 |
| Toxic overreach will be met with a backlash. |
"It
is simply not fathomable that a Constitution that grants Congress the power to
remove a president for reasons including criminal behavior would deny Congress
the power to investigate him for unlawful conduct…".—Judge
Mehta, D.C. District Court, 5/20/2019
“There’s
a certain irony to the situation: President Trump’s support of the
anti-abortion movement emboldened activists; now, the president and his allies
are concerned those activists’ bold moves could cost the party.”—Lisa
Lerer, NYTimes.com, May 20, 2019
In the U.S. today, the Constitution,
the rule of Law and democracy itself are caught in an absurd crisis brought on
by toxic overreach on the part of the White House and on the part of State
legislatures. Never one to let a facile projection go to waste, of course, the
White House is justifying its extreme Executive overreach by accusing Congress
of overreaching its authority
vis-à-vis the White House. At issue here is whether Congress has the authority
to subpoena the Executive branch for information for the sake of investigating
possible crimes committed by the president. If he can’t be indicted, their
logic goes, he
also can’t be investigated.
As Dana Milbank put it in the Washington
Post, “Trump’s not claiming executive power; he’s going right for divine
right.”
It would follow by this logic that
the president truly is above the law, because
who else would investigate his or her crimes? As
Rachel Maddow
put it on MSNBC.com, alluding to a
Trump claim during the 2016 election, “He really could stand in the middle of 5th
avenue and shoot someone.”
I wish this twisted mess were an
exaggeration, but in an amazing roll-out of news in the past week, we’ve seen
that Trump and his supporters have seized upon now as their window of opportunity to abuse the limits of their
power in truly wild, excessive ways.
As if his defiance of Congress and the
Courts weren’t enough, CNN reported
recently that he’s requested paperwork so he can pardon accused U.S. war criminals. This is “interesting” timing for such
a move, as Trump has a documented record of supporting heinous practices like
torture and he’s also setting off
alarm sirens with his current bellicose posture towards Iran. What kind of
signal is he trying to send by issuing such pardons?
As noted, this trend of radical
overreach also extends beyond the White House to a number
of GOP-controlled state legislatures who have decided that now is the time to “go all the way” to
the Supreme Court to kill women’s reproductive rights in this land. In fact,
there seems to be a competition among “red” states for legislation that imposes
the most oppressively complete abortion ban, allowing no exceptions even for
rape and incest.
Alabama and Missouri are the latest
states to pass such bans, with minor variations, with likely more to come. On
their face, the bills are unabashedly unconstitutional and in complete
violation of the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe
v. Wade decision. What interests me here, however, is the deliberate
decision these states have made to hurry up and abuse and overreach on their
authority now—what does this mean
astrologically?
In fact, it’s all happening in plain sight: the rare
convergence of planetary cycles above with
key power-and-structure-related dynamics in the U.S. Sibly chart below perfectly represents the rolling
assault we’re experiencing on the very soul of this democracy, and no surprise,
Donald Trump’s nativity reflects the role he’s been playing as catalyst for this assault—much more on
that ahead.
 |
| The Handmaid's Tale has provided powerful imagery for protests across the nation. |
State legislatures that are passing
these anti-women’s rights bills know full well the bills will be challenged in
courts, and it seems that’s the point. They
want to use these challenges to force the Supreme Court to reconsider Roe v. Wade. Just like Trump and company
are using their blatant disregard for Congressional authority to leverage
expanded executive powers. It’s not like the tension between our co-equal
branches of government hasn’t always been
there—the system is designed to function best when there is tension—but what we’re seeing these days is an order of
magnitude more precarious.
In response to various subpoenas
issued by Congress—most recently to the Treasury
Department in pursuit of Trump’s tax returns—Trump’s lawyers are claiming
that Congress essentially has no right to investigate a president for anything, and that to continue their present investigations would amount to
an attempt to “do-over” the Mueller investigation, which they, as Mitch
McConnell put it, consider “case closed.” Considering the questionable way in
which the investigation was shut down by Trump-booster, Attorney General
William Barr, this “case closed” claim is anything but credible, and several
points in the Mueller report suggest that the Special Counsel was teeing up at
least the Volume II obstruction part of the report for further congressional
action.
