Month: June 2017

This past week we witnessed the funeral of twenty-two year old Otto Warmbier who died within days of being returned home from North Korea.

In January 2016 he was arrested as he was about to depart from Pyongyang International Airport for allegedly stealing a propaganda poster from his hotel.

In February 2016, Warmbier read a statement purporting to be a “confession” and was tried and convicted of “a hostile act against the state.”

On March 16, 2016 the University of Virginia college student was sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor.

The Deputy Director of Human Rights Watch, Phil Robertson, called Warmbier’s trial a “kangaroo court.”

One week before Warmbier’s release, North Korea disclosed to his parents that he was in a coma and had been comatose since two months following his imprisonment.

The North Korean government claims that Warmier’s coma resulted from food borne botulism and sleeping pills.

Upon Warmbier’s release, he was flown home to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he was examined by doctors, who found no evidence of botulism. He remained in a persistent vegetative state until his death on June 19.

Warmbier’s parents elected not to have an autopsy performed and have expressed disbelief and outrage at the North Korean government’s explanation of their son’s cause of death and the failure to disclose his condition sooner and provide prompt medical attention.

Medical experts have concluded that an autopsy would have only revealed what was already known, that he suffered extensive brain damage and any evidence of assault or other trauma would have long disappeared.

North Korea, for its part, contends that it is the victim of a “smear campaign” and “make firm determination that humanitarian and benevolence for the enemy are a taboo and we should further sharpen the blade of law.”

In other words, expect more of the same.

Senator John McCain accused the North Korean government of murdering Warmbier and declared that if Americans were “stupid” enough to travel to North Korea then they ought to be required to sign a form acknowledging the risk of arrest, imprisonment and even death and absolving the U.S. Government of responsibility for the consequences.

While McCain’s opinion seems a bit harsh, considering how close it followed Warmbier’s death, he does have a point.

Since 1996, sixteen Americans have been arrested and imprisoned by the North Korean government and three remain confined along with a Canadian citizen.

The trumped up charges are usually bizarre in nature. Merrill Newman traveled to North Korea at the age of eighty-five and was detained because of his military service in the Korean War. He was released after forty-two days. Poor Otto Warmbier was not so fortunate.

McCain’s observation does raise a number of questions.

Knowing that the North Korean regime is brutal to the point of being murderous, why would any thinking American risk the kind of imprisonment, injury or death that could result from visiting North Korea?

Why hasn’t the U.S. government considered banning travel by Americans to North Korea?

For almost fifty years, the United States Government banned American travel to Cuba. Why, in the wake of the likely murder of a twenty-two year-old American college student following a kangaroo court trial, a similar ban wouldn’t be imposed leaves me somewhat baffled.

Indeed, the way in which The United States has dealt with other North Korean threats in contrast with other countries is likewise perplexing.

There is no secret that North Korea has nuclear weapons. We have watched, complained, negotiated and otherwise tried unsuccessfully to stop that progress, to no avail for at least a decade.

We are now waiting with understandable trepidation for them to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile that might reach our shores.

Is there any hue and cry from Washington about these developments?

Has there been any action taken, overtly or covertly, by the United States, independently or with others, to stop this progress.

The answer appears to be no.

Instead, while all this has been transpiring, this Administration has been beating its breast, denouncing the Iran nuclear treaty entered into by the Obama Administration.

It does so, despite the fact that there is no evidence that the Iranians have not fulfilled their part of the Agreement not to further produce nuclear grade material.

To hear Trump and other Republican leaders excoriate a deal that the Iranians are living up to, while remaining silent and inactive in the face of the North Korean barbarity, leads one to wonder what planet they are living on.

If there is anything positive that might come out of Otto Warmbier’s death, it might be that the government is prodded to produce a coherent strategy to deal with a barbaric regime that threatens us with imminent nuclear disaster.

Perhaps the Administration could perceive it as just as great a real and present danger as…………………….Obamacare.

Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, John F. Kennedy, are American Presidents who were shot and killed.

Andrew Jackson, William Howard Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama were all targeted by gunmen, with Reagan suffering life threatening wounds.

U.S. Senator, Robert Kennedy, shot and killed during the 1968 Presidential campaign.

Alabama Governor, George Wallace, shot and crippled for life during the 1972 Presidential campaign.

Huey Long, shot and killed while serving as the U.S. Senator from Louisiana.

Civil Rights Leaders Martin Luther King Malcolm X and Medgar Evers, all shot and killed by gunmen.

Musician, John Lennon, murdered by a gunman in New York City.

Congresswoman, Gabrielle Gifford, shot and nearly killed by Jared Loughner during a town hall meeting in Arizona.

All of these tragedies came to mind after the gunman opened fire on the Republican Congressional baseball team that was practicing in Alexandria, Virginia.

