Glenn K. Beaton is a writer and columnist living in Colorado. He has been a contributor to The Wall Street Journal, RealClearPolitics, Powerline, Instapundit, Citizen Free Press, American Thinker, Fox News, The Federalist, and numerous other print, radio and television outlets. His most recent book is "High Attitude — How Woke Liberals Ruined Aspen"
As I expected and predicted, the Supreme Court will probably decide the Trump/Colorado case in favor of Trump.
I doubt the decision will be unanimous. On the liberal side, Justice Sotomayor was outspoken in her questions to Trump’s lawyer (Jonathan Mitchell who was arguing his sixth Supreme Court case). Justice Kagan’s questions, too, suggest to me that she will come down against Trump.
Justice Brown Jackson was hard to read, with questions that seemed sympathetic to Mitchell’s point that the 14th Amendment bar fails to mention the presidency and also sympathetic to Trump’s due process argument – the argument that he was effectively convicted of the high crime of insurrection without ever being charged with it.
The Colorado Supreme Court yesterday decided that Donald Trump “engaged in an insurrection or rebellion” on or about Jan. 6, 2021. Under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, he is therefore ineligible for the presidency and would be removed from the Colorado ballot.
A few points to consider:
The Court on its own volition stayed its order until Jan. 4 to give Trump an opportunity to appeal the case to the real Supreme Court, the United States one. If he does so, and he will, and the Supreme Court decides to hear the case, and they will, then the order is further stayed until the Supreme Court issues its decision this spring or summer.
The Colorado Supreme Court is comprised of seven justices. All seven were appointed by Democrat governors. The U.S. Supreme Court has a materially different composition. Six of the nine justices are Republican appointees.
We were told by illegal immigration activists for years that walls don’t work, Oddly, however, they lobbied vigorously against a wall along our porous border with Mexico. If walls don’t work, I wondered, why are the pro-illegal immigration activists so dead set against them?
And if walls don’t work, I further wondered, why did the Berlin Wall succeed in imprisoning freedom-seekers for decades? Why are there walls around prisons? Why is there a wall around the White House?
But I’m not a wall scientist, so I figured there must be good answers to those questions but the answers were beyond my ken. I did learn from yard signs that it’s important to follow the science and that there is no such thing as an illegal human. So, I figured there must be something I was missing about wall-atology.
Former and future President Donald Trump seemed to miss it too. He built walls on portions of our border with Mexico to reduce illegal border crossings.
In the 1977 action-comedy “Smokey and the Bandit,” Burt Reynolds plays a bootlegger named Bo. Everyone calls him “Bandit” because the name “Bo” was apparently too informal for his friends.
The script was so trite that the actors made up much of the dialogue as the cameras rolled. The alleged plot centers on a rich Georgia businessman’s offer of $80,000 to Bandit to drive to Texas and back to fetch him a semi full of Coors beer. In both the movie and real life, you may recall, Coors was illegal east of Texas at the time.
Of course, the illegality of Coors was an accidental marketing coup for the company. The beer’s mystique of illegality partially offset its taste of water. Gerald Ford used to smuggle a few cans back to DC from his vacation house in Vail. Before that, President Eisenhower regularly had the Air Force airlift cases to the White House.
So, you see, the movie is a true story.
Except the cross-country car chase. Bandit gets a truckdriver to drive the semi, played by two Kenworths, while Bandit drives a car, played by a black ’76 Trans Am – four, actually – fitted with 455 engines.
I know what you’re thinking but, no, the Trans Am was not transexual. But it was indeed black. With a lower case “b.”
The filming was hell on wheels. But until the stunt men beat them to death, those black Trannys could really go. In one scene – filmed long before computer generated images – they jumped a river with the aid of an Evel Knievel booster rocket attached to the rear. The things they put in the rear of that Tranny.
Bandit’s scheme was for his Trans Am to act as a “blocking car” for the semi full of Coors. He would commit multiple illegal mayhems along the way to distract the cops from the semi full of Coors illegally crossing state lines – the true crime.
