Today is Donald Trump’s 79 Birthday and “NO KINGS DAY,” across the US, with massive protests vs. Trump’s Dictatorship. The Rosenbergs only wish that Trump, a Russian Asset, be treated like they were.

For Donald Trump’s 77^th birthday 2 years ago, he was given the gift of a 37-count criminal indictment, with 31 of those charges pertaining to blatant violations of the Espionage Act, including spilling Nuclear secrets.

Next week, June 19, marks the 72^th anniversary of the execution by electrocution of Ethel & Julius Rosenberg for violating the Espionage Act. It’s seems so serendipitous, and certainly poetic, that, in the end, the lives of Trump and the Rosenbergs are so intertwined.

Three years ago, on the anniversary of the arrest of Ethel Rosenberg for allegedly providing valuable, top-secret information to the Russians about nuclear weapons designs, radar, sonar and jet propulsion engines, the WashingtonPost broke an explosive story headlined: “FBI searched Trump’s home to look for nuclear documents and other items, sources say.”

Now that we have physical evidence that boxes and boxes of highly classified US secrets—including Nuclear plans, and plans of how best to attack the US—were left in Trump’s bathroom, in a public ballroom and strewn about in closets and storage rooms, Trump’s illegal violations of the Espionage Acts are veering into Ethel and Julius territory.

As we’ve witnessed Trump incessant Smash & Grab 2nd Administration’s frenzied fever to put EVERYTHING in the U.S. up for sale, the prospect of Trump selling highly classified nuclear documents to Vladimir Putin or the Saudis for billions of dollars—or of his recklessness of his mishandling top secret documents he should never have had–is entirely plausible. It adds an entirely new, and dangerous, dimension to Trump’s reign of terror, including the possibility that Russian spies or foreign agents from anywhere, could have photographed these top secret military documents, while using the bathroom at Mar-A-Lago, or that Trump is still monetizing similar top secret, classified information.

Like Trump’s friend, mentor, lawyer Roy Cohn—lionized in the movie, “The Apprentice,” as Trump’s primary tutor—I grew up thinking that only alleged “communists” or “communist sympathizers,” spilled nuclear secrets to the Russians, and our enemies, not Presidents. After all, it was Roy Cohn who sent the Rosenbergs to the electric chair for violating the Espionage Act. My faith in the US Justice system has been shaken because Trump hasn’t been treated exactly the same way as Ethel & Julius. It is so unfair, as Trump himself would say. And, since the foreign asset Trump was not treated the same way the Rosenbergs were, as a Jew, I believe the actions vs. the Rosenbergs were blatantly Anti-Semitic.

After I devoured the brilliantly researched and written 49-page criminal indictment of Trump which lays out not only his continuing theft of top secret classified documents over two years, but his willful obstruction of the Justice Department’s efforts to retrieve them, visions of Ethel Rosenberg, played by Meryl Streep in the HBO production of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, began dancing on my brain.

Quickly, I ran to get my printed and signed copy of Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize winning play.

I turned to the page where the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg shows up at Roy Cohn’s bedside, as he lay dying of AIDS. Cohn, who was Donald Trump’s personal role-model and fellow Studio 54 partier, as well as his attorney, had hounded Ethel and her husband Julius into electric-chair executions three years after her arrest in 1950.

ETHEL: They won, Roy. You’re not a lawyer anymore.

ROY: But am I dead?

ETHEL: No. They beat you. You lost.

(Pause)

ETHEL:

I decided to come here so I could see if I could forgive you. You who I have hated so terribly. I have borne my hatred for you up into the heavens and made a needlesharp little star in the sky out of it. It’s the star of Ethel Rosenberg’s Hatred, and it burns every year for one night only, June 19. (June 19, 1953, was the day Ethel and her husband Julius were executed. Ethel had to be electrocuted three times before she finally died.) It burns acid green.

I came to forgive, but all I can do is take pleasure in your misery. Hoping I’d get to see you die more terrible than I did. And you are, ‘cause you’re dying in shit, Roy, defeated. And you could kill me, but you could never defeat me. You never won. And when you die all anyone will say is: better he had never lived at all.”

