Triple Threat

You're fired.

I won't leave.

   As the nation squirms through the triple threat of corona virus, economic disaster and civil unrest, underlying all this is the speculation that the president might refuse to leave the White House if he loses the election in November.

   Already, there has been the proposal that his term be extended to match the time "lost" to impeachment proceedings. He withstood that, as the Senate voted on party lines not to convict him. But now he faces a threat of three factors not of his making, but that he does little to alleviate.

   Early in his presidency, he was fond of referring to his third or fourth term, and to his ten more years in office. When challenged on this, because the Constitution limits a president to two elected terms of four years each, he insisted he was only joking. But was he? Or was he displaying ignorance of the Constitution?

   Recently, he has threatened to send federal troops to control protest demonstrations in American cities, whether or not local officials ask for help.

   Military personnel are obliged to obey all lawful orders. But if the order is clearly not lawful, they can and should refuse to obey it. This is the predicament senior military commanders are now facing, that the president will order federal troops into American cities to suppress demonstrations.

   Lawyers will argue that there are two federal statutes and several precedents to support such a move. But other lawyers and state governors will argue that the current circumstances do not apply. There was some looting and vandalism earlier in the crisis, but that has subsided.

   Meanwhile, peaceful demonstrations continue. Any attempt by the federal government to "dominate" them, in the name of "law and order," as the president phrased it, is unconstitutional.

   To quote the First Amendment, the people have the right "peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for redress of grievances."

   Police brutality is a legitimate grievance.