Yes, Obama Can Appoint Scalia Replacement

"The President... by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint... Judges of the supreme Court."

-U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 2

The sudden passing of Justice Antonin Scalia has brought widespread opining from Republicans that President Obama should allow his successor to appoint Justice Scalia's. Make no mistake: this is nothing more than a manifestation of a collective conniption fit on the right, resultant of their recognition that they stand on the precipice of losing their majority on the Supreme Court. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) stated that the voters should have a say; they did, when they reelected President Obama in 2012 by more than five million votes, as has been pointed out by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). Barack Obama is the President of the United States; as such, our Constitution assigns him the responsibility of making appointments to the high court.

A presidential term lasts four years, even if many conservatives now seem to believe it lasts three. Eleven months remain in the President's current term, which is more than enough time for the Senate to perform its constitutional responsibility. Speaking of which, advice and consent does not mean, for example, blanket statements from some Senate Republicans that they would reject any nomination from President Obama before he has even named a nominee. The advice and consent provision has been exemplified in recent history by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). Sen. Graham voted to approve President Obama's nominations of Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to the high court. Sen. Graham, of course, does not align ideologically with now-Justices Sotomayor and Kagan, but recognized his role as a senator was to evaluate fitness to serve, not ideological standing. In explaining his vote to confirm Elena Kagan, Sen. Graham said, "the constitution, in my view, puts an obligation on me not to replace my judgment for (President Obama's), not to think of the hundred reasons I would pick someone different." Graham went on to say, "I view my duty as to protect the Judiciary and to ensure that hard-fought elections have meaning in our system."

On CNN's State of the Union program on February 14, 2016, influential conservative pundit Hugh Hewitt posited, "lame ducks don't make lifetime appointments." Since when? The constitution provides otherwise. And labeling President Obama a "lame duck" does not make him so. The way to honor the memory a self-professed constitutional originalist like Justice Scalia is not to defy the constitution. The Senate must do its constitutionally mandated job and consider the President's high court nomination when the time comes. If the Senate Republican leadership neglects its responsibility, the members thereof can never again claim allegiance to the constitution.

Time to Eliminate the Statute of Limitations for Sexual Assault

On December 30, 2015, legendary actor and comedian Bill Cosby was arraigned in the Philadelphia suburb of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, on charges of sexual assault. This follows years of accusations from nearly sixty women - a number that continues to grow - of drugging and raping them.

There is a distinct legal reason that charges were filed when they were against Cosby in this case, and why Cosby has not been charged concerning the swaths of other victims he allegedly assaulted. That reason is the statute of limitations. By way of explanation, this statute provides that a potential defendant cannot face criminal charges after a given period of time. The statute of limitations in sexual assault cases in Pennsylvania is twelve years. The alleged assault for which Cosby was charged took place in January 2004, so come January 2016, the Montgomery County District Attorney would have been legally barred from prosecuting Cosby. The statute of limitations has already expired as concerns the other survivors.

Rape victims often face aftereffects that are excruciating. Survivors sometimes tragically blame themselves and feel shame. They might not know where to turn for help. They may not have family and/or friends on whom to lean for support. Some cultures, incredibly, assign fault to the attacked, not the attacker. A survivor might additionally consider the grueling process of prosecuting her/his attacker, which entails facing the rapist in court and relaying - and therefore reliving - what happened during the course of the attack repeatedly, and conclude that seeking justice is not worth the additional trauma.

There is no statute of limitations on murder, and that is as it should be. If you kill, and then somehow evade capture for any amount of time, you will face charges for that crime regardless of how much time has elapsed since said crime was committed. Rape is a monstrous crime, arguably as egregious as murder; rape victimizes in the most intimate way possible. The challenges sexual assault survivors face subsequent to the crime are gut-wrenching enough without facing a deadline. 34 states currently have statutes of limitations, according to the National Center for Victims of Crime. While Pennsylvania's is twelve years, in some states, such as Connecticut, it is as little as five years.

Those who have survived rape should not have to be saddled with the compounded injustice of the inability to pursue legal remedies. Survivors of sexual assault face lifelong challenges resultant of their attack and attacker(s); we as a society should not make recovery yet more difficult by imposing a deadline to seek justice. It is time to eliminate the statute of limitations for cases of sexual assault nationally once and for all.