The Republican Whip, Steve Scalise of Louisiana was in critical condition, a House staff member and a former House staff member were wounded along with two members of the Capitol Police force.

The gunman, James Hodgkinson, a fervent opponent of the Trump Administration, was killed by the Capitol Police.

Hodgkinson used a 9 millimeter handgun and a 7.62 caliber rifle in the attack. According to the FBI both were legally purchased.

In the wake of the shooting the prevailing sentiment was that political rhetoric from both the left and the right has become too extreme and needed to be toned down lest extremists like Hodgkinson become motivated to act in this manner.

That discussion is long overdue and far be it from me to disagree with it.

What has genuinely surprised me is that there has been no discussion about reexamining our gun laws to prevent extremists like Hodgkinson from obtaining weapons.

Hodgkinson reportedly had a history that included a domestic violence offense and misuse of firearms that should have been a disqualifier for his obtaining firearms.

Jared Loughner, the gunman who shot and killed six people and wounded seven more including Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford, reportedly purchased the handgun he used less than two months before the shooting despite a documented history of bizarre behavior and mental illness.

We never seem to learn from any of these tragedies.

Twenty children and six adults murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut by Adam Lanza another gunman suffering from mental illness.

Twelve people murdered and seventy more wounded by the deranged James Holmes inside a movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado.

Forty- nine people killed and fifty-three more wounded inside the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

Fourteen people dead and twenty-two more wounded in San Bernardino, California.

Thirteen people murdered and thirty-two more injured at Fort Hood, Texas.

Thirteen people murdered and four more wounded in Binghamton, New York.

Thirty-two people murdered and seventeen more injured in Blacksburg, Virginia.

The list goes on and on.

Any attempt to inject some uniformity and sanity into gun laws is met by objections that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to possess these weapons of mass destruction to any brain addled extremist dingbat that has a bone to pick with the government.

The times that I have attempted to make the case for a more rational policy in the op-ed pages have inspired an outpouring of vitriol unlike any I have ever been exposed to.
In the meantime, thousands of people die each year, the victims of firearms.
Between 1968 and 2011 1.4 million people had been killed by the use of a firearm.
In 2010 alone, gun violence cost the taxpayer approximately 516 million dollars in direct hospital costs.
But don’t be disheartened.

The National Rifle Association is trying to alleviate some of the injuries that result from the use of firearms.
They have prevailed on the Republican Congress to introduce legislation to make silencers legal.

That way, gunmen won’t suffer any hearing loss from the use of these weapons.

It’s a measure that should fit neatly into the Obamacare replacement known as the American Health Care Act.

Next year, when the Congress begins practicing for their annual charity baseball game, they might want to consider that not only will they be unable to see any potential assassin, they won’t be able to hear him either.

The great American lawyer, Clarence Darrow once said that “A man who represents himself has a fool for a client.”

Luckily, I have never had to represent myself nor would I, but I have had many fools for clients.

I had one client who was heard to say on a telephone call, “My lawyer told me we shouldn’t be talking on this phone because it might be t-a-p-p-e-d.”

It was.

Another client, under investigation for murder, was asked by an informant wearing a recording device, “So what’s it like to take someone for their last rides?”

After a pause the client answered in a very bored tone, “Aw, you know, they do the usual begging and pleading. “

Try and explain that one to a jury.

My friend, Jim McGraw, was in court with a client asking the judge to appoint someone to represent the client, who was indigent.

Before the judge responded, the client offered thee opinion that “It has to be someone really good because these are serious crimes I committed.”

All of these experiences aside, I never had a client who implicated himself in tweets.

This past week, we watched the former Director of the FBI, James Comey, testify before the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee about the events surrounding his firing and related matters.

As a democrat and someone who voted for Hillary Clinton, I had misgivings about Comey’s conduct during the FBI’s investigation into her flawed use of her e-mail server.

Despite the fact that he initially cleared her of any criminal wrongdoing, he did her no favors with the harsh criticism he heaped upon her during the press conference he held to announce there would be no charges.

Not only was this criticism unprecedented and counter to the Bureau’s policy but it compelled him to announce that he would re-open the investigation in the closing days of the campaign only to exonerate her of criminal conduct again.

While the Clinton’s would wholly blame Comey for her loss, it should be remembered that Comey didn’t counsel her to use a private server in the first instance and no one but Clinton and Huma Abedin are to blame for her e-mails turning up on Anthony Weiner’s computer.

Whatever one thinks about Comey’s judgment and conduct during the election, it is undeniable that he is an honest person who tried to discharge his duties as FBI Director with integrity.

As Comey noted in his testimony, the President of the United States had the authority to fire him without stating any reason.