Will the same thing be said of Trump? Is Trump destined to become his own Roy Cohn? Will he die defeated again, in his own shit, and stripped of everything he ever knew?

The only President in all of American history to be twice impeached, twice indicted of crimes, and twice arrested (so far), Trump’s recklessness, and flagrant disregard for any and all laws, have surprised even those of us who have long pegged him as a criminal cipher, a con, a fraud, a liar, and a mob-boss wannabe. Is he capable of selling nuclear secrets to the Russians or the Saudis, the UAE, Qatar, or the highest bidder?

Perhaps, the only appropriate eulogy that could be given for Trump’s lawless, 50-year temper tantrum and his unending drag show of distraction in public, is a variation on the theme expressed by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg—thrice electrocuted– over Roy Cohn’s deathbed: “Better he never had never lived a public life at all.”

Charlottesville and Trump’s defense of Anti-Semites and White Supremacists as “fine people,” were only a preview of his new virulent war against anyone non-White, nor Christian.

(In working on a documentary about Harry Chapin, singer/songwriter Billy Joel was generous with his fond recollections of Chapin, and recounted the inhumane treatment and cruelty the Joel Family faced at the hands of the Nazis in Germany during the 1930’s. “There are NO good Nazis,” Joel told me during the course of our interview, held in his Motorcycle Shop/Museum in Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York.)

Legendary Singer/songwriter Billy Joel has been in the news a lot these past few weeks: first, concerning a brain disorder—normal pressure hydrocephalus—-that will greatly restrict his ability to perform over the next two years; secondly, in a People Magazine story where he discussed his two suicide attempts in his early 20’s; and, currently, as the subject of a new documentary “Billy Joel: And So It Goes,” which debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival in NYC last week.

Yet, for those of us who have been big Billy fans for decades, he has never really been out of the news, especially when his friend and fellow musician Bruce Springsteen tore into Donald Trump at concert after concert around the world calling Trump a “demogogue” who has “sold out our country and our allies.”

Springsteen’s powerful pro-democracy statements in the face of Trump’s growing totalitarianism, reminded me of a night eight years ago in late August, 2017, when Billy Joel walked out on stage at Madison Square Garden. Joel was the Artist-in-Residence at the Garden, and he performed monthly to standing room only crowds.

On the left side of Joel’s dark suit jacket, a yellow Star of David was pinned prominently over his heart. For the singer/songwriter who has performed more than 100 times at one of the world’s premiere concert arenas, sold more than 150 million records and won virtually every music award, it was a bold and dramatic action, surprising some of his fans, since Joel was not known for being overtly political.

Joel’s jolt came less than ten days after the White Supremacist/Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a young women walking to peacefully protest the anti-Semitic and racial hatred spewed by the “Unite the Right” mob, was deliberately run down and killed by a White Supremacist driving a car into the group of counter-protestors.

Charlottesville was where many Americans were introduced, for the first time, to the pernicious and hateful “Great Replacement Theory,” a Far Right extremist concoction— which called for violent White Domestic Terrorist actions against Blacks, Jews and immigrants. The chant “Jews Will Not Replace Us” was screamed throughout Charlottesville by mostly male, White Supremacists, aiming to drive Jews, and our fellow travelers, out of American society.

The Charlottesville tiki-torch carrying thugs were some of the same violence-loving, anti-Semitic and racist Right Wing fanatics who elected Trump twice, assaulted police officers and committed acts of domestic terrorism on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and are fueling the present xenophobic jihad against Brown and Black immigrants. They represented the same maniacal, inhumane cruelty being currently carried out against thousands of immigrant families—many legal residents or citizens—by masked Federal Agents under direct orders from Trump, and his Taliban-like team of Stephen Miller and Thomas Homan.

To compound the terrible and deadly, hate-fueled events in Charlottesville that day in 2017, Donald Trump went on television and refused to place responsibility on the Nazis and White Supremacists, but instead, stated there were “very fine people on both sides.”

Trump’s despicable statement “enraged”, Joel, as he told The Times of Israel.

