Here I am, I think! Hello?
I’m still groggy from the anesthesia, and the doctor said not to do too much, and definitely not to make any important decisions. I remembered that advice just in time, when I was tempted to watch the Democratic Candidates’ debate, and realized I must still be disoriented. Then I turned to ABC, and thought I saw the Miss America Pageant, which is impossible in enlightened 2019, so I was definitely hallucinating. I’ve also been off my blood-thinner for two days, and could stroke out any second.
1. On Pelosi’s desperate stunt. The House of Representatives adjourned before voting to send the articles of impeachment to the U.S. Senate for a trial. Apparently Democrats are refusing to forward the impeachment to the Senate until they receive assurances the trial will be “fair” in their eyes. You know, like the partisan impeachment in the House, which began with closed hearings overseen by Adam Schiff, and no witnesses who had anything to offer but opinions and hearsay, and ended up with Articles that failed to assert impeachable offenses. Fair.
The Democrats have been following through on this insane scheme hoping to get as much TV time as possible showing Democrats insulting the President, hoping that more repetitions of “Orange Man Bad” supported by the seven Big Lies will somehow change enough votes to avoid a disaster in 2020. They know that absent some presently unknown smoking gun, there is no way they can get the two-thirds super-majority to convict (they’re wishing and hoping for that, too) and knew this all long. The plan now is to try to discredit the Senate acquittal in advance.
This requires a belief that the non-Trump Deranged among the public (think of the rest as the equivalent of the infected in “World War Z”) have the IQs of annelid worms, and the short-term memories of mayflies. The party really believes that after Pelosi and the rest said it was imperative to impeach Trump as soon as possible because the nation and the Constitution is in imminent peril, the decision now to stall the impeachment process won’t be seen as proof that the whole exercise was a cynical, dishonest, hypocritical sham. This is more than irresponsible and incompetent. This is a parody of irresponsible and incompetent.
2. More…It also illustrates the dishonest and insincere nature of the Democrat/”resistance”/mainstream media’s three-year narrative about President Trump ignoring “democratic norms” and the Constitution. Prof. Noah Feldman, who made it clear when he testified that he wants to see Trump impeached and is willing to warp his interpretation of the Constitution to get it done, isn’t willing to endorse this trick. He wrote,
If the House votes to “impeach” but doesn’t send the articles to the Senate or send impeachment managers there to carry its message, it hasn’t directly violated the text of the Constitution. But the House would be acting against the implicit logic of the Constitution’s description of impeachment.
A president who has been genuinely impeached must constitutionally have the opportunity to defend himself before the Senate. That’s built into the constitutional logic of impeachment, which demands a trial before removal.
To be sure, if the House just never sends its articles of impeachment to the Senate, there can be no trial there. That’s what the “sole power to impeach” means.
But if the House never sends the articles, then Trump could say with strong justification that he was never actually impeached. And that’s probably not the message Congressional Democrats are hoping to send.
Alan Dershowitz, who has derided this impeachment from the beginning,writes.
“It is difficult to imagine anything more unconstitutional, more violative of the intention of the Framers, more of a denial of basic due process and civil liberties, more unfair to the president and more likely to increase the current divisiveness among the American people…President Trump would stand accused of two articles of impeachment without having an opportunity to be acquitted by the institution selected by the Framers to try all cases of impeachment. It would be as if a prosecutor deliberately decided to indict a criminal defendant but not to put him on trial.”
Civil rights attorney lawyer Harvey Silverglate described Pelosi’s gambit as “manipulation of the system.” The whole impeachment sham has been a manipulation of the system, and now Pelosi’s defenders will have to go deeper into denial to defend it. Professor Turley, no surprise, also condemned the maneuver. “Articles of impeachment were not meant to be articles of barter,” Turley wrote. “Just as the House elected not to seek to compel the testimony of critical witnesses, the Senate can make the same decision for its own house.”
3. A terrible man. I assume that history will eventually get Adam Schiff right, and mark him as one of the true legislative villains in American history. Here is what he told Stephen Colbert, and I would say it’s revealing, except it just confirms what has been so wrong with the soft coup plots from the beginning (and the beginning was in 2016.):
This is not just about prior conduct. It’s not just about, although it would be more than enough, the president’s inviting Russia to interfere, then trying to coerce Ukraine to interfere.
It is about what is going on today, as the president and his allies continue to try to invite foreign interference in our election. It never stopped. It never will stop unless we put an end to it. And, so, this is a continuing risk to our democracy.
Today, you know, as we sit here, the markup continues, and we are hearing astounding things from Republican members who are saying, it’s okay to solicit foreign interference in an election, things I never would have imagined I would ever hear either party say.
And, you know, for me, participating in this hearing, watching these hearings, I have to say, you know, for some of our members who are defending the Constitution, it is their finest hour. But for others who are willfully blinding themselves to this president’s misconduct, it is the most shameful hour.
