Don’t tolerate abuses of power

Why any man, much less the president of the United States of America, would inflict pain and suffering on hundreds of thousands of federal employees over a piece of concrete or steel is beyond me.

Never in my 70-plus years have I witnessed a more disgusting abuse of power. Talk of a wall began as a sham, meant to keep then-candidate Donald Trump on message. It was a battle cry to rally his supporters. That Mexico would pay to build it was always a lie.

We all want border security, but the number of undocumented immigrants entering along various stretches of unprotected land is small compared with those arriving at airports and other ports of entry.

Technology, workplace management and personnel would do more to secure our sovereignty than a medieval spiked fence. For Trump to shut down our government over a silly campaign promise shows the pettiness of a man intoxicated with power.

Our Founding Fathers worried about creating a monarchy. In creating three equal branches of government, they thought they had included enough checks and balances to preclude that from happening. Could any of them have imagined the use of cyberwarfare to affect our elections? I’m sure not, but in their wisdom, they provided the cure, the power to investigate and uncover the truth.

It’s time for the House of Representative and the Senate to use their constitutional authority to clean house and return to us a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”