Vision, Dignity, Achievement Sat, 12 Aug 2023 11:06:36 +0000 en-US hourly 1 /wp-content/uploads/2020/03/2021-NCC-Logo-Site-Favicon-150x150.jpg 32 32 /2017/07/editorial-political-leaders-shouldnt-demand-loyalty/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=editorial-political-leaders-shouldnt-demand-loyalty /2017/07/editorial-political-leaders-shouldnt-demand-loyalty/#respond Sat, 01 Jul 2017 18:35:25 +0000 https://72375d9a61.nxcli.io/?p=10788 Editorial By Monsignor William J. Linder
Former FBI Director James Comey testified that President Trump demanded loyalty and called for an end to the investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s connections to Russia. That’s disturbing.
Since when do we pledge loyalty to a person? Adolf Hitler did that with the German Army. We’re a democratic country here, not fascist. We pledge allegiance to and respect for the country, not an individual leader. That’s ridiculous.
When Trump made his demand for loyalty, Comey said he would give him honesty. That’s a good answer. We ought to get more officials to make that pledge. Instead he got fired.
The sad part about the whole situation is that some members of the Senate accept Trump’s actions as a fact of life. Demanding loyalty from the director of the FBI is not OK. The head of the FBI reports to the attorney general, not the president. And that person is responsible for overseeing investigations into violations of federal law, which could include investigating the president.
After all, the FBI discovered the connection between President Nixon’s campaign and the men who broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters. That led to the Watergate scandal and Nixon’s resignation.
Trump kept talking about possible tapes of his conversations with Comey, but then tweeted he didn’t record those talks. If tapes did exist, then this whole dispute between the two would be over.
Comey said he was worried Trump would lie about their conversations, so he documented the interactions – something he never did with President Obama.
During his testimony, Comey admitted leaking that information to the press. He gave notes he took about his meetings with Trump to a friend, a Columbia Law School professor, to hand over to the media.
Trump is angry that Comey released information about their private interactions and his lawyer plans to file a complaint with the Department of Justice. But a conversation with the president isn’t classified. It seems anything the administration doesn’t want people to know about gets classified.
There are too many classified documents. We need to be more open. We can’t classify everything as state secrets. The people have a right to information unless its release is going to cause harm.
I haven’t met a political leader that I would give allegiance to like I would my country. And Trump certainly isn’t someone I would pledge loyalty to. I’m glad Comey stood his ground. He may be out of a job, but he did the right thing.

]]> /2017/07/editorial-political-leaders-shouldnt-demand-loyalty/feed/ 0 /2017/03/editorial-trump-and-the-media/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=editorial-trump-and-the-media /2017/03/editorial-trump-and-the-media/#respond Wed, 01 Mar 2017 19:16:41 +0000 https://72375d9a61.nxcli.io/?p=10778 Editorial By Monsignor William J. Linder
President Donald Trump is back at his old antics.
Roughly after a month on the job, the President held a campaign-style rally because he said he wanted to speak directly to the people with his unfiltered message. Two days earlier, President Trump held a press conference at the White House where he stood up and painted the American news media as being “out of control.”
Let’s be clear on this point. The news media is the one that’s acting “out of control”?
During the campaign, then candidate Trump spouted off incendiary comments and sparred with the media, which were two guaranteed ways to garner lots of coverage. Remember, for this former reality television show host, any coverage is good coverage.
That is except if you’re talking about damaging internal leaks.
President Trump railed against the intelligence community for leaking information that ultimately caused Gen. Michael Flynn to get the boot as national security advisor, and similarly harangued the news media for reporting on the details released.
High level leaks are a gravely serious issue and should be dealt with. Even more so is the fact that the president appears to be at war with his own government’s intelligence-gathering agencies by labeling their actions as criminal and illegal. But I am also disturbed by the fact that President Trump sat for two weeks on information that raised concerns of whether Flynn had in fact lied. Action forcing Flynn to resign only came after the leaks became public knowledge and were reported by the media.
President Trump certainly threw Vice President Pence out in the cold, when Pence had to read for himself in news reports that Flynn had misled him regarding communications with Russia’s ambassador.
The firing of Flynn and the intelligence leaks that prompted his sudden departure further highlight a disturbing theme that has become deeply woven into the Trump administration’s narrative: its relationship with Russia.
And that’s the rub. The sound and fury generated by the Trump administration thus far, by rabidly attacking media outlets, has only served as a distraction from much more serious issues at hand.
What Flynn said to the Russian ambassador is still under investigation by the House Intelligence Committee.

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