In fact, word is getting out that
the report is not such a done deal:
in an unusually bold variation on the “pushing his limits” theme, one lonely
GOP Representative named Justin Amash (R-MI) came forward yesterday to say that
the Mueller report contains impeachable
offenses against Trump—the information is there, if his fellow party
members would bother to read the report! Ignorance is bliss?
There’s also the Mueller report’s very concerning omission of information
related to the counter-intelligence investigation into Russia’s meddling in our
election and the Trump campaign’s
possible actions (witting or not) vis-à-vis that meddling.
 |
| Former FBI Director, James Comey testifying before Congress. |
Yes, the Trump
campaign itself was not found to be criminally liable for
“conspiracy/collusion” by Volume I in the Mueller Report, but that’s a separate
issue. The counterintelligence investigation was launched during the last
months of the 2016 election campaign by then-FBI director James Comey, and the House
Intelligence Committee is trying—to no avail, so far—to determine what
happened to that investigation.
Simply put, it seems to have
evaporated into thin air. All of this is very confusing, but think back to May
2017 when Comey made the following announcement:
“I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to
confirm that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is
investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016
presidential election,” he said, “and that includes investigating the nature of
any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the
Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign
and Russia’s efforts.”
Seems like a lifetime ago—Mueller’s
investigation launched that same month, but the investigations were meant to be
concurrent, not one-or-the-other. Mueller’s mandate was a criminal investigation, and he definitely found several crimes to
prosecute (Manafort, Gates, Papadopoulos, Russian hackers, Maria Butina, etc.),
but Comey’s investigation was a counterintelligence one, and no one in
Congress seems to know at this point what happened to it. Has it been squelched
by the DOJ under Barr? Has it been resolved in some way that the DOJ simply
refuses to reveal?
Trying to get to the bottom of this has meant the House
Intel committee has issued subpoenas of its own, which are—of course—being
stonewalled. This should seriously concern
us—transparency is one of the only ways “We the People” have of holding our
government accountable, and we’re in for a world of hurt if we can’t accomplish
this.
Here’s where AG Barr figures into
the story—he’s held a wildly
expansive view of executive power since his first bout as Attorney General
in the George H.W. Bush administration, and his views have clearly enabled
Trump’s apparent desire to be untouchable—above not only prosecution, but investigation. Want to be a criminal
with no consequences? Run for president with Barr at your side! Writing for The Washington Post, Tom Hamberger
recounts Barr’s
history in the Bush administration:
“A few months after William P. Barr joined the Justice Department in 1989
as head of the Office of Legal Counsel, he issued an unsolicited opinion
warning Bush administration officials to watch out for ‘legislative
encroachments’ on the authority of the president.
The memo from
the new 39-year-old Justice official surprised some government officials and
constitutional scholars with its ominous language about congressional maneuvers
that ‘could strike at the heart of executive power.’
The Barr memo, as it came to be known, was considered so challenging to
congressional prerogatives that his Democratic successor in the Office of Legal
Counsel, Walter E. Dellinger III, made it a priority six years later to replace
the opinion with one he considered more measured.
‘It was a very high priority to supersede the Barr memo with one that recognized the
authority of Congress and took a more nuanced view of separation of powers,”
Dellinger said in an interview.’”
 |
| Attorney General William Barr has enabled Trump's defiance of Congress. |
The fact that Barr has been given an opportunity this year to re-establish his doctrine of limitless executive power is a critical piece of the cosmic puzzle we’re faced with these days, and clearly, the administration intends to exercise this power retroactively by blocking the release of historical financial records, etc.. On May 19th, the NYTimes published an investigative piece reporting on possible unreported money-laundering incidents in Trump’s and top aide/son-in-law Jared Kushner’s accounts within Deutsche Bank in New York.
