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1 week ago | 
smokymountainnews.com | Martin Dyckman
To the Editor:
To prescribe term limits for what ails Congress is like offering bleach for COVID-19. It can’t help. It is likely to make matters worse. It’s a distraction from what ought to be done.
Term limits, adopted by initiative, ruined Florida’s legislature when they took effect in 2000. They didn’t just purge the most experienced members. They also insured that new ones would not be around long enough to remember or learn the mistakes of the past.
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2 months ago | 
citizen-times.com | Martin Dyckman
Martin DyckmanGuest opinionThom Tillis, North Carolina’s senior senator, made the front page of the Sunday, Feb. 16, New York Times, but not in a way he should be proud of. The article told in detail how he changed from a firm “no” vote against Pete Hegseth to the deciding vote that made him secretary of defense. The short version of a long story: Tillis folded under pressure from President Trump, who had threatened to find and endorse a rival to him in next year’s Republican primary.
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2 months ago | 
smokymountainnews.com | Martin Dyckman
And now it’s America’s turn.
Donald Trump didn’t stop on Day One, as he had falsely promised. He’s purging the government of anyone who might be more submissive to the Constitution then to him. He’s populating it with fellow fascists and treating the economy as if it were just another name-branded casino to bankrupt.
The Supreme Court has already given him a license to break any law.
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Dec 4, 2024 | 
smokymountainnews.com | Martin Dyckman
That seems to be a familiar reaction within the United States as well — that is, among those who trusted too much that the people would not re-elect someone with as garish a personal and political history as Donald Trump.
Some have reposted on social media how the Baltimore Sun’s famously caustic columnist, H. L.
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Aug 25, 2024 | 
floridatrident.org | Martin Dyckman
In a masterpiece of spin and understatement, the DeSantis administration credited “overwhelming interest” for temporarily pausing a scheme to put golf courses, hotels and pickleball courts on nine of Florida’s pristine state parks. “Overwhelming opposition” better describes the thunderous “Hell no!” Tallahassee was hearing from private citizens and public officials throughout the state. “(O)verwhelming disgust and hatred,” ventured Florida author Jeff VanderMeer in a post on X.
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Aug 4, 2024 | 
citizen-times.com | Martin Dyckman
In December 1962, with the nation’s survival in doubt, President Lincoln advised Congress that “the dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present.”That’s true today about the language of the quiet past. I’m speaking of the misuse of the noun and adjective “conservative.”No conservatives, in the old and true meaning, could do what the John Roberts Supreme Court has done to our Constitution and our country. Or what Donald Trump attempted after he lost the 2020 election.
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Mar 18, 2024 | 
floridatrident.org | Martin Dyckman
The rural lawmakers who once misruled Florida’s Legislature are remembered for how stoutly they resisted a new constitution, desegregation, lobbyist disclosure and fair representation. But at least the Pork Choppers, as they were called, never tried to turn back the calendar and repeal progress, which is what Florida’s purportedly modern Legislature brazenly did this month. They also showed more respect for the bedrock American principle of separation of church and state.
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Feb 19, 2024 | 
sun-sentinel.com | Martin Dyckman
One of the senseless ironies of our time is that more people seem to worry about President Joe Biden’s age — 81 — than about the immaturity of Donald Trump, who is pushing 78. Yes, immaturity. That’s the most telling difference between Biden, whose wisdom and judgment are undiminished by his age, and the former president, whose entire persona is a constant tantrum more befitting an out-of-control toddler than an erstwhile leader of the free world.
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Feb 16, 2024 | 
floridatrident.org | Martin Dyckman
Florida’s politicians love the cops and the cops love them back. The tokens of their affection are endorsements, campaign contributions and votes. Sometimes, though, the politicians love them too much. Bills moving through the Legislature would abolish the civilian police oversight boards in 21 Florida cities and prohibit any new ones. That’s on top of the extraordinary protection the Legislature has already given its preferred public employees.
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Nov 8, 2023 | 
sun-sentinel.com | Martin Dyckman
A classic definition of chutzpah is the parable of a youth on trial for murdering his parents who begs the jury for mercy because he is an orphan. Move over, kid. Make room for the Democrats. They’re babbling with outrage — yes, OUTRAGE!!!! — over Mike Johnson of Louisiana becoming speaker of the House.
