McCormick Monday

Another in an ongoing series:

Dear Senator McCormick;

I am a constituent of yours and I'd like to ask you a few questions. 

As you know, the 22nd Amendment to the US Constitution reads:

No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.

And the 12th Amendment to the Constitution ends with:

But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.

The meaning is clear, isn't it? And yet this week The New York Times reported:

Stephen K. Bannon, the pro-Trump podcaster and convicted fraudster who briefly served as President Trump’s White House chief strategist in his first term, publicly threw his support behind the president’s talk of seeking a third term, in defiance of a constitutionally mandated two-term limit.

In an interview with The Economist, Mr. Bannon vaguely asserted that there was “a plan” to circumvent the 22nd Amendment, which states that “no person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice,” regardless of whether the terms are consecutive. He also suggested that he was part of a team developing that plan.

“Trump is going to be president in ’28, and people ought to just get accommodated with that,” he said.

You took an oath to "support and defend" the Constitution when you were seated in the US Senate and the Constitution includes both those amendments.  The 22nd and 12th Amendments are rather huge obstacles to Bannon's plan, don't you think? 

What are your assurances that this Trump Administration will not be followed by a third?

I'll await your answer.

As always, I'll post here whatever answer I get from you or your office, Senator.

McCormick Monday

Another in an ongoing series:

Dear Senator McCormick;

I am a constituent of yours and I'd like to ask you a few questions. 

I have something of a backlog of your responses to my blog posts. I am trying to keep up.  In one of them, regarding the murder of Charlie Kirk, you wrote:

Our nation’s strength comes from the ability to engage in open and respectful dialogue, even when we disagree. No one should fear expressing their opinions, as this freedom is fundamental to our democracy. When citizens feel silenced or threatened for sharing unpopular views, it undermines the very principles that make our country great. 

This weekend, millions of US citizens at more than 2500 "No Kings" rallies across the country exercised their First Amendment rights - protesting against the current administration.

Members of your own party called them "hate America" rallies and the White House press secretary has even said that:

The Democrat Party’s main constituency are made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals. 

CNN also reported that

A member of his leadership team, Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota, described the rallies as being held by the “terrorist wing” of the party.  

Given the recent Administration rhetoric regarding what it labels as illegal activity, how can any of this not be seen as a threat? 

Reuters, however, reported that:

Little, if any, lawlessness was reported. 

By the way, have you seen the AI video Donald Trump reposted on Saturday?  The NYTimes has a summary:

President Trump has posted a fake video on social media that showed him wearing a crown and flying a jet labeled “King Trump” that dumps brown liquid on protesters.

And:

The fake video, set to the song “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins, shows the plane dropping a brown liquid resembling feces onto the heads of protesters, who appeared to be gathered in a city.

Any comment Senator? Any comment at all? All those citizens exercising their legal right to assemble peaceably in protest and your party calls them anti-American terrorists and the leader of your party (symbolically) dumps a load of excrement on them - all while he's wearing a crown and flying a jet named "King Trump."

You have to have a thoughts on this, Senator.  I am asking you what they are. Do you agree with your party that the "No Kings" rallies were "hate America" rallies? Do you approve of Trump's use of the AI generated video dumping excrement onto US Citizens exercising their First Amendment rights? 

I'll await your answer.

As always, I'll post here whatever answer I get from you or your office, Senator.

WTF IS HIS PROBLEM?

Take a look (or not) at this from Variety:

President Donald Trump had a seemingly scatological reaction to the nationwide “No Kings” protests against him Saturday.

In an AI-generated video Trump shared on his Truth Social platform Saturday evening, the U.S. president is depicted as a king in a fighter jet dropping what appears to be a large amount of fecal matter on protesters below. In the 19-second video, the president is in a fighter jet marked “King Trump,” and he is shown wearing a crown sitting in the cockpit. (The oxygen mask that “King Trump” wears does not fully cover his nose and mouth.) 

Some AI artwork posted in Variety:

And then there's this from The Independent in the UK:

Nearly 7 million people across the country turned out for the second “No Kings” protests against President Donald Trump and his administration, marking the largest single-day demonstration against a sitting president in modern history, organizers said.

After golfing Saturday, Trump returned to his Mar-a-Lago residence and fired off several posts from his Truth Social, including an AI-generated video that appeared to show him wearing a crown, flying a jet, and bombing a crowd of protesters with brown liquid.

Shit.

