Tag: presidential politics

The renewed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails

The renewed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails

On Friday, October 28th, the political world of the US was shocked to read that the Director Jim Comey was investigating new emails in the Hillary Clinton investigation.

As you may remember, Director Comey ended this investigation several months ago. It is utterly amazing that he would announce a renewed interest in more emails. This could easily affect the vote for the President of the United States, and surely Director Comey understands this implication.

And therein gives us our first understanding of what is going on with the investigation. It is very doubtful that these emails have anything to do with Ms. Clinton’s yoga classes or seating arrangements at her daughter’s wedding. The emails, numbering more than 1,000, were found on a computer used by both disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) and his wife, top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, according to law enforcement officials with knowledge of the inquiry who spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity.

In short, as famed reporter Carl Bernstein hypothesizes, I think we can assume that Director Comey already knows enough about these emails to suspect that this is a significant and major problem. To put the American electorate into a frenzy on a whim would be irresponsible of Director Comey. While I disagreed with Dir. Comey on his earlier conclusions, I do think that he is smart enough to know that he just caused Ms. Clinton a lot of pain and possibly destroyed her chances of being elected.

We probably will not get a solid explanation from the FBI in time for the election. We probably will have to choose our next President of the United States without knowing if the FBI thinks that she is a traitor. We definitely will not have a trial by a jury of her peers in time for the election.

What will the American electorate do in a world of uncertain choices and incomplete information and significant innuendo? We will know in just a few days.

Presidential Question Time – Good idea but a terrible name

Presidential Question Time – Good idea but a terrible name

John McCain said in a speech that he would ask Congress for an American equivalent of the Prime Minister “Question Time” that occurs in many parliamentary governments. There have been some editorials on this from George Will and the New York Times as well as some blogging on the concept.

I think most people miss the point (although Mr. Will probably comes the closest to getting it right, in my opinion). In most Parliamentary Government systems, the voters elect the Parliament and they, in turn, elect the Prime Minister (in the UK countries this is slightly different in that the Monarch actually appoints the PM but in modern history the Monarch appoints the choice of the Parliament).  So in this government, the Prime Minister serves at the pleasure of the Parliament.

To compare this to the US would mean that the offices of Speaker of the House and Senate Majority Leader would combine to satisfy the role of the Prime Minister (not exactly of course, but close).

As any 7th grade US student should be able to describe, we have 3 separate and equal branches of government. The Senate and House form the Legislative branch and the President forms the Executive branch. The Executive branch is not more answerable to the Legislative branch than vice versa.  They are equals.

So while I think more open dialog in our government is important, Mr. McCain would be wise not to adopt the British form that is also broadcast on CSPAN.  He doesn’t answer to Congress anymore than Congress answers to him.

Instead, if Mr. McCain is elected and decides to implement this idea, it needs to expand:

  • for every question from Congress, the President should be able to ask a specific question to someone from Congress that is in attendance.  This balances the level of accountability
  • in Britain there is a time limit for the questions.  The US would also need a time limit to cut off long speeches (maybe even a time limit in the phrasing of a question).
  • the overall time should be cut in half.  The first half of the US Question Time would be with the Congress and the Senate Majority Leader and the Speaker of the House.  Since they are rough approximations of the Prime Minister, it is reasonable that they should be accountable to their collective bodies.  Perhaps they could rotate who is grilled by week.  The second half of the event would be the US President and the two way question session I propose above.

I think that all of this would make for an interesting addition to the political process.  It would add more transparency to the process and allow the US President to remind Congress to get their jobs done.  It would also allow Congress the opportunity to force the President to explain his/her decisions and reasons.

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.

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RANT! Obama should use public money

RANT! Obama should use public money

I am amazed that this is not being made a bigger issue.  I guess Obama is paying everyone off with his millions of dollars so that they don’t talk about his millions of dollars.

Obama promised that if he was nominated, he would use public money for his campaign.  Now he is backing out of that promise and is going to forgo those restrictions so that he can outspend John McCain by what some think will be 5 to 1.

Obama will run the richest campaign ever for the office of the US President!

While I have a hard time saying that people can’t give money to their favorite candidate, I do have problems with massive amounts of money being used to “buy” the campaign.  Never before has the disparity between candidates been so massive.  John McCain will only have 84M from the government to spend on the election and Barack Obama will be able to spend as much as he can raise and estimates say that could be 300-400M!

BARACK OBAMA – YOU NEED TO HONOR YOUR PROMISE TO USE PUBLIC FUNDS! DON’T BE A TYPICAL POLITICIAN AND CHANGE YOUR OPINION WHENEVER IT IS CONVENIENT!

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.

Did you know that you can have these articles emailed to you? Click on the Email link in the upper right corner Subscribe section, fill out the details, and you are set. No one will see your email address and you won’t get more spam by doing this.