger Stone case and, again, after he moved to dismiss the Flynn case, are filing such a legal brief.
While it will be interesting to see what Judge, Sullivan decides, in the end, there is one fact that is undeniable.
Trump has finally found his Roy Cohn.

There are probably no more disappointing words to those of us who have made a career in the criminal justice system than “The fix is in.”
I genuinely believe that almost all members of that system, judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers and police officers strive to insure that cases are handled evenhandedly and justly regardless of the outcome.
I have represented a fair share of politicians, public officials, wealthy and powerful defendants during my career as a defense lawyer.
I also presided over many cases involving the wealthy, powerful and influential defendants during my time on the bench.
It goes without saying that when a defendant who is white, wealthy, powerful or has friends in high places escapes conviction that the public becomes cynical and assumes the worst and that the ‘fix is in.”
There can be little doubt that the recent intervention in the Roger Stone sentencing recommendation by Trump and his Attorney general, William Barr, is a textbook example of the “the fix is in.”
If you were to look up the word “sleaze” in the dictionary, Roger Stone’s photo should be next to it.
Stone, a Trump advisor and confidante, has made a career out of performing the dirtiest, most underhanded and sleaziest dirty tricks for anyone who had the bad judgement to hire him.
Perhaps his sleaziest occurred in 2007, when he was discovered to have made harassing and threatening telephone calls to former Governor Eliot Spitzer’s father, Bernard, at a time when the elder Spitzer was suffering from dementia.
Justice caught up with Stone this year when he was convicted by a jury of obstructing the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, lying to investigators and intimidation a witness by threatening physical violence.
Justice Department prosecutors handling the case recommended a sentence of seven to nine years in prison for Stone until Barr stepped in and ordered it to be reduced.
In order to appreciate how the “fix” occurred it is important to follow the machinations of Trump, Barr and others involved in it.
The first move was nominating the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, Jessie K. Liu, to become an Undersecretary of the Treasury. Liu had been the U.S. Attorney that had overseen the prosecution of Stone. She was persuaded to leave her position as U.S. Attorney and assume the Treasury position on an acting basis.
Barr then replaced her with an interim U.S. Attorney, his close aide, Timothy Shea.
Trump then began tweeting that the sentencing recommendation made by the prosecutors in the case was “horrible and very unfair” and “Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice.”
Shea, then wrote to the Judge that the Justice Department believed that Stone should get some jail time but that the seven to nine year term proposed by the trial prosecutors would be excessive. This interference prompted all four of the prosecutors to resign from the case.
Once this had been accomplished, Trump withdrew Liu’s nomination to be Undersecretary of the Treasury, leading t hero resignation from the Administration.
This last act is one that should draw some real scrutiny and prompt Congress to investigate.
What would motivate Trump to withdraw Liu’s nomination for the Treasury position?
Clearly the Administration believed that she was qualified for the position or it would not have nominated her in the first place.
It couldn’t have been a question of loyalty since she joined the Administration and wasn’t an Obama holdover.
There hasn’t been any suggestion of misconduct on her part.
I suspect that the answer lies in the fact that she was scheduled for a confirmation hearing before a Senate committee and would have been required to testify truthfully under oath and the change in Stone’s sentencing recommendation would have been a likely subject of the inquiry.
If there is one thing we know about the Trump Administration it is that they are loath to let anyone testify before Congress.
Now that Liu is a private citizen, Congress should call her as a witness and get to the bottom of this “fix.”
I lived through the Watergate scandal and I have to say that Trump makes me miss Richard Nixon.
William Barr makes me miss John Mitchell too.

Now that the impeachment trial is over and the verdict has been rendered, I can’t help but offer a few thoughts on this chapter in our history.
I don’t think anyone believed that the acquittal of Trump was anything but pre-ordained. Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, had announced well in advance that the majority Republicans would be coordinating closely with Trump to insure this outcome. In order to convict and remove Trump, sixty-seven members of the Senate would have had to find him guilty on one of the articles of impeachment and that was simply not going to happen.
