What's left to say about 2024?

I can't help but say it...but here it is: 2024 was a year where, here in the United States, hate and bigotry won out at the polls.

And the price of eggs was used as a cover.

We, as a group, put a convicted felon back in the White House...a man who called for an insurrection when he didn't win the 2020 election...a man who, like his runningmate, ran with the nonetheless-debunked belief that immigrants in Springfield, OH, were eating their neighbors' dogs and cats...a man who won't take responsibility for his actions.

77 million voters showed they'd rather stick a twice-impeached man back in the Oval Office than put a woman of any color in there.

Yes...I admit that the Democrats would've been better off running a brokered convention at Chicago's United Center last August and finding Joe Biden's successor at the confab. (The leaders of America's legacy media probably would've trotted out the old "Dems in Disarray" headline.) And things would've been better if Merrick Garland and his people would've acted sooner (like on 1-20-2021) to make sure an insurrectionist never again held the nuclear codes...even if Garland would've been accused of doing this for political motivation.

I can't help but think the rest of the world looks at us Americans in light of last year's election and comes away feeling that our laws are toothless.

I remember what happened to Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro and how that country's government dealt with him.

Power-abusing Bolsonaro lost his presidential reelection bid in 2022...and went on to cast unfounded doubts about Brazil's electronic voting system. So...in June 2023, that country's top electoral court ruled him ineligible to run for any political office until 2030.

What if America's government officials had mustered the courage to do the same to a former reality-TV host?

Instead, starting on 1-20-2025, we'll be taking a ride many of us just might regret...the kind of ride we've been on before.

We'll see what happens.

What about the Other Judicial Nominees?

It finally happened.

372 days after President Barack Obama nominated him to serve as a district judge for the US District Court for the State of Nebraska, Robert F. Rossiter Jr. finally got the gig.

This past Monday, the US Senate voted, 90-0, to confirm Rossiter, who's also the newly-elected president of the Nebraska State Bar Association...and the Purdue University and Creighton University grad (he got his doctorate at Creighton) assumed the bench yesterday.  
Congratulations to Rossiter...and all the very best to him. 

Now it's time for the two dozen other district-judge nominees to get their confirmations. 

In fact, it's long been time.

One of the reasons Rossiter's got a new job is US Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE),

who fought like you-know-what to get the Eighth Judicial District a replacement for the now-retired Joseph Bataillon. 

On the other side of the coin...Fischer's one of the US senators fighting like you-know-what to prevent Merrick Garland from even having a hearing as Obama's nominee to replace the now-deceased Antonin Scalia.

You know the big Republican rationale: "No president has ever nominated anyone for the US Supreme Court during an election year, and the Senate has never voted to confirm a Supreme Court nominee during an election year. And no Supreme Court justice ever took the oath of office in an election year."

That's the same line Fischer gave me and so many other Nebraskans when she received emails that pleaded for a hearing for Garland.

Fischer turned 37 in 1988...an election year. (Guess who she voted for on 11-8-1988.) 

1988 was also the year where, 49 days into the year, a 51-year-old Californian named Anthony Kennedy became the newest SCOTUS justice.

 

How about it, you Senate Republicans?

Isn't it time to give Garland his due?

How much longer does he have to wait?