You’ve never heard of Cassidy Hutchinson? You will. So will generations of history students. You’d best believe this hastily called hearing later Tuesday in Washington is a big deal. Cassidy was an assistant to Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. She knows pretty much everything. She knows the authors and the details of the fake electors plot. She knows about Trump’s attempt to hijack and weaponize DOJ. She knows the roster of criminals, who, knowing they had committed criminal acts, wanted to beg Trump to pardon them. And she witnessed Trump’s reaction to the Jan. 6 mob chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!” Cassidy Hutchinson. You’ll be hearing the name frequently and prominently.
The FBI seems to have a beef with former Trump attorney John Eastman, wouldn’t you say? Hell, the Boys from the Bureau wouldn’t even let Eastman box up his cheesecake before they seized his personal phone as he left a restaurant. “Just ‘desserts'”? That phone is flambe’.
And I don’t know what you have to smile about, Jeffrey Clark. You are about to go away for a very long time. Everybody is willing to sacrifice you, Lambkins. If I were you, I’d start trying to cut a deal, like, ten minutes ago.
At least 46 people dead inside a semi-truck. Sixteen others hospitalized. Sixty responding firefighters undergoing stress counseling. And the only response from Greg Abbott was to immediately blame Joe Biden.
Viewed in isolation, I am not incensed by SCOTUS’s ruling that a former Washington state high school football coach’s rights were violated when the school prohibited from conspicuously and publicly praying at the 50-yard-line following games, and later fired him for persisting.
Just as I am a firm supporter of the Constitution’s Establishment Clause, I also respect the religious “free expression” provision as well.
My concern is not really the decision in this particular case, although to be candid I would have voted the other way. My fear—actually, my certainty—is that this will prove to be the first judicial foray toward smugly and pompously returning sanctioned, scheduled, mandatory and strictly “Christian” prayer to our public schools.
In which case, you know, I’ll fight like a rabid badger.
You think my concern is overblown and unwarranted? Why? After all, it was only three days ago that the Court used its ruling in an individual lawsuit in Mississippi to strike down what had been an established Constitutional right for the past half century.
Clarence Thomas has openly stated that gay marriage should be judicially revisited, as should contraception and sodomy laws, in his view. So do you really think that cramming Christian prayer down our educational system’s throats would give him and his robed Elmer Gantrys even a moment’s pause?
That ain’t no hill for those climbers. And think of the opportunities to pander and grandstand about a hysterically emotional but dishonestly framed populist flash point. Mikey will eat it up. Mikey eats everything.
Full disclosure. I’ve prayed on a football field. Hell, yes. I have. Both as a player and a coach. (And a broadcaster, and a writer, and a fan….). But I never made a spectacle of myself as a player (and yes, Coach Kennedy, you WERE making a spectacle of yourself) and I never as a coach took a chance on making any player or part of our team feel that he or she had to “go along to get along.” That would certainly be improper but also illegal religious imposition and coercion, in my view.
And keep in mind that as a coach, I had authority over these young people. I determined their playing time and their standing on our team.
Good coaches know better than that, and would never consider exerting religious pressure.
Good jurists should know better, too.
