THE EMPORER’S SUBJECTS ARE WEARING NO CLOTHES

Yes it’s maddening, but on a different level there is also something very comforting about watching high and mighty Republican Senators expose themselves as hypocrites of the highest order in a naked grab for power. It’s a powerful reminder that underneath it all, they’re no better than the rest of us, just a bit more connected and a lot more full of themselves.

Americans had yet to pay respect to the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia when a host of Republican United States Senators, including two presidential candidates (Cruz & Rubio) and Pennsylvania’s own Pat Toomey, publicly expressed their intent to abdicate their constitutional responsibility to advise our President and consent to appoint a duly qualified jurist to take Scalia’s place on the high court. Not only have those Senators besmirched Scalia’s legacy of unwavering support for contextually interpreting our Constitution, they’ve also demonstrated they are unfit for public office. Were he still among us, Justice Scalia would have brutally eviscerated the suggestion that U.S. Senators renounce their constitutional obligation and swiftly called for their resignation, regardless of political affiliation.

Throughout his tenure on the bench, Justice Scalia disdained public officials who refused to fully execute the duties of their office. In February 2002, speaking at a death penalty conference at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and a week earlier at a similar symposium in Chicago, Justice Scalia defended his view that an originalist reading of the U.S. Constitution demanded that judges who refuse to perform their constitutional duty to impose the death penalty should resign their position immediately. Scalia reiterated that view on countless occasions during the years that followed and never retreated from that position in any Supreme Court opinion he authored.

Justice Scalia recognized that the potential for political gain or one’s personal beliefs do not justify or excuse the abdication of a constitutionally imposed responsibility, and he would never have approved of a wholesale betrayal of constitutional principles for political gain. To do so would justify the charge that Senate Republicans are unprincipled hypocrites of the highest order and that they have no appreciation or respect for the principles and obligations embodied in our Constitution.

The drafters of America’s Constitution wisely recognized that political winds ebb and flow, each according to its own merit, but only a constitution set in stone, with its attending rights and obligations could withstand the test of time. They also believed, and rightly so, that in order to insure the continuation of our republic as intended, those who pledge to uphold our constitutional form of government must fulfill their duty without exception or delay and without regard for their own personal or political beliefs.

Abraham Lincoln, America’s greatest Republican President once famously warned, “Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.”

Take heed, Republicans. Truer words have never been spoken!

THE PASSING OF HARPER LEE

Harper Lee, the acclaimed author of To Kill a Mockingbird passed away today. The literary word has suffered the loss of a power voice of social consciousness, but her legacy will continue in the book that made her famous. I learned a great deal about justice and prejudice when I studied her book in both high school and college, and I’d like to think I’m a better person because of it.

MY TOP 100 FAVORITE MOVIES

Everybody has their own list of favorite movies. Here’s a list of my top 100:

A Beautiful Mind
A River Runs Through It
Amistead
Atonement
Becket
Begin Again
Ben Hur
Benjamin Buttons
Big
Black and White
Black Book
Bridge Over The River Kwai
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
Captain Phillips
Casablanca
Castaway
Chariots of Fire
Chicken Run
Chocolat
Cold Mountain
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Dances With Wolves
Dead Poet Society
Doctor Zhivago
Elizabethtown
E.T.
Field of Dreams
Finding Forrester
Forrest Gump
Fried Green Tomatoes
Girl Interrupted
Glory
Gone With the Wind
Good Will Hunting
Goodfellas
Great Expectations
Hoosiers
Hugo
Ida
In the Land of Milk and Honey
Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark
Indiana Jones: Quest for the Holy Grail
Interstellar
Invictus
Les Miserables
Lilies of the Field
Lincoln
Love Affair
Mary Poppins
Michael Clayton
My Fair Lady
National Treasure
Oblivion
Oh God
On Golden Pond
Open Range
Out of Africa
Pappillon
Philadelphia
Pleasantville
Pride and Prejudice
Redemption
REDS
Saving Private Ryan
Secretariat
Seven Years a Slave
Shakespeare in Love
Shindler’s List
Shoes of the Fisherman
Simon Birch
The Adjustment Bureau
The Age of Adaline
The American
The American President
The Book of Eli
The Dancer Upstairs
The Debt
The French Lieutenant’s Woman
The Godfather
The Great Gatsby
The Green Mile
The Intern
The Natural
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
The Shawshank Redemption
The Soloist
The Sound of Music
The Spitfire Grill
The Water Diviner
The Wind that Shakes the Barley
3:10 to Yuma
To Kill a Mockingbird
Unbroken
Unforgiven
Up
What Dreams May Come
Where the Heart Is
Winter’s Tale
Witness