And I wonder how they’re going to explain one day when their grandchild comes to them and says, grand-dad, grand-mom, please tell me what you did when that unethical man, that terrible man, that man who was putting people in cages, dividing our country, extorting our allies, please tell me what you did to stand up to that man. What will their answer be? For all too many, it will be nothing except shame.
How many lies, misrepresentations and appeals to emotion and logical fallacies do you count here? I count eleven. I’m sure a missed one or two. And of course Colbert nodded as his audience of zombies cheered.
4. How dare you quote what I said! I can’t find a single non-Right mainstream media source that thought this was newsworthy.
When House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was pointing out the undeniable bias of the Democrats and their determination to impeach Trump by any means possible and for any reason they could concoct, he twice referenced “Squad” member Rep. Rashida Tlaib saying in January, “We’re going to impeach the motherfucker.”
“Stop it!” the Michigan Democrat repeatedly shouted. “Those aren’t my words,” McCarthy responded. Signature significance. But of course, nothing the public needs to know about.
5. Incompetence: How that impeachment plan going so far, gang? Here’s a poll that would drive Democrats and “the resistance” crazy, if they weren’t crazy already. I don’t trust polls, but I trust my judgment, and this is about where I thought we were heading a year ago:
The Economist/YouGov poll suggest that President Trump would defeat Joe Biden by four points (and that’s before Joe babbles incoherently in a debate with Trump and tries to feel up a female moderator), and the rest of the Democratic field from 26 to 41 points.
Gee, I wonder if the party leaders have seen such polls, and if they have had any influence on the impeachment Hail Mary? Nah, the Democrats wouldn’t divide the country further, distort the Constitution and create a dangerous precedent just to try to win an election! These people are American, patriots–how could you think such a thing? Only a terrible man like President Trump would try something like that.
Ethics Alarms 
Rest up Jack Nothing has changed except the polls of people that think the House Impeachment was a good idea which are sinking into the depths like a cast iron cannon ball. Only the double digit IQ folks and some sociopaths will continue to vote Democratic. Criswell predicts that nobody can rescue the party.
…Criswell? Who? Where?
RE: #3: One certainly HOPES that history will get Schiff right. I’ve got TDS’d Facebook friends who think he’s been marvelous. I just don’t get it.
Glad to see you’re up and around again. Rest up, we’ll all still be here later.
Rest up Jack
Want to bear witness a spectacularly hypocritical…um…Leap of Faith?
Watch Lefties (whose disdain for Christianity is no secret)…er…find their religion in order to establish an hilarious Unholy Alliance with editor-in-chief Mark Galli’s a Christianity Today op-ed calling for President Trump’s impeachment.
Oy! The earlobe deep, viscid irony they’ll have to slog through to sell that with straight faces!
Did Adam Schiff ever read Deutermonomy 32:35?
What did he think our Lord God HaShem would do to repay the United States, under Barack Obama, interfering in Israel’s elections?
C’mon ME, that’s different; ask Lefty…
Galli is wrong in his thinking. His notion seems to be this: President Trump is a jerk. He swears. He’s something of a bully. In the past, maybe he had loose morals with regards to women. He’s terrible at turning the other cheek. He does many things that Christians don’t (or shouldn’t) like. So Galli is suggesting that while the President is in this precarious position, Christians should step and support impeachment, thus ridding themselves of the man who is a moral failure because that’s what Christians should want.
But that’s not the issue. Impeachment is not for moral failings and past womanizing. It is not for saying “damn” or “hell” or any other forbidden word. It is not for taking the Lord’s name in vain. It is for high crimes and misdemeanors, and there is legitimate doubt that the President committed either.
If the President is innocent – and remember, we still haven’t had a trial – then removing him from office is a colossal blow to the notion that people who don’t commit crimes are innocent and nearly every other tenant of justice we have. I appreciate Galli’s desire for strong moral – even Christian – leadership in Washington, but our system fails when innocent people can be punished for crimes they didn’t commit.
And let me remind Galli that of one of the groups to be targeted first in that environment will be Christians.
Ugh…grammatical issues galore. It’s like I forgot how to read.
1st paragraph…”…Christians should step UP and support…”
The last paragraph…
“And let me remind Galli that one of the groups to be targeted first in that environment will be Christians.”
My apologies.
” A crime doesn’t have to be a crime to be a crime.”
Is anyone old enough to remember when the United States, under Barack Obama, interfered in Israel’s elections?
“Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord (Romans 12:9)
The U.S. wronged the Judenvolk, and our Lord God HaShem is repaying with usurious interest!
If people are so concerned about foreign interference with elections,. maybe they should repent!
Is that deflection somehow justifying a foreign country interfering in our election?
When HaShem repays those who wronged the Judenvolk, it is always justified.
Evidently your good friend Larry Tribe came up with the rope-a-dope strategy Nancy is following. I think the Dems basically want to turn their “impeachment” into a censure. Idiots.
Merrick Garland.
Not even in the same hemisphere, Valk.
valkygrrl,
Merrick Garland is an apples to oranges comparison at best.
