“You can’t be serious!”
--John McEnroe
 
The latest from the Republican National Committee (RNC), the outfit that claimed that the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was “legitimate political discourse:” the loyalty pledge required of all Republican presidential candidates if they want to climb onto the debate stage now has an addendum, per the Republican National Committee. They must promise to support the Republican nominee in the general election, even if he is a convicted felon.
 
Candidate Asa Hutchinson asked the RNC to amend its loyalty pledge to give a pass to him and his competitors in the event the nominee is assessed to be a criminal. No go, said the RNC.  Doesn’t matter if the nominee’s a crook.
 
Every time we think the 2020s version cannot possibly sink any lower or be even more disrespectful toward and dismissive of democracy and the rule of law, the RNC proves us wrong. I cannot understand why they persist in calling themselves “Republicans” when it is clear that they don’t believe in a republican (small “r”) form of government. They are the real RINOs.
 
RNC Chair Ronna (“Don’t Call Me Romney”) McDaniel, who is closing in on close to a decade’s worth of leading her party to resounding electoral losses, is the bumbling Svengali behind these efforts at shocking the conscience of humanity. Grandpa George Romney, who when he was governor of Michigan marched with Martin Luther King, must be spinning like a top in his grave. Put a pair of specs on Ronna and she morphs into Lauren Boebert, another like-minded champion of neo-fascist know-nothingism.
 
So it has come to this: the Republican Party no longer gives a flying hoot about democracy or its guardrails. Donald Trump has effectively seen to that. The RNC has cast its lot with the alternative fact universe in which Trumpworld wallows.
 
There is a lot of speculation about what would happen to the Republican Party should it ever be able to divest itself of Trump and the Trump stench that has corrupted American politics for almost a decade. Media optimists believe that it will return to its mainstream conservative roots.
 
Don’t bet on it. All of the linkages between the historic Republican Party and its current iteration have been severed completely. Ronald Reagan and Bushes 41 and 43, despite occupying the hard right, would have no chance of being nominated by today’s GOP. There is no prospect that the party will somehow magically revert to what it was before Trump and his minions assumed the reins. That ship has sailed.

​Trump is not the only Quisling that Republicans acclaim. Just days after the RNC proclaimed lawbreaking to be a presidential prerequisite, candidates DeSantis and Pence vowed that should they be elected president, they would exhume Confederate General, traitor and owner of more than 100 slaves, Braxton Bragg, and relabel Fort Liberty (the former Fort Bragg) with its original name.
 
Oh, and one other thing: many of Trump’s Republican presidential rivals have declared that, if president, they would consider pardoning the wretch.
 
Unfortunately, there is no mechanism available to ban a party that has lost all justification for continued existence. The only way to get rid of this pestilence is the vaccine of the vote. They must be trounced up and down the ballot if we are ever going to reclaim the America that we thought we had locked in. Anything less and this menace to society will continue to drag us down the road to ruin.
 
Dick Hermann
June 26, 2023

​Donald Trump’s latest legal peril is absolutely justified. In defending him, his competitors for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination  (not to mention more than half of House Republicans) whine about “weaponizing” the Justice Department (which Trump actually did, turning it into his personal lawyer), whataboutism (Hillary’s email server; Biden’s handful of classified documents post-VP), and depicting their criminal ex-president as the Eternal Victim.
 
What is missing from their frothy and ineffective defenses are three very important elements: (1) They don’t offer a substantive defense of Trump’s massive mishandling of national security materials because there isn’t any; (2) They ignore completely the enormous risks involved in Trump’s slapdash storage of America’s most hush-hush secrets; and (3) They don’t care how dangerous and deeply insulting Trump’s cavalier mishandling of the most sensitive documents in the American collection is to millions of patriotic Americans selflessly serving their country.
 
The indictment is one of the most damning such legal documents I have ever seen. If even half of it is proven true, then Trump, as Bill Barr, his former Attorney General and principal sycophant says, “is toast.” His opponents for the nomination know very well that he is guilty as Hell, but they dare not say it for fear of offending the MAGAverse, whose allegiance they fervently hope and pray will transfer to them if and when Trump is finally recognized by his followers as the despicable scoundrel and con man that he is to the core of his being.
 
