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Is It possible many other Americans who feel the same way can take initiative to remove ineffective legislators?.MA

Kaz Weida, Contributor
Freelance Writer & Blogger
An Apology Letter To All Americans — From The Constituents Of Jason Chaffetz
Utah’s District 3 here. We’re super sorry. Let’s talk.
02/17/2017 05:16 pm ET | Updated 11 hours ago

Dear America,
I’m writing tonight because I’d like to apologize for Jason Chaffetz.
To be fair, it’s not really my fault. I didn’t vote for him. But he’s my representative in Congress and he has my power and my voice. So Jason Chaffetz is my mess to clean up.
I’m sorry you have to deal with him. It’s no picnic for me either. This is a man who seems to place party before people, ambition before country. It’s embarrassing to have to lay claim to him but there it is. He’s mine.

Last week, I attended the town hall where Chaffetz belittled and taunted his own constituents. I thought that was about as egregious as it could get. But I was wrong, friends. So wrong. Now I get to sit on the sidelines and watch as my representative in Congress uses my power to prop up a would-be dictator. Hurray!
I took exception when Jason Chaffetz raised my voice in Congress to gut regulation that would protect public lands. I was furious when he used my vote to sign onto a bill to abolish the Department of Education. But today? Today, I think Mr. Chaffetz horrifies us all.
We’ve been assuming that in the face of facts and clear, irrefutable evidence our Congressman would be forced to take action. And he has. Mr. Chaffetz has been clear exactly whose side he’s on. I always knew he didn’t have my best interests at heart and that he wasn’t going to be representative of my ideals. But I never imagined that Jason Chaffetz would betray us all, that he would fail to hold up even the basic tenets of our democracy.
You have my deepest regrets, America, for the disaster that is my representative, Mr. Jason Chaffetz. Please know that thousands of Utahns join me in extending our apologies. But as is often the case, sorry isn’t enough. Sorry won’t save our country and our government from corruption. And apparently, neither will Mr. Chaffetz. So the resistance in Utah is going to do what it always does. We’re going to roll up our sleeves and get to work.
This will be Mr. Chaffetz’s last term in Congress. Jason’s constituents can’t send flowers to make the injury he’s inflicting better, but we can make sure we don’t send him back to D.C. to do more damage.
Sorry, America. We’ll persist. And we’ll fix this.
In love and solidarity,
Utah’s 3rd Congressional District
This piece was originally published on Rantt.

WASHINGTON — The Republicans’ ardor for investigations and oversight, on display throughout the Obama administration, has cooled off considerably with Donald Trump in the White House.
Each day seems to bring a new headache or near-crisis from Trump, the latest being the departure of his national security adviser under questionable circumstances involving Russia.
Yet if there is a line too far, at which point Republicans will feel duty-bound to call for an independent investigation of their president or his administration, Trump hasn’t crossed it yet.
Democrats are clamoring for a full-scale probe of the resignation of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, including demanding to know what Trump knew, and when, about Flynn’s pre-inauguration conversations with a Russian ambassador about U.S. sanctions. White House press secretary Sean Spicer disclosed that Trump was told in late January that Flynn had misled Vice President Mike Pence about those conversations.
Rather than go along with Democrats’ call for an independent outside investigation, Senate Republicans insisted Tuesday that the Intelligence Committee could look at the circumstances as part of an existing probe into Russia’s interference in the presidential election.
“The Intelligence Committee is already looking at Russian involvement in our election and they have broad jurisdiction over the intel community writ large and they can look at whatever they choose to,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., adding that “it’s highly likely they’d want to take a look at this episode as well.”
The intelligence panel’s chairman, Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, told reporters that “aggressive” oversight would continue “privately. We don’t do that in public.”
House Republicans were even less interested, with some shrugging off Democrats’ calls for an investigation entirely. Rep. Devin Nunes of California, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said that the “real crime” is how Flynn’s phone conversations were leaked, echoing a complaint Trump himself made over Twitter.
“I think the situation has taken care of itself” in light of Flynn’s resignation, House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told reporters. That’s a far different stance toward potential wrongdoing by the executive branch than Chaffetz took last year, when House Republicans issued more than 70 letters and subpoenas aimed at investigating Democrat Hillary Clinton over a period of less than three months after the FBI announced criminal charges weren’t warranted related to her use of a private email server as secretary of state.
Chaffetz did turn his attention to a different Trump administration matter later Tuesday, sending a letter to the White House seeking information about Trump’s discussion of a North Korea missile launch while dining al fresco with the Japanese prime minister at a resort in Florida.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., went so far as to counsel publicly against spending too much time investigating the White House, saying that doing so could only be counterproductive at a moment when the GOP faces a daunting legislative agenda on Capitol Hill.
“I just don’t think it’s useful to be doing investigation after investigation, particularly of your own party,” Paul said in an appearance on Fox News Radio’s “Kilmeade and Friends.” ”We’ll never even get started with doing the things we need to do like repealing Obamacare if we’re spending our whole time having Republicans investigate Republicans. I think it makes no sense.”
The relatively hands-off stance of the GOP toward the Trump White House angers Democrats, who are powerless to do much except fume from the minority in both chambers of Congress.
“Do you hear the silence? This is the sound of House Republicans conducting no oversight of President Trump. Zero,” Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, complained at a news conference Tuesday. “That is what it sounds like when they abdicate their duty under the Constitution. We’ve been asking for months for basic oversight.”
The GOP’s lack of enthusiasm about investigating the Trump White House comes as Capitol Hill Republicans struggle to come to terms with a new administration that has been engulfed in upheaval after upheaval. Republicans are trying to focus on their agenda despite the distractions. And for now, they appear to have concluded, going easy on Trump is the best way to achieve their goals, including confirming a Supreme Court justice and passing a new health care law and other legislation they want the president to sign.
“We know full well that there are issues that are going to come up on a daily basis that we’re going to get asked about and have to respond to,” said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 3 Senate Republican, “but we’re interested in repealing and replacing Obamacare, reforming the tax code, reducing the regulatory burden on businesses, confirming a Supreme Court justice, getting these Cabinet nominees through — that’s what our agenda is right now.”

