Until the news broke that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon is probing Sen. Mark Kelly on his “illegal orders” video, I thought the top contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination were Newsom and Shapiro. Now I add Sen. Kelly as a third and even see him having edge ahead of the other two.
Sabrina Haake wrote about this on Salon today. She didn’t cover how this effects any presdiential ambitions be may have. See this as an important adjunct to what I am writing about.
Excerpt:
The duty to disobey manifestly illegal orders is a cornerstone of international law, with foundations in Nazi atrocities-related post-World War II trials like Nuremberg. Orders of such nature that their unlawfulness is clear and obvious, such as an order to target unarmed civilians, are considered manifestly illegal.
But as the video circulated across social media and cable news, Donald Trump became unglued, unleashing a series of posts confirming that he is a danger to all Americans and unfit to lead the military.
Right now on “Morning Joe” they are talking about the obvious. They are saying that the more this gets media attention the more his possible presidential ambitions are given a boost.
They noted that the Pentagon will also be looking into whether there was some violation of protocol because his medals weren’t in the correct arrangement in this photo he posted:
Muscle-head Hegseth is ham-handed when it comes to public perception. He’s trying to turn a national hero whose much admired wife survived not just a bullet that clipped and ear but went into her brain but who was a combat vet and astronaut.
Not only in this highly publicized endeavor he’s also going after the Boy Scouts. Really, the Boy Scouts!
Excerpt:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s war on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies will reportedly result in the Pentagon turning its back on Scouting America, once known as the Boy Scouts or Scouting
According to a leaked proposal obtained by NPR, Hegseth is unhappy with the organization and wants his Department of War to end a 100-year relationship, which would leave officials running the annual National Jamboree scrambling to fill the void.
NPR reported that Hegseth believes the organization, “once endorsed by President Theodore Roosevelt, no longer supports the future of American boys,” and is currently designed to “attack boy-friendly spaces.”
He’s going after nothing less than an American institution (click to enlarge), the Boy Scouts.
Read: How Norman Rockwell’s Boy Scout Paintings Ended Up in Ohio.
By a chance coincidence as I was looking into whether he was ever a Boy Scout I found an article about him making the news in an unfortunate way for a racially insensitive remark he made at a Boy Scouts of America event in New Jersey in 2018 (see article). My point isn’t that he made the comment which he appologized for, but that he’s the kind of politician who would be invited to speak at a Boy Scout event.
This Salon column is an update to yesterday’s Substack “The dodos of DOGE may be extinct, but they left a lot of damage in their wake.”
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