“No, Nazis aren’t good people, “ Joel said. “My old man, his family got wiped out. They were slaughtered at Auschwitz. Him and his parents were able to get out.”

Joel’s comments about his family’s treatment by the Nazis was an understatement.

In Billy Joel: The Definitive Biography, by Fred Schruers (Crown Archetype Books, NY, NY, 2014), the author details the systematic campaign by the Nazi’s against Joel’s ancestors, simply because they were successful Jews living in Nuremberg, Germany, where Billy Joel’s father (Helmut, later Americanized to Howard) was born.

Joel’s paternal grandfather, Karl Amson Joel, started a business in household linens in 1927, which he called the Karl Joel Linen Goods Company. His business was so profitable that he, his wife and their young son — Billy Joel’s father — were able to move into a wealthy section of Nuremberg.

As Karl Joel’s business rose in prominence and the Nazis rose in power, the Nazis fixed their sights on eliminating the Joel’s business and the family operating it.

The Billy Joel biography reports that “in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum database titled ‘Index of Jews whose German Nationality was Annulled by Nazi Regime, 1935–1944,” Billy’s grandfather is falsely accused of “monetary and currency offenses” in the records of two separate files.

“After taking part in the making of the documentary The Joel Files ,I realized what the film’s director, Beate Thalberg had discovered,” Billy told the book’s writer, Fred Schruers. “ My relatives were hounded out of Germany at an absurd price — a paradigm of the economic casualties during the Nazi takeover.”

But Karl Joel was not simply an “economic casualty”: he and his family were specific targets of the Nazis and were used as examples by Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher in the virulently anti-Semitic publication Der Sturmer.

Streicher ran front page articles calling Billy’s grandfather a “Yid,” and falsely accused him of underpaying and sexually harassing his workers. The Nazis made up thousands of lies against Germany’s Jews to dehumanize them and turn their political base against them.

Billy Joel’s father was one of four Jews in his Nuremberg classroom, forced to sit apart from their classmates, and forbidden from using the public swimming pool. As circumstances for Jews in Germany became more dire, and Karl Joel was arrested three times while being called the “Jew Joel,” a “bloodsucker,” and “oppressor,” young Helmut (Billy’s father) was sent to a boarding school in Switzerland.

Meanwhile, the Nazi equivalent of Fox News, Der Sturmer continued its relentless Twitter-like name calling attacks on Karl Joel, labeling him the “Nuremberg Linen-Jew Joel.”

Karl Joel was ordered by the Nazis to stamp all of his outgoing packages with a “J”, a German plant manager was installed at his company, and suppliers began to boycott him. In June, 1938, a new law was passed requiring all Jewish businesses to be forfeited to Aryan ownership. Karl Joel’s linen business was taken from him at one-fifth its’ actual value.

“My grandparents fled in the night,” Billy Joel told author Schruers, “using fake passports, and escaped across the Swiss border to Zurich. They got in touch with my father at his school and told him they had left Germany for good.”

To escape Europe, Billy Joel’s grandparents and his father “secured places aboard a cruise ship called the Andora Star, for a 1939 passage across the Atlantic to Cuba, where they resided for two years before the United States — strictly limiting the immigration of Jews to protect “the ideal of American homogeneity” — allowed them entry.

Karl Joel’s brother Leon and his family were not so fortunate. They boarded the SS St.Louis, and after the Voyage of the Damned was refused entry in Havana and at every US Port, Billy Joel’s aunt, uncle and family were send back to Europe, and executed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

Billy’s father, fluent in German and trained as a concert pianist, was drafted into the US Army in 1943, fighting in General George Patton’s Third Army. When Howard Joel’s battalion liberated the Dachau Concentration Camp near Munich in April, 1945, he didn’t know that his relatives had been slaughtered at Auschwitz.

I interviewed Billy Joel at his Oyster Bay, Long Island, motorcycle shop/museum in five years ago last month.

I wanted to thank him for wearing the Star of David as a powerful statement of protest to what happened in Charlottesville, and as a strong rebuke to White Supremacy, of Trump’s depiction of “fine people on both sides,” and of the “Great Replacement Theory” lie. His bold action was particularly poignant for me, having converted to Judaism 45 years ago. I married a Jewish girl from Joel’s hometown of Hicksville, Long Island, who was in the Hicksville High School Choir with him, so we shared a few things in common.

