The Trump transition is well underway, despite his enemies’ wishes

Commentary by James Shott

Two weeks after the presidential election, things are moving forward for President-Elect Donald Trump, who is busy selecting individuals for administration posts. 

Last week, Trump’s first two appointments were Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus as chief of staff and former head of Breitbart News, Stephen Bannon, as chief strategist. 

Amid assessments of the transition’s first few days as chaotic and on the cusp of failure, Bannon’s choice drew sharp criticism from the leftist Trump opponents and the major media, who are determined to criticize most everything Trump’s team does or says. 

Next came the choice of retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn as national security adviser, Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) as director of the CIA, and Sen. Jeff Sessions, (R-Ala.) for Attorney General, subject to Senate approval, and meetings Saturday with 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, thought to be a candidate for secretary of state, and with retired Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis, who is said to be a potential contender for defense secretary.

Meetings with potential selectees continued through the weekend, stoking the fires of speculation about who might go where and, of course, the predictable Democrat opposition’s criticism of people under consideration, as well as those already chosen.

As bad a choice as media and political enemies believe Trump to be, so far his transition is right on schedule.

Saturday, Trump took action to remove what likely would have become a big distraction to organizing his administration, doing so prior to being sworn in, and which likely would have continued at least into the early months of his presidency. Agreeing to a settlement of $25 million, three lawsuits aimed at Trump University have been resolved. The agreement also includes $1 million in penalties to the state of New York.

Former students of the school claimed that they paid thousands of dollars to learn Trump’s real estate success secrets, but contended that they were lured into paying up to $35,000 to learn from instructors hand-picked by Trump, which they claim did not happen.

The settlement was negotiated between Trump’s lawyers and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and the law firm that brought the suit against the now closed school. The settlement does not require an admission of guilt from Trump, but Trump’s organization issued a statement that said, "We are pleased to announce the complete resolution of all litigation involving Trump University. While we have no doubt that Trump University would have prevailed at trial based on the merits of this case, resolution of these matters allows President-Elect Trump to devote his full attention to the important issues facing our great nation."

If there is a downside to settling the lawsuits, it is that we may never know which side is right. Did Trump defraud the students, or is it merely an opportunity seized upon by students and lawyers hoping for a big payout?

Removing what would have become a huge distraction enables Trump to get on with the business of organizing his presidency, even as his political enemies occupy themselves with petty criticisms about appointments and who he is talking with, suggestions of who he should be talking with, and arguing about whether it was FBI Director James Comey’s handling of the email investigation or the Electoral College that defeated Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump.

Democrats have begun a move to have the Electoral College, the Constitutional mechanism to determine who becomes president, replaced by the popular vote. At the Constitutional Convention, several methods of electing a president were considered, but the Founders well knew the dangers of consolidated power. After much debate and compromise they devised a system that instead distributed power more broadly, balancing federal powers with those of the states, and providing a voice to all states, not just the most populous. 

As Heritage Foundation legal expert Hans von Spakovsky noted: “In creating the basic architecture of the American government, the Founders struggled to satisfy each state’s demand for greater representation while attempting to balance popular sovereignty against the risk posed to the minority from majoritarian rule.”

And the result has been that the Electoral College has provided stability to the process of picking presidents. Though the national popular vote winner typically wins the presidency, that vote failed to determine the winner in four previous elections: 1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000, and the republic survived quite well, thank you.

And the wisdom of the Founders has once again been proven in the 2016 election where the least desirable candidate, Hillary Clinton, wound up with a comparatively thin popular vote margin of 50.6 percent of the vote to Trump’s 49.4 percent; 1.4 million votes out of 124.7 million, meaning that Clinton got 1.15 more votes per hundred voters than Trump did. 

A margin this thin is well within the margin of error of political polling, and hardly worthy of the hysteria that has been demonstrated by this miniscule difference in vote totals.

What this effort does best is illustrate the level of desperation, disbelief and unwillingness to accept the outcome that is so firmly ingrained into the political left and their sub-faction, the major national media.

But as before, the republic will endure and thrive.