SCALIA REMEMBERED

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has not been dead for twenty-four hours yet and already conservatives across this country are tripping over themselves to canonize the Catholic jurist a saint, but from my perspective as a Christian liberal with a sense of compassion for my fellow human beings, a man like Scalia warrants none of the hype or respect that are being afforded him. His family and friends are mourning the loss of a beloved member of their family, and they should have our sympathy and prayers, but the death of a man with a heart as cold as stone is something I can neither celebrate nor mourn, just as I took no delight nor grieved at the death of Osama bin Laden.

You’ll get no argument from me that Scalia was a brilliant man, but history is filled with brilliant men who used their intellectual powers to the detriment of mankind’s advancement, and Scalia ranks right up with the cruelest of them. Some men brutalize with weapons. Scalia did so with words, using the power of his position to send innocent prisoners to their death, to marginalize the oppressed, to disenfranchise minorities, to attempt to deny medical care to the sick, to place firearms in the hands of would-be killers and to thwart efforts to create a clean environment in which mankind could flourish.

Scalia’s legacy is not a legacy worth celebrating. What it truly merits is contempt and derision! He wasted his God-given intellect, not in the defense of freedom and human development, but in defense of an ideology that spawned slavery and continues to support greed and human oppression. That is not a legacy that a lowly carpenter from Nazareth would lift up in celebration. It’s the kind of legacy that Jesus would lament. It’s been said that a mind is a terrible thing to waste. In Scalia’s case, the terrible waste is twice as bad, maybe more.

I’d say rest in peace, but he doesn’t deserve it!

FIXING SOCIAL SECURITY

Let's face it! We're never going to solve the Social Security insolvency problem until we get this whole global warming thing under control. As long as the arctic ice is receding, there won't be enough room to set our old folks adrift on an ice floe and watch them float away into oblivion.

Actually, America doesn't have a Social Security problem. What it has in a political will problem. By that I mean that there are not enough political leaders who are willing to place their own political careers on the line to do what is necessary to honor America's long-standing social contract that was established to take care of our retirees and disabled citizens. The Social Security ledger sheet could be placed in order for the next hundred years without raising the current social security tax rate in one simple step: require citizens to pay social security tax on all their earned income, without exception.

Right now, a person who works a 40 hour per week minimum wage job earns $15,080 per year. The Social Security tax is 6.2%, and on an income of $15, 080, the wage-earner pays $935.00 in Social Security tax. Wage earners making $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 and $60,000 per year pay the same 6.2% of their earned income (earned income = income from working) in Social Security Tax. So does every other wage earner making up to $113,700 per year in earned income.

This is where things get interesting…or unfair…depending on how you view the situation. Once a wage earner starts making more than $113,700 per year, the percentage of Social Security Tax that wage earner pays actually decreases, and the more a person is paid the lower the percentage a person pays. For example, the Social Security Tax rate on a person having earned income of one million dollars in a year is seven/tenths of one percent. In real numbers, a millionaire will pay $7,049 dollars per year in social security tax. When you compare the millionaire to the minimum wage worker, the millionaire makes 63 times more money, but only pays 7.5 times more Social Security tax. Where's the fairness in that system? Why should a guy working at a minimum wage job pay a higher social security tax rate than a guy earning a million dollar per year salary?

