We’re getting a double-blow over just how split our society has become

Guilty, to the second degree

Perhaps it was all-too-appropriate that Friday in Chicago was a cloudy overcast day with a chill in the air and soggy sopping wet. In short, a miserable day that perfectly reflected the miserable events that reflect the social split that our society faces these days.

Friday was the day that a jury in Cook County came back with a guilty (of sorts) verdict against Jason Van Dyke – the Chicago police officer who faced criminal charges related to the shooting death four years ago of a teenager.

Will Kavanaugh receive the ultimate prize?

ALTHOUGH THERE ARE those who want to see the case of nothing more than a white man with legal authority using it to kill a young black man.

That is a case where the legal outcome is going to manage to offend just about everybody – and not just those people who live in Chicago. Some of us were all too eager to see a cop go down to defeat, while others will see anything that doesn’t coddle a cop as evidence of our society gone awry.

As if this isn’t enough to leave people p-o’ed, we’re going to get a similar response either Saturday or Sunday from Capitol Hill in Washington. At about the same time that a Cook County jury neared completion of its two days of deliberations Friday, the U.S. Senate took a procedural vote that narrowly (51 to 49) voted to advance the process for filling a vacancy on the Supreme Court of the United States.

The scene is now set for a final vote possibly Saturday (although I’ve heard reports of at least one senator being unable to attend that day because his daughter is scheduled to get married – and he’s not about to miss that big event!).

WHICH MEANS THE split at the federal level between people who think Brett Kavanaugh is unfit to serve on the nation’s high court and those who want to think he’s being attacked by (as they insist on viewing it) hysterical broads making stories up is going to get those same people all riled up.

Police conduct itself on trial in some minds

Things are looking more and more like the Senate WILL go ahead and confirm President Donald Trump’s appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to serve on the Supreme Court (which is a life-time political appointment).

There will be people who will feel that the legitimate concerns of women are being ignored because Republican officials are eager for a politically-partisan victory. Some of them may well be the same people who think there had to be a “guilty” verdict against Jason Van Dyke, or else a miscarriage of justice will have occurred.

PERSONALLY, I BRACED myself mentally some time ago for the concept that Van Dyke would NOT get whacked with “GUILTY!!!!” on every single criminal charge – which is an outcome some people think is the only appropriate one. Although the ruling of guilty of second-degree murder, combined with all those convictions of aggravated battery, could be seen as a way of appeasing all while satisfying none.

So while I know Van Dyke’s family has said they wouldn't be surprised if he’s found guilty of something because they feel like political people want that outcome to appease the public, I seriously expect people are going to be upset for a long, long time regardless of what happened Friday.

It may well be a double-whammy for some if the U.S. Senate gives Kavanaugh their support.

While I’m also sure there is a segment of society that will be totally pleased with such outcomes. We are, after all, living in the Age of Trump – in which a right-wing element wants to think they’re taking over again and erasing all the deluded, liberal attitudes they want to believe have corrupted us.

OF COURSE, WE could get the societal split, so to speak.

Does it all come down to Donald Trump?

What with Kavanaugh getting confirmation of his appointment, but Van Dyke getting some sort of verdict that turns him from a law enforcement officer to a convict, of sorts.

I’m sure the right-wing ideologues will have fantasies of their own, in which a right-leaning Supreme Court ultimately has an opportunity to rule on an appeal filed on Van Dyke’s behalf. Would an “Age of Trump” court be sympathetic?

And are the news happenings of this weekend leading into the Columbus Day holiday  (a holiday whose very existence offends some people) going to be the cause of countless protests – which were already up-and-running Friday even before a verdict was announced – that will take place for many years to come?

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Picking a federal prosecutor is a political process, no doubt about it

It seems the first steps have been taking toward picking a new U.S. attorney for Chicago; the Chicago Sun-Times reported that names of recommended appointees were sent recently to President Donald J. Trump for his consideration.
 

TRUMP: On verge of picking new U.S. attorney

The president gets to pick who he wants, but usually seeks the advice of the local members of Congress from the state in which the appointee will serve.

WHICH IS WHY Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., the senior-most member of the Republican portion of Illinois’ congressional delegation, took it upon himself to make recommendations – who now will be reviewed by the president’s advisors so as to make sure that Shimkus hasn’t picked a legal dud or two.

Of course, the process is complicated by partisan politics – the great headache-inducer that manages to interfere with the process of “the people’s business.”

Because the president usually defers to a state’s Senate delegation in seeking recommendations. But we in Illinois have chosen Democrats to serve as our senators.

And undermining any influence Democrats may have is kind of the whole point of this Age of Trump that we’re now in.

SHIMKUS, AN OTHERWISE obscure member of Congress from the Illinois-based suburbs of St. Louis, certainly wasn’t going to care what either Richard Durbin or Tammy Duckworth thought.

Although the realities of the political process are that Senate rules exist that would allow either Durbin or Duckworth, if not both combined, to thwart the appointment process. Not that they’ll get any say in who gets the position, but they will have the authority to totally gum up the works.

SHIMKUS: Sent names to president

Which is why, as the Sun-Times reports, the president’s staff has reached out to Durbin to indicate it understands the rules that would permit Durbin, as a Senate judiciary committee member, to have some say over an attorney serving in his home state.