Two lessons can be taken away from this outcome.
First, Trump and any president coming after him will bene emboldened to take any action or do any deed that they perceive will insure their re-election. One of Trump’s attorneys, Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, advanced the dangerous proposition that a president could take any action that he or she believed was in the “public interest,” including inviting foreign interference in our elections, and because they believed that their election was in the “public interest” could not be found guilty of a “High crime and misdemeanor.” Under Dershowitz’s theory there is no reason to draw the line at “foreign interference.” If a president believed that their re-election was “in the public interest,” why can’t they jail an opponent, take unlimited foreign money or assassinate a critic?
Apparently there is no limitation on what a president can do if they claim that the action is “in the public interest.” I would suggest that Harvard revisit this crank’s status as a faculty member there.
The second lesson is that the days of congressional oversight of the Executive branch are over. From the beginning of this administration the Executive branch has ignored virtually every subpoena for information or witnesses it has been served with, whether it related to impeachment or not. It has ignored a request and subpoena for Trump’s tax returns despite a statute that clearly requires their production to the House Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee or the Chairman of the Joint Committee on Taxation, It instructed the Executive Branch employees not to cooperate or honor subpoenas during the Mueller investigation. It stone walled every subpoena for testimony or documents during the impeachment inquiry and trial.
The second article of impeachment which charged Obstruction of Congress was also voted by the House Judiciary Committee during the Nixon impeachment proceedings for conduct which was much less obstructive. No verdict was returned in that impeachment because the Republican leadership at that time had the good sense to persuade him to resign.
The acquittal on this article of impeachment all but insures that compliance with any congressional subpoena will not occur.
Perhaps the most disturbing part of this proceeding is the refusal to call witnesses even where it is clear beyond cavil that they have relevant first hand testimony and evidence to offer. The Republican refrain throughout these proceedings is that the accusation are based on hearsay testimony from witnesses with no firsthand knowledge. Yet, when John Bolton and others are identified as having firsthand knowledge any attempt to summon them is rejected on a party line vote.
It is the first impeachment trial in our nation’s history in which no witnesses were called.
Sixty-four years ago, John F. Kennedy published his Pulitzer Prize winning work entitled “Profiles in Courage.” Among those profiled in the book was Edmund D. Ross, a Republican Senator from Kansas, who crossed party lines and cast the vote that led to the acquittal of President Andrew Johnson during the first impeachment of a president.
The fifty-two Republican Senators who voted not to summon witnesses during Trump’s trial will not be viewed kindly in history. They will be lucky if they are not included in a future work titled “Profiles in Cowardice.”
In the twenty-one years that I tried civil and criminal cases in state and federal courts and the nineteen years that I presided over trials as a judge, I can never recall hearing about a trial in which there were no witnesses.
I’m tempted to call the Trump impeachment trial a kangaroo court but that would be a terrible thing to say about kangaroos.
By all accounts, they are nice animals.

The greatest canard being advanced by Trump, his lawyers and defenders is that the articles of impeachment in his impeachment trial are deficient because they do not charge that he committed a specific identifiable crime.
Nothing can be further from the truth.
A simple review of American history demonstrates the fallacy inherent in this argument.
The impeachment clause that was under consideration during the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 was being discussed and debated while the overall framework of the proposed Federal system was being designed.
The Constitution had neither been approved by the Convention nor ratified by the states.
Thus, there was no Executive, Legislative or Judicial branches in existence.
There was no House of Representatives or Senate which could propose and enact laws. There was no President who could approve or veto enactments and, as a result, there was no penal code in existence which could define the crimes that would make the President and other officers of a government criminally liable or liable for impeachment.
In determining what offenses might be included in an impeachment clause, the Framers included those crimes that they were familiar with having just fought a war of independence a decade before. The crimes of Treason and Bribery were within their recent experience but much debate would ensue over what other conduct would constitute an impeachable offense.
