Now the second of three Comments of the Day I’m posting this weekend authored by Glenn Logan. Like the first, this one is about the impeachment drama (or farce, if you prefer.)

His specific context is the post, “If I Had Been Able To Swing A Full-Time Impeachment News And Commentary Blog, These Kind Of Things Would Have Been On It…” It begins with a quote from the text. I suppose this is as good a place as any to apologize for floating the idea of launching a separate blog to address what still is infuriating to me, the impossibility of getting accurate, objective information regarding the process, its history, essential legal principles involved, like hearsay and due process, and the context of this particular blot on our history. This would not be needed, except that we have no trustworthy journalism sources today. One stop information is impossible, and few people have the time or inclination to bounce around the web to get a fair snapshot of what’s going on without being misled by misrepresentations on one side and crucial omissions on the other.

Almost as soon as I asked for volunteers to assist in this project, the metaphorical roof fell in on me, and just getting this blog out every day became difficult. At this point in my life I should have been financially independent enough to devote full time to projects like the impeachment site. I’ve got half-drafted books lying around, I have half a dozen other fascinating and important projects that should be moving forward and instead have been on my “To do” list for years. This is nobody’s fault but my own: not enough focus, not enough discipline, too easily distracted by topics that interest me but don’t pay the bills or advance the chess pieces.

What a waste. But the end of the year always sees my mind running in this gutter. Anyway, I’m sorry.

Now here’s Glenn:

“For leaders, those who deal in power, distinguishing between rightful and wrongful acts based on motives is particularly difficult, if not impossible.”

I think the Democrats are being deliberately deceptive here, and can’t really say what they mean. What they mean is that the actions they have ascribed to Trump are crimes because Trump did them. If a person such as former president Barack Obama, or more pointedly former vice-president Joe Biden, had done the exact same thing, they would carry with them a presumption of innocence, validity and indeed, praiseworthiness. Their motives would’ve never been questioned, let alone put forward as the basis for an impeachment.

This just highlights the political nature of the impeachment “process” the Democrats have initiated, and the utter bankruptcy of their argument. If they can define crimes as not the acts themselves, but the combination of and act and who commits it, they will have reached a point that Orwell couldn’t, or didn’t imagine.

It is impossible to overstate the pernicious nature of successfully making such an argument. It smacks of the racist trials in the Jim Crow south, where a black man could be convicted of almost anything because of his race. Ironically, that is entirely apropos to the Democrat party.

The Democrats, particularly the intelligence committee report, are trying to say that Donald Trump’s actions must be impeachable not because they meet the high standards defined in the Constitution (remember, the text of the Constitution explicitly defines treason), but because they think they can stretch the meaning of the Constitutional text to encompass conduct it was meant to exclude from impeachable actions.

To the dubious credit (more aptly, shame) of the Democrats in particular and politicians in general, this is completely consistent with their actions over the decades. We have seen judges on both sides, but particularly those who lean left, find “penumbras” and “nexuses” and other hooks in the law and Constitution that import conduct or matters clearly not included in the text of the law in order to justify their desired outcome. This is just another example, although a particularly harmful and egregious one.

“What they’re trying to do is what the KGB under Lavrentiy Beria said to Stalin, the dictator — I’m not comparing our country to the Soviet Union — I just want to make sure it never becomes anything like that. …”Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.

I think this is even worse, or perhaps just a more specific case than that explanation describes. This is a case of, “Show me the man and we’ll stretch a crime to fit his actions, text of the statute be damned.” In essence, this is a kind of attainder without a bill, an illegitimate process cloaked in the high language of defense of the Republic.

And it is altogether evil.