The details are less important here than the overall pattern such
stories reveal: overreach—legal or
not—has been a way of life for these individuals and their institutional
enablers, and it’s a difficult habit to break , so they clearly intend to
simply change the rules to allow for
it.
Unfortunately, when the unscrupulous
are simply allowed to over-reach the
law with impunity, lives are destroyed—this is why civilized nations embrace
the rule of law. One final example of drastic overreach in this past week raises
this alarm: the war-mongering that’s going on in the Trump administration
against Iran. Anyone watching the news this week on this topic knows that the administration
has been building its pretexts for launching this war for some time already—it’s
more than likely that anti-Iran hawk John Bolton wouldn’t have been appointed
National Security Advisor if Iran wasn’t the ultimate target all along.
Consider how eager Trump was to pull
out of the Obama era Iran nuclear deal; is it any coincidence that long-time
friend of the Trump family Benyamin Netanyahu of Israel spoke to a joint
session of Congress in 2015 to oppose that deal because Iran is Israel’s
particular nemesis in the Middle East? True, Iran is a powerful player in
the never-ending Middle East drama, and we’ve had a very rocky relationship
with them since the 1970s, but there’s little doubt that a war with Iran—a
war that our European allies have already said they will not support—would escalate into something truly horrific.
 |
| Many foretold a crisis with Iran when John Bolton joined the Trump Cabinet. |
This could conceivably make the Iraq
war look like a walk in the park, and that conflict is still producing
casualties after 16 years. Trouble is, according to NBC this past week, those in Congress with serious, legitimate
concerns about this déjà-vu-drenched march to war may
end up having nothing to say about it:
President Donald Trump may not need Congress
to go to war with Iran.
That's the case his lieutenants have been quietly building as
tensions between the two nations have escalated.
The key elements involve drawing links between al Qaeda and
Iran and casting Iran as a terrorist threat to the U.S. — which is exactly what administration officials have been doing in recent
weeks.
That could give Trump the justification he needs to fight
Iran under the still-in-effect 2001 use-of-force resolution without
congressional approval…
With Congress unlikely to grant him new authority to strike
Iran under the current circumstances, and amid a campaign of "maximum
pressure" against the regime in Tehran that has escalated tension between
the two countries, Trump administration officials have sent strong signals that
they will be ready to make an end run around lawmakers, using the 2001
authorization for the use of military force — or "AUMF" in
Washington-speak — if necessary.
That law gave the president the power to use force against
"nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized,
committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001,
or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts
of international terrorism against the United States by such nations,
organizations or persons."
News reports are quick to point out that the Trump
administration is divided on the Iran issue—Trump
himself claims to not want to rush to war, but his bellicose rhetoric on
Twitter belies this. Add to this the fact that he’s surrounded himself with
officials (particularly John Bolton and Mike Pompeo) who have openly supported
regime change in Iran over the years, and war becomes even more likely.
As for the administration’s possible intent to go around
Congress by invoking the AUMF authorization to launch an attack: as happened with the Iraq War, this would mean
that We the People will have nothing
to say about this rush to war, or about how much tax-payer money is unleashed
to do so. And, it’s a safe guess that
it will all be done in a highly non-transparent way because that’s what tends to happen when executive
power is given full, unlimited rein.
As we’ll see in the charts below, all the forms of toxic overreach we’ve discussed above are
reflections of the same astrological “climate,” if you will.
It’s important to note that none of these situations has arisen overnight, and that they all
represent trends that have been ongoing throughout the currently waning Saturn-Pluto
cycle (11/1982-1/2020). Let’s explore what that “climate” looks like
today.
 |
| The Alabama vote on May 15th sparked instant protests. |
The Astrology
It’s difficult to settle on any one chart that fairly
represents all the tentacles of overreach that are flailing around out there,
but the Alabama action on May 15th is a good place to start. Many of
the same D.C. players who support that near-total abortion ban are also belligerents when it comes to Iran,
and they’re also enabling Trump’s defiance towards congressional subpoenas, etc.
