Feedback from Oct. 3 and Beyond 

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Cover story, Oct. 3, "Sound the Alarm"
Dear God, City Weekly, use your brain.
Ty Melvin
Via Facebook

Yes!
Cristina De Leon
Via Instagram

Easy to point fingers, but who is offering doable solutions?
C.J. Southworth
Via Facebook

Brown in the Beehive
I've lived in Utah for 25 years, and I still feel like a stranger. The climate of hate against brown people created by the current White House administration has spilled into our suburbs and made it worse. There are areas I avoid because some people's micro-aggressions have become unbearable.

I wonder if it has anything to do with the raping, drug dealing and murdering label their supreme leader has placed on me. I've experienced little things—like cashiers refusing to bag my purchases, to people almost running me over with grocery carts.

My family insisted these were isolated cases until this happened: At a crosswalk, a truck waiting to turn suddenly accelerated toward me. The truck stopped a few feet away as the driver laughed and said things I cannot repeat. This recurrent behavior is strange but not surprising when people's beliefs and values are distilled from the hateful rhetoric of elected officials and their daily Fox News indoctrination.

But where are the teachers and leaders? Why are they not raising their voices against the hate and lies that instill such contempt? When I go to a store, I don't want special treatment, just the same kindness and respect I afford you.
"Anonymous for obvious reasons"
Via CW comments

The Downside of Impeachment
Unless there's some dramatic change in the political landscape over the next month or so, I believe that the U.S. House of Representatives will impeach President Donald Trump. Unless there's some dramatic change in the political landscape between now and Trump's trial in the U.S. Senate, I don't believe the Senate will vote, by the necessary two-thirds majority, to convict him.

Taken together, those two outcomes constitute a bad thing. Here's why: If I'm correct on the first count, Trump will become the third U.S. president to be impeached by the House (the first two were Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998). If I'm correct on the second count, Trump will become the third U.S. president to be acquitted by the Senate.

When Johnson and Clinton were impeached, no reasonable doubt remained that they were guilty of at least some of the charges laid in their articles of impeachment. Johnson had indeed dismissed Secretary of War Edwin Stanton from office after the Senate had voted not to concur with his dismissal. Clinton had indeed lied under oath concerning his sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

If Trump is impeached, he will likewise be charged with one or more things which he, beyond a reasonable doubt, actually did. In theory, the House's job is to decide whether or not an act is worthy of impeachment, and the Senate's job is only to determine whether or not the president actually committed that act.

In real life, this will make three times out of three that the Senate engages in a form of jury nullification. At least 34 Senators will vote, in the face of facts plainly demonstrating guilt, to acquit.

Blame partisan bias if you like. Or, if you prefer, accept some Senators' claims that they disagree that the acts in question, though proven, rise to the level of treason, bribery, or "high crimes and misdemeanors." Either way, a three-for-three record of acquittals sends a message to every future president: So long as your party can whip 34 Senators into line to vote against conviction, anything goes.

Fans of the separation of powers envisioned in the Constitution have bemoaned "the imperial presidency" since the 1960s. Trump has openly and routinely hacked away at that fraying separation. Impeachment and acquittal would be an injection of steroids in his sword arm. Absent conviction, impeachment isn't just useless, it's catastrophic.
Thomas L. Knapp,
Director, The William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism

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