Tag Archives: Mitch McConnell

national news

What is there to hide if the phone call was ‘perfect’?

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

There is so much about Donald Trump defense strategy and the approach taken by his Republican allies in Congress that I do not understand.

The House of Representatives has impeached the current president on abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The Senate is supposed to put Trump on trial. Democrats want to call witnesses. Republicans are fighting that push.

All the while, Trump calls the impeachment a sham, a joke, a hoax, that there’s nothing to see, that the operative phone call with Ukraine’s president was “perfect.”

If Trump and Ukrainian President Vlodyrmyr Zelenskiy engaged in that perfect conversation, then why in the world are POTUS and his GOP allies resisting the demands to hear from witnesses in the Senate trial?

If they clear the president of wrongdoing, wouldn’t it make sense to hear them do so? If there is nothing to hide, then why does Donald Trump act and sound like he’s, um, hiding something from public view?

The appearance of a handful of key witnesses, critical White House aides, wouldn’t necessarily drag the trial into the far distant future. They might work in Trump’s favor; or, they might have precisely the opposite effect.

What’s more, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who today is resisting any witnesses in the Trump trial, was all in for witnesses when President Clinton went on trial in 1999 after the House impeached him. Is he driven solely by partisan concerns?

Why, that just can’t be, given McConnell’s criticism of the House impeachment, which he said was fueled by partisan hatred of Donald Trump. Isn’t that what he said?

If the Senate is going to put the current president on trial, then let’s have witnesses. Let’s see the evidence. Let’s then ask senators/jurors to deliberate over what they see and hear and then let’s demand they make their decision based on what has been presented.

With no witnesses or evidence presented at trial, then there’s nothing to consider.

Where I come from, that sounds like a sham.

national news

McConnell sets no bipartisan example

Yeah, this Twitter message from a former U.S. senator — who once wrote jokes for a living — sums it up for me.

The Senate majority leader is lamenting the absence of a quality about which he seems to know next to nothing. Mitch McConnell is angry about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to withhold the articles of impeachment against Donald Trump. He says House Democrats rushed to judgment against the president while impeaching him; then he says he won’t allow any witnesses to testify in the upcoming Senate trial that will determine whether Trump stays in office.

I don’t know whether to laugh or … laugh even more loudly.

McConnell is infamous for the partisan hit job he performed on President Barack Obama after Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died suddenly in February 2016. Obama wanted to nominate someone to the SCOTUS to succeed Scalia. McConnell slammed the door shut, saying that the president shouldn’t appoint a justice in an election year that would determine who the next president would be.

Obama nominated Merrick Garland to the SCOTUS. McConnell denied Garland a hearing. It was a major-league partisan power play. It worked for McConnell, given that Donald Trump won the 2016 election.

Of course, McConnell has kept up his partisan wrangling during the impeachment saga, declaring that he intends to take his cue from Trump’s legal team and that he is “not an impartial juror.”

So, for the majority leader to gripe about Democrats’ alleged partisanship now is as Al Franken has described it.

Pathetic.

national news

Bring on the witnesses, and then have that trial in the Senate

(Photo by Salwan Georges/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is not making an unreasonable demand on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

The House has impeached the current president of the United States, Donald Trump. The Senate is now slated eventually to hold a trial to determine whether he should be convicted of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

Pelosi wants witnesses called and documentation offered. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer agrees with the speaker. He wants a trial with witnesses, just as what occurred during the Senate trials of Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton.

Without them, the nation will get a show trial.

Let’s understand, too, that Democrats want to hear from former national security adviser John Bolton, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, former White House counsel Don McGahn. What do they have in common? They’re all Trump allies.

Might they provide testimony that works in Trump’s favor? Sure. Might they have something damaging to offer? You bet. Trials need to include witnesses and documentary evidence.

McConnell mustn’t be allowed to stonewall this process the way Trump has done throughout the House impeachment inquiry.

Senators are going home for Christmas. They well might hear from their constituents who could demand they adhere to demands to call witnesses. If they listen to and heed those demands, then we might actually get a serious trial conducted under the rules of evidence.

If McConnell wants to shield these witnesses from public scrutiny, then I believe we’re entitled to presume that he has something to hide from the country.

national news

Trump’s latest ‘worst’ event finally hits bottom … I hope

(Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

There have been more “worst” moments of Donald Trump’s time as a politician and as president that I cannot keep track of them all.

