Dear Progressive Reader,
In breaking news last night, Donald Trump commuted the sentence of his longtime friend Roger Stone. The move was not unexpected, but has still raised even more concerns over presidential interference in the judicial process. Stone, whose high-profile trial last October included a request (denied by Judge Amy Berman Jackson) to show the jury a four-minute clip from the film The Godfather, Part II (in case they had not seen it before), had been convicted of seven counts, including witness tampering and lying to investigators. Trump, however, claimed his loyal friend was the victim of a “witch hunt.”
It is not the first time that Trump has pardoned his friends for lying while he fires his staff for telling the truth (Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman was in the news again this week, as Mark Fiore reminds us). The name of Roger Stone can now be added to a long list that includes former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, former Cheney-aide Scooter Libby, former “junk-bond-creator” Michael Milken, and about two dozen others.
As the debate about statues continues to rage, comedian John Fugelsang tweets a reminder that on July 9, 1776, colonists in New York pulled down the giant statue of King George astride a horse. National Geographic further notes that the statue was broken into pieces and “much of the lead was shipped to Connecticut and melted down to make 42,008 bullets,” later used in the Revolutionary War. As Mike Ervin writes this week, “We’re not erasing history when we topple them. We don’t need public statues to remind us of our infamous past. I don’t see a lot of statues of Richard Nixon around, but I still remember Watergate.” And labor historian Peter Rachleff looks at the true history of the Robert E. Lee statue in Richmond, Virginia. “It is obvious that the Lee statue symbolizes the values of the Confederate South,” he writes, “but few people are aware that its original purpose was to block the development of a biracial workers’ movement . . . The statue was a monumental symbol created to overshadow a social movement, blunt its course, and attempt to erase its history.”
A few legal victories in the courts this week show that justice is not always blinded by corporate or political power. On July 6, a federal judge ordered the Dakota Access Pipeline must be shut down. As Tina Gerhardt reports, “The order marks a major victory for the Standing Rock Sioux and their allies, who have been organizing for years to oppose the pipeline’s construction.” And the same week, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a pair of decisions rebuffing Donald Trump’s efforts to conceal his financial dealings from investigators. However, cautions Bill Blum, “even though Trump technically lost both cases and ultimately may have to comply with the subpoenas, we aren’t going to see the President’s financial records any time soon, and certainly not in time for the November election.”
Finally, today marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the establishment peaceful relations with Vietnam. On July 11, 1995, against the objections of many conservative Republicans, President Bill Clinton normalized diplomatic relations with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Quoting Abraham Lincoln (as both Republicans and Democrats often do), Clinton announced, “This moment offers us the opportunity to bind up our own wounds." Former prisoner-of-war Senator John McCain sided with Clinton and helped advise the process. But in many ways, although it addressed an important diplomatic hurdle, the wounds of the Vietnamese people remain unaddressed. The legacies of Agent Orange poisoning, unexploded bombs and landmines, along with the trauma of years of warfare and civilian atrocities, remain an unpaid debt on our national ledger. Clinton in his East Room speech said, “Let this moment . . . be a time to heal and a time to build." Perhaps that “building” could start with addressing our debt.
Keep reading, and we will keep bringing you important articles on these and other issues of our time.
Sincerely,
Norman Stockwell
Publisher
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