Representative
Tom Cotton (R-AR) comes to mind, although so far, he’s talking out of both
sides of his mouth when it comes to Iran. I hope I’m wrong, but at this
point it’s hard to imagine that GOP members of Congress would push back too
hard on Trump if he decides to go to war.
So even though Triwheel
#1 below is first and foremost about the Alabama abortion ban, we can
certainly consider it to be part of the larger pattern of executive and
state-level overreach. I’ve placed the U.S. Sibly chart (inner wheel) against
Trump’s nativity (middle wheel) and a noon chart for May 15th’s
vote in Alabama (outer wheel-no exact time known).
I encourage you to read Wikipedia’s excellent summary of Alabama’s controversial bill (House Bill 314,
“Human Life Protection Act”)—it recounts the entire process the bill has gone
through since its introduction on April 2, 2019 and it details its intent (to
force the Supreme Court’s hand on Roe v.
Wade), the debate it has engendered and the responses to the bill from both
sides of the political aisle.
Triwheel #1: (inner wheel) USA—Sibly Chart, July
4, 1776, 5:10 p.m. LMT, Philadelphia, PA ; (middle wheel) Donald J. Trump,
June 14, 1946, 10:54 a.m. DST, Jamaica, NY; (outer wheel) Alabama Abortion
Bill passes, May 15, 2019, 12:00 p.m. DST (noon, no exact time known),
Montgomery, AL. Tropical Equal Houses,
True Node.
It’s hard to argue with that, especially seeing this earthy configuration, but the mystery remains: why is control over women’s health care options so materially important to those behind it? The shocking way in which Alabama pushed through such a complete ban is certainly reflected in the Venus-Uranus conjunction in Venus-ruled Taurus. This duo falls sextile Sibly Venus-Jupiter, suggesting to me that there are powerful money interests at stake behind this move. More on that in a bit.
The answer to why control over women is so important to the big anti-abortion players may be tucked into this grand trine as well: Sibly Neptune (Virgo) represents our national illusions and ideals, and this point plays well with our protective Cancer Sun—hence the impulse to make “protecting human life” the basis for this oppressive control over women. The image many conservatives cherish of the U.S. as a bastion of “Patriotism, Mom and Apple Pie” probably feels threatened by women’s freedom of choice.
 |
| Trump's own rhetoric enabled the State bills now threatening women's rights. |
This deep-rooted national mythology flies in the face of women’s everyday lives, of course—which speaks to our national Sibly Moon in Aquarius. Unless we’ve woken up in a different nation today than we did in 1776, Americans—not just women—cherish liberty and self-reliance above all. As it happens, Roe v. Wade is more about a woman’s right to privacy and freedom from government interference in health care decisions than it is about abortion, per se. The weight of 25 men in Alabama trying their best to squelch women’s rights from on high is represented with eerie precision by Trump’s controlling Leo Mars-ASC opposing Sibly Moon—we forget his history of misogyny at our peril.
So it’s easy to see why pro-life v. pro-choice has been so effective as a political wedge issue since the 1970s. As clashing viewpoints have become enmeshed with religious ideologies in the course of those decades, the issue has become an full-on culture war—a shrill contest for hearts and minds—perpetuated for all its divisive potential by the Sibly Neptune-Mars square (Virgo-Gemini). Both Neptune and Mars are disposed by Cancer Mercury (our national mind-set, influenced by communications media), which opposite Sibly Pluto (Capricorn) speaks to the financial juggernaut that’s undoubtedly been spawned by this culture war, as well. Here we are, approaching another presidential election—the connections we’re seeing to Big Money interests are quite relevant!
In fact, it would be an interesting research project to explore just how much of our national GDP depends upon such divisive, self-perpetuating wedge issues like this. How many corporate ventures profit from them? How many dollars flow into various political campaigns in response to emotion-laced abortion-themed ads, on both sides of the argument?
