The Conversation

Okay, the political season is heating up and I just saw a post stating that Hillary Clinton is now completely shut down, complete with an article about her issues with her emails while Secretary of State. The other one I saw was a photo of Senator Ted Cruz with the caption, "The Great White Dope."

Here are the facts: Hillary Clinton is not currently running for President. And, if she is considering a run, she has got to be wondering, "Do I want to wade into this personal attack-fest? Really??" Obviously, Senator Cruz has decided. And he has waded in. And despite the caption, people who know the Senator know he's no pushover in a debate.

To be honest, I believe a President Cruz would end America as I know it. He honestly believes that, in order to lead, one must refuse all compromise and all thought of compromise. That's four to eight years of gridlock in the Executive—which is not generally known for gridlock. I think he would veto the first thirty bills sent him from Congress—unless they perfectly lined up with his extremist stance.

But I am very happy he is running. He is a very intelligent person, a real serious debater and would be very open to multiple Presidential debates as well as debates to win his party's nomination. And we need this. We need to know what the policies will be after President Obama leaves office. We need to discuss policy and not personality and the only thing we're doing in politics is attacking the person.

Today, I saw a posting claiming that President Obama is breaking the laws. The article behind the post utterly fails to cite one single law the President has broken, then goes on to suggest impeachment. I would urge the writer to write his congressman and also to cite the law the President has broken. The House of Representatives is empowered to impeach a President "for high crimes and misdemeanors," as it says in the Constitution. The result is a trial in the Senate.

Seeing as how President Obama does have a law degree and he used to teach Constitutional Law, I doubt the claim is true. But the claim is yet another attempt to stop any conversation about policies in the United States. Laws come from policy and we, the American People need to consider policies that will affect us. Because you had better believe that big corporations do—they regularly write laws they would like to say, hand them to congresspeople and then lobby the congresspeople to pass them.

Do you want an increase in the minimum wage in America? Do you want the federal government to be involved in taking care of Americans, like those in Oklahoma who just lost their homes to an early tornado? Do you want to see our Veterans (and we just made a whole lot of them in Iraq and Afghanistan) taken care of with a VA that works for them? What policies do you want our government to pass into law?

Attacking individuals because they are bad or mad is not policy and is not the kind of a discussion that we need to have as we go forward towards 2016.