And:

Ahead of the marches this week, the president insisted he was “not a king,” while administration officials and congressional Republicans baselessly labeled the demonstrations “Hate America rallies” and blamed Antifa for being behind the protests. The demonstrations are led by a coalition of civil rights and advocacy groups.

Shit. 

Millions of citizens protesting a man who's acting like a king and he responds by retweeting a video of himself (IN A CROWN, no less) shitting on those exercising their First Amendment rights.

Shit 

 

 

A Columbus Day Reprint

This was first posted in 2020. Then tweaked a year later.

Here's the original:

I'd like to take a break from watching our slow-motion Trump-led social suicide and talk a little about this: 

The Pittsburgh Art Commission unanimously voted on Wednesday to schedule a special hearing for the public to voice their opinions on the potential removal of the Christopher Columbus statue in Schenley Park.

Mayor Bill Peduto asked the commission in a letter Tuesday to begin a public review to determine the future of the statue.

The statue, which was erected in Schenley Park in 1958, was vandalized in 2010, 2017 and most recently again in June and July as part of nationwide protests against monuments honoring Columbus.

After the statue was vandalized in June, an online petition was created calling for its removal.

Let me say as a proud Italian-American that it's probably time for the statue to be removed.  As a cultural signifier, "Columbus" has way too much negative baggage to support it's continued presence in Oakland.

But instead of talking about the statues, let's talk about Columbus Day - something with similar calls for removal. What does "Columbus Day" mean? Evidently, different things to different people at different times.

From The New York Times:

Few who march in Columbus Day parades or recount the tale of Columbus’s voyage from Europe to the New World are aware of how the holiday came about or that President Benjamin Harrison proclaimed it as a one-time national celebration in 1892 — in the wake of a bloody New Orleans lynching that took the lives of 11 Italian immigrants. The proclamation was part of a broader attempt to quiet outrage among Italian-Americans, and a diplomatic blowup over the murders that brought Italy and the United States to the brink of war.

Here's the story:

It began with the murder of David Hennessy. A popular police chief, Hennessy was shot down by gunmen while walking home from work. As he lay dying, a witness asked him who did it. “Dagoes,” he reportedly whispered, using a slur for Italians.

And so, more than a few Italians were rounded up and put on trial. The trial ended in a way that the public didn't like (six not guilty verdicts and 3 mistrials) and then:

In response, thousands of angry residents gathered near the jail. Impassioned speakers whipped the mob into a frenzy, painting Italian immigrants as criminals who needed to be driven out of the city. Finally, the mob broke into the city’s arsenal, grabbing guns and ammunition. As they ran toward the prison, they shouted, “We want the Dagoes!”

A smaller group of armed men stormed the prison, grabbing not just the men who had been acquitted or given a mistrial, but several who had not been tried or accused in the crimes. Shots rang out—hundreds of them. Eleven men’s bodies were riddled with bullets and torn apart by the crowd.

It's not surprising that the crowd rejoiced. The Italian government, evidently, did not.

Back to The Times on President Harrison's proclamation:

President Harrison would have ignored the New Orleans carnage had the victims been black. But the Italian government made that impossible. It broke off diplomatic relations and demanded an indemnity that the Harrison administration paid. Harrison even called on Congress in his 1891 State of the Union to protect foreign nationals — though not black Americans — from mob violence.

Harrison’s Columbus Day proclamation in 1892 opened the door for Italian-Americans to write themselves into the American origin story, in a fashion that piled myth upon myth. As the historian Danielle Battisti shows in “Whom We Shall Welcome,” they rewrote history by casting Columbus as “the first immigrant” — even though he never set foot in North America and never immigrated anywhere (except possibly to Spain), and even though the United States did not exist as a nation during his 15th-century voyage.

Seems obvious that the establishment of Columbus Day was initially intended to appease an angry Italian government in light of a brutal Southern lynching and not necessarily a celebration of Columbus himself, who, let's remember, was a man of his time and thus could scarcely be seen today as anything but ignorant and vicious.

Harrison was also a calling for patriotism. From the proclamation:

Now, therefore, I, Benjamin Harrison, President of the United States of America, in pursuance of the aforesaid joint resolution, do hereby appoint Friday, October 21, 1892, the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America by Columbus, as a general holiday for the people of the United States. On that day let the people, so far as possible, cease from toil and devote themselves to such exercises as may best express honor to the discoverer and their appreciation of the great achievements of the four completed centuries of American life.