“There are no good Nazis, “ Joel said. “They killed my family members.”

Then he told me how the Nazis, once they confiscated his grandfather’s linen factory, used the machines in the factory to make the black and white striped prison uniforms which they forced Jews to wear, including his family members who were executed at Auschwitz. It was too macabre and twisted to imagine.

“I’ll continue to fight them as long as I can, and to use my voice to speak out against that kind of hate, “ Billy Joel said.

I thought back to his simple, straight-forward, quietly powerful and courageous act of pinning a yellow Star of David above his heart on his dark suit, and thought of the decades of family and global history behind it, and the millions of Jews and non-Jews for whom Billy Joel’s voice rang out clear and true, without having to sing one note on that night in New York City.

Billy Joel’s voice may be quieted as he returns to full health over the next two years, but his courage and his calls to civic activism may yet be his best public act.

What I learned by listening carefully to what my granddaughter says, and to what the music she is listening to is saying to her, and to all of us.

(Our granddaughter Sage (front row, right, wearing bracelets and braids) and friends at the barricades of the 2025 Bottlerock Music Festival in Napa, California.)

TO LISTEN TO my 16-year old granddaughter Sage’s ever-evolving taste in music is to understand her, and to see the full arc of her personal and character development.

Three years ago, when Sage was 13, she and I did ukulele duets to a painfully revealing little song called “NUMB LITTLE BUG,” by Em Behold. She was going through a particularly rough patch at the time, and the lyrics of that gentle song, calmed her, much as her beautiful, searching voice did for me:

“DID YOU EVER GET A LITTLE BIT TIRED OF LIFE?

LIKE YOU’RE NOT REALLY HAPPY, BUT YOU DON’T WANT TO DIE?

LIKE YOU’RE HANGING BY A THREAD, BUT YOU GOTTA SURVIVE…

‘CAUSE YOU GOTTA SURVIVE…”

Her intuitiveness about those powerful lyrics stunned me. How could this 13-year old know this? How could she possibly know what I was feeling when I was a teenager and made a lame-ass attempt—fortunately—at taking my own life? How could she know that, like her, I was “Hanging by a Thread” but somehow knew, that “I had to survive?”

How could she possibly know that, unless she, too, at age 13, was experiencing the same thing? The last stanza of the song always made my throat catch, hearing those profound and plaintive words, being sung by Sage’s pure, clear voice—my precious little bug with the big, soulful eyes:

“DO YOU EVER GET A LITTLE BIT TIRED OF LIFE?

LIKE YOU’RE NOT REALLY HAPPY BUT YOU DON’T WANT TO DIE?

LIKE A NUMB LITTLE BUG THAT’S GOTTA SURVIVE, THAT’S GOTTA

SURVIVE…”

Astonishing.

But, that was only one small step along a winding, and often painful path. Struggling with some mental health issues, my Sageroo, as I called her, needed a special place to help her discover herself and her talents, and how to better integrate both into her own life, and society. Her “Golden Retriever” (relentlessly loving) father found a music and arts school in Salt Lake City, Utah, which would best fit Sage’s needs and talents.

It wasn’t an easy adjustment at first, for our “numb little bug.” On her second day in a beautiful place, surrounded by snow-capped mountains, she tried to run away, going off campus and into a surrounding neighborhood, wearing only Crocs on her freezing feet, as she trudged through the snow covering the ground in that mile-high City in late November.

She came back to the school, a former Bed & Breakfast in which she lived with about 20 other teenaged girls for the next 18-months. It took her some time to accept exactly the kind of guidance, help and education she needed, and once she did, Sage grew stronger and gained more confidence each day. And, like the “numb little bug,” she once was, she survivee, and never gave up on herself.

Sage’s musical tastes blossomed, and she discovered many more artistic muses, including a proud, all Queer, female group known as “Boy Genius”—-Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dakus and Julien Baker. She taught herself, and me, the lacerating lyrics of a song written by Phoebe entitled, “Graceland, Too.”