The Merrick Garland fiasco was certainly unethical on it’s face but it was not unconstitutional and certainly didn’t downwardly affect the American people like an impeachment of the President of the United States. A comparison might be like this; Garland was a pebble being dropped in a pond and the impeachment is asteroid the size of a Volkswagen Bus hitting the pond at over mach 65.
I expected someone to raise the Garland comparison; I should have known Valky would be the one to raise it, as she is about the last pure progressive here with the guts to give as well as she takes. I’m glad she did raise it. There are similarities, although impeaching a President is much, much more important than ditching a SCOTUS nomination. I regard McConnell’s act the next step up from the Bork rejection.
The main similarity is that both violently vary from “the democratic norm.” I score Pelosi far worse on that score,e because of its hypocrisy: Democrats have been using “breaching of norms” as one of their major indictments of Trump, but he’s never breached a norm like this.
Both the norm McConnell ignored and this one should not have been breached. That’s clear. Both were gambles, and in my opinion, really stupid ones. McConnell lucked out. I doubt Pelosi will.
However the key difference is a big one: virtually all legal scholars agreed that McConnell was within the constitution as written. That cuts no ice with me: it was unethical. But Pelosi’s gambit is almost certainly unconstitutional
Robert Bork
Nixon’s hatchet man who got confirmation hearings and an up or down vote which he lost causing Regan to nominate a second choice who was confirmed overwhelmingly? That Robert Bork?
He was still rejected.
So by your logic, the first time the senate ever voted down a nominee it became acceptable to refuse to even consider any and presumably every nominee?
On your head be it.
Perhaps next time we have the senate and you the oval office we can just refuse everything. No judges at any level, no cabinet, no ambassadors, nothing at all.
That is what you’re arguing for.
No, the Robert Bork who was overwhelmingly recognized by as the most brilliant legal mind of his generation, and who would have been unanimouslyy confirmed under any previous President and by any previous Congress, since he was if anything over-qualified. That Robert Bork.
It’s understandable that you would confuse the two…
We are talking about the Robert Bork who fired Archibald Cox on Nixon’s orders after everyone else who got that order resigned in protest are we not?
Oh, THAT Robert Bork. Not his finest hour, but he was following the law. Nixon was the one breaking his pledge to Congress, but that wasn’t a law. he still had the power to fire Cox.
Just skip ahead to 1:14
I produced and vetted the play and script, and wrote a treatise about the trial. The Nuremberg Trials may have been a necessary show, but they had nothing to do with justice.
The difference is that Bork’s order was lawful (as Jack pointed out) but the orders in question at Nuremberg were not lawful.
In the judge’s trial, the orders most certainly were lawful. They weren’t charged with violating any German laws, they were charged with implementing and then following the Nuremberg Laws. What they did was lawful in Nazi Germany but we’re here to talk about ethics, not law and what they did was wrong. And what Bork did was wrong, even though he had good reasons. The road to hell…
If you’ve never seen the movie, you should. For now, consider the ending and I hope you’re not worried about being spoiled. One expects you already know how it turned out.
Here’s Spencer Tracy deserving the verdict.
And yay, two nights in a row with hardly any sleep. Don’t watch Midsommar, That *expletive deleted* gave me nightmares.
Arthur, I am not sure why Valkkygrrl comment needed a response other than “agreed”. Part of all of our problem is we too often dismiss others because we only focus the things on which we disagree and become blind to areas of agreement
Merrick Garland is probably a fine jurist. Unfortunately, nominees to the high court are becoming targets of the party not doing the nominating not specifically because of their judicial history or temprament but simply because they are not their person.
Merry Christmas to all here on EA and I look forward to reading the many ideas here; especially the ones that are thoughtful and provocative .
I’d tip my hat but I don’t wear….
Uh-hmmm
*holds out a candy cane*
Please accept as a goodwill offering this object that will rot your teeth and give you the diabetes.
Heh. I’d offer you a bottle of wine that’ll rot your liver and might cause you to drive into a bridge abutment, but that would indeed be taking the joke over the edge.
Steve Witherspoon nicely fleshed out my thinking on this. What Republicans did to Merrick Garland was sleazy. But this whole impeachment thing is on an entirely different level of sleazy – and poses far more threat to the Republic.
And whichever holiday you observe – even if you don’t observe any – may this season bring you and yours joy and happiness. I mean that quite sincerely.
Jack, if you can do a “post-op” post like this, you’re doing fine. And you don’t stroke out two days off blood thinners. But you DO, as several people have already told you, need to rest up. Think about writing your Year-in-Review in links. … okay, in 25 words or less (plus your favorite cereal boxtop) commentaries.
Tlaib is from Michigan. Just for the record. Jack’s on drugs and can’t be held to his usually highest standards.
No, I’d make that mistake stone sober. The “Squad” is interchangeable.
He’s still sober enough to ignore my offer of a steam gift of Life is Strange