Columbus stood in his age as the pioneer of progress and enlightenment. The system of universal education is in our age the most prominent and salutary feature of the spirit of enlightenment, and it is peculiarly appropriate that the schools be made by the people the center of the day’s demonstration. Let the national flag float over every schoolhouse in the country and the exercises be such as shall impress upon our youth the patriotic duties of American citizenship.

In order to push the patriotism of the moment, Harrison had to shoe-horn Columbus into something he definitely (and absurdly) wasn't: an enlightenment-age "pioneer of progress." But what about all those who have since felt that the day is not about the misery brought by Columbus (and many others after him) but cultural pride in being written into the American origin story? The day means one thing if you see it as a celebration (or commemoration) of the beginnings of what turn out to be some very bad long-term abuses and another if you see it as a de facto Italian American heritage day and not a celebration of the misery and pestilence that followed Columbus' "discovery" of Hispaniola.

So we're at odds. What does "Columbus Day" mean? Who gets to define its meaning for everyone else? Those pushing for the "heritage day" risk offending those focusing on the very real abuses and those focusing on those abuses risk offending the cultural pride of a large swath of the population.

I don't know the solution.

Here's my domanda piuttosto pericolosa: is an Italian-American Heritage Day even necessary at this point? The fact of the matter is that every ethnic/cultural group deserves recognition for its unique contributions to The American Experience.

Perhaps it's time retire the day and use the temporal space it inhabits to make election day a national holiday instead. Perhaps we can all celebrate the American Experience that way.

A reptint. 

Fetterman Friday

Dear Senator Fetterman;

I am a constituent of yours and I'd like to ask you a few questions. I'd like to ask you, again, about Attorney General Pam Bondi.

During her confirmation hearing she said this:

At her confirmation hearing in January to become attorney general, Pam Bondi vowed to fight violent crime and restore confidence and integrity to the Justice Department.

"The partisanship, the weaponization will be gone," she told lawmakers. "America will have one tier of justice for all."

And yet this week DOJ, under her leadership has indicted two Trump adversaries: NY AG Leticia James and former FBI Director James Comey. 

Both indicted after receiving this from President Trump:

Pam: I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that, essentially, “same old story as last time, all talk, no action. Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam “Shifty” Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell...

And:

We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!! 

You voted to confirm her as AG. Any comment on how she, in fact, has undermined the integrity of DOJ by politicizing that department? Do you regret that vote? Would you vote for her again?

I'll await your answer.

As always, I'll post here whatever answer I get from you or your office, Senator.

And Now...A Few Words From The Former Vice President

“There is so much about this moment that is trying to make people feel like they’ve lost their minds, when, in fact, these mothafuckas are crazy.”

Oh, Kamala Harris, you have charmed me🤭 pic.twitter.com/XKQ8GQOVro

— kamala book tour (@madampolitick) October 7, 2025

Yep.

McCormick Monday

Another in an ongoing series:

Dear Senator McCormick;

I am a constituent of yours and I'd like to ask you a few questions. 

The AP reported early this morning: 

A federal judge late Sunday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deploying any National Guard units to Oregon at all, after a legal whirlwind that began hours earlier when the president mobilized California troops for Portland after the same judge blocked him from using Oregon’s National Guard the day before.

During a hastily called evening telephone hearing, U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut granted a temporary restraining order sought by California and Oregon.

Immergut, who was appointed by Trump in his first term, seemed incredulous that the president moved to send National Guard troops to Oregon from neighboring California and then from Texas on Sunday, just hours after she had ruled the first time.

“How could bringing in federalized National Guard from California not be in direct contravention to the temporary restraining order I issued yesterday?” she questioned the federal government’s attorney, cutting him off.

“Aren’t defendants simply circumventing my order?” she said later. “Why is this appropriate?”

Indeed, Senator. Why is this appropriate? 

In the same AP article, we find:

Trump, however, has turned his attention to the city, calling Portland “war ravaged,” and a “war zone” that is “burning down” and like “living in hell.” 

However in Judge Immergut's initial ruling, she wrote:

The President’s determination was simply untethered to the facts. 

And:

This historical tradition boils down to a simple proposition: this is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law.  

And so I'll ask you again, Senator, are President Donald Trump's actions at all appropriate? Is Trump right about Portland or is Immergut? Are we a nation of Constitutional law or of martial law?

I'll await your answer.

As always, I'll post here whatever answer I get from you or your office, Senator.