Donald Trump, currently arguing on appeal that the First Amendment protected his right to incite the Jan. 6 mob, simultaneously claims the First Amendment does not protect a comedian’s right to insult him.
The Haake Take
Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are published in Alternet, Chicago Tribune, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.
With all the ruin emanating from the Oval Office on a daily basis, it’s easy to fall into quiet despair. Following the news feels like monitoring a malignant tumor as it spreads outward from the epicenter of the free world, jumping oceans, URLs, and psyches, threatening the globe on macro and micro levels simultaneously. Only this sickness, this decidedly opportunistic cancer, has never been seen before. Certainly this level of rot has not been diagnosed in our 250-year history.
Trump’s domestic agenda is so dystopian it’s hard to believe. Unleashing masked goons onto U.S. streets, building concentration camps, punishing the media, threatening judges, and labeling critics “enemies of the state” all vie for his most Hitlerian maneuvers.
Trump’s Armageddon insanity in Iran reminds me of an old funny-not-funny joke:
The First Amendment prohibits the government from endorsing religion. As it evolved from Constitutional text into the canons of case law, that prohibition has protected the plurality for over 250 years by heeding our founders’ warnings to keep church and state separate.
As the price of oil explodes, Trump is doing everything he can to kill cheap energy alternatives. The administration just announced that the U.S. is paying one billion dollars to a French company, TotalEnergies, to cancel wind farm projects already underway, in exchange for new investments in oil and gas.
After WWII showcased the horrors of unchecked aggression, “War Departments” around the civilized world became “Departments of Defense.” Following the deaths of 60 million people, leaders of democratic-led nations embraced a shift from offensive victory to integrated deterrence and unified defense.
Trump’s aggression in Iran keeps triggering feelings I’d rather not have — complicated, overwhelming, and, at times, conflicting.
When church and state overlap, brutality follows, and justice bends with the whip. Blurred lines between religion and government produced the Spanish Inquisition, Salem witch trials, the Crusades, the Huguenot persecutions, and the brutality campaigns of the Holy Roman Empire, to list an easy few, all featuring sadism, torture, and bloodlust in the name of religion.
I’m usually glued to the TV when a president, sitting justices, and members of Congress come together in one room — separate branches in one hallowed space, a time capsule played forward from men in powdered wigs.
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