Not since King John of England signed the Magna Carta in the year 1215 A.D. had there been such a document. But from the time the Constitution of the United States was ratified in 1788, it has stood as the bulwark of democracy and freedom for this country, and as a shining example to the rest of the world of how — despite inevitable differences and imperfections — people can live together as a peaceable and prosperous nation.

But that is not to say that the framers of the Constitution were infallible. They did foresee the possibility of a future tyrant taking control of the government; and so they provided for three separate branches of government, and carefully set out the responsibilities of each in order to prevent one branch from usurping the powers of either of the other two. But they did not specifically state that this separation was immutable, thus leaving room for flexibility . . . and more than two centuries (thus far) of debate.

And they made two additional mistakes in this regard. They gave a good deal of unspecified power to the President, leading to further debate as to whether the holder of that office is legally permitted to take virtually any action, so long as it is not specifically prohibited by the Constitution. Since a single document could never conceivably predict the character of every future president, that unfortunately left the door open to potential disaster should the American people somehow choose to elect an autocrat to lead the country.

And third, they designated the Vice President of the United States as “President of the Senate.” While having no vote of his own in normal circumstances, he has the power, and the responsibility, to cast the deciding vote in the event of a tie, thus preventing a stalemate. The original intent was honorable; but naming a member of the Executive Branch to that role clearly presents a case in which the Executive is able, at times, to cross that line of separation and exercise control over the Legislative Branch . . . a circumstance destined eventually to lead to trouble.

Which is exactly what has just happened.

Yesterday, the Senate voted on a resolution to block Donald Trump’s onerous global tariffs by revoking his emergency order. Half of the Senate — in a bipartisan move — realized the likely disastrous worldwide effect such tariffs are having, and will continue to have, if Trump is allowed to willy-nilly continue imposing, revoking, reimposing, increasing, suspending, decreasing, and reinvoking tariffs as it suits him from one day to the next.

But since we have two senators from each state, we have a legislative body with an even number of votes (100) and a potential tie at any given time. And despite the heroic effort, the rational half on this occasion was unable to persuade just one more Senator to see the light. There was a tie vote; JD Vance happily stepped in to wield the deciding vote; and . . .

Well, to say it was a foregone conclusion would be a gross understatement. The White House overtook Congress’ mandate, and confirmed its own executive order.

*. *. *

It would take a Constitutional amendment to designate a different individual to act as tie-breaker for the Senate. And since a Constitutional amendment requires, not just a majority, but a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress, that appears unlikely to happen under the current administration. But it might be something to consider for the future.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
5/1/25

NOTE: The foregoing is solely the opinion of the writer, and not a scholarly treatise. Feel free to disagree, to add polite comments, or to correct any factual errors (though hopefully there aren’t any of those). And thanks for reading to the end.

No, I haven’t gone mad — not in the sense of having lost my sanity. But “mad,” as in inexpressibly angry? Oh, indeed, yes! Haven’t we all, to some extent, these past 100 days?

I was reminded by History.com that yesterday was the 51st anniversary of then-President Nixon’s release of the Watergate tapes to the Congressional committee investigating the break-in of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters some two years earlier.

Not all of you were around back then, though I’m sure you’re at least somewhat familiar with the history of the Watergate scandal. But I lived through those turbulent times, and I have always hoped and prayed that this country would never again have to experience anything like it.

Each day felt as though you had popped through Alice’s looking glass and found yourself in the most bizarre version of her psychedelic nightmare . . . day after day, month after month.

Without trying to regurgitate the already heavily-documented history of that era, let me just say that — instead of Alice’s White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat, the hookah-smoking Caterpillar with his magic mushrooms, the Mad Hatter, and the Queen constantly screaming “Off with their heads” — Watergate had Richard M. Nixon, H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, John Dean, John Mitchell, E. Howard Hunt, G. Gordon Liddy, the ever-popular Martha Mitchell . . . and an organization ironically known by its acronym: CREEP (the Committee for the Re-election of the President).

And, of course, the notorious 18.5 minutes of erased tapes.

Numerous analogies have been drawn between the illegal acts undertaken by Nixon and his people and those of Donald Trump’s band of merry men (and women). But there are vast differences . . . differences that make this time around much, much worse . . . two of which were circumstances that enabled our country to finally resolve the issues surrounding Watergate and to begin healing from the trauma of those years.