Social Security was created as a financial safety net, but for the wealthiest earners in our society, it's actually a financial windfall. Assume a millionaire pays $7,049 dollars into Social Security for forty (40) years. The millionaire will have paid $281,960 in social security tax over that time span. Now, assume that same individual collects social security for 20 years following their retirement. At the current top rate of $2,162 per month, the millionaire will have collected of total of $518,880 dollars. That's a tidy sum considering the millionaire already had forty million dollars in earned income. This is one place where Republicans never, ever talk about an across-the-board flat tax rate.

If one Social Security tax rate applied to all earned income, American would never have to worry about the insolvency of the Social Security Trust Fund. The baby boomer generation would come and go without bankrupting the security net that has protected seniors since the days of the Great Depression. This fix is not rocket science. It just takes something we're in short supply of lately: political will!

LIVING ONE’S POLITICAL VIEWS

Nothing stinks more than a political hypocrite.

If you’re opposed to abortions, don’t get one.

If you’re opposed to gay marriages, marry somebody of the opposite sex.

If you’re against paying taxes, don’t call the government when your home’s been burglarized, when your kitchen is on fire or expect government assistance when a hurricane has destroyed your home.

If you’re tired of paying for social programs that benefit the poor and needy, don’t apply for unemployment compensation when you lose your job and send back the social security checks when you retire.

If you want your kids to pray in school, remind them about the hundred times each day they can close their eyes and whisper a silent prayer.

If you’re against government regulations, regulate your own behavior so the government’s interference isn’t necessary.

If you want privacy for yourself, respect the privacy of others.

If you want to be treated with dignity, treat others with dignity.

If you’re tired of people making excuses for their faults, start by acknowledging your own.

If you value peace, stop killing others

OIL GOING BELLY-UP

Read today’s New York Times article “Stung by low oil prices, Companies face a Reckoning with Debt” and you’ll get a glimpse of what it’s like to be an oil company sitting on top of the world and then have its throne pulled from beneath it. The picture isn’t pretty, unless you’re one of those folks who’ve had to struggle at the pumps for the past two decades as fat-cat oil barons got rich and now you’re basking in affordable gasoline as the oil barons crawl their way toward bankruptcy. You’ll forgive me if I have no sympathy for the oil companies.

It’s kind of ironic that Sarah Palin’s “drill baby, drill” battle cry, which was so eagerly taken up by the proponents of big oil, has led the industry to ruinous overproduction. We liberals warned about the danger of following the advice of a woman who claimed to see Russia from her living room window, but I guess by golly that mamma grizzly magic was simply too much to resist.

And while I’m on a roll here, folks who were hoping to invest in the Keystone Pipeline should send a large thank-you note to President Obama for nixing the pipeline. The President’s action saved investors hundreds of millions of dollars that would have been piped down the drain as demand for oil dried up. Of course, Obama won’t get the credit he deserves from his critics, but history will prove he made the right decision.

ZIKA ON THE DOORSTEP

I wish a debate moderator would ask the Republican presidential candidates how their version of limited government would respond to the Zika virus crisis that is standing on our Nation’s front porch and knocking on the door. Will Trump be erecting a mile-high mosquito net across our southern border to prevent the virus carriers from crossing into U.S. airspace? Since the virus is also sexually transmitted, will Cruz block government payments to any doctor who prescribes contraceptives? Will Carson require virus carriers to register? Would Christie quarantine them? Would Rubio deport anyone who sleeps with them? Would Carly Fiorina scowl at them and hope they run away? Those are questions I’d like to see answered, because the current outbreak of the Zika virus, like last year’s brush with Ebola in Africa, is a quickly spreading epidemic that could easily turn into a pandemic. If or when that happens, the type of government response that is offered by the United States will depend heavily on the philosophy of the President in charge of it.

