Last week, I traveled to Virginia for a wedding. For history nerds, Virginia is nirvana because it’s literally everywhere, from the story of the country’s birth, to the Civil War, right up to the tragedy at Charlottesville.

As I sat in a hotel eating breakfast, it suddenly occurred to me: “You’re in the cradle of the Confederacy. This would not have been possible, even 50 years ago.”

That quickly was followed by a second thought:

“You are not in the cradle of the Confederacy. You are in America, and this is always how it always should have been.”

I looked across the room at a group of white and Asian teenagers eating and chatting together. I wondered if they had even an inkling of the progress that had been made; if they understand the reason they could even socialize is because America is a nation that moves forward, always forward.

Faulty foundation

America has always been as much an idea as a sovereign country, which means it’s in our national DNA to pursue that which we have not yet achieved.

That we’re still arguing over the merits of Robert E. Lee and the Civil War is absurd because the Confederacy was built on an irredeemably faulty foundation, namely that one human has the right to own another.

It was bound to fail.

The Founders knew it, but were too beholden to the free labor that ensured their personal wealth. They could not summon up the moral courage to press ahead and demand the new nation start out with a clean slate of freedom for everyone. Thomas Jefferson accurately predicted that such reticence would be paid for in blood.

This current romance with a past that never should have been does disservice to the countless Americans who sacrificed for this country, who understood that America has always been a nation of unlimited potential and promise.

They were people of all races, religions and creeds who held fast to the belief that, regardless of our challenges, shortcomings or failures, America’s best days always lay ahead.

For 243 years, we have been the embodiment of hope, progress and opportunity. The only way that changes is if we lose our long-held resolve to be better than we have been.

In quicksand

Forward, always forward.

If we forget that our redemption has always been in our deep-seated desire to make our wrongs right, we will find ourselves casting about in a quicksand of cynicism and despair.

As we all know, the problem and danger of quicksand is you often don’t know you’re in it until it’s too late.

Let’s be clear: We need history. It’s a map, showing us how to move ahead. We need history because, as the saying goes, “past is prologue,” but it’s only useful if we take heed of its warnings and lessons.

If we abandon our belief in the future in order to put a false sheen on an inglorious past, we will suffer the kind of undoing that no enemy ever has been able to achieve.

The wedding, by the way, was performed by Levar Stoney, the mayor of Richmond, the former capital of the Confederate States of America.

Mayor Levar Stoney is black.

Forward, always forward.

Reach Charita M. Goshay at 330-580-8313 or charita.goshay@cantonrep.com.

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: America looks to future, not past

The House Judiciary Committee voted 24-16 to recommend the House hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena seeking an unredacted copy of Robert Mueller’s report. The vote came after President Donald Trump asserted executive privilege to prevent the unredacted report from going to Congress.

Congressional rules empower all committees with the authority to compel witnesses to appear and testify or produce documents for matters being investigated by a Congressional committee.

In 1961, the Supreme Court ruled that a Congressional committee must meet three requirements for a valid enforceable subpoena. First, the committee’s investigation must be authorized by a chamber congress; second, the investigation must pursue “a valid legislative purpose;” and third, the specific inquiries must be pertinent to the subject matter that has been authorized for investigation.

Once the threshold is met, Congress has three options to enforce a subpoena. First, Congress’ inherent contempt power provides constitutional authority to detain and imprison an individual until that person complies with the subpoena. The last time Congress used its inherent contempt powers was in 1934 when the Senate held William MacCracken, a former member of Herbert Hoover’s administration, after he refused a subpoena. According to the Washington Post, the Senate had nowhere to hold MacCracken so he was imprisoned at a hotel.

Second, Congress can pursue a criminal contempt citation through the executive branch seeking criminal prosecution for contempt. This is the most common method used by Congress. The person accused of contempt is charged with a misdemeanor punishable by a fine and up to a year in jail. There are some practical concerns with this option. Where the official refuses to disclose information pursuant to the president’s decision that such information is protected under executive privilege, it is unrealistic that the Department of Justice (DOJ) will pursue a prosecution for criminal contempt. More to the point, under the current facts the DOJ would be asked to prosecute its boss, the attorney general.

Finally, Congress may rely on the courts to enforce a congressional subpoena. Under this option, Congress may seek a civil judgment from a federal court declaring that the individual in question is legally obligated to comply with the congressional subpoena.