Professor Engel in his portion of the work, Impeachment, referenced in my earlier blog post on this subject, quoted Governeur Morris, a convert to the requirement for an impeachment clause on the subject of bribery; “”A president may be bribed by a greater interest to betray his trust and no one would say that we ought to expose ourselves to the danger of seeing the first Magistrate in foreign pay.”
The Framers in trying to decide what other conduct might be a basis upon which to impeach a president, looked to the several state constitutions in existence. Five states adopted “maladministration” as the ground for impeachment. New York specified “misconduct” and North Carolina, “misbehavior.” James Madison suggested “incapacity, negligence or perfidy.”
Professor Engel recounts how Virginia’s George Mason grew frustrated at the impasse, complaining; “Why is the provision restricted to treason and bribery only? He suggested that they reconsider “maladministration.” Madison, however, objected that “maladministration” was too subjective and that a president could then be removed for solely political reasons. A malevolent intent should be required. Ultimately, Mason bowed to Madison’s reasoning and proposed “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Professor Engel notes that the term “High crimes and misdemeanors” has “puzzled readers ever since.” I can confess that while attending law school and throughout my career as a lawyer and a judge, if you had asked me to explain what “High crimes and misdemeanors” meant, I would have said “high crimes” was synonymous with the term “felony” and misdemeanor had its ordinary accepted meaning.
I was astounded to discover that my interpretation would have been wrong.
Engel explains that “High” offenses appeared in English law as early as 1386 and evolved over centuries along a common thread. ‘High’ offenses were committed against the sovereign’s state, or against the people in republics where the people had sovereignty on their own. The adjective is the key. A ’crime’ occurred where one citizen or subject harmed another. “High crimes” were conversely those committed against the crown in a monarchy, or the people in a democracy. The term says nothing about the severity of the crime or its consequent penalty, merely as one that surpassed mere criminal law, being a more fundamental assault against the body politic…….Put in even clearer terms, ‘high’ crimes warranting impeachment were those a president might commit against the entire American people.” Engel further explains “To the Constiution’s authors, therefore, a ‘high crime and misdemeanor,’ need not violate an extant law or statute, and neither would a president who commits common violation be guilty of a ‘high’ offense. An impeachable offense need not be illegal at all.”
Thus, it seems that a president who “shoots someone on 5th Avenue” might ultimately be prosecuted criminally for it, he would not be liable for impeachment for it but one who interfered or obstructed the investigation into it, could be.
Kenneth Starr and Alan Dershowitz are clearly wrong in suggesting that absent the inclusion of a specific criminal offense that the articles of impeachment are deficient.
I suspect that they know that too.

I’ve been multi-tasking this past week.
I agreed to co-host a discussion on Impeachment with my friend, former Syracuse Mayor, Stephanie Miner at Colgate University where she is the Rakin Fellow to be held on Friday, February 7. So, I’ve been familiarizing myself with the topics and sources she identified and gathering other readings on the subject. I’ve been reading and taking notes while at the same time, watching the impeachment trial on television.
Comparing the readings and sources with the commentary being offered by participants in the trial and some of those commenting on it, their lack of knowledge about impeachment has stunned me.
One of the best references on this subject is the book Impeachment by John Meacham, Timothy Naftali, Peter Baker and Jeffrey Engel.
Engel’s explanation of the evolution of the impeachment clause and its inclusion in the Constitution was particularly illuminating.
I was surprised to learn that whether to include impeachment in the Constitution at all was a controversial issue for the Framers during the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787.
The Framers were familiar with the mechanism of impeachment and removal from office because it had existed in the British system as early as the fourteenth century. While the King, who was ordained by Divine right, couldn’t be impeached, judges and other ministers could and were impeached and removed from office.
As the framers debated the duties and powers of the office of the President, which they called the “First Magistrate,” conflicting opinions were offered about the need for impeachment. Benjamin Franklin observed about George Washington that, “The first man at the helm will be a good one, nobody knows what sort may come afterwards.” George Mason of Virginia declared “Some mode of displacing an unfit magistrate is rendered indispensable by the fallibility of those who choose as well as by the corruptibility of the man chosen.”
