According to  a report issued by Special Counsel Robert K. Hur on February 8, his investigation found “evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.”

While the report also mentions “innocent explanations for the documents that we cannot refute,” the argument against charging and prosecuting him largely comes down to an expectation that “Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” whom those jurors would doubt capable of “a mental state of willfulness.”

If the report accurately characterizes the interview, Biden’s memory is … fuzzy … on topics such as when he served as vice president and when his son died. As further evidence of Biden’s mental deficiencies, the report notes that the documents in question were found  “in a badly damaged box in the garage, near a collapsed dog crate, a dog bed, a Zappos box, an empty bucket, a broken lamp wrapped with duct tape, potting soil, and synthetic firewood.”

If Biden can’t remember basic facts or even be trusted to not throw important documents on the “donate to Goodwill” pile in his garage, is he competent to remain, let alone be re-elected as, president?

As a matter of even-handedness, let me acknowledge that Donald Trump, likely Republican presidential nominee, also possesses, so far as I can tell, the mental acuity of a turnip.  But he’s not president again, at least yet, so we can kick that can down the road a bit.

And as a cautionary note, let me acknowledge that there’s no visible metric on which current vice-president Kamala Harris seems likely to do a better job than the admittedly terrible job Biden — or whoever’s using Biden as a compliant meat puppet  — is doing.

BUT!

“Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.”

That’s the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution, and it’s clearly applicable here.

While sending Joe Biden to the elder care facility he so obviously and desperately requires the services of might not improve government policy, it would at least provide more transparency as to who’s actually in charge, and allow the Democratic Party to consider more capable (if not morally superior) candidates for its 2024 presidential nomination.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“Ethan Crumbley,” Reuters reported in December, “was 15 years old when he opened fire at Oxford High School on Nov. 30, 2021,” killing four and wounding seven. At 17, per the Reuters story, Crumbley was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

At the times of both the shootings and the sentencing, Crumbley was considered a “child” by the state of Michigan. He couldn’t legally drink. He couldn’t legally vote. He couldn’t enlist in the armed forces, or get married, without parental consent. And he couldn’t legally buy a gun.

Crumbley became an “adult” in the state’s eyes only when it concerned charging,  trying, convicting, and sentencing him for murder.

But then a curious thing happened. The state waved its magic wand again and his instant “adulthood” reversed itself, Benjamin Button style. He became a “child” once more.

Why? Because if Ethan was an adult at the time he committed his crime, his mother wasn’t responsible for his mental health status, medical treatment needs, or ownership or possession of firearms.

Since the state wanted to convict Jennifer Crumbley of involuntary manslaughter for her son’s crimes,  Ethan Crumbley had to retroactively stop being the adult he’d previously been magically transformed into for purposes of the prior case.

On February 6, a jury agreed with the state that Ethan Crumbley is Schrodinger’s Child — simultaneously minor child and responsible adult inside his cell,  fully becoming whichever one of those things the state needs him to be when there’s a prosecution in progress.

There are many problems with legally defining “childhood” and “adulthood” on the basis of drawing a number out of a hat. Some 15-year-olds are more mature than others — and, for that matter, sometimes more mature than some 45-year-olds.

Letting prosecutors arbitrarily drop the random number in favor of a more convenient number doesn’t fix any of those problems. It just adds to them.

If Ethan Crumbley had previously been allowed to take, and had passed, some kind of competency test to unlock his rights to vote, drink, purchase and possess guns, marry, and enlist, trying him “as an adult” for his crimes would have been reasonable.

If Ethan Crumbley was a child for all those purposes, it would likewise be reasonable to assert some measure of parental responsibility for  supervisory failures culminating in those crimes.

But it should be one or the other, not whichever pleaseth the crown at any particular moment.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

For the second year in a row, Florida’s  state legislature has an “end of life options” — or “medical aid in dying” — bill before it.

SB 1642 / HB 561 would “allow” terminally ill patients, diagnosed as having less than six months to live, to “request” (and doctors to prescribe) medication to end their lives “peacefully” instead of waiting for the prognosis to run its course.

Although this partial and minimal accommodation of patients’ rights should pass with a veto-proof majority faster than the TV cameras pan to Taylor Swift when Travis Kelce scores a touchdown, it’s probably deader than its beneficiaries will be in, say, six months.

Since it’s unlikely to pass, and since nothing I write is likely to change that, I’d like to turn to a simpler question:

Why do we tolerate politicians claiming that our lives belong to them and that whether, when, and how those lives end should be their decision rather than ours?

Nature (and human nature) preclude, at least for the moment, the choice to live forever. Illness, accident, and crime cut lives short every day despite the perfectly normal desire to continue living.

But the desire to NOT continue living, for whatever reason, brings up a choice that rightfully belongs to all mentally competent adults. Entirely. Completely. Without exception.

I might not agree that you’re making a good choice, but it’s your choice to make. Not mine. Not the legislature’s. Not your doctor’s. Not even your loved ones’. Yours and yours alone.

Attempting to forbid that choice is evil in all cases, and especially evil when the victims of that prohibition are going to die shortly, know they are going to die shortly, and are likely in considerable pain and unable to do the things that make further life enjoyable while they await the inevitable.

While the Florida bill represents what one might call “a good start,” it’s flawed because it builds on the faulty and morally abhorrent idea that you are property, owned by the state, rather than a free individual who’s responsible for your own life and entitled to decide whether or not that life continues.

Instead of asking politicians to “allow” us to “request” limited control over such matters, we should ask ourselves why we “allow” those politicians to exercise such control over us in the first place.

And we should take back that control and that choice instead of begging for exceptions.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY