OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2017
Founded in 1873
DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
OUR VIEW
E
ach week we recognize those people and organizations
in the community deserving of public praise for the good
things they do to make the North Coast a better place to
live, and also those who should be called out for their actions.
SHOUTOUTS
The case of a cover-up
in search of a crime
By CHARLES
KRAUTHAMMER
Washington Post Writers Group
Edward Stratton/The Daily Astorian
Knappa High School junior Keenan Glebhart and senior Angeleen
Somoza bus tables at the 20th annual Knappa Schools Foundation
dinner and auction Saturday, which raised more than $100,000.
This week’s Shoutouts go to:
• The Knappa Schools Foundation and state Sen. Betsy
Johnson for raising more than $100,000 at the foundation’s 20th
annual dinner and auction. The combination of ticket sales, raffles
and the oral and silent auctions brought in $69,000, while a special
personal appeal by Sen. Johnson generated more than $40,000.
The money, which eclipsed the $100,000 mark for the first time
in the foundation’s history, will be used to fund scholarships and
school programs. Shawn Teevin, founder of Teevin Bros. Land &
Timber was also honored during the event for his part in forming
the foundation 20 years ago.
• U.S. Bank, which awarded more than $95,000 to nonprofit
organizations in six Oregon counties, including Clatsop County,
in 2016. Twelve Clatsop County nonprofits received a total of
$35,000 in grants during the year, not including marketing and
sponsorships across the region. The grants are made through the
U.S. Bank Foundation and totaled more than $26 million across
the country last year.
• Sam Roberts, grand secretary of the Freemasons of
Washington, who spoke about the need for public civility during
a recent meeting of the Occident Lodge No. 48 in Ilwaco,
Washington. Roberts issued a challenge for all members of
Freemasons’ lodges to set a high example for positive and civil
public discourse, especially with people with whom they may
disagree.
• Cannon Beach Police Chief Jason Schermerhorn and other
officers who were honored at a recent ceremony for first respond-
ers at the Seaside Civic and Convention Center. Schermerhorn, a
former Seaside police officer, was among the many officers who
assisted the Seaside Police in the aftermath of the death Sgt. Jason
Gooding, who was shot and killed in the line of duty a year ago
while trying to make an arrest. Shermerhorn and Cannon Beach
Lt. Chris Wilbur, Officer Josh Gregory, Officer Seth Collins
and Cpl. Joseph Bowman were honored for their “valued contri-
bution after the loss of our beloved officer,” Seaside Police Chief
Dave Ham said at the ceremony.
• The Seaside Rotary Foundation and the Sunset Park and
Recreation Foundation, which partnered to present the annual
A Sweet Affaire fundraiser last weekend at the Seaside Civic and
Convention Center. The event, which featured sweet treats and
silent and live auctions, raised $20,000 which will be used to sup-
port the scholarship programs and community projects of both
foundations.
• Ruth Johnson and Judy Shook, who have been instrumen-
tal in the development and promotion of the Seaside Jazz Festival
for more than 30 year apiece. This year’s festival, scheduled later
this month, will feature 12 bands from across the country and the
Northwest performing at three different venues, the Seaside Civic
and Convention Center, the Elks Lodge and the Best Western.
W
ASHINGTON — It’s
a Watergate-era cli-
che that the cover-up is
always worse than the crime. In the
Mike Flynn affair,
we have the first
recorded instance
of a cover-up in the
absence of a crime.
Being covered
up were the Dec.
29 phone calls between Flynn and
the Russian ambassador to Wash-
ington. The presumed violation was
Flynn negotiating with a foreign
adversary while the Obama admin-
istration was still in office and,
even worse, discussing with Sergey
Kislyak the sanctions then being
imposed upon Russia (for meddling
in the 2016 elections).
What’s wrong with that? It is ris-
ible to invoke the Logan Act, passed
during the John Adams adminis-
tration, under which not a single
American has been prosecuted in
the intervening 218 years. It prohib-
its private citizens from negotiat-
ing with foreign powers. Flynn was
hardly a private citizen. As Donald
Trump’s publicly designated incom-
ing national security adviser, it was
perfectly reasonable for him to be
talking to foreign actors in prepara-
tion for assuming office within the
month.
Worst case: He was telling Kis-
lyak that the Trump administra-
tion might lift sanctions and there-
fore, comrade, no need for a spiral
of retaliations. How different is this
from Barack Obama telling Russian
President Dmitry Medvedev, on an
inadvertently open mic, during his
2012 re-election campaign, “This is
my last election. After my election, I
have more flexibility.”
Flynn would have been giving
the Russians useful information that
might well have contributed to Rus-
sia’s decision not to retaliate. I’m
no Russophile. But again: What’s
wrong with that? Turns out, the
Trump administration has not lifted
those sanctions. It’s all a tempest in
an empty teapot.
Echoing Nixon
The accusations of misbehavior
by Flynn carry a subliminal echo of
a long-standing charge against Rich-
ard Nixon that he interfered in the
This week’s Callouts go to:
• Some of the just plain goofy ideas that are surfacing in the
Legislature for new taxes on just about anything. The latest to sur-
face and die last week was a proposed tax on cars more than 20
years old. The bill would have required the owners of old vehicles
to pay $1,000 every five years to help feed the state’s Highway
Fund. The tax, however, would have hit many of those least able
to pay, since many are driving aged vehicles because they can’t
afford new ones. It’s also hard to figure how the age of a car can
make a difference to the road it’s traveling on. Fortunately, many
legislators voiced immediate objections and the proposal died a
quick death.