Bandit succeeds wildly and wildly succeeds, with the help of an unplanned accomplice. Shortly after Bandit loads the semi with Coors and starts back to Georgia in the Trans Am with the semi in convoy, he picks up a damsel named Carrie played by Sally Field.
Carrie is distressed about her impending marriage to a creep, so she has run away from her wedding. Minutes into her dash, Bandit encounters her on the highway. Bandit rescues this runaway bride, and she hops into the Trans Am. In the passenger seat while they’re tooling along at about 90 mph, she acrobatically swaps her wedding dress for jeans.
It’s not clear why this bride in a wedding dress had a pair of jeans handy. But you would, too, if they fit you as well as they fit the 30-year-old Sally Field in 1977.
Carrie is a New Age type and Bandit is, well, not. They have nothing in common except, halfway into the movie, bodily fluids. Rumor is that it wasn’t all acting.
It turns out that Carrie’s groom, whom she’d abandoned at the altar, is the son of a fat, stupid, southern hick sheriff named Buford T. Justice, overplayed by Jackie Gleason. Furious that his son and Carrie won’t be honeymooners, he sets out to retrieve her.
Sheriff Buford T. Justice – everyone else calls him “Smokey” but he invariably calls himself by his full name and title – spots her in the cisgender black Tranny and gives chase. All the way back to Georgia.
Sheriff Buford T. Justice announces to anyone who will listen that, among sundry other crimes, Bandit has feloniously violated the Mann Act. For readers who are not lawyers or perverts (ah, but I repeat myself) that’s the 1910 federal law that criminalizes the transportation across state lines of “any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.”
That is fairly, um, broad, especially since the law offers no definition of “woman.”
I’ve always thought this law, named after the sanctimonious and probably felonious Illinois congressman who sponsored it, James Robert Mann, was inaptly named. He should have gotten another congressman to co-sponsor it, such as Iowa Congressman Frank Wood, in order to call it the “WoMann Act.”
Or Massachusetts congressman William Lovering in order to call it “LoverMann Act” or Mississippi congressman Thomas Sisson in order to call it “SissyMann Act” or Indiana congressman William Cox in order to call it, well, you get the idea.
Also, I’ve always wondered about the precise meaning of the word “Act” in this context, which is also undefined.
In any event, this law against interstate debauchery always had the intended effect of terrifying my young psyche. I made a point of never dating across state lines, though as it turned out my precaution was unnecessary.
I won’t spoil your viewing pleasure by telling you how the movie ends. But there were a few sequels, so you can guess that the stars made out OK.
The latest sequel was released just this spring. Fat, stupid, southern hick Sheriff Buford T. Justice is played by a fat, stupid, northern hick District Attorney named Alvin Leonard Bragg.
He’s after Bandit again, played by a certain former reality TV star. Bandit has graduated from running liquor to running for president and from driving a Trans Am to driving a golf cart.
The charge in this sequel is not a Mann Act violation, but something more like the Mann-ure Act. In fact, it’s hard to figure out what the charge is. There’s the hush money that Bandit paid to a porn star to keep quiet about their affair but nobody says hush money is illegal – it’s not. Maybe it’s illegal here because Bandit used his own private money for his own private affair rather than using campaign donations.
All I can deduce legally – and bear in mind that I’m a lawyer – is that when you’re running for president and you buy women and other personal things, you’re required to use either campaign donations or maybe a charitable foundation.
Whatever.
The part of Carrie originally played by Sally Field, who is now 76, is played by a young woman named Melania. Carrie still looks pretty good in jeans. Carrie and Bandit still have nothing in common – this time not even bodily fluids. The relationship between them is strictly acting.
Alvin Leonard Bragg, DA brags in front of the cameras over and over that he’s gonna get that Bandit, by gosh, and he’s chasing him hard but hardly catching him. As in the original movie, you sense that he’s making everything up as the cameras roll. He’s every bit the pompous, ridiculous, overplayed ham of Sheriff Buford T. Justice. He truly outdoes Jackie Gleason.