Cross-posted from Observations

Honor and integrity take a back seat to politics in Austin, Texas

Commentary by James Shott

In April 2013 in Travis County, Texas, where the capital city of Austin is located, District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg was arrested for drunk driving. Her blood alcohol level was almost three times the legal limit (.08 is the threshold, and her level was .23), and there was an open bottle of vodka in her car, in violation of the state’s open container law.

Dash cam and police station videos, which are available for viewing on YouTube, show Ms. Lehmberg failing sobriety testing and taunting arresting officers and even threatening them at the police station. One of the officers described action that took place off camera in which she kicked doors and acted violently. Her bad behavior also included rudeness, being uncooperative, and pointing her finger like a gun. And eventually she had to be placed in a restraining device. Reports say her behavior could have earned her a felony charge for assaulting a police officer.

Ms. Lehmberg pleaded guilty to drunk driving and served about half of a 45-day sentence, but said she would not resign from her position of trust as DA.

Ms. Lehmberg has been battling alcoholism for some time, according to reports. Alcoholism does not automatically preclude a person from being a public servant, even a prosecutor. However, someone whose alcoholism leads to an arrest for driving drunk, a crime that too often ends in the death of innocent citizens, followed by the poor behavior demonstrated by Ms. Lehmberg, has proved himself or herself to be unsuitable for the role of prosecutor. Put in the best possible light, it both looks bad and smells bad: You simply cannot have a confessed drunk driver as a prosecutor.

Among those who think Ms. Lehmberg should have stepped down is Texas Governor Rick Perry, although he has no official authority over county DAs.

Following her refusal to step down, Gov. Perry said he would cut $7.5 million in state money from Ms. Lehmberg’s Public Integrity Unit unless she resigned, which he later did through a line item veto. By law, the governor has veto authority.

For acting in the best interest of the people of Travis County, a jury decided it was an abuse of his power, and indicted Gov. Perry on two felony counts.

An Austin attorney filed a lawsuit to remove Ms. Lehmberg from office, but last December a judge ruled that she could keep her job. That attorney has now filed an ethics complaint against her, citing alleged unreported campaign contributions Ms. Lehmberg used to defend herself in the removal lawsuit totaling $227,000.

As it turns out, the Public Integrity Unit has a history of politically motivated prosecutions that failed for lack of substance. Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson was indicted, but never tried, and Republican Congressman Tom Delay was indicted, tried, convicted and then had his conviction overturned on appeal for lack of him having actually committed a crime. It appears the Unit is more concerned with generating political results favoring the Democrat Party than it is with integrity. Sen. Hutchinson may run for governor, and Mr. Delay had earned the hatred of Democrats through his activities. It is not a stretch to use the term “corrupt” in describing at least some of the Unit’s actions.

It’s interesting that the source of the action against Republican Gov. Perry arises from the very office that he defunded because its head, the convicted and jailed drunk driver Rosemary Lehmberg, refused to do the right thing and resign. You see, Travis County, Texas, is heavily Democrat, and Ms. Lehmberg is a Democrat.

Liberal law professor Jonathan Turley had this to say about the indictment: “In this case, the special prosecutor [who answers to Ms. Lehmberg] seemed to pound hard to get these square facts into these round holes. A bit too hard for such a case.” And Democrat political advisor David Axelrod termed the indictment “sketchy.”

Mary Anne Wiley, General Counsel for Gov. Perry, said in a statement following the indictment: “The veto in question was made in accordance with the veto authority afforded to every governor under the Texas Constitution. We will continue to aggressively defend the governor’s lawful and constitutional action, and believe we will ultimately prevail.”

The grand jury process is secret and entirely controlled by the prosecution, and the accused has no opportunity to argue charges made by the prosecution, and in fact is not even present during the process. Which is the reason for the now-famous observation that through the grand jury process you “can indict a ham sandwich.” It is instructive that the staunchest defenders of the grand jury system are prosecutors. Gov. Perry would no doubt prefer to replace the sour grapes on his ham sandwich with Swiss cheese.

