Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for August 23, 2024

Like to have ALL my congressman in the pound.

PAC Man lives there.

Unfortunately, it is lobbyists who keep congressmen leashed.

A lot of people down here have wanted to put some of their politicians on a chain for some time; we don’t have Congresspeople in the Great Land of Oz (Australia). A committee has decided to call out invective, misogyny, and generally rotten attitudes in parliament, recently, however. Lo and behold, and would you believe it, some twerp in parliament has gone on the record as saying that that sort of punishment will STOP people standing for parliament. It just does not compute!

Thinking there are other types of those Exclusive neighborhoods out there: “Keep your bookie/dealer/lawyer leashed at all times”

I’d rather see mine wearing a muzzle.

Remember to spayed and neuter your congressmen.

The wealthy get them at Pols R Us. I tried to get one but my credit card wouldn’t allow it.

With the antics going on in the US House of Representatives, you wonder if some of them ever do anything for their constituent’s concerns.

watched recent YT vid, exposing NYC placing heavy iron fake fire-hydrants. a pickup hit one, and the hydrant, sans pipe, just fell over. why—to gain illicit fines??

Want respect to return to Congress? Get money out of politics. How? Don’t rediscover the wheel. Study how other countries control the influence of money in their governments. Some are closer than you might guess.

It has returned again. Curb money’s influence in politics and we’ll have a more effective government. We did it before. Back before the Sherman antitrust act, there were monopolies who paid Congressmen to vote and enact laws that favored their monopoly like the railroad, sugar and whiskey monopolies. It was government bureaucracies that were mostly responsible for ending this corruption in Congress. In spite of the fact that many said it could never be done. Nowadays, the corrupt Pols call our bureaucracies“Deep State”. They know their history. If they can convince us elect these corrupt Pols who want to “drain the swamp” and get rid of the “Deep State” there will be nothing to prevent them from repeated the “Gilded Age” when political corruption was rampant and respect for Congress was a joke.

On the one side you have a party whose “fanatics” want a $15 minimum wage, an end to the war in the Middle East and universal healthcare like every other developed country and on the other you have those that refuse to acknowledge the peaceful transition of power, want to gut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the ACA to benefit the wealthy and back an incompetent convicted rapist and felon who incited an insurrection against the legally elected government of the United States.

There is no “both sides “ when it comes to representatives who should be on leash’s ( and in jail).

Anyone else notice that the Republican campaign, at least the publicly displayed one and not the shadowy Project 2025, has little or no actual policy? It’s all name calling, pouting, whining, fear mongering and misdirection. It’s easier to scare them into voting for you than it is to convince them to vote for you. Especially when one has nothing to run on.

Is that tRump tOwer on the corner there?

I’d go for MUZZLING a lot of them as well.

Aw, poor Buttercup. Convicted, on the way to sentencing, laughed at, stumbling over what to do about his new opponent, talking down about the military, immigrants, minimum wage, etc, but without the vaguest idea of what he is saying.

Like leashing a congressman is possible.

I am always reminded of the old saying, “Elected officials and diapers should be changed frequently and for the same reason.”

Thanks Wiley. Since gocomics has closed comments on political cartoons some of us needed a place to vent.

Face it, we need a government to run the country. The trick is to have one that serves ALL the people ALL the time. Come back Abe, we need you.

Maybe just say “We The People” don’t need you clowns around here!

Congressman? The real money is in Supreme Court justices.

Frank and Ernest from August 22 should be of interest.

We must be in rural Georgia.That’s where all t he mad dogs are

I’d prefer a muzzle as well.

Run for your life!

?? What about Supreme Court justices, should they be on a leash?

Way too exclusive. Unfortunately.

The problem with leashing is the same one that has been around in governments since the first tribal gathering: Who gets to hold the leash? Who will watch the watchers? It was SUPPOSED to be the Supreme Court and Congress, acting in coordination. Those now are bought and paid for.

I (a white male) have a thought. Let’s turn government over to the women of our country. Yeah, there are dumb one of those as well – Marjory Green and Loren Bobart for prime examples. Yet, by in large, women seem to be able to set aside most differences, cut to the core of an issue, agree on a majority plan to resolve the issue, and then move that plan to fruition – even if it takes decades.

It seems to me to be an appropriate place to start is the Presidency. Right at the top. Someone who has spent a lifetime endeavoring for others – who knows the law very well – who is a consummate patriot. let’s see: who do we know that might maybe fit that description and be willing to lead other women to take on the task of straightening out us selfish, self-centered males?

Hmmmmmm.

Vote in November.

In keeping with the name of this strip, on another note and as a classic example of stupidity and intransigent irrationality, I present the following:

Republican group cites notorious Dred Scott ruling as reason Kamala Harris can’t be president by Gustaf Kilander

“The National Federation of Republican Assemblies (NFRA) has cited the infamous 1857 Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, which stated that enslaved people weren’t citizens, to argue that Vice President Kamala Harris is ineligible to run for president according to the Constitution.”

This Convention’s decision is based in large part on the Scott v Sandford, which (according to the US Archives is “considered by many legal scholars to be the worst ever rendered by the Supreme Court.” It was overturned by the ratification of the 13th and 14th Amendments.

US Constitution, Article II Section 1, Para 5 (which is misquoted in the NFRA article):

“No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”

Note that all persons who had been citizens under the Articles of Confederation were considered to be citizens.

14th Amendment (which, according to Article V of the Constitution, “… shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution”):

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.”

Further, the decision in the 1939 case Perkins v Elg states:

“A child born [in the US] of alien parentage becomes a citizen of the United States.”

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Yet the NFRA goes on to argue in the document that a natural-born citizen has to be born in the US to parents who are citizens when the child is born, pointing to the thinking of Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Then they state catagorically, as if they had the power to make law:

“It is the will of this convention that only candidates who meet the natural born-citizenship standard, interpreted through an originalist and strict constructionist standard, be placed on the 2024 Republican presidential primary ballots.”

The NFRA’s interpretation of the Constitution totally ignores that their referenced part of Paragraph 5 would have made several US presidents ineligible to hold office, such as George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. Their parents were born in what was then the British colonies in what would later become the US, meaning that those commanders in chief would not meet the strict standards of the NFRA. Additionally, it ignores that the Scott v Sandford decision has been superseded by the 14th Amendment and subsequent rulings, completely destroying their “originalist and strict constructionist standard”.

Trump and the MAGAts subscribe to this utter foolishness.