Listening to their music was another way of learning how Sage was growing and of listening to my eloquent granddaughter, who was teaching herself to play the guitar:

“NO LONGER A DANGER TO HERSELF OR OTHERS,

SHE MADE UP HER MIND TO LACE UP HER SHOES…”

Those opening lyrics stopped me cold.

“No longer a danger to herself or others.” Sage KNEW this was true, and had come extraordinarily far to get to this point.

“She made up her mind to lace up her shoes.”

THAT was the line that slapped me: “She made up her mind to lace up her shoes.”

There it was. My Sageroo was not only ready to survive, but to trust in herself, and embrace life—“to lace up her shoes,” —the way you do when you’re ready to go out and play, or get back in the game.

She performed that song at one of her school’s Music & Arts Festivals, her lilting voice echoing how all of us who loved her felt:

“I WOULD DO ANYTHING YOU WANT ME TO,

I WOULD ANYTHING FOR YOU…

I WOULD DO ANYTHING , I WOULD DO ANYTHING…

WHATEVER YOU WANT ME TO DO, I WILL DO.”

She was singing to us, and for us, and most importantly for herself. Not only had she found her path, but she paved some new ones—fearlessly, passionately—expressing clearly who she is as a human being, and what she believes and values most in life.

Sage, whose birth pulled her grandmother and I across country from NYC to San Francisco 16 years ago, always had her own unique voice, just like her father did as a child, and still does. Here and now, she learned how to use that gift, tutoring her friends in Math, and, by example, how to speak up for themselves, and take pride in who they are. She learned how to use that gift—her voice, her vision—to make her world better, and, in turn, to improve all of our lives.

Sage’s friends came out in waves on the day of her graduation from the program and the 10th grade this month, to movingly speak extemporaneously on her behalf, about how Sage transformed her experiences into tools to help other survive, and grow. As one of her classmates said, “She went from being the Crash Out Queen to Buddha.”

Even the great Temple Grandin saw it, when Sage’s Grammy and I serendipitously ran into her earlier this year at a hotel’s breakfast buffet just outside of Stanford University, where both of us were attending conferences. An impromptu chat about how much Dr. Grandin’s brilliant books and work in the field of Neurodiversity meant to us, turned into a full-blown breakfast for the three of us, where the conversation turned to the remarkable accomplishments of our oldest granddaughter.

“Well, what does she want to do?” Temple Grandin asked us.

We filled her in on what Sage had achieved over the last 18 months, and shared with the great Dr. Grandin Sage’s love for music, and how she was talking more about becoming a therapist, to help other people.

“Well, she can do that!” Temple Grandin insisted to us.

And, at that moment, as the great Dr. Grandin was reinforcing Sage’s ability to do just that, the lyrics to “Graceland, Too,” popped back into my head:

“SHE COULD DO ANYTHING SHE WANTS TO..

SHE COULD DO WHATEVER SHE WANTS TO DO..”

Right then and there, Carol Villano and I told Temple Grandin on that sunny morning in Palo Alto, California, that we’d always be there, standing right behind Sage, supporting her in “whatever she wants to do.”

Now, ordinarily, an endorsement from Temple Grandin would be the last thing anyone needs to say. After all, for those of us who know and love her path-breaking writings, teachings and inventions, that’s like getting an endorsement from God…

Yet, even after getting Temple’s blessing, Sage astonished us again. She discovered the music of Noah Kahan, a 28-year old singer/songwriter from the Northeast, whose first album “BUSYHEAD” came out only 6 years ago. Kahan, had experienced mental health issues, and was unafraid to write about those experiences in his songs.

He understood—much as our Sageroo has done—that by writing and communicating about his first-hand experiences, he could benefit other people—to help them through some dark days and night—to help them survive.

As his fame grew, Kahan founded “The Busyhead Project,” named after his first album, a national non-profit aimed at reducing the stigma surrounding mental health and making mental healthcare more affordable and accessible to others. In the short time of “The Busyhead Project’s” existence, it has raised $4 million and helped more than 160 community-based Mental Health Organizations.