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The article below is something we all should read especially our supposedly educated Legislators.MA

By Charlie Daniels | February 14, 2017 | 11:21 AM EST

A tattered and torn American flag blows in the wind with dark clouds overhead.
Over a century ago, the United States of America went through a divisive and bloody Civil War that separated the people of this nation bone from marrow. It split friends, families and eventually the nation itself as a line was drawn dividing the Union States of the North from the newly formed Confederacy of the Southern States.
Ostensibly, the war that followed was fought over the abolition of slavery, a devilish practice that never should have been allowed in the first place, and although it was the basic issue for the conflict – as is the case so much of the time – there were a myriad of other issues involved.
One – in my opinion – was just plain stubbornness and pride and the dogged determination that the South would not let itself be told what to do by the other half of the country, but trade, tariffs and different attitudes and beliefs about just how far a federal government could go in setting the tone and making laws to be obeyed by all the states were also involved.
The point I’m trying to make is that the feelings festered so long and ran so deep that men whose fathers had stood shoulder to shoulder in the war for independence faced off across fields of battle and killed each other.
The Civil War never should have happened, and had cooler heads prevailed on both sides, never would have. Southerners had to know that slavery was an abomination to the principles they had fought and died for in the Revolution.
No man has the right to own another man, to reap the fruits of his labor for nothing, to consider his children nothing more than commodities to be sold off or traded away on a whim, separating
families and breeding human beings like livestock.
But instead of acknowledging the very obvious evil of this situation, politicians from the South, convinced that the economy of the Southern States was dependent on slavery, chose to become a separate nation and soon after over six hundred thousand Americans lost their lives in a senseless war that would set the Southern States back a half century.
Surely, had it been approached by fair, level-headed men on both sides of the issue, abolition could have been achieved without war. But the rhetoric grew ever hotter. Brash young men on both sides, who had never fired a gun in anger, viewed a war as the pinnacle of romanticism, and implacable politicians refused to give an inch. Is this not the same attitude we see on the streets of America today?
I see young people interviewed on television who can’t even articulate the reason they are protesting. Others bent on destruction who probably espouse no cause but chaos.
I’ve seen hysterical protestors screaming about First Amendment rights which they seem to think only protects them and those who think like them and that the opposition has no first amendment protection and should be shouted down at all costs.
The rhetoric is becoming hotter and more nonsensical, the radical element more apparent, the violence and destruction of property more common place.
The pot is boiling and it’s only a matter of time before there will be blood on the streets.
Americans have the right to civil disobedience, a right to gather and demonstrate against some policy they feel is unfair or harmful to the country at large, but they do not have the right to interrupt commerce, break windows, burn cars or do bodily harm to those who disagree with them.
People who won’t listen to reason, who ignore the law of the land and who try to stifle the opinions of others tend to forget that there is an element of violence on the other side as well, a side that, thankfully, so far has not yet come forth.
But, should these conditions continue, someday soon the violent elements of both persuasions will find themselves on the same streets, and what will ensue will not be pretty.
Learn from history, or repeat it.
What do you think?
Pray for our troops, our police and the peace of Jerusalem.
God Bless America
— Charlie Daniels
Charlie Daniels is a legendary American singer, song writer, guitarist, and fiddler famous for his contributions to country and southern rock music. Daniels has been active as a singer since the early 1950s. He was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry on January 24, 2008.