We saw what a limited government response was like when hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the gulf coast in August of 2005. President Bush’s idea of limited government failed to mobilize in advance of the hurricane and failed to respond to initial calls for federal emergency assistance. We’re seeing what limited government advocates – our Republican Congress – are doing today by refusing federal funds for the needed repairs to the Flint, Michigan water system. Never mind that thousands of Flint residents were poisoned by state advocates of limited government who deemed saving money more important than providing safe drinking water for their citizens.

If the United States offers a limited government response to the coming Zika epidemic, thousands of newborn children will suffer life-threatening medical conditions and eventually die from them. It won’t be pretty, but then again in this day and age, limited government never is.

ALLISON LENZ, WELCOME TO OUR WORLD

It’s not very often that a liberal, small town blogger gets to announce an earth-shattering once-in-a-lifetime event, but last evening, at 9:41 p.m., Allison Scarlett Lenz entered this world and took her first breath, saw her first light and felt her mother’s warm touch for the first time. With Allison’s arrival, Sabrina Lenz became a mom, Travis Lenz became a dad (God help this world) and a host of welcoming family and friends were filled with the joy that only newborns bring. Welcome to our world, Allison. We’re very happy to see you!

p.s. mother and child both doing well!

EXPOSING THE VIPER’S BROOD

If you have not already seen the movie “Spotlight,” starring Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, Liev Schreiber and Brian d’Arcy James, go see it! It’s time and money well-spent. Spotlight is the behind-the-scenes story of The Boston Globe’s investigation of sexual abuse by priests in the Catholic Church and the systematic cover-up of that abuse by the Catholic hierarchy. The movie is both accurate and insightful in portraying the newspaper reporters who broke the original story as well as the church leaders and their lawyers who fought the Globe’s investigation and drive to bring the sexual abuse scandal to light. Spotlight is not just a well-crafted movie. It’s a piece of compelling social commentary and deserves any awards it musters.

I was thinking about Spotlight yesterday when I read that Peter Saunders, himself a victim of sexual abuse by a priest, resigned from his position on the Catholic Church’s papal commission on sexual abuse by the clergy. Saunders has been highly critical of what he perceived as “foot dragging” by the Vatican and the commission he departed when it came to acknowledging the true sources of the sexual abuse scandal and committing to concrete and effecting reform in the way victims are treated and their abusers are handled. It is sad that the Catholic Church continues on the ruinous path of denial. The effect of its foot dragging is the loss of moral authority.

You cannot turn a blind eye to the raping of thousands of children and then lay claim to a mantle of morality. There’s a reason why Jesus called the religious leaders of his day hypocrites and a vipers brood. The Pharisees and Sadducees, as they were known, spent countless hours denouncing the morality of those who didn’t conform to the dictates of the Hebrew religious elite, but those same leaders bore the poisonous fangs of a serpent without a trace of human compassion or warmth in their hearts. The Catholic Church today exhibits the same venomous tendencies as the Jewish clergy in Jesus’ day, and that is why it loses more members each day than it gains.

When a man like Peter Saunders throws in the towel, a man’s whose love for the Church remained strong despite having suffered sexual abuse by a priest, something is terribly wrong with the core of the Catholic Church and change is desperately needed.

The nuns in school always claimed that the laity was the Church. If that’s the case, the people in the pews have their work cut out for them.

SUPER BOWL PREDICTION

Panthers 35, Broncos 17

The aftermath:

Broncos 24, Panthers 10...just goes to show how little I know about football predictions!

THE TWO REVOLUTIONS

“What’s wrong with a revolution?” ~ CNN Journalist, Anderson Cooper, questioning Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during the February 3rd Town Hall debate with fellow Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders

Clinton’s response: “That’s for Senator Sanders to explain.”

My response: It depends on the kind of revolution you’re talking about. Figurative revolutions that bring about a significant improvement in the lives of an entire population are good things; literal revolutions that result in the senseless spilling of massive amounts of blood are not!

