7 October—On the second (i.e., two-year) anniversary of Hamas incredibly catching Israel with her pants down and slaughtering 1,200 innocents, the Mallard Filmore comic strip tells us: “Attorney General Pam Bondi recently said that the DOJ would absolutely target people for so-called ‘hate speech.’ She then added that the First Amendment was still sitting on her desk awaiting review.”

The First Amendment brings to mind the Constitution and that brings to mind the Declaration of Independence, the eloquent explanation of why the colonies needed to “dissolve the political bands which have connected them” with a tyrant who had forbidden, dissolved, obstructed, suspended, abolished, constrained, abdicated, plundered, deprived, endeavoured to prevent, refused to assent to what was good, right, lawful, and just; while making “Judges dependent on his Will alone,” erecting “a multitude of New Offices, and [sending] hither swarms of Officers to harrass [sic] our people, and eat out their substance,” and keeping “among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.” And that’s only for starters.

In yesterday’s Hearst RepublicanAmerican was an eloquent letter from Frederick W. Krug Sr. of Watertown which brought to mind the Declaration of Independence. We take the liberty of posting it here in its entirety:

“We are witnessing the erosion of what has made America a free society and the envy of the world. Our president issues executive orders as casually as he once threw rolls of paper towels to Puerto Rican hurricane survivors. He appoints incompetents to government positions based on their loyalty to him. He falsely claims that people who oppose him are criminals. He disregards Constitutional due process protections. By his words and manner of speech he advocates violence and then laments the conduct his outlandish behavior has induced. He strong-arms universities, law firms and corporations using Mafia-like threats if they fail to comply with his demands. He insults our longtime allies and praises dictators. He has undermined our country’s role as leader of the free world and opened the door for China to become the world’s foremost economic powerhouse.

“The Republican-controlled Congress stands idly by without protest and instead passes a budget that strips millions of Americans of health insurance coverage and bestows generous tax breaks upon billionaires. It doesn’t care that the president has undercut a wide range of programs that Congress approved, including those providing food and medicine to starving people in the third world.

“The conservative majority on the Supreme Court has distorted the Constitution by ruling that corporations may spend unlimited funds for political purposes, by gutting the 1965 Voting Rights Act and by deciding that the president is immune from accountability, even for crimes he commits while in office.

“What can we do about this? We must resist whenever we can. We must expose the lies and distortions that contaminate today’s discourse. We must hold accountable those who undermine our Constitution’s system of checks and balances and who betray the voters’ trust. We must elect representatives with the courage to stand against tyranny.”

(To be fair to Trump, he defended throwing paper towels into a crowd of hurricane-ravaged Puerto Ricans on 3 October 2017 thus: “They had these beautiful, soft towels. Very good towels. And I came in and there was a crowd of a lot of people. And they were screaming and they were loving everything. I was having fun, they were having fun. They said, ‘Throw ‘em to me! Throw ‘em to me, Mr. President!” What a guy!)