“What Matters Now”
Especially If You’re A White Male
By Ken Hare
Chicago Defender Staff Writer
Despite centuries of established rules and orders especially when it comes to the Constitution of the United States of America; changing the rules in the middle of the game seems to be the order of the day, especially if you’re a white male.Â
                                            Rahm Emanuel
Take, for example, Rahm Emanuel’s suspension of Chicago’s city rules governing the process of selecting its police superintendent which have been in place since 1960. At the Mayor’s request, all 50 City Council members agreed to a “one-time” suspension of the rules and unanimously voted to hire Eddie Johnson as Chicago’s next Police Chief.
Eddie Johnson never applied for the position nor was he ever properly vetted and his background appears to have been covered up according to an investigative piece about to be released by the Chicago Defender.                                      Donald Trump
The Electoral College has been in existence since 1787. The electoral process has been that the candidate with the required delegates going into the convention becomes the party nominee. Donald Trump, who is the front-runner in the Republican party is expected to fall short of the required 1,237 delegates. Nevertheless, he is feverishly working behind the scenes to change the rules to whoever has the most delegates instead of the required delegates should get the nomination.
In fact, Trump has even threatened that if he doesn’t win the Republican party nomination, there will be riots in America, he stated to the press.
             U.S. Senate Republicans
In a never before, unprecedented move, U.S. Senate Republicans are refusing to hold hearings for Obama’s choice for the U.S. Supreme Court. In defiance of protocols that have been in place since 1955, Republicans have stonewalled Obama’s choice for the high court, Merrick Garland, who is considered a moderate by some.
The American Constitutional Society, in an open letter to the President and to the U.S. Senate, stated that it would be “unprecedented” for the Senate to fail to consider a Supreme Court nominee, and “would leave a vacancy that would undermine the ability of the Supreme Court to carry out its constitutional duties.” The signatories wrote: “the Senate’s constitutional duty to ‘advise and consent’—the process that has come to include hearings, committee votes, and floor votes—has no exception for election years.
Apparently, the Republican Senate has its own interpretation of the U.S. Constitution when it comes to performing their duties. And that leads us back to this whole notion of White men changing the rules in the middle of the game, especially when they perceive that their livelihood is threatened.
This is a troubling trend starting to take shape and threatens our entire democracy – if it ever existed to begin with. Stay tuned…
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