Sen. Enzi explains why he'll vote to remove the president

Once the House of Representatives impeaches the President, Mike Enzi can be counted on to vote to remove Donald Trump

How do we know that? Senator Enzi has been unequivocal about his feelings with respect to presidents who lie to the American people. The country must, he said, be put head of Party.

Senator Enzi believes in the sanctity of oaths. “When our country was founded,” the Wyoming Senator said, “oaths meant everything. A man’s word was his bond.” Enzi cited the oath of office taken by the President when he “raised his right hand and placed his hand on the Bible swearing to uphold and defend the Constitution and to faithfully execute the laws of the United States.”

Enzi said the oath committed the President to being the nation’s “chief law enforcement officer.” A president’s “actions which undermine this high duty,” include obstructing justice, which “strike(s) at the very heart of the rule of law.”

About that oath, Enzi offered, “The President’s oath forbids him to selectively decide whether to follow the laws based on a calculation of political expediency or determination of personal gain or loss. He is bound to follow the Constitution and the laws of our country in and out of season.” Enzi said, “violating this duty, the President’s actions displayed the tendencies of and unbridled monarch.”

For the Wyoming Republican, charges against the President were no less compelling because they involved a private sexual encounter. He noted the President “was so thorough in denying any relationship,” adding the President “told all of us he had done nothing wrong.” Enzi continued, “Do you think he will lie only about sex? This man sends our children into war. He has to be held to the highest standard.”

While some have suggest the President should not be removed when he is doing a good job with the nation’s economy, Enzi vigorously disagreed. “Job performance cannot be a defense for perjury or obstruction of justice or any other crime,” adding, “A corrupt president, by contrast, has the power to wreak havoc on the entire political order.”

Wyoming’s senior Senator lamented that when the country needed the truth, it got “spin” instead. The Senator called it “dizzy deception.”

What troubled Enzi perhaps the most was this question: “Are we a country with one set of standards for the rich, famous, or powerful?” Enzi wondered what we teach our children. “Do we tell them they have to follow the law until they become powerful enough, or clever enough, or rich enough to violate the law with impunity?”

The Senator urged colleagues to avoid partisanship. He cited approvingly what he called “the Spouse Test.” His wife had told him that if this had been a President of the other party, “I would have chained myself to the White House fence until he resigned.”

In the final analysis, Enzi found that, “Those who violate the rule of law for their own personal or political ends must not be allowed to remain in offices of public trust.”

Following such a detailed analysis of the law, the facts, and the Senate’s sacred duties, Wyoming’s Senator Mike Enzi decided his conscience demanded he vote to convict…President Bill Clinton.

The words quoted herein are those spoken by the Wyoming Senator on the floor of the Senate 20 years ago tomorrow. The question is, will he apply the same analysis to Donald Trump?

There are three elements in the case against Trump differing from those causes leading to Clinton’s impeachment. One, Clinton lied under oath. But, are not presidents always “under oath”? Second, the case against Trump appears to be considerably more damning. Third, like Enzi, Trump is a Republican.

For all the talk about “the spouse test,” and the importance of putting country ahead of Party, we all know the truth. It takes considerably more courage to vote against a President of one’s own party than one of the other. Trump’s fate will ultimately be determined by whether that courage can be summoned.

Wyoming's dark cloud of bigotry

Members of Cheyenne Central’s Gay-Straight Alliance recently met with state senator Lynn Hutchings to advocate for an anti-discrimination proposal. Instead of the respect constituents deserve from elected officials, these young people were greeted with a foul expression of hatred.

According to a complaint filed by Wyoming Equality, Senator Hutchings told the young audience, “If my sexual orientation was to have sex with all of the men in there and I had sex with all of the women in there and then they brought their children and I had sex with all of them and then brought their dogs in and I had sex with them, should I be protected for my sexual orientation?”

Hutchings called that “an attempt at a meaningful dialogue.” Others call it a reason for her to resign. Little good that would do. Her odious views square with the Republican Party under the tight-fisted control of a chairman who founded the thankfully-deceased WyWatch, the most intolerant extremist group in Wyoming since the last days of the KKK’s presence in the Equality State.

Certainly she’s not fit to be a public servant. But, she didn’t elect herself. Only the voters of Senate District 5 can atone for their tainted decision. Beyond that, many of her legislative colleagues share her dogma. They endorsed her conduct by rejecting rules protecting the LGBTQ community from harassment perpetrated by lawmakers.

Forcing one of the legislature’s homophobes to resign would be like dredging a bucket of water from the ocean in an effort to drain it.

From the time the students who Ms. Hutchings accosted were in elementary school, they were misled, taught that Wyoming is the Equality State. They learned Wyoming was the first state to give women the right to vote and that Wyoming elected the first woman governor in the nation.

