11/21/2025

 Friday, November 21, 2025

D+16

1967: General William Westmoreland told news reporters: "I am absolutely certain that whereas in 1965 the enemy was winning, today he is certainly losing."

2002 NATO invited Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia to become members.

2017 CBS TV host Charlie Rose is fired after allegations of sexual harassment by eight women

2024 Matt Gaetz withdrew from his candidacy for U. S. Attorney General

2024 Controversial artwork of a banana duct-taped to a wall by Maurizio Cattelan sold for $6.2million at auction in New York. The new owner Justin Sun says he will eat it.

In bed at 9:30, up at 6:30, after an hour on theLZB.  37°, high 46°, another cloudy November day.

“Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. Nothing is surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me."

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 8 a.m.  Trulicity injection at 11 a.m.

The video about "lawful orders." Democratic legislators Mark Kelly, Maggie Goodlander, Elissa Slotkin, Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, and Chrissy Houlahan have released a video encouraging soldiers and other federal officials to disobey unlawful presidential orders.  President Trump has responded by accusing them of sedition or treason, liable to the death penalty.  One of his social media responses was simply "HANG THEM."  When CBS's Nancy Cordes asked Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt whether the President wanted to execute these members of Congress, she replied 'no', but accused them of encouraging soldiers to disobey lawful orders.  Cordes corrected her by pointing out that the video referred only to "unlawful orders," and Leavitt replied: 

They're suggesting that the President has given illegal orders, which he has not.  Every single order which this President has given to the United States military by this Commander-in Chief and through this chain of command, through the Secretary of War, is lawful.

The following is an excerpt from an interview with former President Nixon conducted by David Frost. It aired on television on May 19, 1977.

FROST: The wave of dissent, occasionally violent, which followed in the wake of the Cambodian incursion, prompted President Nixon to demand better intelligence about the people who were opposing him. To this end, the Deputy White House Counsel, Tom Huston, arranged a series of meetings with representatives of the CIA, the FBI, and other police and intelligence agencies.

These meetings produced a plan, the Huston Plan, which advocated the systematic use of wiretappings, burglaries, or so-called black bag jobs, mail openings and infiltration against antiwar groups and others. Some of these activities, as Huston emphasized to Nixon, were clearly illegal. Nevertheless, the president approved the plan. Five days later, after opposition from J. Edgar Hoover, the plan was withdrawn, but the president's approval was later to be listed in the Articles of Impeachment as an alleged abuse of presidential power.

FROST: So what in a sense, you're saying is that there are certain situations, and the Huston Plan or that part of it was one of them, where the president can decide that it's in the best interests of the nation or something, and do something illegal.

NIXON: Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.

FROST: By definition.

NIXON: Exactly. Exactly. If the president, for example, approves something because of national security, or in this case because of a threat to internal peace and order of significant magnitude, then the president's decision in that instance is one that enables those who carry it out, to carry it out without violating a law. Otherwise, they're in an impossible position.

FROST: So, that in other words, really, you were saying in that answer, really, between the burglary and murder, again, there's no subtle way to say that there was murder of a dissenter in this country because I don't know any evidence to that effect at all. But, the point is: just the dividing line, is that in fact, the dividing line is the president's judgment?

NIXON: Yes, and the dividing line, and just so that one does not get the impression that a president can run amok in this country and get away with it, we have to have in mind that a president has to come up before the electorate. We also have to have in mind that a president has to get appropriations from the Congress. We have to have in mind, for example, that as far as the CIA's covert operations are concerned, as far as the FBI's covert operations are concerned, through the years, they have been disclosed on a very, very limited basis to trusted members of Congress. I don't know whether it can be done today or not.

FROST: Pulling some of our discussions together, as it were; speaking of the Presidency and in an interrogatory filed with the Church Committee, you stated, quote, "It's quite obvious that there are certain inherently government activities, which, if undertaken by the sovereign in protection of the interests of the nation's security are lawful, but which if undertaken by private persons, are not." What, at root, did you have in mind there?

NIXON: Well, what I, at root, I had in mind, I think, was perhaps much better stated by Lincoln during the War between the States. Lincoln said, and I think I can remember the quote almost exactly, he said, "Actions which otherwise would be unconstitutional could become lawful if undertaken for the purpose of preserving the Constitution and the Nation."

Now that's the kind of action I'm referring to. Of course, in Lincoln's case, it was the survival of the Union in wartime, it was the defense of the nation, and, who knows, perhaps the survival of the nation.

FROST: But there was no comparison, was there, between the situation you faced and the situation Lincoln faced, for instance?

NIXON: This nation was torn apart in an ideological way by the war in Vietnam, as much as the Civil War tore apart the nation when Lincoln was president. Now it's true that we didn't have the North and the South—

FROST: But when you said, as you said when we were talking about the Huston Plan, you know, "If the president orders it, that makes it legal", as it were: Is the president in that sense—is there anything in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights that suggests the president is that far of a sovereign, that far above the law?

