Tag Archives: impeachment

national news

Impeachment: Problematic, but necessary

I have traipsed all over the proverbial pea patch in trying to assess whether the U.S. House of Representatives should impeach Donald J. Trump.

At this moment, and it appears to be a permanent view, I stand in favor of impeachment as a necessary evil. Will a House impeachment result in Trump’s removal from the presidency of the United States? Probably not. The Senate’s Republican majority isn’t likely to follow the House Democrats’ lead in determining that Trump committed impeachable offenses that merit his ouster.

My former view was that impeachment would be an exercise in futility. So, my thought held, what is the point?

I have determined that the point is that Congress cannot let stand what it believes are acts that constitute egregious abuse of power and obstruction of justice.

It is all but proven that Trump sought personal political help from a foreign government. That’s a crime. The president of Ukraine and Trump spoke on the phone. The Ukrainian thanked Trump for supplying his country with military weaponry, but Trump then said he needed a “favor, though” in return for delivery of the weapons to be used against Russian aggressors.

Trump has sought foreign government help in digging up dirt on Joe Biden, a potential political foe in 2020. How in the world is that not an impeachable offense?

The president’s ouster as a result of impeachment remains unlikely at this moment. The Senate will hold a trial. Republicans occupy 53 of the body’s 100 seats. The U.S. Constitution requires a two-thirds vote to convict a president for him to be kicked out of office.

The way I see it, it is entirely possible for most senators to vote to convict Trump, just not enough of them to kick him out of the White House. I can think of possibly four Senate Republican votes to convict: Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, Lamar Alexander and Johnny Isaakson; the latter two are not seeking re-election in 2020 and are immune from any retribution Trump might seek to level against them. Then again, a slim majority to convict Trump presumes all Senate Democrats vote to uphold the House impeachment.

Yes, this impeachment inquiry remains highly problematic. However, I believe now that it must proceed and it should result in articles of impeachment against the president.

Donald Trump has richly earned the inglorious title of “the nation’s third president to have been impeached.” Whether he can parlay that epithet into a winning re-election strategy remains to be seen.

If he does, then there will be something terribly wrong with our nation’s political system.

national news

Trump’s hypocrisy on full display … imagine it!

Donald Trump now is insisting that “the whistleblower” whose comments have helped trigger the move toward presidential impeachment must testify in public. He or she must sit in front of Congress and answer questions out loud.

Written testimony “is not acceptable,” according to the latest version of Trump’s doctrine.

Really? He said that?

Why do you suppose he refused to answer questions posed to him directly by former special counsel Robert Mueller III during the investigation into alleged Russian collusion during the 2016 presidential campaign? Why, the president only responded in writing to Mueller’s team of investigators.

Hypocrisy, anyone?

national news

POTUS works overtime to hide ‘nothing’

Donald J. Trump keeps insisting he has done nothing wrong. He calls the Democratic effort to impeach him the “greatest witch hunt in our history.” The president calls it a hoax. He calls the Emoluments Clause in the Constitution a “phony” proviso.

All that said, why in the name of presumed innocence does he keep acting like someone who’s trying to hide things from congressional inquisitors?

The House is getting ready to impeach the president. They have a trove of issues on which to decide. They include obstruction of justice, abuse of power, violating his oath of office, possible bribery.

However, the president says he has done nothing wrong. That July 25 phone conversation with the Ukrainian president in which he sought a “favor, though” in exchange for weapons was “perfect,” as Trump has described it.

His newly installed press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, said Trump “has nothing to hide.”

C’mon, gang! With nothing to hide, with there being no “there” there,” why does Trump keep acting like someone who’s trying to keep the goods out of Congress’s hands?

He did the same thing when special counsel Robert Mueller III was trying to ascertain “collusion” with Russians who interfered with our 2016 election. Trump is continuing the same tactic now as House Democrats proceed with their impeachment inquiry.

Hey, I am sitting in the peanut gallery. I get that I am nowhere near the center of the action. Still, from my perch out here in Trump Country, Donald Trump is acting far more like someone with plenty to hide than the victim of a “witch hunt.”

military news

Patriot getting a dose of typical Trump response

U.S. Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman is no one’s puppet. He is the farthest thing I can imagine from being a political creature.

Vindman is a career military man. He is an immigrant who came here to this country as a toddler. The United States is the only country he has known. It is the country he loves and for which he has shed blood on the battlefield.

Yet he has run straight into a fusillade of fire from allies of Donald Trump. Why? Because he had the courage to tell congressional questioners what he heard in real time on July 25, which was the president of the United States seeking a political favor from a foreign government.