At his next press conference, I’m half expecting him to bellow “Awt Cawney!”
Bandit these days has a mixed reputation as something of a storied, charming rascal, sometimes without the charm, though I personally think the stories of pee-pee tapes and Russian collusion came straight out of Hillary’s sick and sordid imagination or perhaps is just a classic case of her projection.
Alvin Leonard Bragg, DA’s relentless, comedic chase is rallying the audience ‘round Bandit. His Mann-ifest violations in earlier movies were inartful, even for a bootlegger, but at least the chase back then was mostly honest and entertaining, if stupid. This time, Bandit is being chased just because Alvin Leonard Bragg, DA craves the limelight and the worship of zany Democrats.
Alvin Leonard Bragg, DA won’t catch his target – Bandit is far too fast for him – but BraggaDonkeyO will generate a box office hit for them both. The next sequel is already set for 2024. The word on the street is that in the next sequel it will be Bandit who is the chaser.
Watch for my book in the coming weeks, titled “High Attitude – How Woke Liberals Ruined Aspen.”
Britain was blessed, cursed and obsessed with a controversial politician named Boris Johnson who had a good brain and mostly good policies but a bad personality. For the latter, he’s been canned. His own crew have jumped ship, effectively dragging their captain overboard with them.
Don’t feel sorry for Johnson. He’s a bit of a jerk, he got caught up in some ridiculous little scandals, he got very little backing from his friends whom he backed very little in their own times of need, he had a habit of saying attention-grabbing but inappropriate things, he’s a second-rate womanizer, and he has funny hair.
Sound familiar?
Johnson was a conservative, or a “Tory” as the Brits call them. You might therefore suppose that the outcome of this political fall would be that the opposing party, the Labour Party, or what we Americans would call the Democrats when we’re feeling charitable – or the Socialists, Marxists, Communists, Stalinists, Maoists or Chavistas when we’re not – now comes into power.
Wrong. When a British Prime Minister resigns before his term has expired, his successor is chosen by the majority party in Parliament. Today, that’s the Tories, the same party that chose Johnson.
Daily COVID deaths and new cases are down to pre-pandemic levels in America. Even the CDC says masks are no longer required for vaccinated people. Heck, even school teachers are returning to the classrooms – sans masks – now that their demands for more money and less work have been met.
Weirdly, however, many people are still wearing masks. In fact, I often see mask wearers driving around alone in their cars. What’s up with that?
A little historical context is necessary. Dr. Fauci originally told us that masks were not effective. It turned out that he never really believed that. He was lying in order to conserve the masks for people he thought deserved them.
Then when masks became plentiful, the good doctor said they are effective after all and so we should wear them. He himself took to wearing two at a time, both over his mouth. I rather wish he’d worn half a dozen.
Twitter and Facebook candidly play political favorites. They censor ideas and content on the right while permitting countervailing ideas and thought on the left
Events of last week compared to events of last summer drive this home. Social media has been clamping down on complaints about a stolen election, to the point now that Facebook says it will censor all references to “Stop the Steal.”
Meanwhile, Twitter has altogether banned the President of the United States from its platform. Their justification for this is that his tweets threaten our country.
In contrast, neither Twitter nor Facebook banned Antifa or Black Lives Matter last summer when they were actively advocating the overthrow of the government. They chanted “No USA at all” and “Burn it Down” as they attempted to do precisely that. They failed, so far, but they did kill and maim a number of people and destroy billions of dollars in property.
A month and a half ago, the GOP had a lock on keeping the Senate. Polls suggested Dem wins in places like Maine and Iowa but, when the votes were ultimately counted, GOP Senators Susan Collins and Jodi Ernst won handily.
In Georgia, the two GOP incumbents did well, but didn’t quite exceed 50% in a multicandidate race. Under Georgia law, that meant a runoff was necessary between them and their Democrat challengers.
