Trust these Opinions on Need for Wall

Do we need a wall along our Mexican border, or don't we? That question isn't answered by op-ed writers claiming that President Donald Trump has "vilified" the "vast majority" of those arriving in the caravans.

Here are four fact-based opinions from Americans who have dedicated their lives to securing our borders -- people who by their training and experience are experts.

-- U.S. Customs and Border Control Commissioner Kevin McAleenan to Fox News, Dec. 17, 2018:
"We absolutely need a wall. This is what our agents on the ground have told me they need to control the border. ... I've been doing this for two decades. Border patrol agents have always wanted more barriers on the border to help them do their job. It's the only way you can stop large groups from flowing across. ...

"There are areas of the border where you've got large population centers on the south side, and immediate access to transportation hubs or neighborhoods on the north side. You got to have a wall in between those areas to help us slow down people from crossing. In other areas of the border, technology is a great solution."

When the interviewer suggested that 80 percent of fentanyl enters the U.S. at ports of entry, and that we'd be better off spending the money for detection equipment at the ports, McAleenan replied:

"We need both. The president's budget requests both. What we see are narcotics coming in between the ports in increasing numbers. They're using these groups of families to divert our agents, and then bring smugglers in behind with narcotics. ... Barriers prevent that kind of activity. The No. 1 priority sector is in the Rio Grande valley. That's the No. 1 crossing point for human smugglers. ...

"The $5 billion would help us shut down the south Texas corridor all the way to Laredo, and bolster security at El Paso and El Centro."


-- Trump's Border Patrol chief Carla Provost to Fox News, Dec. 13, 2018:

"We certainly do need a wall. Talk to any border agent and they will tell you that ... The new wall system integrates technology with the wall. It is much sturdier, has anti-dig features [and] detection technology, and is set up to attach additional technology. It's really [an entire] system. ...

"The president has listened to my men and women on the ground and has listened to me as we have described what we need to secure the border. We need the impedance that the wall brings, we need more technology and more agents on the grounds. ...

"In the first two month of the year we have apprehended over 100,000 people crossing between the ports of entry. ... Obviously we have a lot of bad actors in the group. The wall helps us as we operate .... it helps [us] do our job and makes the border communities safer."


-- U.S. Border Patrol Acting Chief Patrol Agent Raul Ortiz to Fox news, Jan. 12:

"We have 55 miles of fencing in this (McAllen, Texas) sector. We started this job in 2006; we need to finish it. We've got the personnel. We need the technology; we need the infrastructure to control and manage it. Part of our area is covered with fencing on our east side. That accounts for about 6 percent of our traffic. Where we have no fencing, over 90 percent of our traffic occurs in those areas."

-- President Barack Obama's Border Patrol chief Mark Morgan to Fox News, Jan. 12:

"Walls absolutely work. ... The president's right. ... The president of the Border Control Council is right. ... I cannot think of a legitimate argument why anyone would not support a wall as part of a multi-layered border security [system] ... When the president says this is a national security issue, he is right.

"I agree 100 percent with what the president is trying to do with all things related to border security. ... This is based on 30 years of governmental service. It is based on walking the same ground you saw the president walking, talking to the ranchers, talking to the land owners, talking to the border patrol agents who risk their lives every single day.

"I'm telling you this is absolutely a national security and humanitarian crisis along the south west border. In 2006 ... the same language that is being used by our president today was being used by former presidents and politicians on both sides of the aisle saying that we needed a fence, a wall, a physical barrier. ...

"The strategy that they put forth a long time ago, of infrastructure, technology and personnel -- that multi-layered approach -- has been the approach since the beginning. That multi-layered approach works."

Morgan was with the FBI for 20 years. Watch the video (searchable at video.foxnews.com). This guy is impressive. He was special agent in charge of the El Paso office on the border.

Posted: QCOline.com   February 21, 2019
Copyright 2019, John Donald O'Shea

Give Americans the Whole Truth About the Wall

In every jury trial, the jurors are the "finders of the facts" -- the sole judges of the facts.

That means that the jurors decide the case by hearing the witnesses, evaluating their truthfulness, and deciding the weight to be given to the testimony of each.

But occasionally, after hearing the evidence, the jury comes away with the impression that all the witnesses on both sides are telling half-truths, if not outright lies. How does a jury render a true verdict when every witness is either lying or telling half-truths?