He denigrated John McCain’s service to the nation; he mocked a New York Times reporter’s physical ailment; he chastised a Gold Star couple; he has issued insults left and right; his incessant lying; he most recently implied that a late congressman might be resting eternally in hell.

Well, the events that occurred in the House of Representatives I believe qualifies as the worst thing to happen to this individual’s presidency. The House voted to impeach Trump on two counts. It was a partisan vote, but it’s a vote nonetheless. Trump’s tenure as president is now marked indelibly with the label of “impeached.”

It could get worse. It likely won’t unless hell freezes over and the Senate actually convicts Trump either of abuse of power or obstruction of Congress.

Trump hit the campaign trail and at the moment the House was impeaching him, he was standing at a podium in Battle Creek, Mich., where he made the idiotic crack about the late John Dingell “looking up” at the world from, um, the depths of hell.

The day of Trump’s impeachment has been called historic, seminal, pivotal, monumental … all of the above and even some more superlative descriptions.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the Democrats are motivated purely by “partisan” hatred of Trump. Ironic, yes? This comes from the guy who has perfected partisanship to an art form.

So, what now? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is withholding the articles of impeachment until she learns the rules under which the Senate will conduct its trial. She wants it to be “fair.” Well, duh? My hope is that McConnell agrees to conduct a “fair” trial.

As for the president, he will have the indelible mark of being an “impeached” head of state. It’s a designation he has earned. Of that I have no doubt.

Donald Trump

We’re perplexed, too, Mitch

Wow! I gotta tell ya, Mitch. A lot of us out here today, at this moment, are “completely and utterly perplexed” as well.

We are perplexed by the view of those who insist that abuse of power and obstruction of Congress “are not high crimes and misdemeanors.”

You, Mr. Senate Majority Leader, are among those who continue to deny what is patently obvious to many of us out here in the hinterland.

Donald Trump has violated his formerly sacred oath of office. He needs to go.

national news

Sen. McConnell seeks to ‘rig’ Senate trial

(Photo by Salwan Georges/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

So this is how you play the game. You’re in charge of a body that is about to launch a trial and you rig it so it rules favorably against a defendant?

Spoiler alert: I said I was considering a temporary end to impeachment commentary, but I am going to weigh in briefly here.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his 99 U.S. Senate colleagues are about to put Donald Trump on trial for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The House will impeach Trump in due course.

McConnell now says he will work to ensure smooth cooperation between the Senate and the White House, meaning he is going to orchestrate a not guilty verdict for the president when the time comes to take the roll among the 100 Senate “jurors.”

Isn’t that called tampering with the jury? Or some form of unseemly manipulation of the jury pool? If this matter isn’t supposed to be about politics, but about doing what’s right … what is so “right” about what McConnell is seeking to do?

 

national news

Mitch McConnell: Partisan hack demonstrates his hypocrisy

There well might be no more demonstrably partisan political hack in the U.S. Senate than the man who runs the place … and who has the gall to accuse politicians on the other side of playing politics.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has blocked a bill that would seek to make our electoral system more secure and to prevent foreign hostile powers from hacking into our system.

Why did he do that? Because he says Senate Democrats have made it too “partisan.” They are “playing politics” with the legislation.

Wow, man!

Hmm. Let’s see how this works. Requiring paper ballots to back up the electronic ballots is “partisan”? Mandating that political candidates report to the FBI any suspected foreign-power interference is “partisan”?

Meanwhile, Donald Trump has stood with the Russians who did attack our election in 2016 and are likely to do so again in 2020. Trump’s partner in the Senate now is standing with him, declaring that Democrats are the partisan hacks.

Let’s flash back for a moment to 2016.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died while vacationing in Texas. The conservative icon’s body barely had gotten cold before McConnell declared that President Obama — serving his final full year in office — would not be allowed to seat a justice to replace the conservative icon, Scalia.

Obama ended up nominating Merrick Garland, an eminently qualified jurist. Garland didn’t get a hearing. McConnell was at his obstructionist worst in blocking Garland’s nomination and in denying President Obama the opportunity to fulfill his constitutional responsibility.

So now the majority leader calls Democrats the partisans? He says Democrats are playing politics with an electoral security bill?

