This Memorial Day weekend, Veterans For Peace is calling on its members and friends to reflect on the gravity of the day, whose official purpose is to “honor all those who died in service to the U.S. during peacetime and war.” Veterans For Peace chooses to honor ALL who have died in wars, both combatants and civilians. Our hope is that a sober accounting of the casualties of war will mitigate against the tendency to turn Memorial Day – like Veterans Day – into a patriotic celebration of U.S. militarism.

We remember the words of President Eisenhower, who during World War II, was the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe:

“War is a grim, cruel business, a business justified only as a means of sustaining the forces of good against those of evil”. He also famously stated, “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”

Medal of Honor winner Marine Corps General Smedley Butler took it a bit further:

We are at a perilous time, when our most basic freedoms are at risk.

It is vital that we not hand President Trump even more power to wreck our democracy than he already has. Among other things, that means not confirming anyone he nominates to be a federal judge.

In early May, Trump announced the first group of judicial nominations of his second term. One is for the Sixth Circuit, which covers Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. The other four are for district courts in Missouri. Senators on the Judiciary Committee are poring over the nominees’ records in preparation for a hearing expected in early June.

Senators are right to look at a nominee’s record. But in these unprecedented times, the most important record for them to look at is that of the president making the nomination. And Donald Trump’s record shows that he’s dangerously unqualified to be appointing lifetime judges to the bench.

Fair and independent courts are a vital part of our checks and balances. And with the Republican-controlled Congress so far unwilling to stop Trump’s ongoing abuses of power, the courts are more important than ever.

It has been another exciting week in a world at war where the word “diplomacy” has no meaning and would probably be defined by America’s head of Homeland Security Kristi Noem as a doctrine in which you shoot someone first before he or she can shoot you. In my article last week I discussed the reports that there has been a serious rift between President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, exemplified by Trump’s unwillingness to talk to the Israeli leader followed by his failure to visit Israel on his recent Middle East trip. Sources attributed the break to Trump’s perception that he was being “manipulated” by the Israeli, which was completely plausible though something that should have been recognized and warned against by Trump’s foreign policy advisers when he first ascended to the presidency in 2017. Israel always manipulates opinion on the United States through its lobby’s control of the media and corruption of the politicians.

We are at a perilous time, when our most basic freedoms are at risk.

It is vital that we not hand President Trump even more power to wreck our democracy than he already has. Among other things, that means not confirming anyone he nominates to be a federal judge.

In early May, Trump announced the first group of judicial nominations of his second term. One is for the Sixth Circuit, which covers Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. The other four are for district courts in Missouri. Senators on the Judiciary Committee are poring over the nominees’ records in preparation for a hearing expected in early June.

Senators are right to look at a nominee’s record. But in these unprecedented times, the most important record for them to look at is that of the president making the nomination. And Donald Trump’s record shows that he’s dangerously unqualified to be appointing lifetime judges to the bench.

Fair and independent courts are a vital part of our checks and balances. And with the Republican-controlled Congress so far unwilling to stop Trump’s ongoing abuses of power, the courts are more important than ever.