When an impeachment clause was adopted on June 2, 1787, George Mason offered an observation that is often cited today. “No point is more important than the right of impeachment shall be continued. Shall any man be above the law?”
Governeur Morris, a delegate from Pennsylvania, approved of impeachment but resisted vesting the impeachment power in the Legislature believing that it would empower the Legislature, while at the same time, weaken the President, noting that “It will hold him in such dependence that he will be no check on the legislature and will not be a firm guardian of the people and the public trust.” Morris believed that a good president would be returned to office and a bad one voted out. He believed that a shorter term of office and frequent referenda was preferable to making the executive beholden to the legislature.
Delegate, William Davis, of North Carolina, in an observation that should have particular resonance today, declared “If non-impeachable, a thoroughly immunized president would spare no effort or means whatever to get himself re-elected.”
George Mason offered a similar caution opining that, “The man who has practiced corruption and by that means procured his appointment in the first instance might otherwise be suffered to escape punishment by repeating his guilt.” It is not lost on me that Trump made his “perfect call” to the President of Ukraine seeking an investigation of the Bidens, on the day following Robert Mueller’s testimony about the conclusions in his report concerning Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Benjamin Franklin finally brought those delegates who were wavering on the inclusion of an impeachment clause to the conclusion that it was essential by posing and answering a question. As he framed it, “What was the practice before this in the cases where the chief Magistrate rendered himself obnoxious? Why recourse was had to assassination.”
The Framers had to next decide what would be a sufficient basis for impeaching a president.
I’ll share some thoughts on that in the next blog post.

On August 1, 2018 I boarded a flight at Stewart International Airport in New Windsor, New York to fly to Dublin. The flight was scheduled to leave at 9:00 P.M. but was delayed until 11:30 P.M. I wasn’t troubled by the delay because I realized that it would arrive in Dublin at a more suitable hour than dawn.
One thing I have learned about the airline industry, both international and domestic, is that the airlines are the only industry that is convinced that people are getting smaller.
After storing my backpack in the luggage bin, I wedged myself into my seat, tilted the seat back and closed my eyes confident that I would wake up as we descended into Dublin. The lights in the cabin were dimmed and I began to doze off. I was asleep for about a half an hour, when the lights were turned up and the flight crew made an announcement that they would begin serving the meals that passengers had ordered. That would keep me awake for another couple of hours.
One of the things that has changed dramatically during my lifetime is the convenience and comfort of air travel. When I flew from Syracuse to Knoxville Tennessee half a century ago to attend the University of Tennessee, air travel was elegant. Full meals were served along with a complimentary beer, wine or cocktail and the seats had more than ample leg room. Now, every foot of space is utilized to jam as many passengers into ever shrinking seats and every service is offered at a price ala carte. I predict that we are less than a decade away from the airlines perfecting a way to meter the air you breathe during the flight and it will be an additional charge on the price of the ticket.
A decade ago I had my right knee replaced and it didn’t take long for my knee and leg to stiffen in the cramped seating space. The only relief was from getting up and walking the length of the plane periodically down the aisle that could barely accommodate one person let alone two. All night long passengers squeezed past one another, brushing up against seated sleeping passengers with apologies. Needless to say the flight was neither comfortable nor restful.
Once the dinner was served and the trays collected, I did manage to get a few hours of sleep. I awoke at approximately 7:00 A.M. and was able to look out the window as we passed over the west coast of Ireland. I was as struck by the lush greenery that covers the whole island as when I first viewed almost two decades before.
The Dublin Airport had grown considerably and been modernized in the twenty years since I had last visited. I retrieved my suitcase from baggage claim and decided it would be wise to have a couple of cups of coffee before attempting to drive into Dublin, where you drive on the left side of the road and the steering wheel is on the right side of the car.
