Tag Archives: Trump impeachment

national news

Might POTUS be acquitted … on a technicality?

Let’s play out this impeachment saga for a brief moment.

The U.S. House of Representatives appears nearly certain to impeach Donald Trump along partisan lines; there might be one Democrat who’ll vote “no” to impeach the president. A former GOP House member will vote “yes” on the issue.

Then it goes to the Senate, which will conduct a trial. The Senate needs 67 out of 100 votes to convict the president. Republicans currently occupy 53 seats; Democrats have 45 seats, but two independents caucus with the Democrats.

So, what do you suppose might occur if, say, a lame-duck GOP senator or three or four decides to convict the president? Donald Trump would still be acquitted of any high crime and misdemeanor brought to the Senate.

Think of it, though, as an acquittal based on a “technicality.” There is an outside chance that most of the Senate could vote to convict Trump. The technicality occurs because there won’t be enough of them to result in the president’s ouster from office. The closest President Clinton came to such an event was a tie vote on one of the counts brought against him in his 1999 Senate trial; the other count ended up with a 55-45 vote to acquit.

I know it’s a long shot. Those of us who think Trump has committed impeachable offenses are wondering if there are enough Republican senators with stones who will toss aside any threat the president might level against them. Those individuals who have decided against running for re-election next year, thus, might decide to vote their conscience.

I mean, there’s nothing Trump can do to punish them. They’re on the way out the door.

Hardline conservatives generally detest verdicts based on “a technicality.” How might they respond if the president of the United States benefits from the technicality the nation’s founders created when they set the high bar for removal of a president?

local news

Congressman responds … sort of

I got an answer from my congressman, to whom I posed a direct question. His response, I must stipulate, was decidedly less direct.

In a letter I had asked Rep. Van Taylor, a Plano Republican, why after complaining about so-called “secrecy” during the House Intelligence Committee’s closed-door deposition of witnesses during the House inquiry into whether Donald Trump should be impeached, that he voted “no” on a measure to bring it into the open.

Taylor’s response was, shall I say, off the mark. He did thank me for “taking the time to contact me regarding efforts to impeach President Donald Trump. Our representative democracy works best with active participation from the people and I appreciate your sharing your thoughts with me.”

There you go. That’s the extent of any reference to the question I posed. Except that he didn’t answer it.

He offered the boiler-plate response about not seeing sufficient evidence to merit the president’s impeachment, let alone his conviction in a Senate trial.

I am disappointed, although not surprised. I won’t write him any more letters on this subject. I now know precisely where he stands on whether the president deserves to be impeached. Actually, I knew it long before his letter arrived in the mail today.

I told you I would report to you how Rep. Taylor would respond. I have done so. I was hoping for a direct response. I didn’t get one.

Disappointing in the extreme.

national news

Impeachment journey set to take another historic turn

(Photo by Jeff Malet)

It is becoming distressingly clear to me that the impeachment of Donald Trump is going to produce the Mother of All Partisan Battles on Capitol Hill.

Congressional Democrats have sought to make the case that the president has committed impeachable offenses. I happen to believe the evidence that I have seen — and I’ve seen only the portion of it that has gone public!

I need no more convincing that Trump needs to be impeached, convicted of high crimes and misdemeanors in the Senate and then shown the door out of the Oval Office. Sayonara, Mr. President.

It won’t end that way.

Congressional Republicans have fortified their defense of the president with diversions, accusations and vilification of the accusers’ motives. They have ignored publicly the evidence that shows how the president solicited a foreign government for dirt on a domestic political foe, encouraged that government to interfere in the 2020 election, endangered our national security by buttressing the fortunes of a hostile power and violated the oath he took when he took office.

The Senate won’t budge, either.

Where does this leave us? We are left with the upcoming election, which curiously is where House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said initially this battle should conclude. I do not believe the speaker overplayed her hand by launching the impeachment inquiry. Nor do I believe she erred in instructing relevant House committees to draft articles of impeachment.

Believing that the outcome will retain Trump in the White House at least through January 2021, I look forward to watching the trial unfold. I want the Senate trial to commence and conclude in short order. The Senate Democrats who seek to become president need to spend time on the campaign trail and any effort to prolong the trial plays into Trump’s hands.

It won’t end the way I want it to end. However, my own partisan bias persuades me that the 2020 presidential campaign will be just as relevant and spirited as we all knew it would be.

It is also going to be filthy, but millions of us knew that would be the case as well.

national news

Speaker Pelosi: Don’t mess with me

Well, we have witnessed what happens when the speaker of the House of Representatives’ dander get riled up.

