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Martin Dyckman – Page 3 – SaintPetersBlog

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Martin Dyckman - page 3

Martin Dyckman has 78 articles published.

Judicial ethics watchdog could suffer in fight for independent Florida courts

in Statewide/Top Headlines by

Is Florida’s judicial ethics commission about to become collateral damage in a battle over the independence of the courts? House Speaker Richard Corcoran, the Land O’Lakes Republican, appears to have targeted the Judicial Qualifications Commission (JQC) along with the courts themselves in his campaign to curb the independence of the judiciary. The JQC and the Supreme Court had not concluded an ethics case against Circuit Judge Mark Hulsey III of Jacksonville when Corcoran scheduled an impeachment hearing a month ago.…

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Hail Britannia: U.K. could teach U.S. a thing or two about running government

in 2017/Top Headlines by

Late in the campaign, the New Yorker satirist Andy Borowitz wrote that Queen Elizabeth II was offering to take the colonies back, suggesting that Americans dissatisfied with their options should just write in her name for president. It doesn’t seem quite as funny now as it did then. Let’s imagine, though, that we are still part of the British Empire, and that Donald Trump has moved to London and is now Prime Minister. Imagine him waddling into the House of…

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Federal judges’ lifetime tenure for good reason; Tallahassee should take note

in Statewide/Top Headlines by

There is a profound reason why the Founders gave life tenure to federal judges, subject only to impeachment for bad behavior. As Alexander Hamilton explained it in The Federalist No. 78: “In a monarchy, it is an excellent barrier to the despotism of the prince; in a Republic, it is a no less excellent barrier to the encroachments and oppressions of the representative body…” Judges subject to the whims of a president or the Congress to keep their jobs would…

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How can we respect the presidency, when Donald Trump clearly doesn’t?

in 2017/Top Headlines by

When President Harry S. Truman threatened in December 1950 to punch out a Washington Post music critic who had panned his daughter’s singing, he wrote the letter in his own hand, affixed his own postage stamp, and did not make it public. Neither did the Post. But America knew all about it once it had leaked to the Washington News. “It seems to me that you are a frustrated old man who wishes he could have been successful,” the president…

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Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell — why are you enabling Donald Trump?

in 2017/Top Headlines by

An open letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: Gentlemen: It was wisdom rather than whim that guided the founders of our nation in separating the powers of government with a system of checks and balances. As James Madison remarked in The Federalist 47, “the accumulation of all powers … in the same hands, whether of one, a few or many … may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” Their faith in the…

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Time to call the White House, complain to the Madman in Residence

in 2017 by

It was not long after the first telephone conversation in 1876 — Alexander Graham Bell to his assistant, “Mr. Watson. Come here. I want to see you” — that the White House opened a public comment line. OK, I exaggerate. Elasticity with the truth seems to be in fashion. But seriously, the comment line has been a sounding board for the public for quite some time. No longer. It has been shut down — whether at the inauguration or earlier…

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Dear Congress: On Jan. 21, the people roared — and they will vote

in 2017/Top Headlines by

A letter to my Senators and Representative. Crib freely if you wish. Dear Senator Burr: It would seem that we are living in an alternative universe, one in which Nazis, Ku Kluxers and other traitors to our American way of life are euphemized as the “alternative right” and the propagandists for Donald Trump claim entitlement to “alternative facts.” Does that make him an “alternative president?” If only it were so. But about this I am serious: There is no “alternative…

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