THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JULY 28, 2017
FRIDAY EXCHANGE
5A
Criminalizing dissent
’m starting to research a measure
developed somewhere in the U.S.
Senate, that would criminalize —
make a major felony of — Ameri-
cans peacefully dissenting against
the government of Israel. Anyone
who is supportive of the current
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
movement, for instance, would be
targeted. Anyone found guilty of
violating the prohibitions would
be vulnerable to a “minimum civil
penalty of $250,000 and a criminal
penalty of $1 million and 20 years
in prison”(S. 720). That’s a punch
in the gut, huh?
Irrespective of your feelings
about the crisis in Israel/Pales-
tine, please consider what such
a law would mean. This mea-
sure is anti-democratic, to say the
least, and gives the U.S. govern-
ment free reign to destroy the lives
of those who peacefully protest
the government of Israel’s actions.
The law would also certainly be
applied to other points of disagree-
ment, regarding other problems —
as if this isn’t big enough. The law
would very effectively criminal-
ize political dissent, and thus very
effectively destroys any remnant of
democracy and constitutional rights
we may still be hugging onto. The
U.S. is at risk of becoming a true
totalitarian country.
Please find out more about S.
720, and contact your U.S. sena-
tors, Ron Wyden and Jeff Merk-
ley. Perhaps your telephone calls
will help remind the senators that
this measure, apparently soon to be
a bill, must be fully understood as
the atrocity it is, before the major-
ity who hasn’t even read it makes it
into law.
How have our constitutional-
ly-protected rights become so terri-
bly vulnerable? This is a vital First
Amendment issue. We must not
allow S. 720 to keep moving.
SUSAN SKINNER
Astoria
I
Check out ham radio
mateur ham radio is an import-
ant part of our emergency pre-
paredness on the North Coast.
Already, during the storm of 2007,
when wind gusts reached hurricane
levels along the coast, emergency
ham radio networks proved their
value when cell and ground phone
services were interrupted.
Presently, there is a robust and
always-improving ham radio sys-
tem on the North Coast, integrated
with other emergency responders.
Ham radio is also a fun, and very
interesting hobby. Recent tech-
nology has made the activity very
affordable — hand-held devices sell
for less than $40, though the sky’s
the limit if you want all the bells
and whistles.
A
There are local ham groups,
such as the Sunset Empire Amateur
Radio Club (SEARC, https://w7bu.
club), meeting in Astoria, and the
Seaside Tsunami Amateur Radio
Society (STARS, http://wa7ve.org),
meeting in Seaside. New members
or just interested citizens are always
welcome at monthly meetings.
Classes to obtain the ham
license are periodically provided in
both Astoria and Seaside for free,
although there is a nominal charge
for the license issued after complet-
ing the short course.
DAVID SKARRA
Hammond
Zoned for residents
’d like to introduce some his-
tory and logic to the current
rental housing crisis in Seaside.
For the past 30 years or so, many
of us tried to convince the Plan-
ning Commission and City Coun-
cil that allowing vacation rentals in
residential zoning would destroy
the purpose of such zoning, creat-
ing motel zones, instead. No one
in either entity was interested in
the opinions of locals. Creating
housing for tourists became their
priority. Many City Council and
I
Planning Commission members
conveniently owned vacation rent-
als, or sold them for a living.
Now there are 398 vacation
rentals here. Of that number, no
less than 200 were formerly long-
term rentals that provided hous-
ing for the people who lived and
worked here. Where is the logic in
claiming that vacation rentals and
the housing shortage are two com-
pletely separate issues (“Wanted:
Long-term rentals in Seaside,” The
Daily Astorian, July 19)? Those
200-plus vacation rentals used to
be housing that is no longer avail-
able to anyone. And now they are
talking of ending all restrictions/
licensing of these properties.
Think of this: At approximately
16 residential lots per block, Sea-
side has managed to divest us of
residential housing, and replace it
with 25 blocks of vacation rentals
in a town of only 7,000 or so peo-
ple. Wouldn’t it be nice to have 25
full blocks of housing available
for rent? The council and plan-
ning commission are not working
for the residents. They are work-
ing for anyone who comes from
out-of-town, and couldn’t care less
about those of us who live or work
here. Creating tiny increments of
housing by allowing over-retail
apartments will not address the
tremendous need these people
have created via their
thoughtlessness.
How about using some com-
mon sense, and stop the prolifer-
ation of commercial-use housing
in residential zoning? How about
encouraging use of residential zon-
ing for residential use? What a con-
cept, eh?
I’m so sick of their excuses.
SANDY REA
Seaside
Bypass needed
pen letter to the city of Sea-
side: You have a heart prob-
lem. Your arteries are clogged, and
you need a “bypass.” I know this
issue has come up in the past, and
the consensus was that if Seaside
had a bypass, that people may not
stop to shop.
Well people are stopped, for
sure. In fact, they are dead stopped
on U.S. Highway 101 going both
directions most days, and certainly
on weekends. They are able to pick
up an order of Grizzly Tuna, or a
coffee from the Human Bean, or
shop at Nike outlet — that is how
O
slow the traffic moves. There are
more travelers on the road than in
previous years, and it is only going
to get worse; not just here, but
everywhere.