He now is getting the Trump treatment. The president decided to label Lt. Col. Vindman a “never Trumper.” Granted, it’s not nearly as hideous as the comments from some of Trump’s media allies, who have questioned the soldier’s loyalty to his country, suggesting he is more loyal to Ukraine, the Soviet state he and his parents fled.

To their great credit, many high-level Republican politicians have stood up for Alexander Vindman. They have praised his service to his country and said the dubious accusations of disloyalty to the United States have no place in the current discussion. I am heartened to hear such rhetoric from the nation’s GOP political leadership.

Still, that doesn’t lessen the idiocy that continues to flow from right-wing media and, yes, from the president of the United States.

Career military personnel take an oath to defend that nation against its enemies. They do not take political oaths. They are as non-political as anyone in public service. So, for the president to call Lt. Col. Vindman a “never Trumper” is to disparage the oath he took when he donned the nation’s military uniform.

To think that this president, who famously avoided (or evaded?) military service during the Vietnam War, would even assert such a thing about an actual patriot is utterly beyond belief.

national news

Founders had it right when they set POTUS removal bar so high

The nation’s founding fathers did a masterful job of laying out a two-step process for removing a president of the United States from office.

Impeachment is the easy part. It requires a simple majority in the House of Representatives to effectively indict the president for crimes against the nation. The current House appears poised to impeach Donald Trump on at least two counts involving abuse of power and violating his oath of office.

Conviction in the Senate is the hard part. The founders decided that two-thirds of the Senate need to convict a president who stands trial in the upper legislative chamber. The current Senate appears set to keep Trump in office. Why? Because two-thirds of its members won’t vote to convict Trump of the charges that the House will bring to them. And why is that? Because Republicans occupy 53 of the 100 seats; a conviction would require a flip of about 20 GOP seats to convict Trump. It won’t happen.

But here’s another scenario that appears quite possible if not likely.

Most of the senators might actually vote to convict Trump. There might be, say, 51 or 52 Senate votes to remove Trump from office. That’s not nearly enough to force him out of the White House. It is, though, enough of a stain on Trump’s term as president to persuade votes in November 2020 to cast him aside.

There actually might be enough voters in key states who would say, in effect: I cannot support a president who has been found guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors by most of the members of the U.S. Senate. 

Now, Trump likely will be able to say he avoided conviction in the Senate. A majority vote to convict him — even one that fails to clear the high bar the founders set — does not allow him to declare himself “acquitted.”

The drama well could produce a nail-biter and set up the most astonishing presidential campaign theme in our nation’s history.

national news

Let’s put an end to the ‘coup’ garbage

So help me, I am about to go bonkers, nuts, batty if I keep hearing critics of the House of Representatives impeachment inquiry refer to it as a “coup d’état” that seeks to “overthrow” the government run by Donald John Trump.

Let us slam on the brakes!

The House of Reps is embarking on a process that likely will result in the impeachment of the president of the United States. The House will vote Thursday on a measure that will effectively codify that effort, putting all its members on the record: Do you support the inquiry or oppose it?

I should add that the Constitution does not require such a vote. The House, led by Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has decided to do the right thing. It has relented to Republican demands that they have such a vote, not that it has assuaged GOP criticism of the process; Republicans have merely switched targets, changed the subject, “moved the goal posts.”

This “coup” crap has to stop!

So should this nonsense we keep hearing from Republicans about “overturning the results of the 2016 election.” The latest presidential election will stand forever as a victory by Trump over Hillary Rodham Clinton. The House impeached President Clinton in 1998, but it did not negate the reality of his 1996 re-election victory. Nor did President Nixon’s near-impeachment in 1974 overturn the results of his 1972 landslide re-election.

Donald Trump’s impeachment, when it occurs, will have been done in accordance with what the Constitution provides in Article I, which declares that the House has the “sole” authority to impeach a president. The absence of ground rules in the Constitution gives the House considerable latitude. The House is operating well within the authority it owns.

However, absent a credible defense against what has been alleged against Donald Trump, the president’s GOP allies in Congress and in conservative media have decided to attack the “process.” They are criticizing Democrats, if you can believe this, for doing precisely what the Constitution allows them to do.

Then the argument plows straight into the demagoguery associated with phony and dubious claims of a “coup d’état” against the president.

This is nonsense. It is — to borrow a Trump phrase — pure bullsh**!

Let the drama play out.

International news, national news, political news

They’re now calling this fellow a spy? What the … ?

What in the name of military valor am I missing here?

A decorated U.S. Army officer, a refugee from the Soviet Union, a Purple Heart recipient and a true-blue American patriot, is now being challenged by Donald Trump’s supporters on the right and far right, being called a “spy” and a “traitor.”