In the realm of American politics, the voters are the judges of the facts. So how do the voters find the "true" facts when the Democrat and Republican politicians supported by their partisan medias each have their own parallel versions of "truth?"

I suggest that the voters are put in an impossible position. Decision making by the voters is reduced to a crap-shoot; to emotion, luck.

To illustrate my point, and not to criticize, I reference two recent opinion pieces that appeared on this page. Consider the two parallel impressions of the president's recent immigration speech to the nation.

Dan Lee: "As I watched President Donald Trump’s address to the nation last Tuesday evening, I was saddened by the spectacle that was unfolding in the Oval Office -- a spectacle that diminished the dignity of the highest office in our nation."

Jay Ambrose: "Donald Trump can look like a president. He can act like a president. He can talk like a president. He proved as much in last Tuesday’s TV speech on getting $5.7 billion for a more secure border...."

Lee: "After Trump stated that 'innocent people' are being 'horribly victimized' by immigrants who commit crimes, [Shepard] Smith [Fox News] observed, “The government’s statistics show that there is less violent crime by the undocumented immigrant population than by the general population.”

Ambrose: "On the trip to America, up to six out of every 10 women are raped, according to Amnesty International. ... Over the past two years ICE officers arrested illegal aliens who had been charged or convicted of assault (100,000), sex crimes (30,000) and violent killings (4,000). A higher percentage of natives than illegal immigrants commit serious crimes, but that hardly means it is not a worry as still more Americans die."

Lee: "(There is a) flow of heroin and other illicit drugs through ports of entry. This is done in various ways. In some cases, heroin and other illicit drugs are hidden in secret compartments in cars going through the checkpoints. In other cases, it is mixed in with legitimate cargo in trucks crossing the border. ... This illicit activity must be stopped. Building a higher wall, however, will have no impact on it."

Ambrose: "(The President said) a whole slew of illegal drugs come across the border, and fact checkers said lots of them came from other places as well. But they did not deny Trump was right in saying that 90 percent of heroin comes across the border, killing 300 a week."

Lee: "An expensive wall will do nothing to stem the flow of heroin and other deadly drugs into this country."

Ambrose: "(Speaker Nancy) Pelosi, is wrong that walls are ineffective. They are highly effective."


So what is the American voter to do when politicians and members of the press have such radically different "expert" opinions? Do hard facts support either opinion?

Opinions aside, here are three examples of hard facts:

1. Israel has security barriers. In 2002, the year before construction was started, 457 Israelis were murdered by terrorists and suicide bombers; in 2009, after construction, only 9.

2. In 2014, the average cost of educating a child in U.S. public schools was $11,155. Therefore, the annual cost of educating 725,000 non-citizen illegal alien children was $8 billion. The cost of educating 3.2 million children born in the U. S. (and therefore, citizens) of illegal alien parents was an additional $35.7 billion.

3. U.S. citizens murdered or killed by illegal aliens include: Pierce Corcoran, Officer Ronil Singh, Justin Lee, Mollie Tibbitts, and most recently, Connie Koontz, Sophia Renken (age 74), Gerald and Sharon David (ages 80 and 81), et. al.

The American people need the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. A decision based on rank opinion and emotions will probably be political and wrong.

So, do we build a wall or not? The American people need honest facts. So, why not listen to the men and women charged with protecting our border?

See my next op-ed.

Posted: QCOline.com   February 14, 2019
Copyright 2019, John Donald O'Shea

A Baby after Birth is a "Person" possessed of all Constitutional Rights (Editor's caption: "There's no denying, this abortion bill murder")

Is it murder for a doctor and a mother to kill a baby minutes after its birth if its mother consents? You're damn right it is!


On this issue, those who believe in the right to life cannot compromise.


If you intentionally kill your mother without lawful justification, you have committed matricide. The act of intentionally killing one's father without lawful justification is patricide. Killing one's brother is fratricide. A parent who kills his son or daughter without justification commits filicide.


But are matricide, patricide, fratricide and filicide anything less than murder? Or does murder cease to be murder when we give it a fancy Latin name? Do we "justify” a father's murder of his 2-year-old son simply because we label the strangling of the child filicide? Do we excuse a married woman when she stabs her husband to death in his sleep, as "merely matricide?"