More than 10,000 people visit Mar-a Lago every year. Security checks are virtually non-existent. Trump’s abode has been the target of every hostile national intelligence service in the world for seven years. Any casual wanderer around the premises would have had access to the many classified documents stored in the ballroom, bathroom and elsewhere. Apparently, both Trump and most of his competitors for the nomination think this is just fine.
 
It is inexcusable that this gaggle of pathetic Lilliputian candidates do not point out the danger in which Trump has placed our intelligence agents, military members and national security professionals. It reveals them to be completely unworthy of the high office they seek. It also shows contempt for these millions of professionals who dedicate their lives to keeping us safe, which should also disqualify them from consideration. That they deem nuclear secrets and defense war plans of no consequence, and that the people who craft them and put their lives on the line as expendable, is appalling.
 
I am personally offended. As a GI, I served in an Army nuclear weapons unit; and later, as a civilian, served as a Pentagon legal advisor on national security matters. Being a “loser and sucker” (Trump’s assessment of American troops), I and my colleagues and successors in these roles apparently do not deserve the protection or respect of our so-called leaders.
 
By his disregard for classified information, Trump long ago disqualified himself from being fit to be president. On his first full day in office, he shared Top Secret information with the Russian ambassador! During his four years of American carnage, he tore up classified documents, left them lying around on the floor and clogged the White House toilets with them. He entertained foreign leaders at Mar-a-Lago openly and publicly discussing highly sensitive matters.
 
His Republican opponents, who are terrified to step up to the plate for their country, are little better. Facts and law have no place in their universe, We should not permit politicians to be held to a lower standard than ordinary citizens. Support of these timid nonentities or of the House Republicans who spout similar nonsense would be an endorsement of their perfidy.
 
Dick Hermann
June 16, 2023

​When Congress addresses legislation concerning topics its members know little or nothing about, it can call on subject-matter experts at the Congressional Research Service (CRS) and, to a more limited extent the Government Accountability Office, to testify and provide research reports. Until Speaker Newt Gingrich foolishly terminated it, legislators were also able to rely for enlightenment about complex subjects from the highly-respected Office of Technology Assessment. This was a self-inflicted wound that has massively harmed both Congress and the nation. Similarly, the executive branch can invoke the expertise of thousands of specialists who work for 130 federal departments, agencies and regulatory commissions. The federal courts, however, cannot tap anything remotely comparable to the knowledge available to the other two branches of government.
 
Thus, when judges are confronted with cases involving highly technical or esoteric issues, they usually wing it. And that accounts for a growing body of bad law.
 
In 1973, when Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion rights case (since reversed in 2022 by Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization) was before the Supreme Court, Justice Harry Blackmun, agonizing over writing the majority opinion, took the highly unusual step of going outside the Court, picking the brains of the Mayo Clinic’s top-caliber physicians. Prior to becoming a judge, Blackmun had been the Mayo Clinic’s general counsel, which afforded him special access to its collection of medical experts. Tapping this kind of expertise has been a rarity and is non-existent today.
 
Today’s Supreme Court, dominated by six right-wing ideologues, sees no need to go to the lengths Blackmun did because they are convinced that they know better than anyone what the country requires. The possibility of doubt rarely enters their minds. A Court steeped in ideology cannot possibly make wisely considered decisions about disputes involving such complex and prodigiously specialized matters as climate change, artificial intelligence, cyber and other STEM issues. These are arenas where knowledge of the law alone is not enough. Amicus (friend of the court) briefs submitted by interested parties who are not litigants help a little, but their content is invariably biased by the sides they take and their special interest in a favorable outcome.
 
Even were the Court composed of nothing but genuine judicial umpires uncorrupted by political zeal and preconceived notions, it is unlikely that we would witness anything resembling Justice Blackmun’s approach to opinion writing.  The current crop of Justices protest too much when they loudly proclaim that they are apolitical arbiters seeking only a just result.
 
Lack of access to outside experts when deciding complex cases is not just a problem unique to the Supreme Court. It affects all courts, federal, state and municipal. However, it is at the Supreme Court level where expertise is most essential, but most lacking.
 