That, however, was more than Trump could bear.
So, he took to Twitter to declare that Comey was a “nut job” and he fired him because of the probe into Russian hacking of the election.

Whether or not that rises to the level of Obstruction of Justice remains to be seen. Presumably it will be a judgment that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller will make.

Indeed, it was what led the Deputy Attorney-General to appoint a Special Prosecutor when heretofore there was no compelling reason to appoint one.

That appears to be where Trump’s tweeting has gotten him in the short term.

Trump’s staff has now taken the unique position that the media pays too much attention to Trump’s tweets.

Needless to say, a more productive strategy than blaming the media for reporting on the tweets would be to encourage Trump to stop tweeting but that appears to be as likely as getting him to voluntarily stop breathing.

Trump is said to be so dissatisfied with Attorney-General Jeff Sessions decision to recuse himself from involvement in the various investigations into the hacking, collusion with his campaign officials and General Flynn that Sessions offered to resign.

Anything that prompts Session to resign would be a positive development.

In the meantime Trump has hired his personal attorney from New York City to represent him in the various potential criminal investigations.

Reportedly, the attorney has no criminal law experience and appears to be Trump with a law degree.

One would have thought that he would have cautioned Trump not to tweet in response to Comey’s appearance before the Senate committee.

If he did, that restraint lasted all of one day.

Before this is over Trump will alienate everyone, cabinet members, aides, lawyers and perhaps even his son-in-law.

I can’t imagine how frustrating and impossible he would be to represent.

That’s the difficulty in having a fool for a client.

On Thursday, Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Accord.

He did so despite the fact that the worldwide agreement had been signed by 197 nations and ratified by 147.

The United States joins Nicaragua and Syria as the only countries that will not be part of this agreement.

The Paris Climate Accord’s the United States objective was to reduce its greenhouse gases emissions 17 % below 2005 levels by 2020 and 26 to 28% by 2025. The United States had also committed to spending two to three billion dollars to finance international climate efforts.

The United States was the second largest contributor of greenhouse gases behind China which also joined in the agreement.

Almost every major industrial nation that was part of the problem agreed to meet certain targets to reduce the greenhouse gases that were causing the worth to warm and the polar ice caps to melt and more extreme weather to occur.

Thirty CEO’s of major corporations, urged Trump in an open letter published in the Wall Street Journal, to remain part of the agreement such as Nike, DuPont, Cargill, General Electric, Corning and EBay signing an open letter in support of that position.

During Trump’s visit to the Vatican, Pope Francis made a personal appeal to him and presented him with his 2015 encyclical on climate change.

Trump’s justification for this move rests, as usual, on a number of false premises.

He contends that the Agreement is unfair to the United States and he can renegotiate a better one.
He can’t.

There is no mechanism for him to renegotiate the Agreement with the 197 countries that have signed it and the 147 that have ratified it.

The European Union has announced that it will not renegotiate the Agreement with Trump but will bypass the Administration and deal directly with the states to meet the benchmarks to reduce greenhouse gas emission.

Consistent with that strategy, seven states, California, New York, Washington, Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut and Rhode Island have joined together in pledging to reduce their emissions. They comprise 15% of the country’s emissions. Two of the Governors are Republicans. Don’t be surprised if more states choose to join them.

He contends that China and India will be permitted to build hundreds of additional coal plants and we will not be allowed to.

This is false. The Agreement is nonbinding and each nation sets its own targets.

Trump has cited additional false arguments on this issue which are too numerous to enumerate here.

The United States withdrawal from the Paris Accord has a number of far-reaching consequences.

It could encourage major greenhouse gas polluters like China and India to also exit the Agreement although at present they remain committed to it.

It leaves China as the dominant force internationally on this issue and, along with other Trump pronouncements like his skepticism on NATO results in our historical western European allies to doubt our commitment to their security.

It will certainly embolden both China and Russia to be more assertive in their efforts to dominate world affairs.

In the wake of this decision it is apparent that there has been a power shift within the Trump circle once again.

Those more “moderate voices” that seemed to be restraining Trump’s worst impulses on a whole host of important issues have been shut out and Steve Bannon and his alt-right coterie have triumphed again.

The news media appears to be in a frenzy to have someone in the Administration declare whether Trump is a “climate change denier” who believes climate change and global warming is a hoax.

The silliness of this line of questioning couldn’t be more apparent.

After all, if Trump believed in climate change and global warming, he wouldn’t have appointed Scott Pruitt, a brainless and shameless shill for the oil and gas industry as the Director of the Environmental Protection Agency.

What Trump, Pruitt, Bannon and others in the Administration have accomplished by this action is that they have made themselves irrelevant on an issue of international importance.

That will allow them more time to ponder more important and critical issues.

Like whether the Earth is truly flat.