Something to think about

My friends, I hope you'll accept my apologies for being absent from this space for, oh, a good while.  My convalescence from my bout with COVID was completed some time ago, and I dived back into my work life with two hastily constructed weeks, followed by two long weeks of travel.  

But since my last post I've had lots to think about a number of things, and lots of time to think about them.

First topic has to be the number of mass shootings in these past few weeks.  We had a church-related school in Nashville endure a shooting by a person who was apparently a student there many years earlier.  Three children and three adults associated with the school were killed.  Then Louisville had two shooting incidents on the same day, and another last night.  And this morning's news brought details of a shooting at a sweet 16 birthday party in a small town in Alabama.

President Biden says he's done everything in his power as Commander in Chief to curtail the proliferation of guns in this country.  Senate and House members, most of them Republicans, say there isn't much appetite to move forward on additional gun regulations.  Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, widely assumed to be a candidate for President in the 2024 campaign, quietly and privately signed a bill allowing permitless carrying of any firearms by any adult during the course of these couple of weeks.

But it's worth mentioning that Tennessee Governor Bill Lee reversed himself on gun laws and signed an executive order regarding so-called red flag laws, which are designed to keep guns from those who are a danger to themselves and others due to mental illness or other documented issues.  That's a small start.

The debate and protests in Tennessee over guns caused two young and strident state representatives to be stripped of their seats in the legislature there, with leadership claiming their actions to be worse than "any insurrection."  They were promptly celebrated in the national media and reinstated, at least temporarily, by their local city councils.

Then there's the dueling federal court judges and their decisions about abortion pills that are widely used to produce safe abortions for women who want or need them.  A Trump-appointed judge in Texas ruled that the Food and Drug Administration erred some 23 years ago by approving mifepristone for use by the afore-mentioned women.  A different federal judge in Washington state ordered that the FDA's approval cannot be overturned and the drug must thereby be allowed for use.  The Supreme Court issued a stay of the Texas order and will apparently render a more detailed ruling sometime this week.

Florida Governor DeSantis very quietly signed a six-week abortion ban during the public discourse of this debate.  Interesting that he would sign this and the open carry bill while openly contemplating a run for the White House, giving his opponents ammunition to use against him.

Speaking of the White House, I won't make jokes about former President Trump's indictment by New York DA Alvin Bragg, but will add the comment that this is the least serious legal issue facing Trump.  Not much doubt that the investigation by Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith (no relation) is going to lead to charges on at least a couple of fronts, and none of them are minor.

Finally, the reckoning that Fox News has had in store for so long begins in earnest tomorrow, as voting machine manufacturer Dominion Voting's defamation lawsuit against Fox starts tomorrow.  The excerpts that have been released have been damning against Fox, to say the least, and they've probably had a lot of explaining to do about statements some of their hosts made privately about the accuracy of on-air statements about the 2020 election and whether it was rigged or stolen.  And about statements made about how they all really feel about Donald Trump and his associates.

I suppose all is forgiven now that Trump is again a central feature of their programming, with softball interviews conducted by one after another of Fox's vaunted primetime "hosts."  Everyone loves a winner, of course, and it says a lot about the current state of the Republican Party that Trump is by far their leading candidate for 2024. 

We'll meet back here in a few days to see where we are with all of this.