The man’s hypocrisy takes my breath away.

national news

Why block a bill to make elections more secure?

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This one baffles me, man.

Robert Mueller told the world this week that Russian hackers attacked our electoral system in 2016 and are doing so again in advance of the 2020 presidential contest.

Then came legislation in Congress designed to secure our election system against such attacks. What does the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, do? He blocks it! No can do, said McConnell, calling the legislation a too-partisan effort aimed at helping Democrats.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump, the president whose campaign benefited from the Russian attack in 2016, is silent.

Mueller declared categorically that the Russian attack was not the “hoax” that Trump called it. He said “every American” should be concerned deeply about the safety and sanctity of their electoral system. He said the Russians did so specifically to assist Donald Trump’s campaign and to do harm to the campaign of his Democratic opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

A bipartisan measure in Congress has now run into the McConnell buzzsaw, with the majority leader contending it is too political.

Wow! What am I missing?

According to CBS News: “One bill McConnell objected to would have required the use of paper ballots and provided funding for the Election Assistance Commission. He also objected to legislation that would have required campaigns and candidates to report offers of election-related aid from foreign governments.”

Why in the world doesn’t the president simply insist that the majority leader let this bill become law, let it go to the White House so that he could sign it into law?

Wouldn’t those measures, presuming they are built to secure our system against future attacks, help quell the concern? It seems that is the easiest course Trump could take.

But, no-o-o-o! He is insisting on dragging this out, with help from his boy, McConnell.

The chaos continues at full throttle.

national news

Sen. McConnell: partisan hack supreme

There could be little, if any doubt, about Mitch McConnell’s partisan credentials.

The U.S. Senate majority leader, though, has just removed any possible benefit of the doubt. The man plays pure, raw, partisan politics better (or worse) than anyone else in Washington, D.C.

Consider his answer to this question recently: If a seat on the Supreme Court came open in 2020, the final full year of Donald Trump’s term as president, would he seek to confirm the nominee?

McConnell’s answer: “Oh, I’d fill it.”

Just four years ago, he had the chance to “fill” a seat on the high court upon the sudden and unexpected death of Justice Antonin Scalia. His response in 2016, the final full year of President Obama’s tenure in the White House, was markedly different from what he said to the crowd in Paducah, Ky.

McConnell said immediately upon Scalia’s death that Obama would not fill the vacancy. McConnell would block any attempt for a Democratic president to replace a conservative justice appointed by a Republican president; in this case, it was President Reagan who nominated Scalia.

Obama nominated Merrick Garland to the SCOTUS. The Senate didn’t give him a hearing. Key Republican senators never even met the fellow. His nomination withered and died. We elected a new president in November 2016 — and it happened to be Donald Trump!

Oh, but now we have a GOP president in office. If a vacancy were to develop on the court, McConnell — also a Republican — would move to fill the vacancy.

Just think that this partisan hack has the gall, the stones, the chutzpah to suggest Democrats are “playing politics.”

This guy, McConnell, plays the political game with the best of ’em.

Sen. McConnell’s thinly disguised contempt for fairness — to my way of thinking — is what gives politics and politicians a bad name.

legal news

Merrick Garland to preside over Trump appeal? Oh, the irony

The irony here is just too obvious and too rich to ignore.

Donald Trump’s legal team is going to appeal a federal judge’s ruling that the president must obey congressional demands to turn over his financial records.

And just who is going to preside over the federal appeals court that will consider this case? None other than Judge Merrick Garland, the man who by all rights should be sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court instead of serving as chief of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

This is quite fascinating.

President Barack Obama nominated Garland to the high court after the sudden and shocking death of Justice Antonin Scalia in early 2016. Justice Scalia had been dead mere hours when U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared that President Obama would not get to fill the SCOTUS seat. Obama was in the final full year of his presidency and McConnell insisted that the next president be allowed to perform that constitutional duty.

In truth, Merrick Garland was a superb choice. He should have been given a hearing. He should have been confirmed by the Senate. He wasn’t because of McConnell’s partisan grandstanding.

Now the judge gets to preside over an appellate case filed by Donald Trump.

My hunch is this: Judge Garland is going to demonstrate for the entire world his impartiality, his legal judgment, his expertise and knowledge of the U.S. Constitution . . . and will show us precisely why he should be sitting on the United States Supreme Court.