During the arrest procedure, Ms. Lehmberg repeatedly accused police of ruining her career by arresting her for being three-times-the-legal-limit drunk behind the wheel. Then, her Public Integrity Unit goes after a sitting governor in a way that results in the Governor having an indictment and a mug shot on his record. Whose career was really damaged by a third party? And who benefits from this episode of gutter politics by Democrats?

Cross-posted from Observations

We must take a serious look at our laws and how they are enforced

Most people are for law and order, and most obey the laws that keep society functioning. And most have great respect for the men and women who have the sometimes-dangerous job of enforcing those laws.

That said, some laws are just plain dumb and should be done away with, and what is more important, there are so many laws, rules and regulations today that no one can know all the decrees from the federal, state and local governments that affect him or her, and therefore it is impossible to obey them all. This over-regulated environment puts each of us in the position of likely being in violation of one or more of them at any given moment.

What's worse than so many decrees from so many sources, however, is what seems to be a growing tendency of law enforcement agencies at all levels to imagine that even tiny infractions warrant the most dramatic responses.

Case in point: After making a purchase at a Charlottesville, Va. grocery store one night, a 20-year-old University of Virginia student and two roommates were approached in their car by a group of six men and one woman in street clothes. "They were showing unidentifiable badges after they approached us, but we became frightened, as they were not in anything close to a uniform," she recalled in a written account of the incident.

Police say one of the group jumped on the hood of her car. The girl said one drew a gun, and they tried to break out car windows. Unsure who they were, the girl tried to flee the dark parking lot and called 911. Given the circumstances and stories of people being assaulted by phony police officers, who could blame her?

It turned out to be a squad of plainclothes state Alcoholic Beverage Control officers who suspected the girl had purchased beer in the store – she hadn’t – and was under-age. She spent the night in jail as a result.

Question: Who at the ABC thought this procedure actually made sense? Is it reasonable for a squad of plainclothes agents to approach three female college students in a dark parking lot, fail to adequately identify themselves, point a gun at them, jump on their car and try to break out the windows because they think one of them had bought beer that she might not be old enough to purchase?

Prosecutors dropped charges against the young woman, describing her as having panicked at the sight of plainclothes agents who approached her and her roommates.

Case 2: When the Leander, Texas police wanted to serve a warrant on Bradly Simpson, they sent officers to his home. When no one responded to the knock on the front door, a couple of officers walked around the side of the house toward the back yard whereupon they saw two German Shepards coming toward them. One officer pulled his gun and fired three shots. The police said the dog was growling and aggressively coming at them. Fortunately, the officer’s aim was not good and only one of the dogs was hit, but only wounded.

After that spectacle, the police were unable to serve the warrant because they were at the wrong address, and in the wrong neighborhood. Worse than that, not far from where the dog was shot the home owners’ terminally-ill six year-old grandchild was playing.

Worse, yet, the home owners said neither dog was aggressive, that they were merely curious about who was visiting their home, and had never behaved the way the police claimed. And, as it turns out, the lady of the house is a professional dog trainer, and therefore knows about dog behavior, and furthermore noted that there are routinely customers visiting her home, so strangers don’t spook her dogs.

And what heinous crime prompted the police to go to Mr. Simpson’s home to serve the warrant? He had an expired vehicle registration.

Leander police officials say what happened was "an unfortunate accident." Wrong: What happened is that the police screwed up.

The number of rogue law enforcement personnel that intentionally abuse their authority and position is surely very small. Nevertheless, instances of over-aggressive law enforcement action and plain dumb mistakes like these are indefensible and intolerable, and there appears to be a growing attitude toward over-aggressive behavior.  

To maintain the public trust and respect government and law enforcement are going to have to stop doing stupid and dangerous things like these examples, and even worse incidents that have caused serious injury and even death for innocent citizens.

Solutions? Do we really need so many law enforcement officers that seven of them can spend nights sitting around in one store parking lot waiting to catch an under-age person buying beer? Does an expired registration really justify armed police visiting the vehicle owner’s home?

What about accountability? Officials that exercise bad judgment or act rashly must be disciplined, encouraging them to carefully consider how to properly and safely do their jobs, and also demonstrating that public officials really take seriously their duty to adequately serve the people they work for.

Something must be done, and the sooner, the better.