Last night, Joan, my ten year old granddaughter, paid me a big compliment. She told me that she really liked talking with me……because my conversation was so random. I responded: “Thanks. That is really nice. Do you have any idea how many sea lions live off the coast of San Diego?”

In this era when it is always difficult to read through the morning newspapers, I had a particularly hard time yesterday morning with the Washington Post’s front page.

Let me quote: “Sulma Martinez had just left the dentist’s office with her 14 year old twin daughters when an unmarked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement vehicle pulled up behind her and flashed its blue lights. The officers asked for her papers.

“Martinez, a 35 year old originally from Honduras, had a work permit, a pending asylum claim and a pathway to a visa for crime victims. But none of that mattered, she said the officers told her.

“They gave her a choice: she could head to a hotel and be deported with her daughters, or she could contest her removal and try to stay in the United States. If she chose the latter, she’d be arrested an the twins would be sent to a shelter for child immigrants.”

[See article: Deportations Drive a New Wave of Family Breakups, Sep 19, WAPO]

I then looked at another front page article, this one about the aftermath of the death of Charlie Kirk. I quote just one paragraph:

“Vice President JD Vance urged supporters to drum those ‘celebrating Charlie’s murder’ out of their jobs and said the administration may strip tax-free status from two prominent foundations he accused of underwriting an article’ about Kirk. The State Department embarked on a global effort to identify foreign citizens ‘praising, rationalizing, or making light of” Kirk’s death and put them on a list to prevent them from ever receiving US visas. Attorney General Pam Bondi vowed a sweeping crackdown on ‘hate speech’”

[See article: Push to Police Speech Breaks with GOP’s Typical Rhetoric, Sep 19, WAPO]

Of course, there are so many things that I am upset about that they all can’t be listed here, and they certainly wouldn’t all fit on the front page of the Post. Just this morning, I saw VP JD’s comment on the strikes on the Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean. He said: “I wouldn’t go fishing right now.” Or his other comment on the military strikes on the boats when it was suggested to him that this was a war crime: “I don’t give a shit what you call it.”

I don’t know whether these boats are carrying drugs to the United States or not. Perhaps the president and vice president have irrefutable evidence that they are, but obviously there are other ways to top boats than blowing them up and killing all on board. Even Israel, when it goes against flotillas on their way to Gaza, does not resort to this extreme.

And who are the men on the boats? Are they all drug runners? Do they all even know what their cargo is? So many questions could be asked, not even including the ultimate question of whether or not the United States has the legal right to attack boats on the high seas.

So I have asked this before, and I will ask it again: Was the life of Charlie Kirk more valuable and more worth mourning than the life of the Venezuelans who were killed in these military attacks? If someone answers “yes”, shame on them.

I can put the same question a different way. Is it more tragic that Charlie Kirk’s children are without their father than that the children of these Venezuelans are without their fathers? If someone answers “yes”, shame on them.

And let me multiply the question. There have been at least 15 Venezuelans killed so far. Does that make the actions of Mr. Trump 15 times as bad as the action of Mr. Robinson? If not, why not? Both Robinson and Trump believe they are fighting against evil. Both took action and took lives without any due process. Yes, one is president and one is a troubled 22 year old. But our president appears to have once been a troubled 22 year old, and now he is a troubled 79 year old. A 79 year old not with a classic Mauser rifle, but with the American military at his disposal. How big of a difference is there, really? Really. Think about it.