Former officials who owe prison time rounded up
Forget the tales of police brilliance or daring. There was a nationwide warrant sweep and the former mayors of Panama City and Arraijan, the former Minister of Social Development, the former director of the now defunct National Assistance Program and the former representante of the Panama City corregimiento of Calidonia were swept up with the more numerous drug runners and garden variety thugs. Should we put the word “alleged” in there? Maybe for some of the ordinary detainees. The former officials all had their days in court and were found guilty and sentenced to prison. They may have been keeping low profiles, but they were not deep underground. The police found them more or less where expected.
Under our present constitution the president has to power to pardon people for “political crimes” and to commute sentences for ordinary crimes. If President Mulino invokes his powers to let these men avoid prison, he would be within his commutation for ordinary sticky fingers crimes powers, but it would be unpopular. And then there’s the big fish, rotting in the Nicaraguan consulate, former president Martinelli.
Longer incarceration under harsher conditions is an ugly political platform. Let’s avoid that demagoguery. But upholding the decisions of the judiciary is a prudent use of executive power. Letting the bad guys off from years in prison would not be well received, but perhaps the red line that the president most needs to avoid crossing is letting them keep what they stole.
US citizens in Panama: vote if you have not already done so
Can you believe it? Civilian American citizens who cast absentee ballots in US historically trend a bit Democratic, so one might not be surprised that Republicans in the US House of Representatives want to block those votes. But the military voters, like the marines who guard the US embassies? The GOP Caucus in the US House wants to block military voters too.
The troops tend to be a bit more conservative than the US electorate as a whole, but also tend to vote for the party of their commander-in-chief. Is that why House Republicans are trying to disenfranchise military voters?
On the federal level, the Republicans don’t have the votes. Maybe a federal judge here or there, maybe a state government here or there, but any new federal vote suppression law is dead on arrival.
American citizens living abroad have the right to vote in this November’s elections. If you are one of those, use that power, with the best wisdom that you can muster.
Mr. Cooper said to me that he had an idea for a film in mind. The only thing he’d tell me was that I was going to have the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood. Naturally, I thought of Clark Gable.
Fay Wray
Bear in mind…
Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Nothing amuses me more than the easy manner with which everybody settles the abundance of those who have a great deal less than themselves.
Jane Austen
The best way to keep one’s word is not to give it.
Napoleon Bonaparte
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