On October 1, 2019, a Dallas jury returned a verdict of “guilty” in the mistaken identity shooting case of Officer Amber Guyger, who killed her apartment complex neighbor in 2018. Off duty after a grueling 13 hour shift, Officer Guyger entered what she thought was her own apartment, actually one floor below, only to find Botham Jean, her black 26-year-old neighbor, sitting on the couch eating ice cream.
Naturally, she shot him.
Karma can be defined as the results of our actions – what we put out, comes back to us in some linked form. It is the metaphysical equivalent of Newtonian cause and effect – every action has a related reaction. It has been said that the wheel of justice grinds slowly, but exceedingly fine. Karma is intimately related to justice in that it has a component of impartial equilibrium and in time, invariably brings us what we deserve, based on our prior behaviors. Also related is Nemesis, divine retribution, an equalizing force which rectifies the balance and resets the counters of karma.
At 5:04 PM EDT on Tuesday, 24 September 2019, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, fresh from a Democratic Caucus meeting, stood before the nation and announced that the US Congress was beginning formal impeachment investigations against Donald J. Trump. Critical mass had been building for this step in the caucus for a week, since the revelations of Trump’s outrageous breech of ethics, convention and quite possibly laws, in requesting aid from a foreign government in his 2020 US presidential reelection.
Perhaps more surprising, Mitch McConnell supported a unanimous nonbinding resolution in the Senate requiring the White House to release the full report logged by a national security whistleblower concerning Trump’s interactions with the Ukrainian president. Has the worm truly turned?
An emerging story casts further light on the Trump administration’s freewheeling, Mafia-style transactional interactions with foreign governments and its rampant stonewalling of congressional oversight. On August 12, 2019 a whistleblower from the U.S. intelligence community filed a complaint with the Inspector General that alleged some kind of wrongdoing at high levels of the U.S. government. The complaint was marked “urgent concern”, an unusual designation requiring immediate action, but the complaint hasn’t been made public, nor has it been shared with Congress, in direct contravention of the law.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is perhaps one of the most disliked, and most effective, politicians in the country. First elected in 1984 in a squeaker election which he won by less than one percent, McConnell has won reelection five times, and faces another race in 2020. He was tapped to replace outgoing Senate Minority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) in 2006, and became Majority Leader when Republicans took over the Senate in 2015.
The self-styled “Grim Reaper” of the Senate, Mitch McConnell is where legislation goes to die. Through a combination of stonewalling, pigheadedness, and obscure parliamentary tactics, McConnell has done his level best to frustrate Democratic administrations and agendas for decades.
Former Vice President and current Democratic presidential nominee frontrunner Joe Biden is often credited with having an authentic, “folksy” style, especially when interacting with individuals who have suffered great personal tragedy or loss. There’s a reason for this: when it comes to suffering and loss, Biden has a lifetime of experience.
Just after winning his first Senate race in 1972, Biden lost his first wife and their infant daughter in a devastating car crash, which also severely injured their two sons. Biden was in fact sworn in for his Senate seat at his sons’ bedside in the hospital. Forty-three years later, the Grim Reaper picked up where he left off, and claimed one of those boys, Biden’s eldest son Beau, who lost a two-year battle with brain cancer.