By the President of the Senate.
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As our national civics lesson continues to unfold on its march toward our 59th Presidential Inauguration on January 20, 2021 & 45’s 2nd term, I write today not of his unmasking exercise but of distraction, evolution & Trump’s battle for a return to the Constitution.
As a 3L in the FSU College of Law, I almost single-handedly produced an “African Americans and the Law in Florida” conference.
It was a futile attempt to give our Black Law Students Association a substantive event annually revolving around our chosen profession.
The following year, our BLSA chapter could not have been less interested in sustaining it and reverted to the same ole, same ole.
Fluff.
My subsequent failure on the Florida Bar examination is worthy of a novel. Not from a bitch and moan perspective, although incredible institutional mistakes were made that crippled my legal career.
No, at every step of the way *I* made THE critical mistakes.
Freely.
And because prudence rules my world, I reasoned out why my decisions were the prudent decisions.
Precedents, you might say, personally stacked one upon another since my early teens were weighted and given outsized importance that – unbeknownst to me – worked against my stated professional goals.
Can you see how this relates to my earlier critique of the United States Supreme Court and their reliance upon precedents of their own creation?
Perhaps not. Perhaps its merely personal to me.
Whatever the case, *I* see it.
For me, and because I see it this way, "evolution" -- especially if one isn't careful -- can easily morph merely into a form of distraction.
A loss of focus.
This all came back to me as I watched a video Thomas Wictor highlighted.
The relevant part of this video for this thread runs from the 2:25 mark to 5:00.
https://t.co/gjQovqhrRW
Wictor appears to presume in the video the emotion we see from Miller links back to his appointment as Acting Secretary of Defense on November 9, 2020.
But would that after-election appointment generate such emotion from a combat veteran?
I think not.
No, I think that tremendous emotion goes back to the beginning of the Trump Administration.
Why?
I’ll try to explain that tomorrow.
No, I see it as part of his effort to return power to “we the people” b/c Trump is – like Thomas and Alito – an Originalist.
He knows the logic of our Constitution is inescapable. There is a very clear hierarchy that has, through distractions & evolution, been hidden.
The President, as Chief Executive, is President of *all* the people.
That much we all know.
The President of the Senate, however, a position constitutionally-mandated to be whomever is Vice President of the nation, is Senator to *all* the sovereign states.
Every citizen has two sovereigns, remember?
So, he’s not Senator of all the people . . . no, his duty is to the sovereign states.
Senate Rule 1 could not begin more clearly when it starts out “In the absence of the Vice President . . . .”
Clearly, the VP does not occupy a ceremonial position.
He occupies an incredibly important CONSTITUTIONAL & quite powerful position.
https://t.co/BlKJFojtBb
He, and he alone when presiding as President of the Senate, is CONSTITUTIONALLY authorized as presiding officer to maintain order and decorum, recognize members to speak, and interpret the Senate's rules, practices, and precedents.
Prior to the distracted evolution we increasingly endured as the 20th Century progressed chronologically, the Vice President *regularly* presided over the Senate.
More from Trump
1/ In a Trump Tower press conference, held nine days before he took office, Donald Trump described his plan to separate his business from his presidency. Over the last few years, the key pillars of that plan have crumbled. Let’s go through them one-by-one.
2/ Promise 1 of Trump’s ethics plan: “No new foreign deals will be made whatsoever during the duration of President Trump’s presidency,” his attorney said. Trump did at least one new foreign deal anyway.
(See the promise at 31:57 of the video
3/ We know that the president did new a new foreign deal in office because he himself admitted it—on a financial disclosure report filed with federal ethics officials. You can see here that he sold $3.2M of land in the Dominican Republic on Jan. 29, 2018. https://t.co/U7r3VCiJPM
4/ Promise 2 of Trump’s ethics plan: He said he wasn’t going to talk about the business with his sons, Eric and Don Jr., who he put in charge of day-to-day operations. Doesn’t look like he kept that promise either.
(See promise 25:00 into the
5/ Contradicting his father, Eric Trump later told me that he did in fact plan to update his dad on the business. “Yeah, on the bottom line, profitability reports and stuff like that. But you know, that’s about it.”
2/ Promise 1 of Trump’s ethics plan: “No new foreign deals will be made whatsoever during the duration of President Trump’s presidency,” his attorney said. Trump did at least one new foreign deal anyway.
(See the promise at 31:57 of the video
3/ We know that the president did new a new foreign deal in office because he himself admitted it—on a financial disclosure report filed with federal ethics officials. You can see here that he sold $3.2M of land in the Dominican Republic on Jan. 29, 2018. https://t.co/U7r3VCiJPM
4/ Promise 2 of Trump’s ethics plan: He said he wasn’t going to talk about the business with his sons, Eric and Don Jr., who he put in charge of day-to-day operations. Doesn’t look like he kept that promise either.
(See promise 25:00 into the
5/ Contradicting his father, Eric Trump later told me that he did in fact plan to update his dad on the business. “Yeah, on the bottom line, profitability reports and stuff like that. But you know, that’s about it.”