The absurdity and perniciousness of all this will likely be forced into full view before Saturn-Pluto finally conjoin in January, 2020. It’s high time this issue is resolved once and for all, and whatever that ends up looking like, it does feel like we’re approaching a crossroads in the year ahead.
Interchart Grand-Square: AL Jupiter (Rx, Sagittarius) conjoins Trump Moon (Sagittarius) and opposes Sibly Mars-Trump Uranus-No. Node-Sun (Gemini); this axis squares AL Neptune (Pisces) opposite Sibly Neptune (Virgo). Clearly, Trump is emotionally invested in the pattern of overreach that’s powerfully enabled here (his Moon conjoins AL Jupiter), and the Neptune influences on his chart suggest that personal power and executive power are only vaguely differentiated in his thinking. Of course, his refusal to disentangle himself fully from his personal businesses as he assumed the presidency already told us that. Where traditional ethical principles decry conflicts of interest between the personal and the political, he might just see opportunities.
 |
| It's all there, in the report. |
Trump’s Sun-Uranus conjunction tied into all this reflects a desire to push the limits—and get away with it. Unfortunately, holding him accountable with all the slippery Neptunian energy in play right now is far from simple—if anything, it supports his legal team’s strategy of muddying the waters of congressional authority and eroding our structured system of checks and balances, using his emotional needs as a catalyst for that purpose. Amazingly, one of AG Barr’s justifications for giving Trump a pass on the obstruction of justice-related issues raised by the Mueller report fits perfectly here. From Slate.com:
“In Barr, Trump has found an attorney general with hoary Republican bona
fides who accepts Trump’s view and has developed a theory according to which
Trump’s feelings not only matter more than the law, but should dictate it.”
So if Trump doesn’t feel he should be the target of an investigation, he shouldn’t?!
What does all this have to do with the Alabama abortion ban? In the 2016
campaign, Trump made promises that powerful fund-raising entities took to mean
that his Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade, and at this point in the
election cycle, they’re likely calling in their “chips” and—importantly—testing
whether they wish to gamble on his 2020 campaign.The more Trump is allowed to act with impunity to fulfill their agendas, the more he can satisfy his feelings-driven quest for more power (Moon-Nodal Axis). His Moon disposes his security-conscious Saturn-Venus conjunction (Cancer) and is disposed by his finance-focused Jupiter (Libra), which—conjunct his Chiron-Juno (Libra)—is not easily satisfied. Taken together this all drops another hint that he equates political success with personal and financial success. And that it’s very, very important that he feels safe and in charge.
The fact that Trump’s Jupiter-Chiron-Juno gathering also conjoins Sibly Saturn (Libra) explains his present clash with Congress over the accountability it's demanding from him. It also explains his quest to control the DOJ and the Judiciary in response. He apparently wants to be an authority—his natal Saturn-Venus appreciates the benefits of being the one to hold others accountable--but he has no use for the concept of authority otherwise. Needless to say, Saturn and Pluto transiting exactly opposite his Saturn-Venus registers on his delicate feelings as a threat and a frustrating obstacle, and they’re not about to ease up for quite awhile. The question might be, how far will he go to defy Saturn-Pluto’s call to accountability?
 |
| Authority without accountability is...? |
I think we’re seeing the answer play out in the news every day, and in all the examples of overreach we discussed above. Of course, it doesn’t help that all these accountability issues are enmeshed with his plans to serve a second term in office, come what may.
It will be very interesting to see how he and his election team navigate the transition between the current Saturn-Pluto cycle and the beginning of the new one in January 2020.
AL Jupiter (Sagittarius) semi-sextiles AL Saturn-Pluto (Capricorn), which quincunxes Sibly Mars-Trump Sun-No. Node-Uranus (Gemini). These aspects highlight another key cycle that is waning to completion and beginning anew in the next year—Jupiter-Pluto. Significantly, this is a twelve-year cycle, so its impact on society, particularly on the expanded exercise of power designed to aggrandize the power players, tends to pack a punch, but usually on a more short term basis. Even so, it appears that we’re seeing a sort of “tandem” effect between the last two Jupiter-Pluto cycles, with troubling consequences.