Trump is the Candidate the Republican Party Deserves

By now, it's fairly well-circulated and well-publicized that the prohibitive frontrunner for the Republican nomination for President of the United States announced that, should he win, he would bar any and all of the Muslim faith, foreign nationals and U.S. citizens alike, from entering the country. It goes without saying - or at least it should - that Donald Trump's position is wildly offensive, historically deeply troublesome, and a clear and present threat to national security, not to mention repugnant to the U.S. Constitution. But how did we get to this point? How did we arrive at a major party presidential candidate's advocacy of such a fringe policy?

The Republican Party has a long and storied tradition of stoking fear in order to win elections. To be fair, the Democratic Party has not always been guiltless thereof; prior to the administration of President Lyndon Johnson, when they were the dominant party in the South, Democrats did plenty of fearmongering surrounding slavery, Jim Crow, voting rights, and so on. But the Republican Party has long since assumed the fear mantle. In the 1950s, then-Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) crusaded against communists, actual and otherwise. Following President's Johnson's signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Republican Party gleefully swooped in to claim white Southern voters who would rather not have seen African Americans become their societal peers.

More recently, the Republican Party deftly turned gay rights into a wedge issue in 2004. Massachusetts had recently legalized marriage equality, and Republicans (led at the time by Ken Mehlman, who later came out as gay himself) used that development to resounding electoral effect, reelecting then-President George W. Bush (for this and other reasons) and buttressing their majorities in the House and Senate. Voters in eleven states additionally approved, in some by large margins, constitutional amendments to limit marriage to between a man and a woman. These eleven and their ilk are the amendments that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down in legalizing marriage equality nationwide on June 26, 2015.

Donald Trump is, if nothing else, a businessman. In the opinion of this author, Trump does not believe in much beyond the almighty dollar. If one can point to any consistent position or advocacy on his part before he announced his presidential candidacy, one will invariably recall Trump's strident contention, colloquially known as "birtherism," that President Barack Obama was born perhaps outside the United States, thereby invalidating his presidency. President Obama, in April 2011, produced his "long-form" birth certificate proving he was born in Honolulu, a fact not in legitimate dispute. For swaths on the right-wing fringe, however, the affirmation of the President's Hawaii birth did little to assuage widely-held suspicions of the illegitimacy of the Obama presidency, doubtless fueled by this President being a biracial man with an unusual name, and stoked by the likes of Donald Trump.

Can it be any surprise, then, that so many are on board with Trump's plan to bar Muslims from entering the U.S.? Trump has fanned this un-American fire of ignorance and intolerance. But Trump cannot claim sole credit here; this is a monster of the Republican Party's creation. The GOP is reaping what it has sown. For all it has done in recent decades to effectuate political strategy couched in fear and division, Donald Trump is the candidate the GOP deserves.

Make no mistake: Trump's strategy will not work in a general election, should he advance thereto. But the effects of Trump's radical, and arguably fascist, policy positions will not be confined to his presidential race. In what was already figuring to be a rough election cycle for Republicans in U.S. Senate races, Trump would do vulnerable Republican incumbents no favors. In fact, Trump's presence at the top of the ticket could easily represent the proverbial nail in the coffins of GOP Senators in highly competitive Senate races in states such as Illinois, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Ohio, and more.

Donald Trump's candidacy has proven time and again to be a regrettable chapter in American political history. The lowlight reel from Trump is extensive, and we as Americans should not fool ourselves; the world is watching. The world sees crowds cheering Donald Trump as he calls for a wholesale ban on Muslim entry into our country. But the world should also take notice of the widespread vocal condemnation of Trump from disparate corners of American political life. Mainstream news media has not been shy about recalling the dark history of instances of singling out classes of people for different treatment; Tom Brokaw offered a particularly poignant commentary.

This is an episode of American politics that we will overcome, but it is one from which we must continue to learn and one we must not forget.

The American Electoral Auction

The first week of August brought the two debut presidential debates, both on the Republican side: one on August 3 in Manchester, New Hampshire, held by the New Hampshire Union Leader; and one on August 6 in Cleveland, Ohio, hosted by Fox News Channel. For those counting at home, we are fully fifteen months away from the 2016 election. This does not mark, of course, the start of the 2016 election cycle; Former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) announced the formation of his exploratory committee in December 2014.

The inordinately excessive duration of contemporary presidential election cycles makes for quality fodder for political pundits and great copy for political writers. But is it healthy for the country? In the United Kingdom, the campaign process for electing a prime minister lasts all of a month. Contrast that with the American system, which carries on for nearly two years.

