2016 March 19^th

As I write this protesters are blocking a highway in Arizona where fans are trying to attend one of Trump’s rallies. Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s famous tent jail in the middle of a desert awaits those he chooses to arrest. Maybe Trump will pick Sheriff Joe as a running mate because they both are certain that the President was born elsewhere. The Sheriff, an unacknowledged expert on birth certificates, claims that the one produced by the President is a fake.

This morning the paper had a half page spread on a topic of considerable national importance; it concerned President Obama’s failure to attend either the two hour long funeral of Judge Scalia or the funeral in California of Nancy Reagan. His failure to attend either of these events is unprecedented. How do we know that? Easy; it is because Megyn Kelly, the Fox News doyen of Presidential funeral attendance, has told us so. Ms. Kelly has said, “I find no precedent for this in history, that a sitting U.S. President would not attend the death of a sitting Supreme Court Justice.” Megyn Kelly, once more, clings to the Fox news party line even when it is demonstrably wrong. Notice that Kelly said “attend the death;” she did not say attend the funeral. President and Mrs. Obama did indeed pay their respects to Justice Scalia as he lay in state in the rotunda of the Supreme Court.

On the issue of funeral attendance Kelly is wrong even with that. President Eisenhower did not attend the funeral of Justice Robert Jackson who died in 1954. President Truman attended the funerals of just one of the three justices who died during his Presidency. Kelly should check her facts instead of doing her usual anti-President Obama bit. She should, but she won’t because she’d rather keep her job.

Nancy Reagan’s funeral fits the same model: First Ladies usually attend these events; Presidents rarely do. Factcheck.org tells us that “Only four times in history have sitting Presidents attended former First Ladies’ funerals.” What nonsense!

Given that we have a SCOTUS nomination from the President that the right wing refuses to recognize and that the Congress refuses to work more than four days a week and is about to take a generous vacation, why are we attending to these  trivia? Maybe lead in America’s drinking water is more widespread than we had feared.