If the killing relieves "stress" or "anxiety," is that "lawful justification?"


In this country, a person who kills another person without lawful justification commits murder if, in performing the acts which cause death, he either:

1. Intends to kill or do great bodily harm to the other person, or

2. Knows that such acts will cause death to the other person, or

3. Knows that such acts create a strong probability of death or great bodily harm to the other.


The principle lawful justification is self defense. In Illinois a person is justified in the use of force which is intended or likely to cause death or great bodily harm only if he reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or another.


On Jan. 28, Democratic state Rep. Kathy Tran testified before the Virginia House in support of a proposed bill to remove abortion restrictions. She was questioned by Todd Gilbert, the Republican chairman of a Virginia House committee.


Gilbert: "How late in the third trimester could a physician perform an abortion if he indicated it would impair the mental health of a woman?"


Tran: "The physical health ...."

Gilbert: "I'm talking about the mental health."

Tran: "So, I mean through the third trimester. The third trimester goes up to 40 weeks."

Gilbert: "So, to the end of the third trimester?"

Tran: "Yes, I don't think we have a limit in the bill."

Gilbert: "So, where it is obvious a woman is about to give birth ... where she has physical signs she is about to give birth .... Would that be the point at which she could request an abortion if it was so certified? She's dilating ...."

Tran: "Mr. Chairman, that would be a decision that the doctor, the physician and the woman would make at that point ..."

Gilbert: "I understand that. I am asking if your bill allows that. "

Tran: "My bill would allow that, yes."


In the hours that followed, Virginia's Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam gave a radio interview in 

which he supported delegate Tran's bill, and even went a step further. 

           “So in this particular example if a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what 

           would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. 

           The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and 

           then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”


Note what Northam said: "The infant would be delivered .... kept comfortable." It would then be up to the mother and the doctors to decide whether a baby should be killed.


At the time established by Northam, we are not talking about an embryo, or a fetus. We are talking about a completely born baby, a human person.


What Northam would allow is murder. Infanticide, no less than matricide, patricide and filicide, is murder. It is the intentional killing of another person without lawful justification.


The child is born. The mother survived. Where is the genuine threat of "imminent death or great bodily harm" to the mother at that point in time?


Or are we now going to permit mothers and fathers to justify murdering their children because the child creates stress, anxiety, or other emotional or financial problems for the family? And if you are justified in murdering your newborn because it cause stress or anxiety, why can't a father logically and justifiably kill his daughter to eliminate the stress caused by her marrying a Christian?


The very same progressives who would shower any 1-year-old child who crosses our southern border with free attorneys and a full panoply of Constitutional rights would deny those very same rights to any other child born in Virginia.


Once we deny the personhood of a baby that has just been born, we are no better than slave holders and Nazis. Killing Jews and babies without lawful justification is murder.


Posted: QCOline.com   February 7, 2019
Copyright 2019, John Donald O'Shea

A Year is too long to wait for a Criminal Trial

During the last 10 years of my judgeship, I spent eight and half years hearing nothing but felony criminal cases. I frequently looked over computer printouts to see how expeditiously I was disposing of my cases.

Our assignment system was very simple: If a defendant was arrested this week, the associate judge who handled his preliminary arraignment would set his formal arraignment and preliminary hearing for the next Tuesday. That would be within eight days from his initial court appearance. We called this “Preliminary Hearing Day.”

There were two circuit judges who took the cases over for formal arraignment and preliminary hearings. We alternated weeks. If I took preliminary hearings the first week, Judge X took them the second week. I’d then take them the third week, and he’d take them the fourth week, and so on.

A preliminary hearing is a hearing to determine if there is probable cause to justify holding the defendant either in jail or on bond until trial. It is a safeguard against the defendant being held on a baseless charge.

At the hearings, one of four things happened. Either we conducted a brief preliminary hearing, the defendant waived preliminary hearing, the prosecutor dismissed the case, or a preliminary hearing was (rarely) continued for one week.

Every Tuesday about 30-35 preliminary hearings were set. It was a hectic morning. Between 8 a.m. and noon, we had 240 minutes to handle 35 cases, or 7 minutes per case. Most defendants waived preliminary hearing.