The first time I had visited Dublin, I was in a car with my wife Terri and her friend Mary Beth. Like this trip we had been on a flight that landed in the early morning. Bleary eyed, I tried to adapt to driving on the left side of the road and the right side steering wheel. The roads were narrow and every time we went around a curve the bushes would brush the left side of the car eliciting screams from my passengers. I tried to shrug off, what I perceived as needless hysteria, when I rounded a curve and sheared off the left-side passenger mirror on the side of a beer truck that was partially out in the road. My passengers let out a scream and dove into the rear seat with their coats over the heads. I got out and picked up the mirror and put it on the floor of the front of the car. “Are you going to call the police?” Mary Beth inquired. “Are you kidding me?” I responded, “who do you think is going to be found at fault for this?” We drove on and for the next several days I endured the shrieking that accompanied my driving.
We were coming out of Mass in Kinsale, a city with very narrow streets, when I tossed Marybeth the car keys and remarked, “I’m kind of tired of driving, why don’t you get us back to the B&B.” She climbed behind the wheel and drove about fifty yards, stopped and said,” I can’t do this.” “How about you Terri,” I said to my wife. “There is no way I can do it,” she said. We sat there for a few minutes and I said, “I don’t know how we’re going to get back then.” “Can’t you get us back?” Terri said. “You want me to drive?” I said incredulously. “Yes,” they both replied. “Okay, I responded, “I’ll do it on one condition. I don’t want to hear a sound for the rest of the trip about my driving from the rear seat.” With that understanding, we had a pleasant drive back to the B&B.
On my next trip to Ireland with my daughters, six months later, I discovered that the ability to drive on the left side with the steering wheel on the right, came back to me right away. My daughter, Meghan, who was nineteen at the time, also mastered it. Notwithstanding this, since it had been twenty years and I was older, so I was apprehensive about trying it in Dublin in midday. I needn’t have worried, it came back like riding a bicycle.
I don’t mean to suggest that driving in Dublin was easy. Like all of the cities, town and villages in Ireland, the streets are narrow and can be confusing. In some cases, the streets will intersect with another without any clear sign of where on ends and the other begins. It is not hard to get lost. Anticipating this, I had purchased an app for my cell phone called “Google Ireland” that was advertised as providing directions throughout the country. It would prove to be the most useless tool I ever purchased. As I drove to my hotel, jetlagged and all, the app never made a sound. I was relegated to driving through the city, while glancing at the screen to see if I was going in the right direction. Like a blind squirrel finding an acorn, I eventually found the hotel. I checked in and decided to go out for a walk to see if I could acclimate to Dublin time.
Dublin has metamorphosed into one of the most cosmopolitan, cultured cities in the world. It has a rich and diverse citizenry. The streets are filled with immigrant people dressed in their native garb. You can hear any language being spoken and find any cuisine. If you were to close your eyes and listen to the streets, you might think you were in New York City. Unlike Trump’s America, the immigrant population is welcomed, if not celebrated. I suspect that the reason for that is because throughout the past couple of centuries, other nations welcomed the Irish fleeing oppression and famine.
I checked into my hotel and immediately went out for a walk to stay awake, avoid jet lag and try to adapt to the new time zone.
Almost immediately I came across “The castle Lounge operated by J .Grogan.” Since one of my closest friends is Mike Grogan, I took this as a sign from God that I should have a pint. I went inside, ordered a pint of Harp and stuck up a conversation with the bartender. When he learned that I would be traveling to Northern Ireland he asked if I was going to attempt to cross the rope bridge at the Giants Causeway. It was the first time but not the last that I would hear about the Giants Causeway. At that point, the Giants causeway was not part of my itinerary and not being crazy about heights, I doubted the rope bridge would be added to it.
After leaving Grogan’s I walked through the neighborhood enjoying the scenery, sounds and the lyrical lilt of the Irish brogues. I ate dinner outside at an excellent Indian restaurant and decided to call it a night.
As I was checking out the next morning, the clerk inquired about my next destination? “Enniskillen,” I responded. “Oh,” she exclaimed, “If you think people are friendly here, wait until you meet the people there.” I would happily discover that she was right. To be continued.