Two reforms would go a long way toward closing the Supreme Court’s growing expertise gap: Congress should step in and establish (1) additional specialized federal courts in addition to the current assortment of specialized adjudicative bodies that hear and decide a variety of disputes (bankruptcy, international trade, claims, taxes, veterans’ claims, contracts, patents, trademarks, social security benefits, employment, etc.). New specialized courts could tackle highly complex scientific, technical, medical and other disputes about issues that require special expertise, for example, such as what could be applied by judges who have degrees in both medicine and law. Then, if these cases get to the Supreme Court, the Justices could benefit from the specialized expertise reflected in the record; and (2) a Supreme Court Research Service modeled on CRS, to which the Justices can turn for counsel when confronted with issues beyond their—and their clerks’—ken.
 
Dick Hermann
June 9, 2023

The Progressive wing of the Democratic Party is doing a lot of wailing over the debt ceiling agreement President Biden negotiated with House speakeasy manager, Kevin McCarthy. They—and the mainstream media lemmings parroting their rage—need to back off. Instead of castigating Biden, they should applaud him for masterfully ending a hostage crisis. Despite enormous odds, he came away from the negotiation with what amounts to a nation and world-saving triumph.
 
When the formerly responsible Republican Party decided to behave like a suicide bomber, threatening the global economy with catastrophe if Biden didn’t agree with at least some of their demands for spending cuts, he had to come to terms with the terrorists. If he didn’t, here is the scenario that would have played out:

• The United States would have defaulted on its debt for the first time in history.
• Millions of jobs would have been in jeopardy.
• Inflation would have ramped up.
• Stock markets would have tanked.
• Benefits earned by Social Security, Medicare and Veteran recipients would have stopped.
• Financial institutions would have failed.
• The U.S. would have gone into recession.
• It would have cost the government much more to borrow because foreign investors would have demanded higher rates of return, given the higher risks they would have incurred.
• Etc.

 
While I would have preferred that Biden invoke Section 4 of the 14th Amendment, which states that “the debts of the United States shall not be questioned,” he came to the conclusion that, despite the unambiguous wording of Section 4, applying that would be too risky given a reactionary Supreme Court majority only too eager to add fuel to the neo-fascist fire Republicans are fanning. Moreover, he perhaps correctly foresaw that the interregnum between invoking Section 4 and its interpretation by the Supreme Court would lead to worried markets, banks and employers who might not wait to throw the country and planet into economic turmoil regardless.
 
Republicans quite rightly calculated that come November 2024, the voting public would blame the sitting president for the economic ills it had suffered due to a debt default. Suicide bombers have nothing to lose once they commit their lives to their task.
 
While we can gnash our teeth over this latest shameful outrage perpetrated by McCarthy and his band of political incendiaries, it is both wrong and deeply insulting to accuse Biden of succumbing to “Stockholm Syndrome,” a victim who identifies with and empathizes with their captor and their goals. He managed an untenable situation as well as it could possibly be managed. For that, he deserves a great deal of credit. It is not a stretch to say that he saved the country and the planet.
 
The one criticism of Biden that is warranted is that his communications team once again did a face plant. While McCarthy was out demagoguing to the media umpteen times a day during the negotiations, the president’s team took a vow of silence, thus allowing the Republicans’ misleading messaging to receive top billing.
 
This is a pattern with the Biden comms team. I asked several generally well-informed and politically aware individuals to tell me what they knew about the landmark legislation Biden had gotten through Congress: the American Rescue Plan; the CHIPS Act, the Infrastructure and Jobs Act; and the Inflation Reduction Act. Their responses to the most successful legislative initiatives in 60 years were along the following lines: “Something to do with fixing bridges?” If even these voters are uninformed about Biden’s remarkable accomplishments, you can understand why his poll numbers are feeble. People simply don’t know what he has achieved. That’s on his communications team.
 
There is still time to fix this. Biden needs a communications course correction ASAP.
Absent such an overhaul, he—and we—will risk a very ominous outcome in November 2024.
 
Dick Hermann
June 2, 2023