The current presidential campaign season has highlighted the fact that in America, two very distinct groups are seeking revolution, but the revolutions they promote involve diametrically opposing goals and the tools they employ could not be deemed more different. The idealistic youth at Wednesday’s Democratic Town Hall debate seek change in the way government responds to the needs of the people it represents and the instrument of their revolution is the ballot box. The other group promoting revolution is the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party. Their goal is a crippled government that cannot respond to the needs of its people and the instrument of their revolution is the barrel of a gun.

I support the student’s call for a figurative revolution in the way government supports the right of its people to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I find value in the notion that a government by the people, of the people and for the people is a government worth having. I cheer the enthusiasm of America’s idealistic youth, and I recognize that this Nation’s future success will depend in large measure on the progress those youth are able to obtain, but a word of caution is in order.

The revolutionaries of the far-right have an insatiable appetite for bloodshed and they are heavily armed, and itching for a fight.

We saw it in 2010 when the Tea Party’s loudest mouthpiece, Sarah Palin posted on her website the name of Arizona Representative Gabby Giffords in the crosshairs of a rifle scope and then several months later a Tea Party sympathizer attempted to assassinate Giffords near Tucson, killing six and wounding thirteen others in the process. We saw it in 2014 when agents showed up to confiscate the cattle of Tea Party activist Cliven Bundy for non-payment of grazing fees owed to the citizens of the United States – that’s you and me. Hundreds of militiamen showed up with assault rifles, ready to gun-down the federal agents who were just doing their job. We just saw it again last month in the armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon by Tea Party militia men who threatened to gun-down anyone who attempted to dislodge them. The fugitive LaVoy Finicum, a member of the group, tried to draw his gun on federal agents as were arresting him and he was killed in the process. That’s the kind of revolution Tea Party Republicans are seeking, the one brought about by the long barrel of a gun.

The next time somebody starts calling for a revolution, it’s wise to ask what kind they’re suggestion. It’s not wise to show up at a gunfight armed only with a ballot box.

THE POWER OF ONE VOICE

Nobody was home this morning when I got into the shower. At some point between shampooing my hair and rinsing, I started singing a couple of bars from Nessun Dorma, an aria that’s part of Puccini’s opera Turandot. My wife and I saw a performance of Turandot this past weekend and I can’t seem to shake the music from my head. It’s a good thing nobody was home at the time, because my rendition of Nessun Dorma wouldn’t have been recognizable to anybody, except perhaps my wife, who’s suffered through eighteen years of hearing my off-key shower singing and has developed a good ear for bad voices.

While eating lunch I was reading an article on campaign financing and the author was lamenting the vast sums of money being pumped into this year’s presidential campaigns. When I came across the word “voice” in the article, I my first thought was about my shower singing and then I asked myself, how much power is in my voice? And from there, an even more interesting question arose – in a democracy, does it matter?

I can speak pretty forcefully when I have to, and I have the necessary linguistic and intellectual skills to deliver a very persuasive argument in the heat of any verbal battle, but even my voice will only travel so far, and I’m keenly aware of my tonal limitations. I can write, too, and though the number of readers of this blog is negligible, the Internet provides a platform for disseminating my views in case any dare to read them. My point is I’m expressing myself. My words have power, albeit in a limited sense, because very few are hearing them.

But what if I my words, or my voice for that matter, had more power? What if I could yell so loudly that nobody could hear anyone but me? What if I could drown out all other conversation except the conversation I wanted everyone to hear? What if the power behind my voice could stifle the voices of all opinions contrary to mine? What if I could somehow censor, or silence, or deny a meaningful voice to anyone who doesn’t meet with my approval? Wouldn’t that be grand?

You’re probably mouthing the words or thinking, “No, it would not,” and I’m inclined to agree with you, at least the part of me that’s not self-centered or egotistical, but there is something that can accomplish all the above scenarios and we often don’t give it a second thought. What is it? Money!

