Press here

When convicted felon president Donald Trump denied White House access nearly a week ago to journalists from CNN, MS NOW and Politico, claiming that those news organizations only reported negative news from the White House, I wasn't particularly surprised.

Nor was I surprised when he seemingly defied a judge – District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump-appointed judge – ruled that the affected organizations had to have their access reinstated for at least 14 days as their legal challenge continued to turn.

Access was eventually restored Thursday afternoon by the temporary restraining order.

You knew it would be. Trump's endless quarrel with the media – particularly those outlets he considers to be left leaning and progenitors of a made-up term he labels "fake news", as an assault on the First Amendment. You know, the amendment that guarantees freedom of the press. It's why it's the very first amendment to the Constitution. It's first for a reason.

It's first because it's designed to provide accountability as a check to a president's questionable actions – like starting illegal wars, or illegally raising tariffs, or illegally denying due process. Stuff like that.

But what do you expect from a felon president who was granted almost total immunity for his actions by an obviously corrupt Supreme Court? What do you expect from a Republican-controlled Congress that has basically surrendered its first-branch-of-government (Article I) power and authority to the convicted felon president with hardly a whimper?

How does a convicted felon remain as president in a democracy?

I think the thing that surprises me the most is the support that Trump is receiving not only from the party-line Court, but from a segment of the electorate that tends to agree with his assessment of the media – that it creates fake news.

There's no such thing as fake news, just like there's no such thing as a deep state. Those are simply labels created by a paranoid government that feels as if its power is being threatened. Those that believe the government in power are called the base.

So who do you believe when you get your news? The main stream media? Podcasters? Bloggers? The government? Those who align with your own perceptions?

It's a tough call.

I spent my career in newspaper journalism and in my experience the professionals with whom I worked went out of their way to provide the truth. The thing is, what is the truth? Who perceives what truth is? Who defines what truth is? How is truth influenced by life experiences? Is truth even obvious? Is truth founded on evidence?

For me, truth is molded by my upbringing, by my values, by my logic, by my sense of what feels right and what feels wrong. That's what I rely on to determine what is true and what is conspiracy theory.

It's why I believe in vaccines. It's why I believe in the law. It's why I believe in the Constitution. It's why I believe what I see by my very eyes and ears.

It's why I don't believe in a convicted felon. 

 

 

Another class reunion

The last time I heard somebody ask me to sign their high school yearbook was 57 years ago, but then, that's the kind of life I've lived. You know, the kind filled with oddball change-ups and unpredictable curves that you never really see coming. The kind that just kiss the corner of the plate and the ump cries out "Steee-rike!"

Linda Radle, myself, and Hannah Pennewell

 So here was Linda Radle. We weren't particularly close back in our high school days – basically just anonymous students passing each other in the hallways – but I think she somehow recognized me by my name tag. We struck up a friendly conversation, with me pointing out that I actually didn't graduate with her class because we moved away in my senior year.

Then, out of nowhere, it seemed, she whipped out her class of 1969 yearbook. "Will you sign this, please?"

I was taken aback. Then humbled.

"Just sign it in the space here on the page where your picture would have been," she suggested.

I don't know if it's because I've reached a certain age, or what, but it's moments like this that tend to make me misty eyed. All my hearts fall off my sleeve like autumn leaves.

So I wrote, as best as I can remember, "Linda, it only took me 57 years, but I finally got to sign your yearbook." I think I added another clever sentence or two, then signed it, "In renewed friendship, Bruce Wehrle." She seemed pleased.

Bruce Buratti and myself

 This reunion was going to be different than any I'd been to previously. This time, the organizers combined the Southern Lehigh classes of 1966, 1967, 1968 and 1969 because, you know, we're dying off now. It's not that easy to coax people to come to that little school that lies in the shadow of Allentown,  PA, especially as we get older and driving becomes a little more problematical. But I thought it was a brilliant move, since most of us also had friends in classes other than our own and whom we hadn't seen for years. Plus, the event was being held over two days, with a casual picnic lunch on Friday and a more formal catered luncheon at a local college on Saturday.

This gave me a chance to meet up with Bruce Buratti. He and I were teammates on the Solehi cross country team. He was a year ahead of me in school.

He recognized me immediately and we started reminiscing from the get-go. Here's an interesting tidbit: we're two guys named Bruce who ran for the same cross country team in high school, and then went on to spend their entire professional careers as sports writers. To top it off, both of us were inducted into our respective county sports halls of fame. What are the odds?

I spent so much of my Friday talking with Bruce that I actually missed having my group picture with the present members of the class of 1969. No matter. We could try again Saturday. Except that when the call came Saturday for another class picture, I was off somewhere talking with Bruce. Again.

Steee-rike!  

