Editorial

Governors and mayors do not generally warm to the task of closely monitoring the police. Their reluctance is understandable, since police departments usually have a well-disciplined political action apparatus.

Every senator who sat as a juror in Trump’s impeachment took the same oath as Mitt Romney. Yet he is the only Republican to see that his president’s conduct was so “grievously wrong” that he had to convict in order to comply with the oath that he had taken. He was the only one of 53 senators to convict.

While the citizens of Iowa cannot be held responsible for the quality of criminal justice in the other 49 states, they should not support a policy that could deprive the vote to others who are now law-abiding.

Carter G. Woodson, a black alumnus of Harvard University, established Black History Week in 1926. The objective was to record the history of blacks in America, many of whose roots had been lost in the experience of slavery. He stated, “If a race has no history, it has no worthwhile tradition. It becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated.” In 1970, Woodson’s idea was expanded to the whole month of February. This gives blacks time to consider the consequences of the recent impeachment process.

While the Founding Fathers feared the establishment of a tyrant in the presidency, at the same time they were concerned about the capacity of the average voters to make effective decisions. There was an expectation that the Senate would function as a body of well-educated, upper-class gentlemen.

The solemnity of an event often instills an appreciation of its significance. The formal procedure for transporting to the United States Senate the articles of impeachment of a U.S. president assured citizens of the power of the Constitution that has been guiding the republic since 1787.

Martin Luther King and other civil rights activists learned that economic equality was the most difficult goal to attain. Blacks and other racial minorities found it difficult to move forward because working class whites, who should have been their allies, had been deluded to believe that racial discrimination was to their advantage.

When Trump ran for president in 2016, he promised to nominate candidates for federal judgeships who would overturn support for Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that established a woman’s right to abortion. The rationale for this position was to establish a strong political base with the Christian Evangelicals.

With the holiday season over, many now remember the sumptuous meals with friends and family. For most Americans, the possibility of hunger seems very remote. But hunger is still a problem in America, the greatest industrial power in the world.

Whenever an organization has nonprofit status, the public seems to assume that its objective is to benefit the people. For that reason, it is expected that political liberals would support trade unions, even without considerable assurance of the moral clarity of their expenditures.

Conservatives tout that the Republican Party is the bastion of the nation’s economic strength as well as the pillar of support for America’s constitutional law. Under the Trump regime, neither assertion is quite true.

As the enormous power of the presidency became more apparent to him, Trump began to believe that his authority was limitless, like that of an emperor. He seemed to believe that he was above the law.