August 27, 2018:

 

8/27/18: The sun rises over the nation’s capital. Across the city, flags are raised and then lowered to half-staff. Sen. John McCain, who passed away Saturday, is being honored. Flags are lower at the Washington Monument, at Arlington Cemetery, at the Vietnam Memorial and on Capitol Hill. Observers note that flags over the White House are not at half-staff. Donald J. Trump, the most emotionally stunted man ever to hold America’s highest office, has balked. He does not care to honor the hero who spent five-and-a-half years in a North Vietnamese prison. 

Where was Trump during those years (1967-1973) when McCain was being tortured? The future president was nursing sore feet (which kept him out of the draft) on the ski slopes at Aspen. 

The president is up and tweeting early, however. He has kind words for...Jim Brown. Brown is a former star fullback of the Cleveland Browns. Trump thanks him for his “wonderful words and support.” 

Brown is not a war hero. He did, however, once spend a day in jail and pay a $500 fine for choking a golf partner. 

No one tortured him. 

Trump also compliments…Tiger Woods…because the famous golfer wouldn’t criticize him when reporters asked him for an opinion. Trump says Woods “is very smart.” 

Woods is not a war hero. But he once “suffered” in jail, too, after pulling his sports car halfway off the side of the road and passing out, partly because he had a cocktail of banned substances in his bloodstream. Also, like Trump, as a husband he proved to be a serial philanderer.

 

Veterans’ groups are quick to catch the slight to McCain. A storm of criticism gathers. The commander of the American Legion issues a statement: “On behalf of the American Legion’s two million wartime veterans, I strongly urge you to make an appropriate presidential proclamation noting Senator McCain’s death and legacy of service to our nation, and that our nation’s flag be half-staffed through his interment.” 

Leaders of the AMVETS, a group which represents 20 million veterans, blast the president. “It’s outrageous that the White House would mark American hero John McCain’s death with a two-sentence tweet, making no mention of his heroic and inspiring life,” says National Executive Director Joe Chenelly. 

The president suddenly backs down like the abject coward he has always been and always will be. Down goes the flag over the White House. After refusing for days to do so, Trump issues a statement in McCain’s honor, noting, “I respect Senator John McCain’s service to our country.” 

(We know he really doesn’t.)

 

* 

IN OTHER NEWS, involving the freedoms McCain fought to protect, a panel of federal judges rules that North Carolina’s existing congressional districting map is unconstitutional. That is, it was drawn in so partisan a fashion as to violate the rule of “one man, one vote,” under the law. Currently, Republicans, who drew the map, hold 10 of the state’s 13 seats in Congress. 

This is the third time the courts have ordered the legislature to redo the map.

The 2016 map wasn't quite so obvious in its intent; but it worked just the same way.

 

Unfortunately, the map they came up with for 2016, while it looks better than the 2014 version which judges tossed, allowed Republicans to poll 2.4 million votes vs. 2.1 million for Democrats and still gain 10 of 13 seats. This result was aided greatly by packing tens of thousands of extra Democratic votes into three districts, the First, Fourth and Thirteenth. As a result, for every 700,000 Democratic voters in North Carolina you have one member in Congress. For Republicans, the number is one for every 240,000.

 

How was such a wondrous result achieved? GOP state lawmaker David Lewis, who chaired the redistricting effort that led to the 2016 map, admitted in court: “I acknowledge freely that this would be a political gerrymander, which is not against the law. I think electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats. So I drew this map to help foster what I think is better for the country.”

 

Rep. Lewis didn’t much care whether or not North Carolinians got representatives they preferred. (See: 12/4/18.)

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE: In May 2019, Ohio becomes the fifth state to have its district maps thrown out by federal judges, on the grounds they are unconstitutionally gerrymandered. The state joins North Carolina, Michigan, and Wisconsin among states whose maps, according to the courts, are gerrymandered unconstitutionally. Democrats get the blame for gerrymandering the fifth state, Maryland. 

Congressional District 4, and others, make zero sense.