Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.

President Joe Biden’s recent pardon of his son Hunter Biden has reignited the debate over the presidential pardoning power. And argument over this constitutionally protected prerogative of the president will not go away with Donald Trump’s return to power next month. Trump already has used the pardoning power for the benefit of his political cronies during his first term (2017-2021).

Biden is reportedly mulling whether he should go further in light of Trump’s threats to bring charges against some of his political enemies after he returns to office in 2025. In light of those threats, Biden is reportedly considering preemptive pardons for former U.S. Representative Liz Cheney, former Representative and now Senator Adam Schiff, former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci, and General Mark Milley, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.

Congress finally got it together.

Overruling a few outspoken far-right Republican members, on April 20 the U.S. House belatedly approved crucial aid for nations and peoples that desperately need it.
 The wide vote margins reflected bipartisan support for all three measures. Here are the numbers:

Jack Posobiec speaks at the Turning Point Action Conference in West Palm Beach, Florida on July 16, 2023. Photo by Gage Skidmore, available via Wikimedia Commons.

Jim Nelson is a retired Montana Supreme Court justice.

It has been said that: “When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and waving the cross.”

Early signs are visible in the U.S. right now. For example, at the Conservative Political Action Convention’s recent annual meeting, right-wing conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec proclaimed during a panel discussion, “I just wanted to say, welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on January 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it and replace it with this right here.”

Posobiec then held up a Christian cross on his necklace, adding, “That’s right, because all glory, all glory is not to government, all glory is to God.”

President Donald Trump poses with a Bible outside St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington on June 1, 2020. Official White House photo by Shealah Craighead.

Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

For openers, please consider two quotes from centuries ago. They are relevant to today’s politics, and in particular to former President Donald Trump and his supporters among those the news media call “the evangelical right.”

The first quote is from 1792, when then Secretary of the Treasury and founding father Alexander Hamilton warned of the risks inherent in a democracy:

Dan Piller was a business reporter for more than four decades, working for the Des Moines Register and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He covered the oil and gas industry while in Texas and was the Register’s agriculture reporter before his retirement in 2013. He lives in Ankeny.

Senator John F. Kennedy rose to a lectern at the Rice Hotel in Houston on September 12, 1960 to face the toughest audience of his presidential campaign; a roomful of Southern Baptist ministers who reflected the longstanding antipathy of the evangelicals toward Kennedy’s Roman Catholic religion.

JFK was just the second Roman Catholic nominee of a major political party, and older Americans remembered the fate of the first. New York Governor Al Smith lost to the lackluster Herbert Hoover in 1928, amidst charges that Smith’s Catholicism would put him—and the nation—under the control of the Pope in Rome.

If Kennedy didn’t win over the skeptical Texans, his sixteen-minute address at least neutralized their hostility by avowing his support for the longstanding doctrine of separation of church and state.