The length of today's election cycles exacerbates the underlying problem: money. In this author's opinion as one who has worked in Congress and on innumerable campaigns, money is the single most corrosive and damaging element of modern American politics. The viability of a candidacy for office is determined not by the potential candidate's ideas, experience, or intellect, but instead by the individual's fundraising prowess. This is fundamentally perverse and should be antithetical to American democracy. The amount of money a candidate must collect in order to be competitive naturally rises with the level of the office sought, so presidential campaigns stand out as the most eye-popping of said numbers. For the 2012 presidential race, according to Politico, the Obama campaign raised a total of $1.123 billion, while the Romney operation's final tally was $1.019 billion. The nominees in the current cycle will certainly need to take in at least that much, and likely more. The combined amount raised by the two campaigns in 2012, roughly $2.142 billion, is at once breathtaking and deeply disheartening when one stops to ponder what over two billion dollars could do for the country.

It stands to reason, as a function of common sense as relates to human nature, that donors to campaigns are not giving their money to a candidate out of the kindness of their hearts. All donors want something in return for their money. Our officeholders in this country are therefore beholden to their money, much as they might argue otherwise. This becomes a profoundly magnified issue as concerns large-dollar donors, exemplified by figures like Charles and David Koch, Sheldon Adelson, and an assortment of other billionaires. These mega-donors are found almost exclusively on the Republican side of the aisle, the one exception of note being Tom Steyer, the San Francisco environmentalist. The Koch brothers have pledged to spend, through their network of wealthy contributors, upwards of $900 million in this presidential cycle. It should therefore come as no surprise that Republican presidential candidates trip over themselves to sing the Koch brothers' praises in hopes of being anointed their preferred candidate, and the recipient of their vast contributory capacity. But the practical effect of this arrangement is that, should said preferred candidate be victorious in November 2016, the brothers Koch would have essentially exclusive influence over the direction of the country; how could this hypothetical new president, in office as a result of the behemoth sum of money funneled into their campaign from these siblings, dare say no to the aforementioned siblings?

So, how did our country find itself in this predicament? A principal reason is the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The decision removed the ban on campaign contributions from corporate entities established by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, colloquially known as McCain-Feingold for its chief sponsors, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and then-Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI). In his majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy held that such bans were violative of the free speech protection guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution. In other words, the conservative majority of the court declared that money was a expression of free speech. The country can thank the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision additionally for the advent of the SuperPAC (Political Action Committee). SuperPACs cannot write checks to campaigns or political parties themselves, and can thus collect unlimited monetary contributions from donors of both the human and corporate varieties. The bar on direct contributions, however, does not mean that SuperPACs cannot spend on behalf of the candidate; this becomes key in terms of buying time to run television spots, the price tag for which can run well into seven-figure territory per week depending on the size of the media market.

Corporations simply must not be permitted to make contributions to campaigns. As then-Justice John Paul Stevens wrote brilliantly in his dissent, "...corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, and their 'personhood' often serves as useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of 'We the People' by whom and for whom our Constitution was established."

How to stem the tide, then, of the unfettered sums of cash, particularly from corporations, corrupting our political system? First and foremost, the nation desperately needs a reversal of the ruinous Citizens United decision, which I view as perhaps singularly the worst decision from the high court in at least a generation. A reversal can be accomplished by bringing a case before the court that challenges Citizens United, but the same five justices who voted in favor of the 2010 holding remain on the court today. Another option is Congressional legislation. Still one more possibility is an amendment to the U.S. Constitution limiting the ability to contribute to a campaign to people, thereby banning corporations from doing so. Such an amendment has been endorsed by no less than presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

Ultimately, further steps need to be implemented to cleanse our political system of the stench of money. But remedying the mistake of Citizens United is a starting point. America is better than this; we have been in the past, and we must be so again.

America: The Shooting Gallery

On July 16, the confessed perpetrator of a 2012 mass shooting at a movie theater in the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado, was found guilty of twelve counts of first-degree murder. On the same day, a heavily armed 24-year-old man went to a military recruitment center in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and opened fire, killing five servicemembers. One week later, on July 23, the jury in Colorado had progressed to the sentencing stage, and was debating whether to recommend a death sentence or life in prison for the man they had convicted of the 2012 Aurora theater massacre. That same evening, a 59-year-old man entered a movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana, and fired on the patrons assembled to watch a film. The shooter murdered two and wounded nine in that theater.

This is the norm in the United States of America. Gun violence, often on a mass casualty scale, is so commonplace that we as a nation are no longer shocked, which should be the natural reaction, when a gunman slaughters multitudes of innocent people at a time. The United States is, as President Barack Obama has repeatedly stated, the only advanced nation on the planet with such staggering levels of gun violence. In fact, as any American who has traveled abroad and spoken about this topic with locals in another country can attest, there is a widespread view around the world that the United States is the Wild Wild West. While visiting Japan earlier this year, I had the opportunity to speak with a Japanese woman who informed me that she was reticent to ever visit the United States, citing the volume of guns in this country. I found it difficult to counter her point.