I was reminded of all this by an MSNBC.com report regarding some dramatic events during the George W. Bush administration that echo what we’re seeing today. A few years into that administration, a crisis of power abuse flared up under the 1994 Jupiter-Pluto cycle’s final square (Virgo-Sagittarius); this was caused by some overreaching officials, including White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andrew Card, Jr.. Wikipedia sums this incident up nicely:
“In March 2004, the Justice Department under Ashcroft ruled
that the Stellar Wind domestic intelligence program
was illegal. The day after the ruling, Ashcroft became critically ill with
acute pancreatitis.
President Bush sent his White House Counsel Alberto
Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andrew
Card Jr. to Ashcroft's hospital bed. They
wanted him to sign a document reversing the Justice Department's ruling. The
semi-conscious Ashcroft refused to sign; Acting Attorney General James
Comey and Jack Goldsmith, head of the Office of Legal Counsel for DOJ, were there
to back him up.[22]
FBI Director Robert Mueller, who also was rushing to the
hospital, spoke by phone to Ashcroft's security detail, ordering them not to
allow Card or Gonzales to have Comey removed from the hospital room.[23]”
Then-DOJ legal counsel James Baker
and others threatened to resign en masse over this attempt by Gonzales and
Card, so Bush backed down and made some modifications to the surveillance program
in question. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow interviewed
Baker about this historical echo with today’s Attorney-General and DOJ, and
he discussed the courage that’s needed to stand up to the Trump administration
in pretty stark terms.
As we saw above, William Barr’s overblown theory of executive
power (1989) was already rattling around in the Justice Department by this
time, even if it had been squashed temporarily; in fact, Barr’s theory was resurrected
by Alberto Gonzales after he became Attorney-General in 2005, and he acted upon
it. By the time Jupiter was in its balsamic phase with Pluto in late 2007
(closing out the 1994 cycle begun at 28°+Scorpio),
Gonzales was gone for overreaching the limits of his position.
Again, from Wikipedia:
“Gonzales's tenure as U.S. Attorney General was marked by
controversy regarding warrantless surveillance of
U.S. citizens and the legal authorization of so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques",
later generally acknowledged as constituting torture, in the
U.S. government's post-9/11
"War on Terror". Gonzales had also presided over
the firings of several U.S.
Attorneys who had refused back-channel White House directives to prosecute
political enemies, allegedly causing the office of Attorney General to become
improperly politicized.[2]
Following calls for his removal, Gonzales resigned from the office "in the
best interests of the department," on August 27, 2007, effective September
17, 2007.[3][4]”
This should sound familiar: Barr is basically repeating the overreaching
pattern his infamous 1989 memo unleashed, and in fact, we have to wonder if the
19-page “application memo” he sent the White House this past year, before his
current return engagement as Attorney-General, was basically a replay of that
1989 memo that jumpstarted his DOJ career. Gonzales was forced to resign in
2007 at the end of one aggressive Jupiter-Pluto cycle and the
beginning of a new one in late
Sagittarius, a degree area that Jupiter is now approaching once
again (we can’t make these things up!).
The difference this time around,
however, is that Barr isn’t likely to be forced by Trump to resign for
over-politicizing his position—Trump revels
in Barr’s overreach because it protects him!
As we often see with the Cosmos, cycles echo
in terms of themes, but there are
usually variations on that theme that
shift our norms and expectations ever so slightly. What’s disturbing about this
particular echo is the way it is slowly-but-surely normalizing the radical
expansion of executive powers.
 |
| The future of women's rights in this nation is truly at stake today. |
Back
to the abortion issue
Executive overreach isn’t confined
to the direct actions of the president; it’s also at play when executive
appointees are encouraged (overtly or not) to overreach on their legal bounds or norms for the sake of the executive’s agenda.
