Shut-down

What's so special about this partial government shut-down?  After all, it's the third one this year, and most of us can remember many others. There have been 30 others since Congress authorized the president to shut down parts of the government in 1971. What makes this one so unique?

Well, for starters, this is only the second time in history that a shut-down occurred due to a president's rejection of a duly passed, Congressional budget. The first one happened when President Gerald Ford vetoed a budget he thought was too extravagant. All the others occurred due to Congressional failure to pass a budget. So, President Trump is in rare company in rejecting the budget extension Congress passed just before adjourning for their Christmas break. But that doesn't make this shut-down unique.

What makes this one unique is President Trump's reason for his pocket veto of a duly passed spending bill. He has stated that he will not sign any budget unless it includes funding for a border wall between the United States and Mexico. That makes this the first time a President has shut down his own government in order to coerce Congress into authorizing a specific expense.

Under the Constitution, only the House of Representatives can originate a spending bill. This stems from the Founders' concern with taxation without representation, and the tyranny of an all-powerful monarch. Until now, it has never been challenged.

Perhaps President Trump sees this as a bit of routine Congressional arm-twisting, practiced by nearly every president. It's more than that. By threatening to close down the entire United States Government and keep it closed until he gets his way, President Trump is holding the entire United States of America hostage to his wishes, an act of tyranny unprecedented as long as we have been an independent nation.

Only one other president in history has engaged in similar actions against the Constitution-- Abraham Lincoln. With the Civil War raging, and Confederate troops in sight of the capital, President Lincoln instituted the first draft in US history, abolished the rule of habias corpus, and took other actions that got him branded a tyrant at the time. And it was this that compelled his assassination, not the war, nor the issue of slavery. We know this, because, as he was making his escape through Ford's Theater, where he had just shot Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth jumped to the stage and shouted to the shocked audience, "Sic semper tyrannis"-- Latin for, "Thus always to tyrants."

This is also the motto of  the Commonwealth of Virginia. Some have suggested that Booth therefore was acting as a Confederate patriot. This is unlikely, as he was not a Virginian. He was, however, a Shakespearean actor, and would have been familiar with the line from "Julius Caesar", in which Brutus utters the phrase after murdering Caesar.

It is my sincere hope that President Trump's attempts to fund his pet project do not occasion the same sort of response.