Sage’s sweet voice sung the lyrics of Noah Kahan’s music at another Music & Arts festival, in a song explaining how Kahan helped save a friend from committing suicide. The song, entitled “Call Your Mom,” reflects the full-circle our Sageroo traveled over the past 18-months: from first refusing help; to accepting how good, caring people could make her life better; to using her own first-hand experience to help others navigate troubled waters.

But, it was another Noah Kahan song which grabbed hold of me, once I started constantly listening to his music on Spotify:

“YOUR GONNA GO FAR.”

In that song, Kahan records his bittersweet feelings for a friend leaving home, knowing that as painful as it was for him, it was the best thing for his friend. It reminded me of exactly how we felt when our Sageroo went away to school, some 600 miles away:

“SO PACK UP YOUR CAR, PUT A HAND ON YOUR HEART,

SAY WHATEVER YOU FEEL, BE WHERE EVER YOU ARE…

WE AIN’T ANGRY AT YOU LOVE…

WE’LL BE WAITING FOR YOU LOVE…

AND WE’LL ALL BE HERE FOREVER…

AND WE’LL ALL BE HERE FOREVER..

YOU’RE GONNA GOOOOOOO FAR…

YOU’RE GONNA GOOOOOOO FAR…

YES , YOU ARE (OOOOOOOH, OOOOOH).”

This past weekend at the Bottlerock Music Festival in Napa, California, Sage, along with her dad, Matt Villano, their next door neighbors The Chavez’—who are among our granddaughters’ biggest boosters—and thousands of others, sang and swayed to Noah Kahan performing his own original music which articulates so much of our lives.

A music festival pro—thanks to her father’s love of such venues—Sage seized a prime spot at “the barricades” of Bottlerock, close enough to make eye-contact with all of her favorite musicians, and to make new friends. Her instagram account is full of photos of Noah Kahan, in a glittering white suit, singing the songs SHE made famous to me.

I cannot listen to Kahan’s “You’re Gonna Go Far”, without thinking of our Sage—who has already come so far. . . and continues to astonish us, and to improve her world, as well as the lives of others.

And, just as Temple Grandin confirmed: “She can do that!”

Like all other sideshows in the Trump Administration, the Press Secretary dances with veils, so wealthy white boys can steal and commit crimes.

(Top to bottom : Eva Karoline Braun; Tom Homan, of the Anti-Humans; Hans Schultz, of “Hogan’s Heroes;”)

Eva, Eva, Karoline Braun,

Clicks her heels to Hans Homan!

Her cross of Gold;

His stare of Cold;

Cut from Goebbels/Miller’s Mold.

Eva, Eva, Karoline Braun,

Monstrous men know she’s their pawn;

Trot her out, show her abs;

And, her gift of Gaslighting Gab.

“The Constitution is Unconstitutional,” Eva declared,

And, even Aryan AG Blondie was shocked & scared.

Then, the Fuhrer waved his own fine hair,

And Eva Karoline Braun was there!

Each time his thin, little lips spew lies,

Eva certifies them with her wide eyes.

“Ridiculous,” she sniffs when anyone calls out his Grifts;

Qatar’s $400 million jet? The Smash & Grab hasn’t started yet!

Bob Martinez got his Mercedes Benz—

What can Trump steal? World without end. . .

Crypto? Gold coins? Media stock?

Eva’s good felon can sell any old schlock.

“If the President sells it, it’s fair trade,”

Says Eva Karoline, milk-skinned handmaid.

No DOJ to get in the way;

No S.E.C. to oversee.

Attack the Judges!

Attack the Courts!

Eva, Goebbels/Miller & Hans

Do it with Loud, Angry snorts.

For White Collar Criminals: AMNESTY!

Since everything White, must be free.

Erase Black History, and Gay People, too;

Eva’s got a prayer, and Stepford Smile for you.

Habeas Corpus? Rigor Mortis! Process Due? Not for you!

NOT, if you’re Black, Brown, foreign born, LGBT, or a liberal Jew.

Eva, Eva Karoline Braun,

Distraction is her siren song;

Look at Greenland! Rage at Musk!