She tells a reporter who had the bad form to ask her a question that cut her to the quick to “not mess with me” when framing a question about whether she hates anyone, let alone a president of the United States whose impeachment she is about to engineer.

James Rosen, formerly of Fox News and now of Sinclair News, asked Pelosi on Friday whether she “hates” Donald Trump. Pelosi had stepped away from the podium after giving her press briefing. She wheeled around to answer Rosen, then she went back to the podium to make abundantly clear what was about to come from her mouth.

She said she doesn’t “hate anyone.” She invoked her Catholic upbringing and her being taught to “pray” for those with whom she disagrees. Pelosi said she prays for Donald Trump “all the time.” She said the issues leading to his certain impeachment have to do with the law, the Constitution and his high office.

“Don’t mess me with” when you ask me a question that implies hatred, she scolded Rosen.

Then she walked away a second time.

I have read accounts of the mood in the room in that moment and those who were there reported that they’d never witnessed a room full of reporters stunned into total silence. That is what occurred when Pelosi fired her barrage at a reporter.

It well might have been the speaker’s finest moment in her long public service career. Moreover, it likely revealed the kind of foe that Donald Trump is facing.

national news

Newt offers a stunning demonstration of duplicity

Newt Gingrich’s lack of self-awareness is utterly and totally astonishing.

The former Republican U.S. House speaker told Fox News this week that he is amazed and stunned that congressional Democrats would have the nerve to impeach Donald Trump this close to Christmas.

Why, that is just appalling, he said. How can Democrats possibly sully this holy event with such a display of blatant partisanship?

Well, let’s flash back 21 years, shall we?

The GOP-led House of Representatives, led by Speaker Newt Gingrich, received articles of impeachment from the Judiciary Committee in its effort to impeach President Bill Clinton. When did the full House vote on those articles and formally impeach the president?

They did it on the week of Christmas, 1998! The date was Dec. 19.

So, my demand of the former speaker today is clear and concise.

Shut … up!

business news, economic news

266,000, 3.5 percent: Numbers are great, Mr. POTUS, however …

You bet that those numbers released this morning from the U.S. Labor Department are pretty darn stellar.

We added 266,000 jobs to our private payrolls in November; unemployment ticked down to 3.5 percent, retaining a full-employment ratio in the work force.

Those are impressive figures, as Donald Trump will tell us. “It’s the economy, stupid,” he tweeted this morning, using a phrase made famous by Bill Clinton campaign guru James Carville in 1992.

Let’s wait, though, for yet another suggestion from the president that will declare, “You cannot impeach me. Look at the job I’m doing to boost the economy! The economy is going too well for you to impeach me!” 

Mr. President, the pending impeachment by the House of Representatives has nothing — zero, zilch — to do with the economy. Indeed, presidents don’t get impeached based on how they are handling the nation’s economic health, unless they commit some sort of “high crime and misdemeanor.” Near as I can tell, Donald Trump’s trouble has nothing to do with the economy.

It has everything to do with other matters relating to how he has abused the power of his office to solicit a foreign government to help him win re-election. The articles of impeachment that will come from the House will speak to that abuse of power, perhaps to obstruction of justice or to obstruction of Congress.

The economy? It won’t be mentioned anywhere in those articles.

So, Mr. President, you may stop referencing the economy in the context of impeachment. It’s a non-starter.

national news

Trump remains ignorant of the U.S. Constitution

Debbie Mucarsel-Powell is a first-year member of the U.S. House of Representatives, who happens to serve on the House Judiciary Committee.

She is a Democrat from Florida who is likely to vote “yes” on articles of impeachment against Donald John Trump. She is a native of Ecuador.

The congresswoman offered an obvious observation today, which is that “I don’t think the president has ever read the Constitution.”

Gee, do ya think?

I happen to virtually certain he’s never looked at it. If he has, then he looked past Article II, the segment dealing with executive authority, or the power of the presidency. He infamously referenced Article II not that long ago when he declared that it enables the president to do whatever he wants.

No. It does not! Not even close. Indeed, Article II spells out the limits of executive authority. Indeed, Article I — which deals with the legislative branch of government — implies heavily that the executive branch’s powers are kept on a tight leash.

Rep. Mucarsel-Powell’s instincts are correct. Trump took office without dedicating a single moment of his entire pre-political life to public service. He didn’t understand government when he ran for the presidency and doesn’t understand it now that he is president.

