The following commentary by Peter Dorsen was printed in the Eden Prairie News August 24, 2017:
The 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution deals with succession to the presidency and establishes procedures both for filling a vacancy in the office of the vice president as well as responding to presidential disabilities.
As I have analyzed in a previous commentary titled “A Responsible President,” Donald Trump has clearly demonstrated mental illness: paranoia and narcissism. It is time for all members of Congress to cross the aisle and implement the applicable substance of the 25th Amendment to our Constitution.
William O. Douglas, the longest-serving Supreme Court justice, initiated an effort for an environment — an inanimate plaintiff — to sue a culpable defendant. His opinion was overridden.
However, just his motion of dissent delayed pristine wilderness from destruction. Now, too, we must save our planet.
The Chinese are not responsible. Emissions of global industrialization are.
Now, our president denies global warming that threatens the lifeblood of those who supported him and those who did not. His unconscionable stance runs clearly and despicably counter to the scientific community’s boilerplaite evidence that our current deterioration of the world’s living environment, already evident, is imminent.
With such contrary evidence, he has withdrawn the United States from the so-dearly-won Paris Agreement. Fortunately, his decision cannot be implemented before 2020.
He denies his election campaign’s involvement with the Russians despite boilerplate evidence by iron-clad investigative committees.
He has maligned Special Counselor Robert Mueller’s credibility by citing members of his investigative force’s donations to Democratic candidate Hilary Clinton, despite that he has done so himself.
He refuses to divulge his financial status and taxes despite precedent. Paranoia?
He has demonstrated unacceptable sexual behavior and consistent with sociopathy. Amorality?
His management of the current North Korean missile crisis, so easily capable of world destruction, is impenetrably incompetent. As always, he has ignored capable counsel of military advisers, legislative committees all by ignorant Twitter rants. Don’t forget the paranoid accusations that he is being sabotaged by “fake press.” He appears unaware of the First Amendment.
The right to circulate opinions in print without censorship by the government. Americans enjoy freedom of the press under the First Amendment to the Constitution.
He distorts the Second Amendment: “The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” But does that include the mentally impaired? To Trump, yes.
The proposed wall will only destroy already established boundaries, precious environments and long-hewn international relationships with Mexico, which has given us the necessary hard-working workers to “Make America Great Again” by manning our kitchens, roofs and care for our environment.
Just because the few Somalis have chosen to cross over to terrorism obviously does not condemn the Muslim country’s computer technicians, physicians, scientists from entering the American melting pot.
In our current horrific and distorted political environment fraught with racial, gender and religious contempt, so ominously evident in the agenda of Donald Trump’s political campaign, is undeniable. Clear evidence supports the frightening crescendo of antisemitism and hate crimes. The tragic assault on opposite-minded demonstrators in Charlottesville, Virginia, is but another byproduct of our president’s ethnocentrism and expressed purification of American that so-pandered to the disenfranchised who were duped by his candidacy.
It is time for Sens. Al Franken, Amy Klobuchar and 3rd District Rep. Erik Paulsen to cross the aisles and blend red and blue, not denying that these two primary colors make purple. Now is the time to invoke the 25th Amendment, while there is time.