In most states and on the federal level, laws regulating guns are largely permissive on account of years of brutally effective campaigning and advocacy on the part of the gun lobby, led by the National Rifle Association (NRA). The Lafayette movie theater murders illustrated just how lax these sparse laws are. The Louisiana shooter, whose name I will not state in keeping with my practice of omitting the names of perpetrators of his ilk, has been characterized alternately as "disturbed," "radical," a "drifter," and "a little off, quite obviously." He was arrested in 2005 on a domestic violence complaint, but a case did not materialize; the victim declined to prosecute. The Lafayette perpetrator applied in 2006 for a concealed weapons permit in Phenix City, Alabama, where he resided until last year, but said application was denied on account of the domestic abuse complaint. Officials in Phenix City, where the perpetrator purchased the gun, have nonetheless stated that the sale of the weapon was lawful.

Incidents of mass gun violence and massacres like those in Littleton, Colorado, in 1999, in Blacksburg, Virginia, in 2007, and in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012, among so many others, attract the attention of the country, and rightly so. But these tragedies are not the end of the story. Not even close. This nation's permissive gun culture yields consequences on a scale not seen, as indicated earlier, in any other advanced country. According to Gun Violence Archive, in 2014, there were 51,685 incidents of gun violence in this country, with 23,012 injuries and 12,551 fatalities resultant therefrom. Take a moment to reread the previous sentence and let register the enormity of the numbers. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence reports that "one in three people in the U.S. know someone who has been shot," myself included. By the starkest of contrasts, the number of gun murders in the United Kingdom for the 2013-2014 financial year, according to Citizens Report in the UK, was 619.

So, at what point do we declare as a nation that enough is enough? At what point do we reject such mind-numbingly pervasive gun violence as the American Way? At what point do we cease to accept the unacceptable?

The massacre of twenty first-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14, 2012, sparked action in the form of legislation from Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Pat Toomey (R-PA) to extend background checks on firearms purchases, the purpose of which was to close the loophole that exempts vendors at gun shows from performing background checks. Support for universal background checks is so vast that it includes, in a 2014 survey, 92 percent of gun owners and 86 percent of Republicans. Yet an all-hands-on-deck NRA lobbying effort succeeded in defeating the legislation from Sens. Manchin and Toomey.

Universal background checks represent the bare minimum that we as a society should do toward the goal of keeping guns out of the hands of those who should not be in possession of a lethal weapon. The assault weapons ban that was in effect from 1994 to 2004 should additionally be resurrected. There is no need for a private citizen to possess a semiautomatic or automatic assault weapon; these spectacularly deadly firearms belong in the hands of the military and some divisions of law enforcement, such as SWAT.

America is, indeed, the Wild Wild West. Here's hoping more in positions of power take note.

The Stench of the Gerrymander

Last week, the Supreme Court of the United States released a handful of landmark decisions. Most notably, the high court upheld the tax credit subsidies component of the Affordable Care Act, declined to hike the standard by which a prospective tenant can bring a Fair Housing Act case, and in arguably the most significant civil rights case in at least a generation, made marriage equality law nationwide.

On June 29, however, the court ruled on a case that should not be overlooked. In 2000, the voters of Arizona approved Proposition 106, which established an independent commission to redraw congressional districts, as well as those for the state legislature. The Republican-controlled Arizona state legislature took issue with being excised from the process of redrawing districts, and filed suit against said commission. Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission made it to the Supreme Court, and in a decision penned by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Court held against the state legislature and in favor of keeping the process in the hands of the commission.

The Arizona legislature contended that the establishment of a redistricting commission violated Article I, Section IV of the U.S. Constitution, also known as the Elections Clause, which provides that the "Time, Places and Manner of holding Elections for... Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof." In her opinion written for the majority, Justice Ginsburg noted that contemporary dictionaries from the late eighteenth century, when the Constitution was composed, defined "legislature" as "the power that makes laws." As Arizona's state constitution grants state voters the power to make laws and enact constitutional amendments through referendum, Justice Ginsburg concluded that the independent commission does not, in fact, run counter to the Elections Clause.