Those conditions do not exist today; and their absence may well be our undoing.

First was the fact that both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives consisted in 1964 of Democratic majorities, while the President — Richard Nixon — was a Republican. He did not own the Congress. He did not own the Supreme Court. Those estimable bodies were comprised of members who had the interests of the country at heart; who remembered that they had sworn to uphold the Constitution; and who had the cojones to stand up to a president who sometimes forgot his own oath. When the Watergate break-in, and the subsequent fallout from that failed adventure, became known, Congress launched an appropriate investigation and followed through without fear of retribution or having to make concessions.

And second, Richard Nixon — though certainly possessed of an outsized ego and an instinct for self-preservation — was not delusional. Though he thought he could get away with it, in the end he did not believe he was a god, above the law, impervious to punishment. When he realized he was about to be impeached, he did the smart — actually, the honorable — thing: he resigned.

And that is the part of the Watergate episode — the ending — that I would like to see repeated now. What we are missing is a government with guts: a legislature that truly represents the will of the people who elected them; a judiciary, up to and including the U.S. Supreme Court, that will consistently rule in accordance with the law of the land, and enforce those rulings through proper action by a Department of Justice that understands and reveres the concept of “justice.”

But in order to do this, they need to come together. And as long as they continue to be guided and controlled by partisanship and fear of retribution, that won’t happen.

What will happen, though, is that many of those who have failed us will be standing for election again next year. And if things don’t improve, but continue to deteriorate under this administration, those elections will accomplish the very thing they have been trying to avoid: the loss of their jobs and their political careers.

That is, if we survive that long. And to ensure our survival, the government we elected needs to take action now, and not wait for another election cycle.

We need to take our country back . . . even if it means another Watergate investigation.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
4/30/25

On Thursday of last week, Jeffrey Goldberg — the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic who was accidentally included in one of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s classified Signal conference calls concerning attack plans against the Houthis in Yemen — met with Donald Trump in the Oval Office. With Goldberg were The Atlantic journalists Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer, about whom I commented yesterday with regard to their earlier interview of Trump.

When Goldberg asked Trump if SignalGate actually happened as reported, the reply was, “Yeah, it was real . . . you got it out very much to the public . . . it became a very big story.” [Sharon Knolle, The Wrap, April 28, 2025.]

Trump — the man who represents the United States of America on the world stage — was then asked what he had taken away from that security breach. And this was his nearly unintelligible response:

“I think we learned: Maybe don’t use Signal, OK? If you want to know the truth. I would frankly tell these people not to use Signal, although it’s been used by a lot of people. But, whatever it is, whoever has it, whoever owns it, I wouldn’t want to use it.” [Id.]

“Maybe don’t use it”? “Whatever it is”?

Right.

And he gave the citizens of the U.S. further assurance that everything is under control and we can all sleep well tonight by adding that he has no plans to fire Hegseth . . . this despite the two major security breaches that have made headlines around the world and potentially endangered the lives of our military personnel . . . saying simply, “Yeah, he’s safe.”

Well, I don’t know about you; but I’m sure I’ll sleep better knowing that my country is in the hands of a person who doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about . . . and doesn’t care.

Sleep? Yeah . . . sure.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
4/30/25

And if you don’t believe me, just ask this guy:

In late March, two journalists from The Atlantic — Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer — through sheer perseverance and a stroke of good luck, scored an interview with Donald Trump.

Their report on that conversation is detailed, fascinating . . . and chilling. From my perspective, it is well worth your time to read it in full, as I could not begin to do it justice here.

But one paragraph — near the end of the interview and before the authors segue into a discussion of how Trump’s second term even came to be — leapt out at me. I just want to quote that part, and let you judge for yourselves what to make of it.

The interviewers had asked Trump if his second term felt different from his first. And this was his response:

“The first time, I had two things to do — run the country and survive; I had all these crooked guys. And the second time, I run the country and the world.” [Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer, The Atlantic, April 28, 2025.]

I have nothing to add . . .

Brendochka
4/29/25

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
4/29/25

I don’t need Snopes to tell me that all but one of the following statements are untrue. See if you can find the single truth amongst all the lies . . . or if you need serious help.

*. *. *

#1: The moon is made of cheese.

*. *. *

#2: Ukraine started the war.

*. *. *

#3: The stork delivers babies.

*. *. *

#4: Vladimir Putin sincerely wants to end the war.