Nothing nailed down is gone by dusk.

Eva, Eva Karoline Braun,

Slithering on what-used-to-be the Rose Garden Lawn.

Hail to Trump! To Hans and Goebbels/Miller!

Hail to the true Democracy Killers!

Lawyers, Bar Associations, legal support staff, court employees, and tens of thousands of US Citizens are fighting to save the Rule of Law across the country, on Law Day

Lawyers, legal support staff, law students and citizens across the United States are rallying tomorrow in hundreds of communities across the country on National Law Day, May 1, to Stand Up for The Rule of Law.

Individual lawyers, law firms, and judges, have found themselves under unprecedented political and external pressure over the past 100 days. It’s why a number of Bar Associations—such as the Bar Association of San Francisco, the Alameda County Bar Association, and the 104-year old Sonoma County Bar Association—have joined with national organizations like the Lawyers for Good Government, and are calling for involvement by individual lawyers, law firms, and their professional organizations to participate in a National Law Day of Action at Federal Courthouses across the country on this year’s Law Day, May 1.

Participating lawyers—on the steps of Federal Courthouses around the nation—will be reaffirming their oaths of office as members of their State’s Bar Association. The organizers of the Law Day of Action, are encouraging Lawyers to reaffirm their commitment to protect and uphold the Rule of Law. That call to action for practising lawyers reads like this:

“Retake the Oath”

“On Law Day, May 1st, we invite you to retake your Attorney’s Oath. We each took this pledge upon admission to the bar. The oath is the cornerstone of our profession, and it represents our promise to support the Constitution of the United States. It encompasses a duty to defend the Constitution, protect constitutional rights, ensure due process, and oppose laws or actions that undermine it. By retaking the oath, you reiterate your role as a guardian of the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law.”

Printed below is the full-statement of endorsement of the National Law Day of Action:

Core Principles for Law Day, 2025 Actions

“ These principles are intended to guide all participating organizations and individuals in planning and executing Law Day 2025 Events. They are designed to be a unifying framework, ensuring that our message is clear, consistent, and impactful.”

1. Upholding the Rule of Law: The foundation of our actions is a commitment to the rule of law as the cornerstone of a just and democratic society. This means:
   1. Equality Under the Law: All individuals and institutions, including the government, are accountable under laws that are publicly promulgated , equally enforced, and independently adjudicated.
   2. Due Process: Everyone is entitled to fair and impartial legal proceedings, including the right to counsel, the right to be heard, and the right to a decision based on law and evidence.
   3. Protection of Rights: Fundamental rights and freedoms, as enshrined in the Constitution, must be protected for all.
2. Defending Judicial Independence: We believe that an independent judiciary is essential for upholding the rule of law. This means:
   1. Freedom from Interference: Judges must be free to make decisions based solely on the law and the facts, without fear of political pressure, intimidation or retaliation.
   2. Respect for Judicial Decisions: While disagreement with specific rulings is natural, attacks on the integrity and legitimacy of judges and courts undermine the judicial process.
   3. Accountability & Transparency: Judicial independence does not mean lack of accountability. Judges must be held to high ethical standards, and the judicial process should be transparent and accessible.
3. Protecting the Independence of the Legal Profession: We recognize that a fearless and independent legal profession is vital to ensuring access to justice and protecting individual rights. This means:
   1. Zealous Advocacy: Lawyers must be free to zealously represent their clients, within the bounds of the law, without fear of reprisal or undue influence.
   2. Confidentiality: The attorney-client privilege must be protected to ensure open communication and effective legal representation.
4. Non-Partisan and Non-Violent Action: Our actions are non-partisan and focused solely on upholding the principles of the rule of law, judicial independence, and legal independence. This means:
   1. No endorsements of candidates or Parties: We do not endorse or oppose any political candidate or party. Our focus is on principles, not politics.
   2. Commitment to Peaceful and Lawful Conduct: All events and activities must be conducted peacefully and in accordance with the law. We reject violence, intimidation, and any form of unlawful disruption. We encourage constructive dialogue and respectful engagement.
5. Promoting Public Understanding: We believe that an informed citizenry is essential for a healthy democracy. This means:
   1. Educating the Public: We strive to educate he public about the importance of the rule of law, judicial independence, and the role of lawyers in protecting individual rights.
   2. Engaging in Civil Discourse: We encourage open and respectful dialogue about these issues, even with those who hold differing views.