Those things are the truth but not the whole truth. These kids learned something closer to the whole truth in their unpleasant encounter with their state senator, a hard but important lesson, learned at an early age. These young men and women now know what the Equality State is really like for cultural, racial, and religious minorities.

Anger about this incident turns to sadness when you recognize that dark cloud hanging over Wyoming. For some, it’s a cloud of hopelessness. That cloud was there from the start, hanging low, casting shadows in the shape of bigotry.

Senator Hutchings wasn’t the first. She isn’t even the worst. There were others like her before her. Those who pioneered her mindset destroyed Native American culture on the Great Plains. They lynched Wyoming blacks at a per capita rate exceeding that of Mississippi, massacred Chinese workers in Rock Springs, and attacked Jehovah’s Witnesses in Rawlins.

They attempted a McCarthy-era purge of textbooks at the University of Wyoming and imprisoned Japanese Americans at Heart Mountain. Without people who thought like Ms. Hutchings, wicked politicians could never have blackmailed Wyoming Senator Lester Hunt into committing suicide.

They carried confederate flags into War Memorial Stadium to taunt fourteen black football players the day after an intolerant coach terminated their education because they asked to protest the then-racist policies of the LDS Church. They murdered Matt Shepard and then tried to erase the crime by revising the history of that atrocity.

They continue propagating prejudice, seeking to build a prison to inhumanely warehouse hundreds of undocumented persons whose only crime is seeking better lives for their children. They are proud Wyoming is one of four states refusing to pass hate-crimes laws, satisfied theirs is the only state in the union unwilling to enter into a refugee resettlement agreement with the U.S. Government.

They smile and nod their heads as Donald Trump says there are “good people on both sides.” They continue working to make sure that whatever seeds of tolerance and love are scattered elsewhere, they will not find fertile soil here.

That cloud grows ever darker as many Wyomingites stare blankly at the sky and say, “Well, we do need the rain.”

"Cafeteria Christianity"? Why not?

“Religion is not like a smorgasbord. You can’t just pick a little of this and a little of that.”

Who says? Seminary professors taught us to be be careful about what we say because someone might just believe it.

It is one of those trite sayings preachers toss out to make sure you don’t think for yourself. Heads may nod affirmatively, but no one asks, “Why?” It’s a rhetorical or homiletical device designed to stop the folks in the pews from engaging the preacher in a genuine dialogue.

Some pastors call it “cafeteria Christianity.” Others update it to “Google Christianity.” The idea is that the preacher will decide the menu. You need do nothing more than come to the table and eat what he or she has prepared.

When you asked for something different than what mom put on the table, maybe she responded tartly like mine, “What do you think this is, a buffet? Eat what I’ve put on the table of go to bed hungry.”

To paraphrase the Apostle Paul, “When I was a child, my mother treated me as a child. As I grew up, she allowed me to make my own choices.”

And so, when you went off to college, there it was, a smorgasbord. Someone else still chose the menu but there were many more choices. When you became fully adult, you decided what you wanted. If one restaurant didn’t have it, there were others right around the corner. And if none of them satisfied your longings, you just stayed home.

When preachers denigrate those in the pews by telling them they must “eat what I’ve put on the table of go hungry,” a lot of people go hungry. If you’re trying to understand why the fastest growing religious (or non-religious) demographic is “none of the above,” this may be where you should put your focus.

These folks have not turned away from God so much as they have turned away from preachers who pretend that trying to understand God is more like your mother’s dinner table than a smorgasbord.

Is God really so small and predictable, they ask, that God can be captured by one book or one doctrine? Isn’t it more likely that each of us has a piece of the puzzle while none of us can make out the whole picture? 

Menus offered by every religion from Christianity to Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and others should at least be studied by all seekers. We are better prepared to serve God in a diverse world with an honest knowledge of what other choices are offered.

Christianity was not a choice when I was a child. My parents chose for me, taking me to Christian churches to learn the Christian stories exclusively. As an adult, I gradually left much of the post-Easter dogma behind, making the choice to remain a Christian because of the closeness I feel to the Jesus of the Gospels, a devout Jew whose teachings arise wholly from the Bible he read, what Christians call the Old Testament, or the Hebrew Bible.

There is a place for the Muslim view that there is no God but one and that Jesus is one of Allah’s many prophets. We could all benefit from the mindfulness of Buddhism and radical tolerance of Unitarian Universalism. Further, anyone who hasn’t given at least some thought to becoming an atheist, hasn’t seriously thought about what they believe and why.

Preachers who refuse to accept that religion is indeed like a smorgasbord are motivated by the age-old need theologians have to control the thinking of others. They are comforted, in a way that comforts increasingly fewer adults, with an exclusivist’s sense that there is only one path to the truth.

One of my favorite stories in Jewish scripture is that time Jacob wrestled with God. The God of the universe is big enough to welcome that wrestling match, which is why, unlike my mom, God was willing to lay out a smorgasbord for us.