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman is talking to congressional committees about what he heard in real time when Donald Trump spoke on the phone to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and then sounded alarm bells in the moment about what he heard come from the president’s mouth.

Vindman reportedly heard Trump ask Zelinskiy for a political favor. He heard the president reportedly withhold military aid until the Ukrainians delivered on the favor.

And for speaking out in closed session to congressional inquisitors, the president’s friends on Fox News and other conservative media — as well as politicians — are calling Vindman dirty names that impugn his loyalty to the country he has served with valor.

I do not understand this misplaced loyalty. I do not comprehend how one can demean, denigrate and disparage a proven battlefield hero in this fashion.

However, it is happening.

Actually, I suppose I can understand it. The reaction appears to be a product of the cult of personality that has consumed the once-great Republican Party.

Reprehensible.

national news

Crowd gives POTUS a taste of what he has dished out

Donald Trump’s political and media allies have worked themselves into a lather over a World Series crowd’s reaction to his appearance during a Major League Baseball game.

The president’s arrival Sunday at the Washington Nationals ballpark was greeted with a thunderous chorus of boos and then a chant of “Lock him up!”

How dare those lefty-leaning fans from D.C. disrespect the president in such a manner? That has been the response in some quarters.

My answer? Trump got just a taste of what he has dished out, or allowed his crowds to dish out, regarding a former secretary of state. You have heard those crowds shout “Lock her up!” while referring to Hillary Clinton and those email messages that vanished while served in the State Department.

She hasn’t been convicted of anything, but the crowds delivered the chants anyway. Many of them did so in Donald Trump’s presence. Did he stop them? Oh, no! He encouraged and enabled them.

Had I been in the crowd, I likely would not have joined in the chant. That’s just me. I do not begrudge those who couldn’t resist the temptation to yell the chant along with those on either side of them.

Donald Trump is a grownup. At least he is according to the calendar. Therefore, he should suck it up and take the heat.

national news

Yes, on House impeachment inquiry vote!

The U.S. House of Representatives is taking the correct course in its decision to call for a vote of its members on whether to proceed with its inquiry on impeaching Donald J. Trump.

The courts have ruled that the impeachment process is legal. They have said the House is on solid legal footing, despite what the president and his allies have alleged.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had dug in against staging a vote. However, with sufficient votes to support the inquiry and likely enough votes to impeach the president when that vote comes due, the speaker has decided to put the House’s officials imprimatur on the inquiry.

So it will be done Thursday.

Republicans have declared that an inquiry without an official vote somehow was less than legitimate. They are wrong. The House, though, plans to settle that issue once and for all as it proceeds toward all-but-certain impeachment possibly by the end of the year.

Let’s call the roll, shall we?

national news

Here is a tale of two impeachments

While the president of the United States keeps taking a victory lap after authorizing the mission that killed the Islamic State’s founder, it is time look at another matter that should concern Donald J. Trump.

The president is going to be impeached by the House of Representatives. The Senate will put him on trial eventually and likely will fail to convict him.

It will be the second presidential impeachment in 20 years. The House impeached President Clinton in 1998 and the Senate put him on trial the following year.

Is there a difference between these two matters? Let’s examine a critical difference.

Bill Clinton’s impeachment had everything to do with boorish personal conduct. The Republican-led House was looking for a reason to impeach Clinton, a Democrat. The president handed it to the House by lying under oath to a grand jury about a relationship he was having with a White House intern. Clinton denied the relationship. The House had evidence to the contrary.

The House impeached the president on perjury and on obstruction of justice.

Back to my point: Clinton’s impeachment had next to nothing to do with the job he was doing as president. In fact, he proved to be an effective and highly successful president. He worked with Congress to balance the federal budget and the economy was booming.

His impeachment was based on a disastrous personal decision he made. Clinton paid the price politically for that decision. He stands forever as an “impeached president.”

What about Donald Trump? The allegations staring this president down have everything to do with the conduct of his office. He has been accused of violating his oath of office by accepting foreign government assistance for personal political gain. He allegedly withheld military assistance to an ally in exchange for dirt on political foes.

There might be even more to be revealed before it’s done.

Donald Trump’s troubles far exceed in relevance to the conduct of his elected office anything that Bill Clinton did.

Clinton got impeached because he lied about marital infidelity. Donald Trump is going to be impeached over allegations that he has abused the immense power of his office.

The irony is that Trump likes to boast about doing things in fashions that dwarf his presidential predecessors. On this impeachment matter, what Donald Trump reportedly has done lends a certain quaintness to whatever it was that got Bill Clinton into so much trouble.