In the weeks after I returned from Ireland with Meghan and Kate, I talked longingly of returning to it for a third visit. Terri, who had been very gracious about my taking the second trip with the girls six months after the first trip, told me I needed to take her to Italy first. In my book, that was more than fair.
Since we both were living busy professional lives, I was a judge in county court and she was the city attorney, we put our travel plans on the back burner.
Several years went by and one late weekend summer day in 2003, I was sitting in the sunroom at our home, giving a Mega Million lottery ticket a cursory glance while comparing the numbers on the ticket with the winning numbers published on the newspaper. I didn’t have my eyeglasses on but it appeared I purchased the winning ticket. My heart started to pound as I conducted a mad search for my glasses. Once I found them, I compared the numbers again. It turned out that I had five out of six of the winning numbers plus the mega ball number. It was one number short of the first place prize but I knew it had to be worth a prize. On Monday, Terri and I visited the lottery office and learned that the ticket was worth Five-thousand dollars.
“What are you going to do with the prize money?” Terri asked. “I’m going to use it to get the Italy monkey off my back,” I replied, “let’s start making travel arrangement.”
We traveled to Italy during the last week of October that year and had a wonderful trip through Rome, Florence Luca, Siena and Venice. The country was beautiful, the people very nice and the cuisine was out of this world. The only drawback were the drivers. Scooters would swarm every intersection almost daring you to hit them. Leaving Siena one morning, I looked in the rearview mirror and saw a scooter rider behind me. He was so close that only the goggles appeared in the mirror. I told Terri, “If I touch these brakes, he’ going to go over the top of the car and be in front of us.” I decided that I’d rather drive on the left side of the road in Ireland with the steering wheel on the right side of the car rather than our conventional way in Italy.
When we returned home, I still longed to return to Ireland but it would be fifteen years more before I realized that dream.
In the intervening years much occurred that would whet my appetite to do so.
I began to follow the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland and the Peace Process that was unfolding there. In particular I studied the reports of the Independent Monitoring Commission which kept track of sectarian violence. I wrote an article titled “The Elusive Promise: Northern Ireland and the Quest for Peace” which I was invited to present at the regional conference of the American Conference of Irish Studies in Portland Oregon.
I was approached by the local chapter of the Irish American Cultural institute and asked to write a profile of my great-uncle, James K. McGuire, the youngest Mayor in the history of Syracuse, New York and leader of the Friends of Irish Freedom, a national organization that raised money for Irish independence in the years before, during and after the 1916 “Rising” in Ireland. I knew from family lore that Eamon DeValera fled to America after escaping jail in England that he had been sheltered by my ancestor, a fact that DeValera confirmed during a visit my parents had with him in 1973. My knowledge of McGuire was limited to what had been passed down from my mother, his niece, but I began to research his life and discovered a fascinating individual. When I was done, the profile amounted to thirty-eight pages on his life. The anthology was never completed or published.
I submitted the profile as a topic for the annual conference of the American Conference of Irish Studies to be held in New York City in April 2007 and was invited to present it on Friday, April 21 at City University of New York. Terri and I traveled to New York where I gave a talk entitled “James K. McGuire Boy Mayor and Irish Patriot.”
Shortly after I returned home, I was contacted by James Mackillop, who was the Editor of the Irish series at Syracuse university Press and very active in the American conference of Irish Studies. He told me that he had been at the ACIS Conference in New York and had very favorable reviews of my talk. We met for lunch and he asked me if I thought I could turn the paper into a full blown biography. I told him that I thought that I could without realizing that it would consume much of the next seven years of my life.
My great-uncle left no papers, letters, diaries or any other evidence concerning his experiences or thoughts about the events in his life. I was forced to go to a variety of sources, official mayoral correspondence, newspaper accounts, books that he published and the writings of others whose lives intersected with his fascinating journey through life. My research ultimately filled several large boxes which I would donate to the local historical society at the end of my quest to chronicle his life.