Could it be that our president, who during his first four-or-so months in office has shown much contempt for the process of government, is finally catching on?

OR AT THE very least doesn’t want something as basic as appointing federal prosecutors to various districts across the nation – including northern Illinois – to become a convoluted mess?

DURBIN: Can make GOP life miserable

Because Trump is the one who made the big spectacle of terminating the employment of all the chief federal prosecutors who had been appointed by Barack Obama – thereby leaving the offices in the hands of interim staffers who aren’t expected to last for the long-term.

Even Trump realizes how incompetent he’d appear to be if he couldn’t come up with permanent replacements. The real question is how uncomfortable will Trumpites be in having to acknowledge Democratic Party control or influence of even this minor magnitude.

I’m sure that Shimkus considered it a significant advancement to his influence on Capitol Hill that HE would get to make the recommendations and would get to ignore the thoughts of senior-most officials because of politically partisan concerns.

WILL HE, AND other Republicans, consider it some sort of blow to their political partisanship that the president winds up having to contemplate what the other side, in the form of Durbin, thinks after all?

 

DUCKWORTH: Likely to have a say too

And what happens if it turns out that the recommendations picked by Shimkus wind up being found too incompetent, or unqualified, for whatever reason to warrant the president signing off and picking those individuals in his name?

I’ve always thought the only way that Trump could seriously face the threat of impeachment and removal from office (regardless of the new Morning Consult poll that shows 54 percent of people believing Trump is unfit for office and 43 percent thinking he already has committed an impeachable offense) is if he were to actually behave in a conciliatory manner toward more-progressive interests in our society. The concept of a buffoon who eagerly dumps all over non-ideologue Republicans is exactly what GOP officials who have the majority in Congress desire.

So could naming the replacement for Zachary Fardon and 45 other U.S. attorneys wind up being an act that causes Trump so much of a political headache he’ll be wondering just why he was foolish enough to ever want to be president in the first place.

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It’s nice to see how common the idea of females in government has become

I didn’t realize what I was doing until after I cast my ballot at an early voting center for next week’s primary election – I picked women for the nominations for the three government posts that have serious challengers.

DUCKWORTH: Send her to Senate

As I previously wrote, I finally overcame my reluctance to get enthused about the Hillary R. Clinton presidential dreams enough to vote for her.

WHILE ALSO GIVING my support in the U.S. Senate primary to Tammy Duckworth to challenge Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., in the November general election. And also casting a primary vote for Anita Alvarez to keep her political post for Cook County state’s attorney.

Not that it was some sort of unique pick – in the state’s attorney Democratic primary, all of the choices were women. I’m sure there already will be people ready to lambast me for not preferring Kim Foxx or Donna More for the post.

While for the U.S. Senate, I could also have considered Andrea Zopp. Only Hillary didn’t have other women running against her, and I just couldn’t seriously think of  casting a ballot for Willie Wilson – he of the failed mayoral bid and likely to be equally unsuccessful for president next Tuesday.

But it feels like evidence of the continued evolution of our political structure that the three political posts for which there were serious choices to make (all of the others in my South Side district were people running unopposed, or just against token challengers) wound up producing so many female challengers.

NOW I KNOW there probably will be some people who won’t want to acknowledge this as anything significant. Perhaps they want to believe gender shouldn’t be a factor.

Although I’d argue it is people who think that way who truly are the problem. Because it’s as though they fantasize about a day when women don’t get elected any longer and we can go back to the days of all-male officials who don’t have to take into account the concerns of other types of people.

ALVAREZ: Not perfect, but who is?

In short, the people who are the bulk of the voters who have given Republican Donald Trump many of his primary election and caucus victories thus far.

We aren’t anywhere near the point where gender (or ethnicity or race) isn’t relevant. So I find it worth noting that my own ballot wound up producing so many potential female nominees for the Democratic ballot.

THEN AGAIN, I’M also not young enough to be of an age that would think the presence of women in government is routine.

I was in high school back when Jane Byrne won the Chicago mayoral election – the one we now regard as largely a fluke of the weather and a government official’s inability to control the situation.

CLINTON: Can she trump Trump?

While my first ballot cast in the 1984 election cycle was the one that gave us Geraldine Ferraro as a vice-presidential candidate (a move we now remember as presidential hopeful Walter Mondale’s act of desperation in his failed bid to defeat incumbent Ronald Reagan.

Even as recently as the 1998 election cycle when Illinois got its first female lieutenant governor (remember Corinne Wood?), many political-watchers joked that the accomplishment was only achieved because she ran against Mary Lou Kearns for the Democrats.

SO BEING ABLE to so easily cast a ballot with such a strong female presence felt, to me, like something significant – and perhaps a blow against those voters who probably think they’re saving us from “those broads” when they vote against them.

Honestly, I think I picked the best candidates on the Democratic ballot (although I expect serious challenges to my choice for state’s attorney), even though I’ll admit that when it comes to all of those judicial candidates, sometimes I’ll deliberately vote for the female.

Just to counter the people who seriously think it makes sense to vote for anyone with an “O’” or a “Mc” or anything else Irish-sounding who happens to appear on their ballot.

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