IF we lose the presidency none of this may matter. Welcome to Trumpainia. If anything could achieve that well placed election fraud can. They’re getting REAL good at it, and the Don has been busy trying to reinforce it with… wait for it… foreign interference? Well, it’s like they’ve never, ever tried THAT gambit, before!!!
IF we do regain the presidency I think we need to think this through. To overcome all that’s been done we may need even more presidential powers to do so. The next president may have to push harder on the limits of presidential power than even Trump to get us back 
to some semblance of rule of law. The most deplorable of his base isn’t going away, Sorry. Not happening. And 
An under estimation.
Yet hasn’t this been the source of so many of our problems? The history of our nation has been one of presidents grabbing more and more power. If we just go to more recent history, Korea, Nam should never have happened. They were called conflicts and other euphemisms so it SEEMED we still were operating within the Constitution. The president doesn’t declare war.
Ask any grunt who was sloshing through the swamps, crawled through tunnels, were medics in Korea. IT WAS ALL ‘WAR.’
The previous Republican administration grabbed a lot of power, appointed so many sycophant judges whose idea of rule of law was politically driven, they were only to be outdone by Trump. Bush got to hold Cheney’s hand behind closed door when 9/11 was investigated. Trump has taken all this to a new level where he didn’t even have to do that. And his written ‘answers,’ like Bart Simpson, or Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes, were mostly no answers at all. Not even a kid in school who answers “I don’t know” and “I don’t remember” to damn near every question gets to ‘pass’ the test. Not even as much as a D for effort.
None of this is new, it’s just gotten worse, more Watergate for idiots, bullies and dictator wannabes.
Reagan decided, when Congress forbade funding the Contras, to do a run around. He traded arms for hostages. Torture is perfectly fine if, like American jobs, you offshore it? Even a former American citizen is now an American vegetable, unable to defend himself for a lessened charge. Convicting a barely human rutabaga was pretty easy. Brought to you by the very unfunny comedy team: Bush and Cheney.
First they came for those who could be slapped with the terrorist related label. Then they came for the immigrants: not just illegal ones. I’m sure you and I may eventually be on the short list of heretics and instigators, if we aren’t already.
Welcome to 1984, Fahrenheit 541 and we may all well end up saying some variation on, “Do it to Julia!”
But I am not claiming this is strictly a one party only problem. Drones murdering innocents answered that. Historically every president has done what they could to be more than what the Constitution allows. Some did a lot, some less. Lincoln grabbed a lot of power: though with a house divided it was understandable. Jefferson put down a protest: violently, when confronted with citizens who were “refreshing the tree of liberty:” to use his own pre-revolution words. Guess he decided cutting down that tree of liberty that had to be refreshed was wiser when he was president. The first Adams decided freedom of speech didn’t exist for those who criticized him right from the start: inauguration day he had a bar patron put in jail for his whole term for calling him old and toothless.
Imagine what would have happened to some today’s nasty tongue wags.
We have a trend that started practically from the founding of the nation: high ideals constantly compromised or even totally ignored.
If the grumps in Congress want to do anything to stop this huge power grab they would call then sergeant at arms and have at least one of his snarky former associates escorted not so gently to a jail. Yes, there is one that exists for such circumstances. Personally I’d like to see them all packed in tighter than sardines.
We have far more than a two century history of doing little to nothing to halt, or at least slow down, this march towards a monarchy, a dictator. “A president can’t be investigated while in office?” REALLY? You see how far this is going? Seems, according to the administration, the president could order the military into districts that probably won’t vote for him and slaughter everyone.
”There were bad people on both sides there.”
Why do I get the feeling Massacre Mitch might back him up?
Yet, no matter what party has the White House, isn’t the White House resident becoming more and more dictator, oligarch, king; whatever label you’d rather apply, a BIG problem?
What do we do? Do we simply continue the trend of handing more and more power over? In at what is at best a two party-only system it’s like a very dark version of Don McLean’s American Pie where the players take the field, the teams keep grabbing the ball from each other, as they head towards the same goalpost.
Sieg heil, ya’ll.
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Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 40 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks, and into the unseen cracks and crevasses, that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.
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