One of my earliest discoveries came from my great-grandfather’s obituary in the local Catholic newspaper. I discovered that my mother’s family didn’t come from Athlone but rather Enniskillen in Northern Ireland. My mother had passed away by then but I delighted in calling all of my siblings who had made pilgrimages to Athlone and asking them, “Where is Mom’s family from?” “Athlone” they all answered, “we’ve all been there.” “Well, I hate to break it to you but I found her grandfather’s obituary in the Catholic Sun and it says that he’s from Enniskillen in Northern Ireland.” My youngest sister, Jane, who never lacked certitude said, “Maybe it’s wrong.” “You don’t think they knew where he was from when he died?” I replied, “he was only forty-nine years old.”
I continued to research and write about each episode in his life in local, state and national politics and his involvement in the 1916 “Rising” and fight for Irish independence. Along the way, I learned about fascinating characters from that era such as John Devoy, Michael Collins, Roger Casement, DeValera and a figure from an earlier era named Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, who is the subject of my current writing project.
In 2013 I delivered the Manuscript entitled James K. McGuire: Boy Mayor and Irish Nationalist to Syracuse University Press. It was over nine-hundred pages. The editors at the Press persuaded me to cut it to slightly over three-hundred pages. It was published in 2014 and won the 2014 Central New York book Award in Non-Fiction.
After the launch of the McGuire biography, I turned my attention to researching the life of O’Donovan Rossa. I followed the same routine of scouring the newspaper accounts about him both in Ireland and the United States. Fortunately, Rossa wrote his own recollections about the various episodes in his life and there is much great writing about the “potato famine” by the acclaimed Irish historian Tim Pat Coogan, Cecil Woodham-Smith and others although “famine” is a term that Rossa, Devoy and even James K. McGuire eschewed.
In 2015 I retired and had even more time to devote to this project and the desire to return to Ireland and make a long overdue pilgrimage to Enniskillen to see where the McGuires came from as well as the many places I was learning about in my research was upon me again. I proposed idea of a trip to Ireland to my close friend and law school classmate, Pat Doyle, a very successful lawyer in Washington, D.C. We agreed to meet in Dublin in August 2017 for a few days and travel throughout Northern Ireland.
More to come.

It had been nineteen years since I first visited Ireland. My wife, Terri, arranged the first trip with a number of our friends as a 50th birthday present. Little did I know that the country would have a magnetic effect on me that would pull me back again and again.
I think we were only three days into our excursion when it dawned on me that both sides of my family, the Faheys and the McGuires had longer history on this island that they did in the United States.
On our first trip with friends, we didn’t get to visit either of the areas where the Faheys and McGuires had come from. My cousin, John McGrath, a Canadian journalist had found our great-great grandfather, John Fahy’s baptismal certificate in Knockavilla, a hamlet outside of the Town of Cashel in County Tipperary. None of us batted an eye at the fact that the spelling of our last name had been changed with the addition of the letter “e” to it, since that seemed to be a common occurrence experienced by immigrants entering this country. I would later learn that our great-great grandmother’s name had been altered from Honora to “Hannah” when she arrived in North America. Unlike the McGuires, who entered the United States through New York City around 1855, the Faheys had emigrated through Canada during the 1870s and all searches for emigration records there led to a dead end.
We stayed in Waterford, Kinsale, Kenmare, Tralee, Galway and other beautiful towns and villages along the Irish coast. I was captivated by the beauty of the Cliffs of Mohr and amazed that there was no fencing at the edge of the cliff. Since I’m not a fan of heights, I stayed about fifteen yards back taking photos. Suddenly through the camera, I saw a young girl jump over the side. Heart pounding, I forgot my fear and ran to the edge and looked over to discover that she had jumped down to an out cropping about five feet below the edge. As my heart pounding was subsiding, I couldn’t help but think how lucky she was that I wasn’t her father.