Morag, myself and Kim

Reunions can be hardest on spouses because they don't know anybody there and I kind of wondered how Kim would navigate her way through this – especially for two days, 500 miles from home. It's not as if she could hop in the car and drive off (Well, she could have, I guess. She has her own keys to the car. But that would have been a totally different story).

Anyway, in one of those moments when Kim was alone in a room full of strangers, a woman named Christie Davies (Class of '68) approached her and asked about her. Who was she? What class was she in? Kim explained that she was married to me, but Christie had no clue who I was. We never crossed paths in school.

A bit later, Kim told me about this nice woman who made her feel comfortable and she pointed her out to me. I went up to Christie, showed her my name tag, and thanked her for talking to my wife. Christie was friendly, outgoing and funny. We talked for a few more minutes. And just like that, I had made a new friend from out of the reunion ether.

And then there's Morag. You might remember that I've written about Morag Christie-Churm before. She and I met as teenagers in the summer of 1967 when we both had summer jobs at the community swimming pool and, well, the friendship that started then has now spanned seven decades. It's one of those tasty change-ups that you never expect. Whenever Kim and I head north, Morag (Class of '68) graciously offers us a place to stay for a couple of days, without fail.

Damn. There goes another heart off my sleeve.

Morag was more or less the ramrod behind this reunion, serving as coordinator, accountant, proofreader, ass kicker and whatever else it took to put something like a two-day reunion together. Plans are already in the works for another reunion in three years, which would make it my 60th. 

There were others I remembered: Hannah Pennewell, who represented the Class of '69 on the reunion committee; Tom Schaeffer, the class president; Duane Wetzel; Ed Alosi; Linda Yost; Arthur Urffer, and Glen High, to name a few. 

I have to say, for a bunch of septuagenarians, the folks in the four classes looked pretty good. Healthy. Sharp. Glad to be in each other's shared company. Humbled to be shaped, in part, by the high school that brought us together.

For sure. See you in three years. 

Modeling my new T-shirt

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Voting rights

If you ask me (and I know you didn't, but here goes anyway), the right to vote is the most sacred of our American freedoms.

It's the lubricant of our democracy. In a world full of despots, parliaments, oligarchies, theocracies, anarchists and communists, our 250 years of free and fair elections are, I believe, what most clearly defines us as Americans.

So why is there an assault on our right to vote? Why is the Voting Rights Act being decimated by the Supreme Court? When the American vision should be welcoming all of its citizens to vote, why are limitations being imposed on who and where we can vote?

Why, for crying out loud, did officials in Tarrant County, TX – the third largest county in the state, which includes Fort Worth – approve a plan on Tuesday to reduce the number of polling locations by 92 for the rapidly approaching midterm elections?

It might be an easy guess. The Tarrant County Commissioners, in a party-line 3-2 vote decided by three Republicans, reduced the number of polling locations from 316 to 224.  Fewer polling stations is expected to cut down the number of potential voters – and thus the number of Democrats who show up in steadily growing purple Tarrant County.

Most appallingly, the polling stations at the University of Texas-Arlington and Tarrant County College have been dropped, denying students an easy opportunity to vote. That's what this is really about – access to the ballot. Fewer voting locations usually means it's more difficult for older voters, rural voters or students – to arrive and exercise their franchise.

For a Republican Party that is in (desperate) fear of losing majorities in both the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate in the midterms, restricting voting locations and attempting to explain that there are still plenty of places to vote is absurd. It's all about control.

The excessively corrupt Trump Administration has been whining about rigged elections for more than a decade now without any evidence, even though he has won two presidential elections. This whining is nothing more than pre-planned fear-mongering (think Project 2025) and red meat for the MAGA base, even though numerous studies and investigations have shown that elections have been overwhelmingly free and fair.

The Brennan Center think tank published a report years ago, "The Truth About Voter Fraud", and found that most incidents of fraud are traceable to other sources, like clerical errors or poor data matching processes. Consequently, the Brennan Center concluded that incident rates of fraud measure between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent.

The Brennan Center wrote than an American more likely "will be struck by lightning than he will impersonate another voter at the polls."

In another study by the bi-partisan Brookings Institute, election data from the conservative Heritage Foundation found that voter fraud measures less than 1 percent over the last 38 years. In other words, no election was altered by voter fraud over those years. Imagine that.

When Trump complained about the "rigged" 2020 election, Trump's then-Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the Department of Homeland Security, Christoper Krebs, declared the elections were the most secure in American history. He was fired by Trump days after the election.  

Early voting begins in North Carolina on Oct. 15 and the midterm election will be held nationally on Nov. 3, only 57 days from now.

To this point, the only attempted tampering with our elections seems to have come from Trump himself.

Our right to vote is under attack. It's being assaulted by gerrymandered districts. It's being assaulted by Supreme Court decisions that have dismantled Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. It's being placed in doubt by the repeated unsubstantiated lies of an astoundingly failed president.

Exercise your franchise to vote. Get to the polls the best way you know how. And vote.