Such is the case today with the DOJ and the Courts, including the Supreme
Court—of particular interest to those who want to see Roe v. Wade overturned. In the Sibly chart, these institutions are
represented by Saturn in justice-loving Libra.
Unfortunately, one of the highlights
of Saturn’s
last transit of Libra (roughly 2009-2012) was the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, the landmark
decision that unleashed unlimited corporate dollars into political campaigns
using the spurious justification of “First Amendment rights.” Needless to say, this decision (official on
January 21, 2010) sold out our election process to the highest bidders and
undermined the power of ordinary voters. Significantly for today’s discussion,
Saturn
exactly squared Pluto that day in 2010
(Libra-Capricorn), and we’ve been experiencing the final square dynamics
between those two ever since.
So, will the Court, during the final
days of this square phase, deliver
for those whose millions have been fueling anti-Choice campaign coffers ever
since 2010? Justice Brett Kavanaugh
claimed in his confirmation hearings this past year that Roe v. Wade was “settled precedent,” and he convinced Senators to
vote for him who might not otherwise have done so with that comment.
Unfortunately, the Court just
decided to overturn a settled precedent in another case, so this raises the
possibility that the same lack of respect for “stare decisis” could be applied
by this Court to Roe.
 |
| Madison designed this system to ward off tyranny--if that's the "Deep State," so be it! |
Final
thoughts
He spits those words out as though there’s something inherently shady about how our three coequal branches of government were engineered to check and balance each other, when quite to the contrary, this resilient Madisonian system is the only thing that stands between us and tyranny.
Trump has identified his target—any mechanism within our government that might hold the president accountable for anything—and he’s literally casting shade on it. Congress, the FBI, the Courts—they’re all fair game. He’s doing this most controversially by issuing a blanket refusal to any subpoenas or calls to testify before congressional committees seeking to exercise their legitimate oversight function over the Mueller investigation or any other issue that might implicate the executive branch. Amazingly, the subpoena issued by the GOP-led Senate Intelligence committee to Donald Trump, Jr. was at least acknowledged and responded to, rather than blatantly defied.
The fact that it was a GOP-led committee is key here: Trump’s lawyers are trying to establish a legal theory that any investigations by Democratic-led committees are political in nature, not legitimate uses of their oversight function. Thankfully, Federal Judge Amit Mehta of the D.C. District Court ruled yesterday that Trump’s former accounting firm, Mazar’s, must turn over the financial records subpoenaed by the House Oversight committee, and he allowed Trump’s lawyers no stay of his ruling for appeal.
This is a hopeful development, and there are likely to be more like this one in the near future. Along with a few setbacks, of course—Jupiter and Saturn are also at odds these days, so there’s a tug of war between overreach and accountability that will most likely drag out into 2020. It doesn’t take astrology to know that the coming election will be decided around all these issues.
Today, however, the focus in the news will be the massive outpouring of protests regarding the wave of state-level abortion restrictions that crashed across the nation in the last weeks, and it’s probably high time for this confrontation. IMHO, American women--whether they ever contemplate having or needing an abortion or not--must simply refuse to relinquish their rightful power and self-determination, or they will be dragged back into the dark times before Roe v. Wade. And yes, the men in their lives should step forward and fight alongside them—this is about all Americans having choices!
Twenty-five men in the Alabama Senate have no business denying a woman’s right to make healthcare decisions for herself—shame on them for trying!
 |
| Should these 25 men have the final say on a women's right to choose? |
Raye
Robertson is a practicing astrologer, writer and former educator. A graduate of
the Faculty of Astrological Studies (U.K.), Raye focuses on mundane,
collective-oriented astrology, with a particular interest in current affairs,
culture and media, the astrology of generations, and public concerns such as
education and health. Several of her articles on these topics have been
featured in The Mountain Astrologer and other publications over the years.
She is
also available to read individual charts—contact her at: robertsonraye@gmail.com.
© Raye Robertson 2019. All
rights reserved.
