Veto:As promised, President trump vetoed the legislation that would have blocked his declaration of a national emergency at the southern border.

  The President called the legislation “dangerous” and “reckless.” He said, 

 “Congress has the freedom to pass this resolution and I have the duty to veto it.” 

  It’s always interesting that Trump accuses his opponents of what he’s accused of doing himself. His critics in both political parties have said it is dangerous, reckless, and possibly even unconstitutional for the President to ignore the will of Congress and proceed to build his border wall.

  Standing by the President’s side at the veto signing, Attorney General William Barr said the President’s emergency order was “clearly authorized under the law.” Actually, it’s not clear, and it’s an issue that will probably be resolved in court.

  Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement,“Even members of President Trump’s own party are beginning to realize that he is a one-man constitutional crisis.” 

The Gun Beat:Following the massacre of 49 people in two Christchurch mosques, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern didn’t just offer thoughts and prayers, she promised changes in the country’s gun laws.

  The attacker, 28-year-old Australian Brenton Tarrant, had a gun license and used five guns, including two that were semi-automatic. 

  Ardern said, “Our gun laws will change, now is the time.” She didn’t offer specifics but said, “People will be seeking change, and I am committed to that.”

  Australia passed restrictive gun laws after a mass shooting in 1996 and they haven’t had anything like it since.

  Ardern published a white nationalist manifesto before the attacks and named President Donald Trump as one of his inspirations. Speaking with reporters, Trump dismissed the notion that white nationalists are a rising menace, even though they have carried out some of the worst mass attacks in recent years. “I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems,” he said.

  In his manifesto the accused Tarrant said he admired Trump “As a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose? Sure. As a policy maker and leader? Dear god no.”

Boeing, Boeing:Wreckage from the crash of an Ethiopian jetliner indicates that it had the same trouble as an Indonesian Lion Air 737 Max 8 that crashed in October. Searchers found a jackscrew from the horizontal stabilizer at the tail of the plane that indicates the stabilizer was up, forcing the nose of the plane down.

  The primary theory is that the plane’s automatic flight software went haywire and the pilots were unable to control it.

The News Roundup:Arkansas’ Republican governor signed a law banning most abortions 18 weeks into a woman’s pregnancy, enacting one of the strictest abortion laws in the country. — Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is returning to his television shows “Cosmos” and “StarTalk” after he was cleared in a sexual misconduct investigation. — The EPA has banned the home use of paint strippers containing methylene chloride that have been blamed for 50 deaths of people inhaling the fumes. 

The Obit Page:The poet WS Merwin, who was twice named poet laureate of the United States and won the Pulitzer Prize, has died at age 91 at home in Hawaii.

  Over his life Merwin came into despair over war and the deteriorating state of nature. He abandoned the restraints of punctuation in his poems to give them more urgency. In the 1980s he moved to Hawaii where he and his wife restored a pineapple plantation and they lived with nature.

  Dan Chiasson wrote in The New Yorkerthat, “Merwin’s poems seem made from a kit, a highly personalized but weirdly plain repertoire of details: rain, light, mountains, water, wind.”

  Here is Merwin’s poem, “Place.”

“On the last day of the world
I would want to plant a tree

what for
not for the fruit

the tree that bears the fruit
is not the one that was planted

I want the tree that stands
in the earth for the first time

with the sun already 
going down

and the water
touching its roots

in the earth full of the dead
and the clouds passing

one by one
over its leaves”

Last Laughs:Proving once again that Democrats have no sense of humor, presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke has apologized for a joke he has repeatedly told in campaign speeches.

   O’Rourke was a three-term member of Congress, a job that leaves little time for a personal life, as well as a permanent campaigner for higher office. He has joked that his wife Amy has raised their three kids, “sometimes with my help,” a line that always gets laughs except from critics who’ve said it’s “insensitive” to single parents.

  Democrats occasionally get elected president, sometimes with the help of Democrats.

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