Normally, we conducted an average of five prelims each Tuesday. If the defendant waived, or if I found probable cause, I would then enter our standard pretrial order, which provided:

1. The state would furnish standard Supreme Court Rule (SCR) discovery to the defendant within 17 days.

2. The defendant would furnish standard SCR discovery to the state within 21 days.

3. An early day to plead guilty would be set 45 days after Preliminary Hearing Day.

4. The last day for negotiated pleas would be Thursday before trial. Trial was set for Monday, 60 days after Preliminary Hearing Day.


The purpose of setting firm plea dates and trial dates was to keep the cases moving. Every Tuesday, about 35 new felony cases came into the system. That means I had two weeks to dispose of 35 new or old cases. If 35 came in for preliminary hearing, and I only disposed of 17 before my next Preliminary Hearing Day, I was creating a backlog.

During my preliminary hearing (or non-jury) week, my schedule was very busy: Tuesday morning, prelims; Thursday morning, final plea date; Friday morning, early plea date.

The remainder of my non-jury week was spent hearing bench trials, motions to suppress evidence or confessions, probation revocations, motions to set aside pleas of guilty, post-trial motions, post-conviction hearings, and motions to determine if a defendant was fit to stand trial.

The weeks between prelim weeks were jury trial weeks.

Most cases were disposed of by plea, either on the early or final plea day. I would normally end up with about three cases that required jury trial. If I knew that one case would take the whole week, I’d take the most important case, and ask Vicki, the chief judge’s administrative assistant, for help to handle the others. Vicki never let me down.

I loved doing jury trials. For me, it was the best and most exciting part of being a judge. The system we used, outlined here, I created after Chief Judge Jeffrey O’Connor assigned me as presiding judge of the Criminal Division.

The system was designed to handle the routine cases. If a case had to be continued, I would continue it for two weeks. Each additional continuance was also for two weeks.

I cannot recall ever giving more than three two-week continuances (except where the defendant could not be tried because he was mentally unfit to stand trial).

I never had time to check on how fast other judges were moving cases. But I ran periodic checks on my own docket. From prelim day to “disposal,” my average time of disposition was 45 days. That included murders and other major cases.

For me “disposal” meant dismissal, plea of guilty, or first day of trial. Murder trials almost always took somewhat longer. But the average was brought down by pleas entered even before the early plea date.

A first offender, who had negotiated his case for probation, wanted to plead early and get out of jail. That helped my average.

So, in the 18 years since my retirement, something has changed for the worse.

Posted: QCOline.com   January 17, 2019
Copyright 2019, John Donald O'Shea

Justice Delayed is Justice Denied

I became a judge in December 1974. A few days later, all the newly minted judges throughout the state were summoned to attend a new judge’s seminar run by the Hon. Roy O. Gulley.

We were there to learn how to be judges. Gulley had been elected as a circuit judge in 1957, and appointed by the Illinois Supreme Court in 1968 as the court’s administrative director.

Judge Gulley told us in no uncertain terms that a judge had administrative as well as judicial duties. He cited Illinois appellate and Supreme Court cases which told us being a judge meant more than “sitting on the bench and looking like a wise old owl.”

We were not to “sit in our black robes” looking like “alabaster busts of our grandsires.” A judge was not a “mere referee,” he was the “governor of the trial.” In unequivocal words, he told us that we had an non-delegable duty to see that cases moved in a timely fashion to completion.

Cases should be continued only for reasons unforeseeable at the time they were set. “Justice delayed, is justice denied.”

Judge Gulley’s remarks made sense, I had no doubts that what he told us was right. My earlier experiences in the state’s attorney’s office confirmed that he was.


When I came into the prosecutor’s office in September of 1966, none of the judges were doing what Gulley said we needed to do. When a defendant was arrested pursuant to a grand jury indictment, at his arraignment the judge entered of plea of “Not Guilty” for him and ordered, motions to be filed within 10 days. There, judicial administration ended.

Once the judge said, “Motions to be filed within 10 days,” the judge seemingly divested himself of his administrative duty to see that the case moved forward in a timely fashion. That was left to the state’s attorney.

The big problem was that with no judge pushing the case for trial, once the defendant made bond, in most instances the defendant didn’t care if the case ever got tried! Without the court setting a trial date, that was left to the state’s attorney.

But as prosecutors, we had a tendency to want to try the good cases, and to let the “dogs” lie. But once the state’s attorney set the case for trial, defense counsel, whose client was on bond, would then begin filing a blizzard of motions.