*. *. *

#5: Kissing a frog will give you warts.

*. *. *

#6: Bobby Kennedy, Jr. has a functioning brain.

*. *. *

#7: The Earth is round, not flat.

*. *. *

#8: Higher tariffs will lead to lower taxes.

*. *. *

#9: Black cats are bad luck.

*. *. *

#10: Elon Musk will establish the first colony on Mars.

*. *. *

#11: Sitting on cold pavement will cause hemorrhoids.

*. *. *

#12: Donald Trump will make America great again.

*. *. *

So how did you do? My guess is that the vast majority of you got it right, while those wearing the MAGA hats are still trying to figure out how to pronounce “hemorrhoids.” (By the way, MAGA people, #7 is the correct answer.)

Just a little fun for Tuesday . . .

Brendochka
4/29/25

Vladimir Putin’s unilateral Easter ceasefire turned out to be — not that anyone was surprised — a big, fat red herring: a distraction from his continuing refusal to negotiate seriously any meaningful peace terms with Ukraine.

So now, to “prove” his sincerity, he is offering, not just a single day, but a three-day temporary ceasefire . . . this time to allow him to enjoy Russia’s annual Victory Day celebrations on May 8th: the 80th anniversary of what is called in his country “the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany.”

The statement issued today by the Kremlin on its official Telegram channel said:

“Based on humanitarian considerations, the Russian side declares a truce during the 80th anniversary of the Victory Day. For this period, all hostilities are stopped.” [David Brennan, GMA, April 28, 2025.]

Well, isn’t that special! But wait . . . there’s more:

“Russia believes that the Ukrainian side should follow this example. In the event of violations of the truce by the Ukrainian side, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation will give an adequate and effective response.” [Id.]

Aha! The escape clause.

Are we really supposed to take this at face value? After all of the lies, the broken promises, the continued bombardments (even on Easter Sunday, during the so-called “ceasefire”) . . . is there any reason to believe that this time will be different?

And why just three days? If Putin is truly interested in “humanitarian considerations,” why not offer the 30 days suggested by the Ukrainian side? As Ukraine’s President Zelensky has said,

“ . . . [there is] no reason to wait [until May 8]. Russia has consistently rejected everything and continues to manipulate the world, trying to deceive the United States. Now, yet again, another attempt at manipulation: for some reason everyone is supposed to wait until May 8 before ceasing fire — just to provide Putin with silence for his parade.” [Id.]

Even the Trump administration isn’t satisfied with this latest hollow gesture from Putin. On Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said:

“While President Trump welcomes Vladimir Putin’s willingness to pause the conflict, the president [Trump] has been very clear he wants a permanent ceasefire and to bring this conflict to a peaceful resolution.” [Darya Tarasova, Daria Tarasova-Markina, Edward Upright and Sana Noor Haq, CNN, April 28, 2025.]

But since April 19th, when Putin ordered the Easter ceasefire to take place the following day, at least 62 civilians have been killed and another 290 injured in Ukraine by Russian attacks. [Id.]

*. *. *

So what do we make of this latest exchange? Once again, I find that no one (least of all myself) can say it better than my favorite old reliable, William Shakespeare:

“It is a tale told by an idiot,
full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
– Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5

Such is life . . . still today, five centuries later.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
4/28/25

George Bogen hadn’t done anything wrong; he had simply attended a friend’s wedding in Jamaica in 2019. He didn’t know that some six years later, a picture of him among the other attendees at the wedding would appear on the internet, or that it would be seen by members of the second Trump administration. Or that someone would recall that Bogen had also attended the same friend’s second wedding in 2023.

Whether or not he knew that the groom at those two weddings, Miles Taylor, had published an opinion piece in 2018 critical of Donald Trump — then serving his first term as president — is irrelevant . . . or it should be.

But to Trump, no slight — no matter how small or insignificant — is irrelevant, or ever forgotten.

Or forgiven.

Because George Bogen — who had been serving as Executive Director of the Office of Trade Relations at Customs and Border Protection (CBP) — was asked to step down from his post last week because of his alleged connection to Miles Taylor. [William Vaillancourt, Daily Beast, April 25, 2025.]

That’s right, folks . . . in Washington’s official circles, you are no longer allowed to choose your own friends. Donald Trump takes very seriously the adage that “the friend of my enemy is my enemy.” And he makes no secret of his unquenchable thirst for revenge.