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9 / 20

The Washington Post
Kathleen Parker
2 hrs ago

Editor’s note: The opinions in this article are the author’s, as published by our content partner, and do not necessarily represent the views of MSN or Microsoft.

Good news: In two years, we’ll have a new president. Bad news: If we make it that long.
My “good” prediction is based on the Law of the Pendulum. Enough Americans, including most independent voters, will be so ready to shed Donald Trump and his little shop of horrors that the 2018 midterm elections are all but certain to be a landslide — no, make that a mudslide — sweep of the House and Senate. If Republicans took both houses in a groundswell of the people’s rejection of Obamacare, Democrats will take them back in a tsunami of protest.
Once ensconced, it would take a Democratic majority approximately 30 seconds to begin impeachment proceedings selecting from an accumulating pile of lies, overreach and just plain sloppiness. That is, assuming Trump hasn’t already been shown the exit.
Or that he hasn’t declared martial law (all those anarchists, you know) and effectively silenced dissent. We’re already well on our way to the latter via Trump’s incessant attacks on the media — “among the most dishonest human beings on Earth” — and press secretary Sean Spicer’s rabid-Chihuahua, daily press briefings. (Note to Sean: Whatever he’s promised you, it’s not worth becoming Melissa McCarthy’s punching bag. But really, don’t stop.)
With luck, and Cabinet-level courage that is not much in evidence, there’s a chance we won’t have to wait two long years, during which, let’s face it, anything could happen. In anticipation of circumstances warranting a speedier presidential replacement, wiser minds added Section 4 to the 25th Amendment, which removes the president if a majority of the Cabinet and the vice president think it necessary, i.e., if the president is injured or falls too ill to serve. Or, by extension, by being so incompetent — or not-quite-right — that he or she poses a threat to the nation and must be removed immediately and replaced by the vice president.
Aren’t we there, yet?
Thus far, Trump and his henchmen have conducted a full frontal assault on civil liberties, open government and religious freedom, as well as instigating or condoning a cascade of ethics violations ranging from the serious (business conflicts of interest) to the absurd (attacking a department store for dropping his daughter’s fashion line). And, no, it’s not just a father defending his daughter. It’s the president of the United States bullying a particular business and, more generally, making a public case against free enterprise.
To an objective observer, it would seem impossible to defend the perilous absurdities emanating from the White House and from at least one executive agency, the Agriculture Department, which recently scrubbed animal abuse reports from its website, leaving puppies, kittens, horses and others to fend for themselves.
In a hopeful note, a few Republicans are speaking out, but the list is short.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz recently got a taste of what’s ahead for Republican incumbents. Facing an unruly crowd at a town hall meeting in Utah, the House Oversight Committee chairman was booed nearly every time he mentioned Trump. Even if many in the crowd were members of opposition groups, the evening provided a glimpse of the next two years. From 2010’s tea party to 2018’s resistance, the pendulum barely had time to pause before beginning its leftward trek.
While we wait for it to someday find the nation’s center, where so many wait impatiently, it seems clear that the president, who swore an oath to defend the U.S. Constitution, has never read it. Nor, apparently, has he ever even watched a Hollywood rendering of the presidency. A single episode of “The West Wing” would have taught Trump more about his new job than he seems to know — or care.
Far more compelling than keeping his promise to act presidential is keeping campaign promises against reason, signing poorly conceived executive orders, bashing the judicial and legislative branches, and tweeting his spleen to a wondering and worrying world.
Trump’s childish and petulant manner, meanwhile, further reinforces long-held concerns that this man can’t be trusted to lead a dog-and-pony act, much less the nation. Most worrisome is how long Trump can tolerate the protests, criticisms, humiliations, rebuttals and defeats — and what price he’ll try to exact from those who refused to look away.
Read more from Kathleen Parker’s archive, follow her on Twitter or find her on Facebook

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