The United States Supreme Court in its Citizens United decision several years ago ruled that money is a form of speech. It has a voice and the more money a person has the louder their voice becomes. In fact, a person with a large enough sum of money can have a voice so loud that it drowns out all conversation except the conversation that person wants everyone to hear. With enough money, a person can stifle the voices of all contrary opinions and deny a meaningful voice to anyone who doesn’t meet with that person’s approval. The adage “money talks” has never been truer, and the people without money might as well be singing in the shower.

PUNXSUTAWNEY PHIL’S POLITICAL PROGNOSTICATION

America’s most famous prognosticating groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil crawled out of his burrow this morning and announced to the crowd of anxious onlookers that, given the current political climate and the dark shadow cast upon this Nation by GOP presidential candidates, there will be at least six more weeks of Cruz and Trump, and probably a great deal more.

The assembly of twenty thousand well-wishers gathered at the annual Punxsutawney Ground Hog Day festival. The crowd was initially in good cheer when Punxsutawney Phil emerged from his secluded burrow, grabbed a nearby microphone and proclaimed, “It’s a great day to be an American!” However, when the applause and cheers subsided and Punxsutawney Phil began speaking to the crowd about yesterday’s primary results in Iowa, the public mood turned noticeably darker.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” an elderly wheelchair-bound woman shouted from the front row. “What’s going to happen to my Medicare and Social Security check?”

“Gone to the highest campaign donor,” another man quickly yelled. A wave of anxiety covered the elderly people present as they realized that a Trump or Cruz presidency would mark the beginning of the end of government support for elderly programs and their safety net.

“What about my son?” a mother of a Marine Corp Lieutenant asked with concern in her voice. “Is he going back into another senseless war?”

“Looks that way,” Punxsutawney Phil responded. “Both Cruz and Trump are itching for a chance to send your son off to die. Enjoy the boy while you still can.” Two women standing nearby offered comfort to the Marine’s distressed mother who began crying uncontrollably.

A visibly anxious Hispanic woman in her mid-twenties raised her hand and asked the famous groundhog, “What will happen to my teen-aged brother who came to visit me last year to escape a Mexican drug cartel’s death contract?”

“He’ll be sent back, no questions asked!” the groundhog replied.

“But they’ll kill him!” the shaking woman replied.

“Your boy means nothing to Trump or Cruz,” Phil replied.

A bald woman stepped forward from the crowd and asked, “What about my chemo? I finally got health insurance through Obamacare and the chemo it pays for helps me stay alive. Will I be able to continue getting chemo treatment?”

“Start planning your funeral,” the Punxsutawney groundhog answered to the stunned crowd. “Neither Cruz nor Trump care about the sick.” With that, Punxsutawney Phil returned to his burrow. We can only hope he’s wrong.

THEY’LL KNOW WE ARE CHRISTIANS BY OUR…

When I was in eighth grade at St. Patrick’s Elementary School, I was very fond of the then-popular Christian song, They’ll Know We Are Christians by Our Love. It was a catchy tune easily played on guitars that I loved to hear, and it combined the social consciousness of the sixties with the timeless message of Christ’s social gospel. The song lyrics resonated with me back then and have ever since, and those words go a long way toward explaining why I consider myself a liberal with an affinity for the poor and the oppressed.

Sadly, a lot has changed since my elementary school years and I dare say that many Christians today are no longer known by their love. They’re known instead for their disdain for the poor, their callous indifference to the plight of refugees and their hard-hearted attitude toward the suffering of those who are sick and infirmed. They are known by their loathing of women seeking reproductive freedom and their intolerance of individuals who practice different faiths or no faith at all. They’re known by what they take and not the things they give, by their criticism and not their compassion and by their arrogance and not their humility. They are known by the bombs they drop and not the people they uplift, the sins they commit and not the righteousness they claim and by their practice of discrimination and not their profession of man’s equality.

It’s no wonder that much of Christianity today has become synonymous with hypocrisy of the highest order. How could it not when so many professed believers have rejected the central edict of Christianity - the command to love one another - in favor of selfish personal interests? They use to know Christians by their love, but not so much anymore. How sad!