A number of obstacles face Congress in any attempt to enforce a subpoena issued to the Attorney General, an executive branch official. Congress may be able to enforce its subpoena through a civil lawsuit; however, relying on this option to enforce a subpoena directed at the attorney general may be inadequate to protect the authority of Congress due to the time required to achieve a final court ruling.

The two most recent court cases seeking to enforce a Congressional subpoena involved former Attorney General Eric Holder in 2012 and former White House counsel Harriet Miers in 2008. According to a 2017 report from the Congressional Research Service, ”(B)oth conflicts ended the same way: The contempt charge was stuck in a court battle for so long that a new president and Congress were elected and new administration officials took office along with them.”

Trump’s blanket claim of executive privilege appears to be an effort to shield Barr from contempt. Essentially, the president is saying the redacted aspects of the report are privileged and Barr cannot turn them over to Congress.

Trump’s efforts parallel Richard Nixon’s unsuccessful effort to prevent his White House Counsel, John Dean, from testifying pursuant to a subpoena from the Watergate special prosecutor.

According to Michael Conway – a former counsel to the House Judiciary Committee – like Nixon, Trump is trying to use an expansive claim of executive privilege to thwart a legitimate Congressional investigation.

Trump seems to be prepared to do as Nixon did in 1973. Conway wrote on the NBC News website, “Nixon predicted that the Senate would question his claim of executive privilege if Dean were required to testify. If that occurred, Nixon said ‘we’ll let it go to the (Supreme) Court. Fight it like hell.’"

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner’s Toll, 2010 was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Contempt of Congress: Where do we go from here?

Most polls show Americans are more severely split and entrenched along partisan lines than ever before. Conservative Republican voters believe Trump was sent by God. Democrats agree, but only because God was out of frogs and locusts. Dems think Republicans were antagonistic to our first African-American president, so they are not being very kind to our first orange one.

We are also divided as much along racial lines, and Democrats’ strategy is to fan the fires of racial division in order to win back the White House in 2020. Absent any workable ideas, calling their opponents “racist” (only if they cannot call them “sexist”) is their stated strategy. Trump cannot sort laundry without being called racist. This contest is all about race, so strap in — it will be an interesting ride.

Sadly, race relations worsened under Obama, a man uniquely positioned to heal our nation’s wounds. But when he quickly took the wrong side of the facts in the Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown (Ferguson, MO “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” lie) and Harvard Professor Henry “Skip” Gates cases, he abdicated that moral position.

Just an admission from a casual observer — porn seems to have much better race relations than America right now. In TV commercials, there also seem to be no black burglars in any home security ad, so we are clearly seeing progress in that space. But fanned by Democrat strategists, the rest of the country seems bitterly divided on race. And when African-Americans refuse to play the “victim” card, to replenish their voter rolls the Dems look to lavishing political favors on illegal aliens in return for their votes.

The Obamas are two of the many blacks doing well under the Trump economy. Barack and Michelle have huge book deals of over $20 million, and are about to ink a Netflix deal to make up to $100 million producing movies and TV shows. I presume some of them will be called “House of the Race Cards,” “Game of Cronies,” or “Orange is Not the New Barack.” And if the Dems lose in 2020, they’ll produce “Better Call Saul – Alinsky.”

Everything seems to be construed about race. The media are now openly debating whether Jesus was white. They say Jesus was darker-skinned and not blue-eyed and white like all my childhood Methodist Bible pictures portrayed Him. Democrats say Jesus was not white because the Roman police would have let Him off with a warning ticket if He had been.

If not about race, Dems want you to believe that women are disadvantaged by their gender. So Dems have Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Tulsi Gabbard, Kirsten Gillibrand, et al running for president. They have more women running than an Alabama Walmart opening on a Black Friday. Yet the leaders in the polls are the “Jurassic Park” faction of Democrat white male millionaires: Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. These men have had so much work done to look young that they resemble their pictures when they were protesting nuclear power in the 70s.

What Democrats miscalculate is that blacks are better aware of how their situations have improved under Trump, when they didn’t under Obama. Wages are up more for blacks than for whites, and employment (including wage increases) has also improved. In the 2018 Florida governor’s race, white candidate DeSantis cut into black candidate Gillum’s Democrat vote with the “School Choice Mom” vote. Eighteen percent of black women voted for DeSantis because of this issue that affects them, which translated to 100,000 votes. DeSantis won by 30,000 votes. The lesson here: Blacks are won over by facts and results on issues they care about, not by conjured-up racial fears of the past.