NIXON: No, there isn't. There's nothing specific that the Constitution contemplates in that respect. I haven't read every word, every jot and every tittle, but I do know this: That it has been, however, argued that as far as a president is concerned, that in war time, a president does have certain extraordinary powers which would make acts that would otherwise be unlawful, lawful if undertaken for the purpose of preserving the nation and the Constitution, which is essential for the rights we're all talking about.

From the third Nixon-Frost interview, The New York Times, May 20, 1977, p. A16.

The legal fight over the extent of a president's authority and his right to ignore legal constraints in certain circumstances has been going on since the founding of the nation.  It is still going on, witness the public reaction to the Supreme Court's controversial, made-out-of-whole-cloth decision creating presidential immunity from criminal prosecution in Trump v. United States (1924).  It is being widely argued today that there should be no question about the accuracy of what the six legislators said about the right and duty of soldiers and others to disobey orders to engage in unlawful acts, but ought we not at least wonder whether this is still true under Trump v. United States?  Can anyone predict with certainty how this Supreme Court would rule on the issue argued by Richard Nixon in the famous Frost interview?  To date, the Court has been very deferential to exercises of presidential power.  It seems likely one of these days to formally bless the "unitary executive" theory, which, when combined with the reasoning of Trump v. United States, could produce some heretofore unthinkable new law. 

In any event, I wish the six legislators had not made and published the video, not because I don't agree with it, but because it is more likely to get some military guys in trouble than to save any from trouble from following orders.  How does a soldier or Marine distinguish lawful from unlawful orders?  Was the order sending Marines from Camp Pendleton to the streets of Los Angeles lawful or unlawful?  In Newsome v. Trump, U.S. District Court judge Charles Breyer ruled (in a 52-page opinion) that the deployment did violate the Posse Comitatus Act, a 19th-century law that generally prohibits the use of U.S. military forces to perform civilian law enforcement.  He wrote that the administration’s top-down, systemic effort to use troops for law enforcement went beyond what is allowed, calling it “a serious violation … of federal law.”  The 9th Circuit paused the lower court’s injunction, allowing Trump to keep control of the Guard in L.A. while the appeal proceeds, but the court did not fully reject judicial review; it did not say the President’s decisions are totally immune from court scrutiny.  

Are orders to blow civilian boats on the high seas out of the water and to kill their occupants, believed to be smuggling illegal drugs, lawful or unlawful?  The Trump administration has a legal opinion justifying the killing of 88 or more of these foreign civilians, but many experts and think tanks are raising red flags: striking vessels on the high seas may violate international law.  The UN human rights office has also said the use of force “violates the international law of the sea” and might amount to extrajudicial killings.  Is an individual pilot or drone operator able to decide whether the order is lawful or unlawful?  I suspect it is politically controversial presidential orders like these that the six legislators had in mind when they made the video.  Deciding whether these orders are "lawful" or "unlawful" is a crap shoot at best.  The video will do nothing to help the individual American military man or woman in the field, but it may encourage some scrupulous trooper to hazard a guess, guess wrong,  and risk his or her life or liberty.  

Nurimv

The FB post is so long that I don't expect anyone to read it, but I wanted to make my point 'for the record.'

Two years ago I listed my New Year's resolutions:

1.  I should live next year as if it is my last year, as well it may be.  Live next month, week, day, and hour as if it is my last, and accept that it may well be the last with no more warning than Tom had on January 18th of this year.

2.  I need to appreciate being alive and appreciate all the beauty around me - beauty in Nature, beauty in people old, young, and in between, and beauty in art through vocal and instrumental music, painted and written images, and fine writing. 

3.   I should write a letter each week to Sarah and Andy, to leave them some record of their father's thoughts and values as an old man.  I needn't concern myself with whether they read them or think much about them, especially now.  I wish my father had been more open with me during his last years.  On second thought, I suspect this is a delusional pipe dream.

4.  I need to be more mindful: (a) of the gift of Geri's presence in my life; (2) of the clouds above and the earth below, the birds all around, the squirrels, white-tail deer, wild turkeys, chipmunks, and all sorts of critters; (3) of the food I eat,  the water and tea I drink, and the air I breathe.

I've had some success on ## 1, 2, and 4, not so much on #3, which I need to reconsider.  When I wrote these, my sister Kitty and Tom St. John had died, and Ed Felsenthal was still alive.  Alas.

 Nuremberg.  I saw this movie at the North Shore Cinema this afternoon.  It was interesting, and I'm glad I saw it, but I didn't enjoy it very much.  I can't say I was disappointed because I didn't have any particular expectation about the movie.  I need to give some thought to this flick.