A week before the trial date set by the state’s attorney, the defendant would finally file his motion for discovery, and a motion for a bill of particulars. The trial would be continued until the motions were heard, allowed and complied with.

The state’s attorney would then set a new trial date. Then just before the second trial date, defense counsel would file a motion to suppress the defendant’s confession. The trial would again be continued, the motion heard, and, if denied, the state’s attorney would eventually get around to setting another new trial date.

Then, just before the third trial date, defense counsel would file a motion to suppress the evidence as illegally seized. The trial would again be continued, the motion heard, and if denied, the state’s attorney would eventually get around to setting a third trial date.

To get additional continuances, the defense attorney could trot out motions to suppress the eye-witness identification, and motions to continue — because his Aunt Matilda died, or his dog had been run over by a car.

The result was a case that should have been disposed of in 60 to 90 days, took six months or a year.


When I set up our criminal division, I took over the scheduling for my court. I kept my own scheduling book. When the attorneys wanted to set a hearing, they came to me, told me why they wanted time, and how much time they thought they’d need.

They would often suggest a short date when they were both available. Once we set a case, it was continued only for something that came up that couldn’t have been foreseen at the time the matter was set.

Over the years, we got very good at estimating how long a hearing would take. The most common reason for a motion hearing going off was because the defendant decided to plead guilty instead. Firm settings move cases.


Judge Gulley nailed it.


Posted: QCOline.com   January 10, 2019
Copyright 2019, John Donald O'Shea

3 Unchanging Principles for Handling Criminal Cases

I spent 8.5 years of the last 10 years of my judgeship handling felony cases in the Criminal Division of the Rock Island County Circuit Court.

In the 18 years since, I have written only once about the business of my old court to show the difficulties facing the judge in a particular highly publicized case.

Two things have now moved me to write about the handling of criminal (felony) cases here in Rock Island County.

First, it seems that there are daily news accounts of shootings in our Illinois Quad-Cities.

Second, in visiting with people I trust, who spend a lot of time around the county criminaldivision, I have been told:

— It now takes a year to dispose of a case;

— The circuit court judges don’t want to be assigned to the criminal division;

— Nobody wants to try cases; they want to negotiate the cases instead.


Before writing this, I decided to verify what I had been told. I did so by checking the dispositions of cases filed in January of 2018, the first 97 cases filed in 2018.

From past experience (in checking dispositions of my own cases), I felt that checking all the cases filed in the first month of 2018 would given me a fair representative sampling.

Of the 97 cases filed in January 2018, here’s what I found:

1. One case is stayed until the defendant is restored to “fitness.”

2. 36 cases still were pending/undisposed of as of Dec. 20, 2018.

3. 10 were dismissed — without any other dispositions on other counts.

4. 14 cases utilized more lenient “alternative dispositions;” i.e., judgments were withheld, or where defendants were placed in an offender initiative program.

5. 36 cases ended with a plea of guilty to at least one count. Of those 36 cases, 14 ended with probation, 13 ended with conditional discharge (probation without a probation officer) and nine ended with a prison sentence.


As I studied the computer printout of the criminal cases filed in January 2018, certain facts stood out:

1. Not one of the 97 cases appears to have gone to jury trial or bench trial.

2. 36 out of 97 cases are still pending — nearly a full year after they were filed!

3. The 36 cases disposed of by pleas of guilty all appear to be the results of negotiated pleas.

So based on the foregoing, what concerns do I have based on my experiences?

Principle No. 1: If a judge starts the year with 100 cases on his docket, he wants to end the year with 100 or less cases on his docket. If 100 new cases are filed each month, the judge must dispose of 100 (new or old) cases each month.

If on Jan. 1, you have 100 cases on your docket, and 100 more are filed in January, if you dispose of only 64, on Feb. 1, you will have 136 cases on your docket.

If that pattern holds (you fail to dispose of 36 cases each month), by April 1, you will have 208 cases on your docket, and by year’s end you will have 532.


Principle No. 2: Getting an acceptable negotiated plea requires that judges and prosecutors be able and willing to take/force cases to trial. If the defendant makes bond, why would any defendant or his attorney care if the case ever gets to trial?