In fact, all that the Democrats want you not to think about is how good the present is. They want you to fear the racial hatred of the distant past, or fear what might happen to us in the future when we all die from global warming, which they also use to stoke fears. The truth is, by any measure we are living in economically great times. Thanks to capitalism and the technology supplied by the private sector, our lower economic class lives better than the upper 25 percent of most other countries. If Dems can keep your mind focused on fake racial or other drummed-up crises, they can regain power.

The new Democrat Party has a tired laundry list of alleged “racism.” CNN will likely show a picture of Trump putting the Medal of Freedom around Tiger Woods’ neck and say it was a noose when, in fact, this award is the highest honor a man can give a golfing buddy.

Ron Hart is a libertarian op-ed humorist and award-winning author. Contact him at Ron@RonaldHart.com or @RonaldHart on Twitter.

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This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Democrat Strategy: Divide the Country Along Racial Lines, Jettison White Workers

There is so much buzz in this country about criminal justice reform. Much of the focus is on mass incarceration. America puts more people in prison for longer periods of time than nearly every other nation in the world.

Prisons and jails are not pleasant places. They are often dirty, smelly, overheated places filled to capacity with a constant threat of violence. However, as inconceivable as it may seem, some people commit crime hoping to get caught because they want to go to jail.

Some see incarceration as a way to get shelter and food. Others seek jail as a way to get healthcare, or mental health treatment. Some former inmates become institutionalized after a long prison stay and find it easier to cope with the structure of a prison than adjusting to life on the street.

Hidden Homelessness, a survey of more than 400 homeless people by Sheffield Hallam University, in England, revealed the desperate steps taken by the homeless to find shelter. One-in-five homeless people have committed offenses punishable by incarceration just to spend a night in jail away from harsh weather and the dangers of the street.

Correctional facilities in the U.S. are considered the largest provider of mental health services. More people are receiving mental health treatment in prison than in mental health facilities.

When mental health facilities began to close in the 1950s, they weren’t replaced, as promised, with mental health services in the community. As a result, prisons and jails have become de facto mental health facilities. Many people with mental illness have scrapes with the law, intentional and unintentional, and end up incarcerated.

At the same time, the correctional system is struggling to provide constitutionally adequate treatment. At least those in prison are mandated to receive treatment – no such “mandate” exists on the street. Nearly 40 percent of inmates in state and federal prison report having some mental health disorder.

Then there are those who seek to be imprisoned in order to get health care treatment unavailable or unaffordable to them on the street.

A vivid example of “prison in exchange for health care” is Frank Morrocco of Amherst, New York. He was released from prison after serving 20 years on felony drug conspiracy charges, reported the Business Insider.

Unable to afford healthcare for a rare form of leukemia, Morrocco walked into a grocery store, stepped up to the counter, and grabbed about $23 worth of merchandise in front of store employees and walked out the front door.

He was eventually arrested on a shoplifting charge. The charge was a violation of his parole. He was hoping the act would result in returning to prison so that he could get health care treatment unavailable on the street.

What is the state of a nation that has people who seek the comfort of a prison cell as opposed to “freedom?”

Reform advocates are pushing lawmakers across the country to ease the pressure on jails and prisons. Leaders on both ends of the political spectrum want less people in prison. Yet, for some, life is so difficult outside prison walls that they seek the refuge of incarceration.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner’s Toll, 2010 was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Prisons offer an alternative for refuge for some

"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." — P.J. O'Rourke

Beating all expectations, the U.S. economy continued to grow at an exceptional 3.2-percent rate in the first quarter of the year. Unemployment is at an historic low, consumer spending is up, and the stock markets hit new highs. Trump’s success drives limousine liberals nuts. As they spend lavishly for themselves on Rodeo Drive, they yell at their limo drivers that “We must impeach Trump!”

The fundamental thing Trump has done was to unshackle businesses from the economic burdens of the Obama Administration by lowering taxes and reducing regulations. It is a sad day when those who want to produce must get onerous permission to do so from bureaucrats who produce nothing.

Obama and the new Democrats possess economically uninformed socialist views that concentrate power in an overbearing central government. George Bush had a modified bigger government tack that included more wars of choice. Bill Clinton was the last pro-capitalism Democrat. I think Clinton’s economic philosophy went something like: Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day. But teach a man to fish, and while he is out fishing all day, you can slip in and have sex with his wife.

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ Big Government (a.k.a. the AOC/DeBlasio wing of Democrat Party) is based on the circular pick-pocketing of the productive in the name of "fairness." When it runs out of people and businesses whose pockets it can pick, like northern states who chase the rich out, it’s in trouble. Big government politicians are about as concerned about citizens as ticks are about people.