This is a monumental decision. Gerrymandering, a state legislature's practice of redrawing legislative districts decennially to benefit the political party in charge and attempt to perpetuate their majority, is a pervasive problem with real consequences for the country. In Florida, for example, a roughly evenly divided "purple" state that voted twice for President Barack Obama, the state legislature is heavily Republican on account of districts that have been drawn in the GOP's favor. Presently, the 120-seat state House has 80 Republicans, 39 Democrats, and one vacancy, while the 40-seat state Senate comprises 25 Republicans, 14 Democrats, and one vacancy. The 27-member Florida delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives includes seventeen Republicans and ten Democrats.

To be clear, both major parties have been guilty of gerrymandering. But with the majority of state legislatures currently under Republican control, the GOP has reaped the benefits of this practice of late. In 2012, the Republican Party retained their majority in the U.S. House, even as President Barack Obama won reelection by a healthy margin. In the aggregate, Republican candidates for the House received nearly 500,000 fewer votes than did their Democratic counterparts. Thanks to their gerrymandering, however, the GOP maintained control of the lower chamber.

Neither party should be permitted to draw districts; the temptations of power, political contributions, and human nature have proven time and again to be too much for state legislators to resist. Arizona, and other states such as California that also have independent redistricting commissions, have the right idea; districts must be drawn by individuals with no vested interest or incentive in the process. Only then will the composition of legislative bodies reflect the true will of the people they purport to represent.

Good on Justice Ginsburg and the majority in this case for ruling for the people.

Charleston

On the evening of June 17, a 21-year-old white man - whose name I will not state here - traveled roughly 120 miles to historic Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Congregants were attending a bible study, which they invited the young man to join. He did so for an hour, following which he opened fire on the congregants, while reportedly saying "you rape our women and are taking over our country." Nine lost their lives that evening.

In the aftermath of acts of mass violence, which are far too frequent in this country, there can exist a sense of bewilderment as to motive. For example, after a heavily armed 20-year-old man beset by mental health challenges murdered 27 people, including twenty first-graders, a prevailing sentiment was, why? Why innocent six-year-olds? Why this school? Why? The shooter took his own life before he could be captured, ensuring that his motive(s) will likely never be known.

There can be no such questioning, bafflement, or equivocation as to the impetus for this latest mass murder. Put plainly: this was racism. Deep-seated, systemic, violent racism. Again, the shooter reportedly told the black congregants, "you rape our women and are taking over our country." The perpetrator had previously posted to his Facebook page a picture of himself wearing a jacket bearing the flags of apartheid-era South Africa as well as Rhodesia, the name of the country now known as Zimbabwe that dates to when it was white-ruled. A picture has additionally surfaced of his getaway vehicle bearing the confederate flag with the words "Confederate States of America." The evidence supports the transparent racism of his actions, but in this case, the evidence is almost not even necessary; the shooter can be taken at his own words, the words he uttered as he gunned down innocent bible study participants.

This was an act of domestic terrorism. Dictionary.com defines terrorism in part as "the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce." The shooter drove two hours from Lexington, near the capital city of Columbia, to Charleston to execute this crime. In addition, he specifically targeted Mother Emanuel on account of its deep historic significance to the black community in South Carolina's Lowcountry. He murdered nine people in their church, their safe place, their sanctuary.

It must also be mentioned that this was yet another heartwrenching incident of mass gun violence made possible by this country's gun culture and permissive gun laws resultant therefrom. President Obama, in a statement he delivered from the White House in the hours following the shooting, stated: "We do know that, once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun." The perpetrator reportedly told police that he purchased the gun he used in the Charleston attack in April, two months after he was arrested on felony drug possession charges. A background check, which the pro-gun lobby led by the National Rifle Association has long fought, may have revealed his felony arrest when he acquired the weapon. Had a background check prevented the perpetrator from procuring the weapon that day in April, he may have found alternate means of obtaining a gun. But the firearm vendor should have been required by law to perform the background check.

So, how to address the pervasive and dangerous cancer of racism in this country? I certainly do not claim to have all the answers. But acknowledging the problem is the necessary first step, and too many put their heads in the proverbial sand and search for reasons for the Charleston shooting other than the obvious one. Small steps can be implemented, and one in particular is long overdue and would make a big difference: the Confederate battle flag that flies at the South Carolina State Capitol in Columbia must, at long last, once and for all, be removed. The Confederate flag is a painful reminder to the black community of this nation's dark and violent history of slavery and suppression. The flag's presence at the Capitol represents South Carolina's endorsement of that history, no matter how much state officials argue otherwise. The flag should have been removed long ago, and every day it continues to stand is a slap in the face of the black community of South Carolina.

My thoughts are with the families and loved ones of the victims in Charleston.