If defense counsel knows that the prosecutor is unable or unwilling to try his case, what incentive is there for the defendant ever to seriously negotiate or plead guilty?

Defendants plead when they know that the prosecutor is ready and willing to try the case, and the client may get hammered by the judge if the defendant is found guilty at trial. Without these two realities, why would any competent defense counsel ever plead his client guilty — unless the plea results in the prosecutor effectively “giving away his case?”


Principle 3: It is up to the judge to move the cases on his docket. Defense counsel has no incentive to force his defendant’s case to trial, unless his client is sitting in jail, and will spend more time in jail awaiting trial, than he is likely to get if he pleads guilty.

And if the prosecutor is allowing his own case load to increase by 36 a month, why is there any reason to believe that he will be sufficiently diligent to do the judge’s job as well as his own?


My next two op-eds will deal with the role of the judge in the disposition of cases.

Posted: QCOline.com   January 3, 2019
Copyright 2019, John Donald O'Shea

At Christmas, Thank God you're an American

My dad was born two years into the 20th century. One day, late in his life, before his death in the 1980s, dad told me he lived in mankind’s best times.

He said when he was born, the horse was the common mode of transportation, and that within a few years of his birth, the automobile became the universal mode of transportation in America.

Oil lamps were replaced by electricity. The telegraph and telephone provided instant communication. Flight grew from nothing to a great industry. Radio and television were invented and soon became common to every American home.

Wood heating changed to coal, then to oil and then to natural gas and nuclear energy. Central heating replaced fireplaces and stoves.

Supermarkets replaced small stores. Air conditioning became an essential in every home. And America put men on the moon.


As I have reread the histories of Jamestown, the Plymouth colony, and the French at Quebec, I marvel at how far we in America have come.

When Cartier made his second voyage to the St. Lawrence River (1534), he and his men had none of the things that Americans had when my dad was born.

That winter at Quebec, when the snow hit and the river froze, the French were trapped in their huts. Scurvy broke out. Twenty-five men died, and only three or four remained healthy enough to care for the dying.

An Indian saved those on death’s door with a “tea” (from the Aborvitae?) that provided the vitamin needed to ward off the scurvy. There were no stores, doctors, or efficacious medicines. What little food they could find came from the few animals hunted and from the river. Shelters were barely heated.


Dad didn’t live to see the computer come into common use. There were no cable networks. No email. No cellphones. You couldn’t go on FaceTime and see your daughter as you talked. You couldn’t download an app and watch virtually every Notre Dame sporting event from your phone or computer. He never knew of the internet, which today we take for granted.

The advanced batteries that we now have to power our cars hadn’t been invented in his time. The treatments for cancer and other illness that we take for granted today, didn’t exist.


There is a simple truth involved in all of this. There’s something wonderful we should be thankful for this Christmas.

We live in America. Whether we are Bill Gates’ rich, or on welfare, we still live in the greatest country in the world.

People from all over the globe opt to come here; not to Russia, China, France, Venezuela, or Cuba. Not even Sweden.

Here you can practice the religion of your choice without government interference. You can travel from Florida to Washington, from Maine to Arizona, anytime you want without a passport or government permission.

If you are arrested, you get all the rights set out in our Bill of Rights. You are presumed innocent, the government must prove your guilt to a jury of your fellow citizens (not other government officials) beyond a reasonable doubt.

If you hate the president, you can call him all sorts of vile names without fear of being imprisoned or sent to indoctrination or re-education camps. (Some 800,000 Muslims in China are presently in indoctrination/re-education camps.)

There is no nation in the world where you could enjoy greater freedom of religion, speech, association, and press.

You are free to work and grow rich. If not, there’s the social safety net. Think about it. Today, the people on welfare in America live better than virtually anybody did before the beginning of the 20th century — including kings!


Kings might have had gold, and lived in palaces. But did 19th century kings have the range of foods anybody can find in an American supermarket? The medicines? The doctors? The sanitation systems? Central heating? Air conditioning? Cell phones? TVs? Computers? Internet? Cars? Trains? Airplanes?

Were their subjects free to denounce the king on the street corner or in print? Free to practice the religion of their choice? Our country is not perfect. But it’s the best so far.


This Christmas, thank your God that you’re an American.

Posted: QCOline.com   December 21, 2018
Copyright 2018, John Donald O'Shea