I returned to Ireland six months later with my daughters, Meghan and Kate. Meghan was nineteen and Kate was fourteen. In Dublin on our first day, I told Meghan I would buy her a first “legal” pint at lunch. The pub owner took both our orders and then turned to Kate and asked, “What kind of a pint will you be having?” She looked at me and I said, “Not a chance.” Flattered at being thought to look older than she was, she turned to the pub owner and asked, “How old do you have to be to drink here?” “Eighteen but were flexible” he replied, “How old are you?” “fourteen,” she answered truthfully.” “We’re not that flexible,” he told her and she had to settle for a soda. She looked at me and plaintively asked, “Aren’t you going to let have even a sip while we here?” Yes,” I told her “But I’ll pick the time and place.”
We stayed in Dublin for a day and then set off on what I thought would be a journey to the places where the Faheys and McGuires came from.
Our first stop was Athlone, a beautiful town which the Shannon River ran through. My mother told us that her forebears came from Athlone and no trip to Ireland would be complete without a pilgrimage there.
I hadn’t seen Athlone on my first trip since we were traveling with friends and it didn’t fit into our itinerary. We arrived at mid-day and went into the Cathedral that sits at the heart of the town square, knelt and said a prayer for all the McGuires that had gone before us and lit a candle to their memory. Afterward, we ate lunch in Sean’s Bar which is the oldest pub in Ireland according to the Guinness Book of Records. After lunch we set out for our next stop, which was Cashel. We arrived in Cashel at dinner time and stayed at Rockville House a B&B owned by the Hayes Family.
The following day we drove to Knockavilla, a hamlet approximately ten kilometers away where my cousin, John, had found our great-great grandfather’s baptismal certificate. The only edifice in Knockavilla was the parish church, Church of the Assumption. Like our stop in Athlone, we went inside, knelt, said a prayer and lit a candle for all of the Fahey or Fahys that had come from there. As we left the church I told the girls that we needed to find a pub to toast the Faheys. My daughter, Meghan, said, it’s got to be a catholic pub too.”
We drove a short distance and the first pub I came to was named “The Rectory.”” Is this one Catholic enough?” I asked Meghan. The girls decided to fix their hair and make-up and I took the opportunity to go inside and order a Bulmer’s Cider which was Meghan’s drink of choice, a pint of Smithwick’s beer and a half pint of Smithwicks.
When the girls came in, I put the half pint of in front of Kate and said, “Here’s your sip.” As we ate lunch I stole glances at her and could tell she hated the dark beer but kept dutifully sipping it. Suddenly, her face flushed and she said to her sister, “My face feels hot.” Meghan started to laugh and told her that her nose had turned red. She turned to me and said, “Oh my God, Dad, my nose turned red, it will go away won’t it?” “Not if you keep drinking,” I replied. That was the end of her half pint of Smith wicks.
We left the Cashel-Knockavilla area and drove to Blarney so that they could kiss the Blarney Stone, not that either one of them needed it to get the gift of blarney.
Our next stop was in Limerick, where I had arranged for a walking tour of the locations set out in the memoir Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt.
While McCourt’s book was a bestselling Pulitzer Prize winner, I hadn’t realized how unpopular it was in Limerick. I suspect that there were a number of reasons for that including the portrayal of the Catholic Church as indifferent to the plight of the poor and the relationship between Angela and a cousin. As we walked the streets of Limerick with our guide, he was the target of a number of derisive comments by several motorists in the city. He took it in stride and was very knowledgeable about the locations and some of the situations portrayed in the book such as why many of the husbands and fathers had to seek employment in England due to Ireland’s poor economy, leading some of them to never return.
Limerick, which also has the Shannon River running through it, bore some of signs that the hard times had left on it in terms of poverty and neglected infrastructure. Fortunately, better days were ahead. While we were there, Dell Computers announced that it was opening a plant there and would become the largest employer in the country.
We left the following day for home. It was a very special father-daughters trip and I would always cherish those memories but I still hadn’t seen, done or visited all the places that I wanted to in Ireland and the yearning to return would be with me for the next two decades.