This, then, is the moral compass of the man that more than half of America’s voters trusted to ruin . . . sorry, run . . . their country for them.

Happy yet?

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
4/28/25

I recently asked how you would feel if someone were simply to take your home away from you and give it to a bully who had no legal claim to it, but merely wanted it for his own greedy purposes.

And now I ask: What if it were not just your property . . . but your children . . . who were snatched from your arms, or their beds, or their schools, and whisked off to a secret location to be “re-educated” — indoctrinated into a new way of life, completely alien to anything they had ever known?

Don’t dismiss the idea as some dystopian work of fiction, because it is happening, now, in Ukraine.

While Vladimir Putin continues to drag out negotiations for a peace treaty in Ukraine, gaining a few more miles of territory, and taking a few hundred more lives each day; and while Donald Trump continues to placate Putin while accusing Volodymyr Zelensky of having “allowed” the invasion to happen in the first place . . .

. . . while all of this goes on, and on, and on, now into its fourth year . . .

. . . an estimated 20,000 Ukrainian children, kidnapped from their families, are being held prisoner in towns and villages in Russia and in Russian-held Ukrainian territory.

But now, some have been helped by a Ukrainian NGO and others to escape; and one — Vladyslav Rudenko — has spoken out about his nine months in captivity.

In October of 2022, when Rudenko was just 16 years old, three armed Russian soldiers came unannounced to his home in Kherson.

“They came to my apartment and said I had 30 minutes to pack my things, and I had to go with them,” he says. [RFE/RL, April 24, 2025.]

He and hundreds of other young Ukrainians were told they were being evacuated. They were boarded onto buses and transported, with a military escort, to a former health spa in Yevpatoria, in Russian-occupied Crimea. The spa had been transformed into a training camp for indoctrination of Ukrainian youths in all things Russian.

“We were told to get rid of everything Ukrainian, so that there was absolutely nothing Ukrainian, or there would be problems,” Rudenko said. [Id.]

During his nine-month stay there, he underwent Russian military training, and intensive studies in Russian language, culture, and patriotic ideology.

He describes the Soviet-inspired regimen as follows:

“First, we woke up to the Russian national anthem. Then we raised the Russian flag. After breakfast, we had an hour of education about what had happened during the evening in Russia. Then we were taken to a cinema to watch Russian films. It was constantly a vicious cycle where nothing changes.” [Id.]

The youngsters were given military uniforms, including the Russian nationalist St. George’s ribbon,** and were made to take shifts standing guard. “This is a very large pro-Russian machine,” Rudenko explains, “and it was very difficult.” [Id.]

** The Ribbon of St. George is a widely-recognized military symbol, consisting of a black and orange striped pattern, commemorating the veterans of the Eastern Front of World War II (known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War).

*. *. *

Not all of the estimated 20,000 children are in camps like the one at Yevpatoria; some have been placed with Russian foster families or in boarding schools. But the camps are described by Mykola Kuleba, Ukrainian Commissioner for Children’s Rights, as a form of “cultural genocide”:

“This is the technique that the Russian Empire used in order to quickly assimilate the population after conquering new territories, to make them obedient to the regime. The main thing is to resettle [them] and start reeducation. That is, to see what needs to be done in order to get these children obedient to the [Putin] regime as soon as possible. Make them ready to live in the Russian Federation and continue to send them to Russia, to families, to boarding schools.” [Id.]

And, of course, to forget who they truly are, where they came from, and that they once had blood relatives who loved them.

* *. *

Thus far, according to Yale Humanitarian Research Lab estimates, more than 8,400 Ukrainian children have been relocated to more than 50 known facilities . . . 13 in Belarus, and 43 in Russia and Russian-occupied territory . . . clearly making Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko complicit in yet another of Vladimir Putin’s crimes against humanity. [Id.]

Only about 1,300 children have been returned to Ukraine by various means.

A recent statement released by the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said:

“ . . . without the return of the children abducted by Russia, the war cannot truly be considered over.” [Id.]

While President Zelensky has made previous public demands for the return of the children, and it most likely has been a subject of discussion in the ongoing ceasefire negotiations, it is unclear whether the matter has been given priority by the members of the Trump team. We hear plenty about land rights, security guarantees, rare minerals, and NATO membership.

As important as those issues are . . . don’t the lives of these children matter even more?