The U.S. government spends our money to make us increasingly dependent on its programs.  Unfunded mandates (which are not Grinder dates where both men forgot their wallet) are not good. Things like the disastrous ObamaCare force states to implement programs without providing funding to run them. With the repeal of the individual mandate, the only buyers of ObamaCare are those who get health insurance free with taxpayer subsidies and those with pre-existing conditions who buy it right before a big hospital bill. Like almost all government programs, ObamaCare is an idiotic disaster.

Generally speaking, in the last 20 years, RINOs have been too cowardly to fight new entitlement bills, and Democrats don’t care what’s in a bill as long as it’s mandatory and they are in charge of it.

Look no further than Boston University econ. major and Democrat economic thought leader “Notorious” AOC. Setting aside the lunacy of how worthless college educations that produce economically illiterate graduates like AOC are now, let’s look at what the bartender-turned-Democrat “thought leader” thinks. She uses precise economic terms when she says she wants to tax those “at the tippy top,” so you know she’s smart.

It seems the model Dems want us to become resembles the dismal economies of North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela. Millennials will eventually learn economic realities, as all generations do. To use another fish economic reference — a minnow is a whale after 15 years of socialism. In Cuba now there are even shortages of beer and condoms; growing up in Maury County, Tennessee we called that “Saturday night.”

Venezuela is only the most recent stark example. In this once rich, oil-producing country, ravaged now by socialist rule, if you throw a bone to a dog there, he has to signal for a fair catch. Socialism has never worked. Hopefully, on the campaign trail old sensible Dems like Joe Biden can talk some economic sense into AOC (maybe if he stands behind her and blows in her ear). But that air might be just a refill for her head.

It is hard for GOP politicians to make the tough economic choices that the country needs. When they do, they are painted as cold-hearted jerks by the Dems and their handlers in the media. It is easier to sell John “Low-IQ” Public on the concept of socialism, free stuff and student loan debt forgiveness.

There is not a problem, both real or imagined, that Democrats don’t think more government and taxes won’t solve. Yet they never do.

If Trump understands one thing, it is business. As we Americans have learned in the first three years of his presidency, from the rains in California that put out wildfires to the Steele Dossier and Trump’s growing economy, the man can make it rain.

Ron Hart is a libertarian op-ed humorist and award-winning author. Contact him at Ron@RonaldHart.com or @RonaldHart on Twitter.

What's your view? Write a letter to the editor.

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Economy reignited; Dems implacable economic foes: Math and Human Behavior

Crestview has that nice small-town feel, with some amenities of a larger city. We have an historic Main Street, shopping centers, good schools, and a low crime rate. To top it off, we are a friendly group of people.

Located close to Duke Field, Hurlburt Field and Eglin Air Force Base, many choose Crestview for its convenience and amenities. Our housing costs are reasonable, which is also a draw. There are over 90 churches available for worship in the Crestview and surrounding areas. There is almost any denomination one would choose.

The town's population was 16,785 in 2004, and in 2019 it is estimated at 23,567, according to the city's website — quite a substantial growth for a small town.

Numerous beautiful parks and recreational opportunities are here for families. It took real vision to plan these parks and community buildings. Seven parks are maintained by the city, and several of them have recreation spaces for soccer, baseball, basketball, football, cheerleading and so forth. There is also a city-maintained community center for large events such as the monthly Chamber of Commerce breakfast, wedding receptions, family reunions, job fairs and so on. A smaller building, Warriors Hall, is available for more intimate gatherings, plays, concerts, public forums and city meetings.

Brian Hughes, the city's public information officer, said in a Feb. 27 media release that crime continued to drop in Crestview in 2018, continuing a trend seen over the last several years.

"The Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s annual Uniform Crime Report [shows a] 26.5 percent drop in violent offenses, and a 19.1 percent drop in property offenses over data for 2017," the release stated in part.

Crestview's new mayor, J.B. Whitten, has announced a new Cultural Series for the city, with the first being a multimedia commemoration of the 75th anniversary of D-Day, according to an April 24 media release.

Also in the works is the idea of beginning a Crestview Community Chorus, which sounds like great fun. Mayor Whitten has lots of great ideas for our city. Area residents may give suggestions for the cultural series by calling 850-682-1650.

Janice Lynn Crose, a former accountant, lives in Crestview with her husband, Jim; her two rescue collies, Shane and Jasmine; and two cats, Kathryn and Prince Valiant.

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Location and amenities among reasons to love Crestview