Strike Two!

By David Glenn Cox

Oh boy, are the headlines ever full of Clearance Thomas. Whoops, he did it again. After a Federal Judge ruled against Lindsey Graham, Graham appealed. A three-judge panel appeals court ruled unanimously against the Senator, so he appealed to the Supreme Court. Where Clearance Thomas decided maybe Senator Graham had a point.

Everyone is talking about Thomas’s unethical behavior to the point where we can soon forget just how we got here. Lindsey Graham, Lindsey Graham made phone calls on behalf of Donald Trump in the immediate aftermath of the election. Calling high government officials (an assumption on my part) in the same way as Donald Trump was calling officials and asking them to throw the election.

Graham’s basis for his silence comes from an ancient legal artifact from out of our founding father’s past. Suppose George Washington and I were planning a surprise birthday party for Thomas Jefferson. We’re travelling through New England, when the sheriff appears and arrests us in connection with a dead hooker incident at the Ye Old Days Inn.

Obviously, George and I didn’t kill any prostitutes. They just want to know about the Birthday party. Where and when? Who is invited and why were other people not invited? And if we don’t tell them, they will hold us in jail until the Birthday Party is over. Spoiling it for everyone.

Now back in those early days of pre-bus, pre-railroad and pre-rolled. A delay of a few days could ruin everything; you could miss a birthday party or a legislative session. Confining, delaying or otherwise demanding testimony of a member of Congress about his or her OFFICAL duties, shall be illegal. But it’s that big word “official” tripping everyone up.

Lindsey Graham appeals all the way to the Extreme Court, so that he cannot be compelled to testify in court under oath about his actions. He always has the remaining option of taking the Fifth Amendment, but that’s not near good enough! He can’t put himself in that witness box or let his butt warm that chair. If he talks, it’s all over. Danny Ballgame, Checkmate!

Graham doesn’t want to talk and apparently in this country, you can’t make him. Odd indeed when a politician doesn’t want to talk. As long as Graham doesn’t talk, we can only assume he is just as guilty of voter fraud allegations as Donald Trump. But Graham’s testimony sinks two ships with one salvo and removes all doubt.

“When did Donald Trump first ask you to make these phone calls on his behalf? Did you discuss the purpose of the phone calls explicitly? What were your goals and intentions? Did you consider that what you were doing might be considered criminal?”

You know that when someone works that hard and spends that kind of cash, trying to stay out of court. He has a lot not to say. Reaching for the furthest branch available, treated with extreme comfort and deference. Graham like Steve Bannon should be looking at hard time. You see, Graham’s conversations weren’t made under the aegis of his “Official” duties. The conversations were made on his free time and were done in connection with a criminal conspiracy.

That’s the rub right there. Crime and conspiracy to commit crimes, are omitted from immunity laws. It’s not in Graham’s official Senate capacity to commit crimes and participate in criminal conspiracies. It’s a common enough practice, but it’s not an official duty.

Republicans’ xenophobes and illiterates everywhere, but I repeat myself, are rushing not to aid Senator Graham and are avoiding him like a weekend get away at Chernobyl. He is absolute poison now, like the fat kid skunked at summer camp. He’s all alone in the canoe and riding precariously.

Only the kindness of Mr. Thomas has saved Lindsey Graham for now. The Republicans want to stall to avoid bad publicity before an election. They think it might hurt their chances in November, if it comes out the Republicans were trying to overthrow democracy and cheat America. 

Here’s the other rub; Clearance Thomas is married to a woman whose name could potentially come up in connection with Lindsey Graham’s conversations. Meaning that any legitimate judge or barrister, would immediately recuse themselves from the case…but not our Clearance!

You can see the attempt to bend the truth and use the law from both ends in a corrupt manner. Whoops, he did it again. Clearance has once again taken the esteem of the court down another notch. The full court will rule eventually, but with this court that’s a crapshoot at best. The full court could rule Graham innocent and order every American to send Lindsey a check for $1.08 for defamation of character.

It’s hard to imagine reaching the pinnacle of success and being the Eddie Gaedel of the Supreme Court. Famous as the 1962 Mets of the Supreme Court. Mentioned in law books only as, “don’t be like that guy!” To be the Kim Kardashian of the Supreme Court. To set the record for most hit batsman in a single inning. To have one of the most serious jobs in the world and yet, not to taken seriously anymore.

Thomas must be living the vapor of his own farts. Living in the cloud of obliviousness to what Americans are beginning to believe about him specifically, and believe about the court in general. There is even talk afoot of impeaching injustice Thomas, but nothing will come of it.

Three strikes and you’re out. Thomas has one more strike. If he pulls another bonehead stunt or violates the cannons of judicial ethics one more time, he might be impeached, but only if the Democratic majorities are large enough. VOTE!

This court is accused of setting itself up as a super legislature and fourth branch of government. The American House of Lords. Steve Bannon goes to jail and Lindsey Graham goes all the way to the Supreme Court. Asking for and getting a special dispensation. For something any other American would be jailed for refusing to do.

Odd these Republican candidates are always talking about election integrity. And here we have a clear-cut case of voter fraud, and the Republicans don’t want to talk about it. They’ll go to the ends of the earth not to talk about it, to the highest court in the land to maintain their silence about it.

Lindsey Graham doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on. He was engaging in criminal activity with the former President. And since Graham made these phone calls at the instruction of Trump, Lindsey knows the real reason why he was making them and so does Clearance.  Strike Two!

“When a child first catches adults out — when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just — his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child’s world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.”
― John Steinbeck