If their immediate, safe return hasn’t been made a non-negotiable condition of any settlement with Putin, it damn well should be.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
4/28/25

I count myself among the fortunate people who have never been a victim of crime . . . although a Russian street thug did once try to get his fingers into my cross-body bag on a crowded plaza in St. Petersburg, Russia, in broad daylight. I began yelling at him in Russian, threatened to call for the police, and he ran off. He thought I’d be an easy mark; he hadn’t counted on the one “helpless little lady” tourist who actually knew what she was doing.

But I’m quite certain that if I had ever been unfortunate enough to lose, say, a purse to a thief — whether here or in another country — I would never see that bag, or its contents, again. My complaint to the police would be added to a mountain of similar cases, and I would be left with a promise that they would do their best, and a patronizing lecture on being more careful in the future.

However, things are different if you’re the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and you’ve been careless enough to leave your bag on the floor below your table in a crowded Washington, D.C., restaurant while you’re busily engaged in conversation with your family.

To begin with, that was no ordinary handbag. It was a “high-end Gucci bag,” containing a “Louis Vuitton Clemence wallet, . . . driver’s license, medication, apartment keys, passport, DHS access badge, makeup bag, blank checks, and about $3,000 in cash.” [Josh Campbell and John Miller, CNN, April 27, 2025.]

With that number of contents, the bag must have been fairly sizable. And even medium-size Gucci bags sell for — not hundreds — but thousands of dollars. So that thief knew what he was doing. And when he opened it, he must immediately have thought he was the luckiest petty thief in town . . . because the Louis Vuitton wallet alone could run upwards of $600, not to mention the $3,000 inside.

So this was no longer petty theft; it was theft on a grand scale. And what the thief probably did not know — at least, until he looked at the remaining contents of the bag — was that he had chosen as his victim du jour a high-level federal government official.

Forget the police; this was a case for the U.S. Secret Service. And since they already had egg on their faces for having allowed the theft to occur under their very noses, they had, shall we say, added incentive to solve the crime. Which is what they reportedly have done, within just a week’s time.

Today’s report does not mention whether the bag and any or all of its contents were recovered; but there is a fair amount of detail concerning the thief and his modus operandi. Though he is not identified by name, he is obviously not a novice at his trade.

Security footage at the restaurant showed him “purposefully moving closer to Noem as he zeroed in on her Gucci bag near her feet . . . dressed in dark clothing, [he] sat down at an empty table next to Noem with his back facing her and used his left foot to slide the bag away . . . He surveyed the restaurant before eventually picking up the bag, covering it with his jacket and leaving.” [Id.]

So, my earlier fantasies of his possibly having cartwheeled through the restaurant, or rappelled down from the ceiling, were way off the mark. He is just a very practiced sneak thief, unnoticeable in a crowd, who happened to choose his Easter Sunday victim very well. Not everyone walks around with $3,000 in cash.

As for a description of the perpetrator, Noem posted on X that he is a “career criminal who has been in our country illegally for years. Unfortunately, so many families in this country have been made victims by crime, and that’s why President Trump is working every single day to make America safe and get these criminal aliens off of our streets.” [Id.]

What the hell . . . ??!!!

Did this unnamed suspect just hand the Trump administration a huge gift of propaganda material to support their ongoing purge of immigrants? Is this suspect the actual thief . . . or was he simply arrested in a roundup of the “usual suspects” — i.e., one of Noem’s “criminal aliens”?

The report states that, aside from the one person in custody, “multiple additional arrests are expected in a theft ring recently targeting Washington, DC’s, Penn Quarter area.” And a Secret Service representative has said that “the defendant is a serial offender.” [Id.]

So . . . stay with me here . . . if he has been in the country illegally for a number of years; and if he is indeed a serial offender; and if he is possibly part of a theft ring operating in D.C.; and if neither he nor any of the other members of the purported “ring” have been apprehended until now; then how is it that he was so easily identified and taken into custody this week?

Could it be because the victim — Homeland Security head Kristi Noem — was a person of substance . . . a government official . . . a Trump ally? Because the incident was an embarrassment to the Secret Service, and had to be rectified? Or because the Secret Service acted more quickly and efficiently than the D.C. Police Department might have done if the stolen goods had belonged to you or me?

Whatever the case, the truth is that — despite the promise of the Constitution that we are all considered equal under the law — we are not.

Some are simply more equal than others.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
4/27/25