Suggestions?
Do you have a Shoutout or Callout you think we should know about? Let
us know at news@dailyastorian.com and we’ll make sure to take a look.
Paris peace talks in October 1968
to prevent his Democratic opponent
from claiming a major foreign pol-
icy success on the eve of the presi-
dential election.
But that kind of alleged diplo-
matic freelancing would have pro-
longed a war in which Americans
were dying daily. The Flynn conver-
sation was nothing remotely of the
sort. Where’s the harm?
The harm was not the calls but
Flynn’s lying about them. And most
especially lying to the vice presi-
dent who then went out and told the
world Flynn had never discussed
sanctions. You can’t leave your vice
president undercut and exposed.
Flynn had to go.
Why the cover-up
Up to this point, the story makes
sense. Except for one thing: Why
the cover-up if there is no crime?
Why lie about talking about sanc-
tions? It’s inexplicable. Did Flynn
want to head off lines of inquiry
about other contacts with Rus-
sians that might not have been so
innocent? Massive new leaks sug-
gest numerous contacts during the
campaign between Trump associ-
ates and Russian officials, some of
whom were intelligence agents. Up
till now, however, reports The New
York Times, there is “no evidence”
of any Trump campaign collusion or
cooperation with Russian hacking
and other interference in the U.S.
election.
Thus far. Which is why there
will be investigations. Speculation
ranges from the wildly malevolent
to the rather loopily innocent.
At one end of the spectrum is the
scenario wherein these campaign
officials — including perhaps Flynn,
perhaps even Trump — are com-
promised because of tainted busi-
ness or political activities known to
the Russians, to whom they are now
captive. A fevered conspiracy in my
view, but there are non-certifiable
people who consider it possible.
At the benign end of the spec-
trum is that the easily flattered
Trump imagines himself the great
dealmaker who overnight becomes
a great statesman by charming Vlad-
imir Putin into a Nixon-to-China
grand bargain — we jointly call off
the new Cold War, join forces to
destroy the Islamic State and reach a
new accommodation for Europe that
relieves us of some of the burden of
parasitic allies.
To me, the idea is nuts, a narcis-
sistic fantasy grounded in neither
strategy nor history. But that doesn’t
mean Trump might not imagine it
— after all, he maintains that if we
had only stayed in Iraq to steal its
oil, we wouldn’t have the Islamic
State. And if this has indeed been
his thinking about Russia, it would
make sense to surround himself
with advisers who had extensive
dealings there.
I believe neither of these scenar-
ios but I’m hard put to come up with
alternatives. The puzzle remains.
Why did Flynn lie? Until we answer
that, the case of the cover-up in
search of a crime remains unsolved.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Coretta King’s letter
CALLOUTS
Ruptly via AP
U.S. President Donald Trump’s former National Security Adviser Mi-
chael Flynn, right, shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Pu-
tin, in Moscow in this video still taken Dec. 10, 2015.
his is Black History Month.
Martin Luther King’s wife,
Coretta Scott King, wrote an
eloquent, informative and poignant
letter to the U.S. Senate in 1986
concerning the actions of
Jefferson Sessions in her home
state. You can find it at
http://bit.ly/2kntiYn
This letter influenced the U.S.
Senate at that time to deny Sessions
the federal judge appointment. This
letter was all but lost when Sen.
Strom Thurmond failed to put the
letter in the record, as she specifi-
cally requested. It was his job to put
it in the record.
This same letter was almost lost,
but recovered from news archives.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massa-
chusetts tried to read it into the
U.S. Senate record for the sec-
ond time during Sessions’ hear-
T
ing for appointment to the posi-
tion of U.S. Attorney General. It
must have struck a nerve, because
the GOP Senate leader became out-
raged and said she was impugning
Sen. Sessions. Sessions had already
impugned himself by his actions
back in 1986.
The letter is eloquent, informa-
tive and poignant. If only all could
read it. Obviously, the GOP leaders
were trying to hide it.
MONICA TAYLOR
Astoria
‘Unbelievable’ president
here is a rhetorical or logical
tool called Occam’s or Okham’s
Razor, which says that for any prob-
lem or question, the hypothesis
that explains most of the known or
observed facts in the simplest way,
with the fewest caveats, ifs, or leaps
T
of faith, is extremely likely to be the
correct answer.
What explains the president’s
total lack of expressed surprise,
anger or even interest in the Rus-
sians’ hacking and interfering in
our election, according to Occam’s
Razor, is that none of it did surprise
him because he knew about and col-
luded in it all along.
That was Paul Manafort’s job,
I think, and getting rid of him and
stirring up a storm about “fake
news” reporting is all getting us
ready for the facts of the matter to
eventually come to light. Trump has
always said he’d be an “unbeliev-
able” president. It’s one of his three
or four adjectives.
But who took it this literally? He
lies every day, in almost every utter-
ance. The emperor is naked, folks.
JOSEPH WEBB
Astoria