The local businesses are the los-
ers, because local residents stay
home to avoid the traffic, and it is
becoming increasingly difficult just
to go to the grocery store. Those
vehicles that are waiting to move
through Seaside are not going to
veer off and lose their place in line,
and most are wondering if there has
been an accident, as there is no sig-
nage that tells them why traffic is
congested.
Travel time from Gearhart to
the U.S. Highway 26 junction can
take up to 45 minutes. As a business
owner, it has made it almost impos-
sible for me to accommodate my
customers with deliveries of wed-
ding cakes from my shop in Can-
non Beach, traveling north, and it
is affecting my bottom line. I now
have been forced to redesign my
business plan and re-evaluate my
customer service.
The issue of a bypass around
Seaside needs to be made a priority
sooner, rather than later.
JAE YOUNG
Gearhart
Trump tweets, therefore he is
By CHARLES
KRAUTHAMMER
Washington Post Writers Group
W
ASHINGTON —
Transparency, thy name
is Trump, Donald Trump.
No filter, no
governor, no editor
lies between his
impulses and his
public actions. He
tweets, therefore
he is.
Ronald Reagan
was so self-contained and impen-
etrable that his official biographer
was practically driven mad trying
to figure him out. Donald Trump is
penetrable, hourly.
Never more so than during his
ongoing war on his own attorney
general, Jeff Sessions. Trump has
been privately blaming Sessions for
the Russia cloud. But rather than
calling him in to either work it out
or demand his resignation, Trump
has engaged in a series of deliberate
public humiliations.
Day by day, he taunts Sessions,
attacking him for everything from
not firing the acting FBI director
(which Trump could do himself in
an instant) to not pursuing criminal
charges against Hillary Clinton.
What makes the spectacle so
excruciating is that the wounded
Sessions plods on, refusing the
obvious invitation to resign his
dream job, the capstone of his
career.
Trump relishes such a cat-and-
mouse game and, by playing it so
openly, reveals a deeply repellent
vindictiveness in the service of
a pathological need to display
dominance.
Dominance is his game. Doesn’t
matter if you backed him, as did
Chris Christie, cast out months
ago. Or if you opposed him, as did
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks on Capitol Hill in June as he testifies before the Senate Intelligence
Committee hearing about his role in the firing of James Comey, his Russian contacts during the campaign
and his decision to recuse himself from an investigation into possible ties between Moscow and associ-
ates of President Donald Trump.
Mitt Romney, before whom Trump
ostentatiously dangled the State
Department, only to snatch it away,
leaving Romney looking the foolish
supplicant.
Yet the Sessions affair is more
than just a study in character. It
carries political implications. It has
caused the first crack in Trump’s
base. Not yet a split, mind you. The
base is simply too solid for that.
But amid his 35 to 40 percent core
support, some are peeling off, both
in Congress and in the pro-Trump
commentariat.
The issue is less characterologi-
cal than philosophical. As Stephen
Hayes of The Weekly Standard
put it, Sessions was the original
Trumpist — before Trump. Sessions
championed hard-line trade, law
enforcement and immigration pol-
icy long before Trump rode these
ideas to the White House.
For many conservatives,
Sessions’ early endorsement of
Trump served as an ideological
touchstone. And Sessions has
remained stalwart in carrying out
Trumpist policies at Justice. That
Trump could, out of personal pique,
treat him so rudely now suggests to
those conservatives how cynically
expedient was Trump’s adoption of
Sessions’ ideas in the first place.
But beyond character and
beyond ideology lies the most
appalling aspect of the Sessions
affair — reviving the idea of prose-
cuting Clinton.
In the 2016 campaign, there
was nothing more disturbing than
crowds chanting “lock her up,”
often encouraged by Trump and his
surrogates. After the election, how-
ever, Trump reconsidered, saying
he would not pursue Clinton who
“went through a lot and suffered
greatly.”
Now under siege, Trump has
jettisoned magnanimity. Maybe she
should be locked up after all.
This is pure misdirection. Even
if every charge against Clinton
were true and she got 20 years in
the clink, it would change not one
iota of the truth — or falsity — of
the charges of collusion being made
against the Trump campaign.
Moreover, in America we don’t
lock up political adversaries. They
do that in Turkey. They do it (and
worse) in Russia. Part of American
greatness is that we don’t criminal-
ize our politics.
Last week, Trump spoke at the
commissioning of the USS Gerald
R. Ford aircraft carrier. Ford was no
giant. Nor did he leave a great pol-
icy legacy. But he is justly revered
for his decency and honor. His great
gesture was pardoning Richard
Nixon, an act for which he was
excoriated at the time and which
cost him the 1976 election.
It was an act of political self-sac-
rifice, done for precisely the right
reason. Nixon might indeed have
committed crimes. But the spectacle
of an ex-president on trial and
perhaps even in jail was something
Ford would not allow the country to
go through.
In doing so, he vindicated the
very purpose of the presidential
pardon. On its face, it’s perverse.
It allows one person to overturn
equal justice. But the Founders
understood that there are times, rare
but vital, when social peace and
national reconciliation require con-
travening ordinary justice. Ulysses
S. Grant amnestied (technically:
paroled) Confederate soldiers
and officers at Appomattox, even
allowing them to keep a horse for
the planting.
In Trump World, the better
angels are not in evidence.
To be sure, Trump is indeed
examining the pardon power. For
himself and his cronies.