The GOP – and the oddsmakers and pollsters – thought the GOP incumbents would win easily. Georgia hasn’t elected a Dem senator in the last generation. Moreover, both Dem candidates were fairly weak. One was tied to China and the other was a Reverend Wright wannabe, Fidel Castro sympathizer and wife abuser.
But the Dems won today. The Senate goes to the Dems along with the House of Representatives and the Presidency. So what happened in the two month interval between the time it seemed the GOP had a lock on the Georgia runoffs and the runoffs themselves?
I’d love to see President Trump somehow get a second term. He’s done a lot of good, I voted for him twice, I actively campaigned for him and I predicted he’d win.
But I see now – in fact, I’ve seen for over a month – that due to a combination of bad luck on COVID, bad campaigning, bad personality and bad fraud, he won’t serve a second term after all.
I’m disappointed, but that doesn’t make me a traitor. I have not turned against Trump, but simply recognized that he has lost.
Manifesting my disappointment through denial and fantasy will not help. Reality cares nothing about my feelings of disappointment. What reality cares about are my real actions to obtain a different outcome in the future, not my fervent wishes for a different outcome in the past.
After four years of “resisting” President Trump with meaningless recounts, rogue electoral voters, groundless impeachment and specious claims of Russian collusion, not to mention unending name-calling and harassment of him and his family, the Democrats now urge the country to heal, to come together, to unify.
Behind them, that is.
In fairness, that’s what the winner always does in politics. The winner smears his opponent right up to election day. Then he forgives the target of his smears for being smear-worthy, and graciously invites him and his supporters to unify behind the smearer. This is politics, after all, where hypocrisy is an art form.
At least they’re mostly competent and honest about their hypocrisy, unlike their intellectual and ethical inferiors in what used to be called journalism.
This time, however, a unique opportunity presents on the political stage. But it will require elements that are missing from both journalism and politics. It will require compassion, cleverness and courage.
Joe Biden should pardon Donald Trump. You say Trump has done nothing to be pardoned for? Fine, I agree. But it would be compassionate, clever and courageous for Biden to pardon him anyway. Here’s why.
It would be compassionate because it would spare Trump and his family the angst of being unjustly prosecuted in the criminal justice system for what are really political matters. Prosecuting one’s vanquished opponents is what they do in banana republics, not in the United States of America.
I know there’s an element on the left that aspires to banana republic status, complete with Mao jackets, bread lines and firing squads. But most of us don’t.
If Biden wants us to unify behind him, what better way than for him to offer the first step? I’m old enough to remember when sports involved sportsmanship. The winner always offered his hand to the loser. It’s what ladies and gentlemen do, or at least they used to.
A pardon would be clever because it would put Trump in a difficult position of accepting or rejecting the pardon. Accepting implies that he did something wrong. But rejecting means he might then suffer a prosecution by politically motivated people. After the bias of the Mueller team which at the time of their appointment were highly regarded professionally, and the incompetent pettiness of Michael Flynn’s judge, no one doubts the existence of such creatures.
And it might indeed serve to unify some Trump supporters behind Biden, or at least serve to convey the message that Biden wants a respected and effective presidency, not distraction, vengeance and blood.
But a pardon would also require Biden’s courage in resisting the clinical hysteria of the hard left. They would protest in the streets, mostly peacefully of course, by setting fires in what used to be called arson, collecting reparations in what used to be called looting, and destroying property in what used to be called riots.
College classes would be cancelled because students would think they’re too distraught to attend, or at least that’s what their lefty professors would tell them to think.
Denied the blood of Trump and his family, the left would go after the blood of his supporters, and they’ve already put together lists. Hell hath no fury like a compassionate liberal who’s angry that he’s been denied his pound of flesh and equally angry that he’s been forced to admit that he wants it.
The old empty suit that is set to assume the presidency of the United States is a lot of things, or used to be, but courageous is not one of them. He won’t stand up to the leftist mob that now constitutes the Democrat base.
But what a compassionate, clever and courageous move that would be.
the Aspen beat 