Donald Trump sounds and acts like someone who fancies himself as The Boss. He isn’t. You’re the boss. As am I … the boss. We call the shots. Not him.

Had he ever thought for a moment about the U.S. Constitution, the document he took an oath to “defend and protect,” he might understand the limitations it places on the presidency.

I do not believe he has done that. I also believe his ignorance of the Constitution is precisely the reason the House of Representatives is going to impeach him.

International news, political news

What has happened to those ‘mainstream Republicans’?

As I watch congressional Republicans and other GOP members around the country seek to defend Donald Trump against the impeachable offenses that have been alleged against him, I am struck by a curious notion.

What in the world has happened to supposed adherents to a political philosophy/ideology that seems so terribly at odds with what has become the centerpiece of the impeachment effort against the president?

Donald Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for a “favor, though.” He wanted Zelenskiy to announce an investigation into Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, before getting a White House meeting. He also held up military assistance appropriated by Congress for Ukraine to use against Russian-backed aggressors in Ukraine.

The Ukrainians are our allies. The Russians are not. And yet, Trump sought to pursue a posture that would benefit the Russians. What in the world … ? Moreover, by seeking dirt on a potential foe from a foreign government, the president of the United States is seeking another government to help him win another election.

Mainstream Republicans used to take great umbrage at any sort of softening of U.S. policy regarding the Russians and their ideological forebears, the communists who formed the Soviet Union after World War I. These days, we have an ostensibly Republican president currying favor with and kowtowing to Russian strongmen and oligarchs. Indeed, the Ukrainian initiative — the withholding of arms to fight Russian-backed rebels — looks for all the world to be yet another example of Trump licking the jackboots of the Russian thugs who run that once-great superpower.

All the while, Republicans in the House and Senate do or say virtually nothing that the president can interpret as stern criticism of this hideous policy. They remain complicit in the president’s violation of the oath he took to defend and protect the Constitution. They look and sound ready to stand by their man even as he continues the hijacking of their once-great political party, twisting and turning into something unrecognizable from the days when the GOP stood for national strength and resolve against an enemy of this nation.

I’ve said repeatedly that Donald Trump has disgraced the nation with his conduct. So, too, have his political allies who once stood strongly in favor of the very values that the president is flouting.

national news

Professor makes mistake by invoking name of POTUS’s son

Pamela Karlan is one of four constitutional legal scholars who testified today before the House Judiciary Committee.

She was sailing along with her remarks … and then she made a mistake. Professor Karlan said that Donald Trump couldn’t make his son Barron “a baron.”

Bad call, professor.

She drew criticism from Republicans on the committee, who scolded her for invoking the name of the president’s minor son into the debate over whether his father should be impeached by the House.

Karlan deserved the criticism, which also came from first lady Melania Trump, who said the children of politicians are off limits.

Yes, they are.

But then Karlan took a moment at the hearing to apologize for her remarks and to express regret that she made them. I am willing to accept her apology. However, I am not holding out much hope that her critics — and the president’s allies — will do the same.

national news

Four scholars offer words of impeachment wisdom

The testimony today from four legal constitutional law scholars has been far more riveting than I thought it might have been.

Three of them selected by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee have concluded that Donald J. Trump’s action warrant his impeachment and removal from office. A fourth, chosen by Judiciary Committee Republicans, said the evidence presented so far falls short by a good margin of the threshold of proof needed to remove Trump from the presidency.

Let me state up front that every one of them made compelling arguments for their respective cases. Yes, even the GOP-selected professor, Jonathan Turley, has been impressive in arguing his case.

I remain steadfast, though, in my belief that Trump has violated his oath of office, has abused the power of his office and obstructed Congress sufficiently to merit his impeachment and removal from office at the end of a Senate trial.

At issue is whether Trump sought to leverage a White House meeting and military assistance to Ukraine against a request by Trump that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy investigate allegations of corruption by former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. Three of the law professors testifying today said without equivocation that the action is impeachable. Period.

I realize that I don’t need any convincing. Then again, it doesn’t matter what I think, because I am not going to cast a vote on whether to impeach the president. I am just a chump taxpayer, one of the congressional benefactors whose taxes pay the salaries of the men and women who are asking all these questions.

What has been remarkable, though, has been the continuing reticence of committee Republicans in the wake of the scholars’ insistence that Trump has committed offenses worthy of his removal. I recognize that the GOP resistance to being moved to support the Constitution is no surprise. I am not at all shocked by what they have said in questioning the law professors.

However, it has been edifying — and in many ways riveting — in ways I did not foresee when I tuned in this morning.