If you practice law anywhere in the San Francisco Bay Area, and support this Statement of Principles, as a way of endorsing the May 1, 2025 Law Day actions on behalf of the Rule of Law, please take action immediately by contacting Law Day of Action organizers Rebecca Kagin (rebecca@burrellkagin.com) ,Jean Hyams (jean@vinickhyams.com) or Valerie Lescroart (valerie@acbanet.org).

Take action today, on Law Day, and everyday to stand up for the Rule of Law in the United States. There has never before been a more urgent time to use your voice, your position, your intelligence and your passion for the Rule of Law to protect the fundamental principles of this Democracy.

It takes a fraud to salute a fellow fraud as a “Future Leader” of the GOP. Maybe they’ll be running mates…

George Santos & Elise Stefanik. It takes a fraud to know one. (official GOP Photo)

Over the past year, I’ve written a few pieces about Georgie Santos, the former Drag Queen of a thousand lavish costume changes and faces, as he and his fellow blowhards like Steve Bannon, Elise Stefanik, Lee Zeldin and Kevin McCarthy inflated Santos, like a Diva Diribigle, onto the New York and National Political scenes.

Then, like the Hindenburg blimp bursting into flames over Lakehurst, New Jersey, the imposter immolated himself as he lied and lied as fast as he could flap his arms and his gums. First came a swath of indictments for breaking a number of federal laws, then his arrests, his criminal convictions, and finally, a 7 year jail sentence.

Now, Elise Stefanik’s favorite dragged queen—who cast a crucial vote to make Kevin McCarthy (briefly) Speaker of the House, is being kicked out of the Congress he faked his way into, and sent off to a federal penitentiary.

Sadly, it was only when House Ethics investigators discovered that Santos illegally used campaign funds for Botox, Spa Treatments, lavish hotel visits, fancy meals and expensive clothing—all such stereotypically Drag Queenie stuff—that they decided he was too much of a fraud, even for House Republicans—who have masqueraded as lawmakers, ever since they tried to burn the U.S. government down on January 6, 2021.

Trump, and his busted little valise, Elise, stooped to the cultishness SantosRia to a new low of fraud, deception, lying and lawlessness by defending the pardoning of 1,500 January 6 Felons—among them many violent criminals, pedophiles, wife-beaters and thugs.

High on her own Harvard-bashing hijinks—which paved the way for Trump’s university, law firm and business extortionism— Stefanik has proven to be a slimy little shape-shifter: one minute a House leader; the next an almost-UN Ambassador, followed by her latest costume change—a candidate for New York State Governor. Her upstate New York Congressional Constituents—abandoned by Elise’s raw ambition again and again—could be forgiven if they exhumed the long-dead body of Sam Stratton, and elected him in absentia to represent them. Even a Dead Sam would be better than being fleeced by an Elise Scam. Shades of Georgie Porgy Santos….

So before you even think you have to listen to the Busted Valise’s bloviation over “fraud,” “waste”, and “abuse,” being bleated by Crypto-craven GOP ghouls in Congress or scampering, like rats feet, through the Trump Administration, remember who was the chief cheerleader for George “The Felon” Santos as a key part of the “Next Generation of Republican Leadership.”

Isn’t that the kind of vision and judgement you want to see in Congress? Or in the Governorship of NY? A vote for Stefanik is a vote for Santos. If the Democrats don’t start buying billboards NOW all over upstate New York, featuring the official GOP photo of Elise and the Lyin’ Beast, they are more comatose then any of us have ever accused them of being.

I look forward to the day when Georgie Porgy Santos, sidekick of Elise Stefanik and future leader of the MAGA movement, is hauled off to jail. Like many law abiding Americans, I love the sound of GOP frauds, liars and cheats being handcuffed in the morning.