Our Foundation is crumbling

Lard and the Food Police

Our Foundation is crumbling

Accessory by Inaction

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            Tony Ortega and I set aside a few minutes each month to reminisce.

            It takes place when I make the rounds by the hardware and feed stores paying the bills incurred by Leonard from his forays into town buying plumbing supplies, duct tape, a new rope after he broke his lifting a bull with the backhoe, and sweet feed.

It is a monthly ritual. I see Pete and Larry at Johnston’s True Value Hardware, Curtis at Horse and Hound, and Tony at Mesilla Valley Feeds. Each of them is not just a friend. They have a role in our success. Their expertise is relied upon and their words have become matter of importance to the foundation of our business.

Each of us shakes our head as the greetings are concluded and the latest horror story from Washington is dissected. Long ago, our conclusion was that we don’t have an elected representative who defends our businesses. Certainly, our senatorial duo of Udall and Heinrich never promote any business that is founded on local customs and culture.

Their mandates all involve our willingness to give up our money and property for the good of the … collective.

Lard and the food police

With the last stop at Tony’s yesterday, the first order of business was to debate the disclosure that Border Patrol is being forced to ask apprehended illegals if they qualify for this president’s amnesty program. In affect, those illegals are overseeing the process whereby they either declare themselves de facto legal welfare recipients and future Democrats or just run of the mill trespassing lawbreakers.

With the untimely interruption by a customer, our discussion continued with the disclosure of our privileged youth when we got a new pair of shoes, two new pairs of Levi’s, and a couple of shirts to start school each year. Tony remembered when his grade school at Winston competed in a day long baseball marathon with the kids from Monticello. The new brown shoes he had started to school in the previous fall had grown so tight from a growth spurt that they cut his feet. After playing in them all day, he took them off on the way home and noticed blood on his socks.

I remembered the X-Ray machine at Pennington’s where my folks always shopped on credit. We would run look to see if our toes were crammed up against the ends of the shoes whether they were old or new. It was a great way to keep us from being a nuisance while our mothers shopped. There was no telling how many gamma rays we absorbed during those years.

Then, the discussion was on to food.

Both of us were raised on venison. We still crave the meat of our youth. Beef was largely absent or an occasional treat. In Tony’s case, his father sold every calf they raised for family income. In my case, my grandfather would butcher a single calf a year to spread with the immediate family. All other meat was killed, or caught, or bought in the form of hotdogs or fish sticks from the Cliff Trading Company or Mr. Mauldin’s. The first peanut butter I ever tasted came from Mr. Mauldin’s when we moved to town. It was as much a novelty as was Superman and Mickey Mouse. The kids laughed at me at my country innocence.

But, venison ruled supreme.

Tony remembered how his mother fried their venison in lard. He would wrap that hot dripping delicacy in fresh, hot blue corn tortillas and savor the excellence. It went along with the frijoles always simmering in the cast iron pot sitting on the wood cook stove.

My version was similar.

Nana would fry cubed backstrap in butter until it was brown. She would then stir in cream to make gravy. We would then smother that chef-d’oeuvre on her fresh made biscuits along with gathered eggs fried in bacon grease. Butter, fresh from her churn, would be spread on more biscuits, allowed to ooze out in golden richness, and layered with her pear or green tomato preserves.

No king had a more royal feast, and no athlete could toss those hot biscuits out of the hot oven with more dexterity to whoever called for the next one. Successive tosses came with behind the back shots, underhand or overhand tosses, hook shots, and even hoolihans.

As for the alleged health risks we faced with that butter, cream, lard and bacon grease, eggs, and whatever else the food police might now condemn ad nauseum, nobody was fat.

“Nobody … nobody was fat,” laughed Tony.

That is … none of us who started to school each year with one new pair of shoes, two pairs of Levi’s, and a couple of shirts.

Impeachment tutorial

 The United States Congress has impeached only two sitting presidents … Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton.

The House has the sole “Power if Impeachment”. The protocol starts by publicly investigating and holding hearings into the charges. If that body votes against impeachment at the conclusion of that process, the action is concluded. If the body votes for impeachment, Articles of Impeachment are drawn and the president is impeached as per the authority of the Constitution.

The action then shifts to the Senate where the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presides. The Senate decides whether to convict or acquit. No president has ever been convicted of impeachment. Both Johnson and Clinton were acquitted.

Starting in reverse order, Bill Clinton was impeached on two articles, perjury and abuse of power. The ‘hope from Hope’s’ misdemeanor failed to discern the technicalities of sexual relations in the Oval Office. His impeachment will be remembered not for his tom cat morals, but for the humiliation he pinned on the Office of the Presidency.

Johnson was different. Johnson’s high crimes and misdemeanors centered on his willful defiance in refusing to uphold an unconstitutional law. Defending the South from a Congress that fully intended to ride roughshod over it, Johnson had the audacity to fire his appointed Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton. With the backing of the congressional majority, Stanton was intent on extracting continued revenge on the South. At issue was the Tenure in Office Act whereby Congress asserted oversight of the Executive Branch’s authority to fire its own appointees. Stanton intended to blister the South which met the desires of the majority party. Johnson intended to put in place an administrator who would support his intentions for reconciliation. He fired Stanton and replaced him. Congress was incensed. Johnson was impeached. The House of Representatives filed 11 articles of impeachment. The Senate convened and acquitted him.

In a twist of vindication in 1887, Congress repealed the Act central to the Johnson impeachment. To further substantiate Johnson’s defense of the Constitution, a similar Act was declared unconstitutional in 1926.

In hindsight, Johnson was impeached for his intention of humanitarian treatment toward the South. Clinton was impeached for his propensity to succumb to a hummer in the closet.

High crimes and misdemeanors … you be he judge.

Accessory by inaction

Curtis, Larry, Pete, Tony and I have something in common. We are profoundly worried about our country. We hail from simpler times that give us a much different perspective of the foundational atrophy we see around us. We are sick of the food police and we abhor the progressive obfuscation of our heritage.

The impeachment of a president for his singular intent to prevent further humiliation of a defeated segment of American citizenry or the wanton humiliation of an impressionable intern by another president are trivial to the unparalleled destruction of our nation today. There is no comparison to the articles imposed on those presidents and the assaults by this administration on our intelligence and us, the tax paying Americans.

Listen.

All we hear is chattering and endless hyperbole by elected leadership that supposedly stands in juxtaposition to the lawlessness exhibited by this president. With inaction, their leadership has collectively and demonstrably debased their oath of office to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. Both parties are guilty and flaunt with impunity their Oaths of Affirmation.

There cannot be condemnation without action, and there remains no action. If there are no impeachment grounds for this president in the current state of affairs, there are no grounds for any such actions. Hence, if there are no such grounds, the phrase in the Constitution is meaningless which renders everything meaningless.

That is where we are drifting.

The process starts in the House. Until a single leader steps up and starts defending this nation with courage and intent … every congressman must be subject to recall and or defeat.

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “The House has the authority to start a healing process. They have control of the purse strings and the authority to impeach. It is time to act!”

On the impeachment of President Johnson, Wilmeth mentions the "majority party".  That would be the Republicans.  They were hot to trot with impeachment then, but are sitting on a bucket of ice today.