Not to see Clint Eastwood’s latest film “Richard Jewell” is to engage in citizenship malpractice.
The real Richard A. Jewell, 1997. (photo: Greg Gibson/Associated Press, 1997)
Every citizen should see Eastwood’s portrayal of how well-meaning people in powerful government positions, allied to rambunctious reporters, can be so awfully wrong and mature into a malevolent force without even knowing it. It’s how prosecutors can pursue an individual, wrongfully convict the person, pursue harsh sentencing, and resist any effort to set the record straight. It’s how investigations are pursued on the flimsiest of “probable cause” and can morph into other investigations because it is heartily believed that the guy must have committed some crime somewhere, somehow. Does this remind you of the events leading to the current impeachment melee?
A notion gets stuck in the craw of government officials – call it a “profile”, an expectation about the kind of person who commit these sinful acts – and persists until action is taken to the detriment of all. Richard Jewell was slapped by the powers-that-be as symptomatic of the “hero syndrome” (creating a situation or crime to become a hero). The media’s and the FBI’s “rush to judgment” led to Jewell’s public humiliation as the Olympic Park bomber in 1996 – only 7 years later to find the real culprit, Eric Rudolph.
Eric Robert Rudolph being escorted from the Cherokee County Jail for a hearing in federal court in 2003 after being on the run for five years.
False ideas creep into the heads of mighty people in a burgeoning and energetic federal government. And if these people have guns, watch out! It’s how we can have a Ruby Ridge (1992). It’s how we can experience a Waco (assault on David Koresh’s compound, 1993). It’s how we can have serial investigations of a presidential candidate as a “Russian mole”, and later to try to pin something else on him when the first effort failed in the belief that he’s still corrupt to the core.
The Branch Davidian compound, Waco, Tx., Feb.28, 1993.
There’s something in the government ether from the 1990’s to the present that is so insidious. No, it’s not a “deep state”. It’s something endemic – or generic – to government. The Founders’ idea of government as a necessary evil is as true today as it ever was. It’s a lesson we had better repeatedly teach ourselves and our young.
Kudos to Senators Josh Hawley (R, Mo.) and Marsha Blackburn (R, Tn.) for attempting to really drain the swamp. Their bill, S. 2672, would move “90% of the positions in 10 Cabinet-level departments out of D.C.” What a great idea: break up the place! The thought occurred to me some time ago as the Trump-collusion imbroglio was gaining steam and I was reading Geof Shepard’s “The Real Watergate Scandal” on my Kindle. Come to think of it, a real state depression in DC wouldn’t be such a bad thing for the country.
Blackburn and Hawley.
All those minions scurrying about DC have created a world all their own. The progressives of the late 19th century assured us that the halcyon days of good government would be upon us if only more power was deposited in the hands of degreed professionals who were educated to treat all of reality as a matter for “science”. In other words, people like themselves.
Ironically, they ignored the implications of the “science” of people both as individuals and in large groups. People are simultaneously self-serving and altruistic, and not in equal measure – usually to the detriment of altruism. As a collective, they create a distinct society with its own norms and expectations. It’s a world unto itself.
The skyline of Washington, D.C., including the U.S. Capitol building, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, and National Mall, is seen from the air, January 29, 2010. (Saul Loeb/AFP)
A trip into the world of the Watergate scandal sheds light on the brave new world of this administrative state. Let’s examine 3 prominent characters in the now bastardized but popular version of the story: Clark Mollenhoff, Mark Felt, and Bob Woodward.
Mollenhoff was a DC reporter and well-connected lawyer and friend of presiding judge John Sirica (Sirica is another of these networked DC folks). Not only was he well-connected, he got a position in the first year of the Nixon White House. His ambition to have direct access to Nixon and be Nixon’s premier sage was thwarted by learning that he would have to work under Haldeman and Ehrlichman. The job didn’t last much longer than a year. He becomes another of the disgruntled operatives – one among many thousands populating the District – roaming about looking for outlets for their scorn. In clearly improper, if not illegal, ex-parte meetings with Sirica, he would fill that coveted role of “sage”.
Clark Mollenhoff
Mark Felt, ex-Associate Director of the FBI, is another example of a person with stymied high aspirations. Passed over for the FBI directorate – it was handed to L. Patrick Gray – he simmered as second fiddle. He willingly became an espionage agent for Bernstein and Woodward as “Deep Throat”.
Former FBI official W. Mark Felt arrive at federal court in Washington 9/18 for the continuation of his trial on charges of approving illegal break-ins during the Nixon Administration.
Finally, what about Bob Woodward? He made his name in DC circles as an aide to Admiral Thomas Hinman Moorer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His connections would be useful in his second career as WaPo muckraker.
Carl Bernstein, left, and Robert Woodward, who pressed the Watergate investigation, in Washington, D.C., May 7, 1973. (photo: AP)
What to make of all this? The country is governed in a bog-like slough of cliques, the excessively ambitious, and self-serving inter-relationships. If you’re an outsider from Ashtabula, beware!
Trump, does this sound familiar?
Forget all that stuff about rule by the people. Progressives bequeathed to us a government of an unaccountable nomenklatura.
That’s right, Blackburn and Hawley, we have no realistic recourse but to break it up! Break it up, and do so quickly.
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Dec. 11, 2019.
Like an abused wife in a divorce and seeking to salvage something from her 20 years in a failed marriage, the Democrats comb the Horowitz report on FISA abuse for something to justify their faith in the evils of all things Trump. Granted, the Trump tweets and coarseness in public performances are irritating, but are “traitor” and “shakedown artist” taking it a bit too far? I think so.
Any reasonable observer must conclude that the Russian-collusion angle fell apart. Mueller stumbled his way to the obvious. Nonetheless, the Dems tried to salvage something from the disaster by clinging to the bizarre locution of “failed to exonerate” on obstruction in Volume II of the Mueller Report. But prosecutors don’t “exonerate”. They either indict or they don’t. When they don’t, the matter is dropped. It’s treated as if it never existed.
Now, Horowitz uncovered 17 Justice/FBI FISA misdeeds. That’s the most that one can expect from a departmental IG who is limited to department documents and personnel. Plus, IG’s are famous for being deferential when they reach a dead end in spite of strong suspicions of further wrongdoing. The heavily restricted investigatory arena that they operate within produces constricted conclusions, or lack thereof.
Then we get to the Dems’ death grip on 2 other incomprehensible verdicts in the report: (1) the investigations were properly predicated and (2) a lack of bias in the investigations. #1 relies on such a low bar of cause to launch almost any government effort against a private citizen. #2 takes us back to the “deferential” thing. Without a cabal willing to engrave “We will get Trump removed” in granite with appropriate fingerprints, any suspect’s statement contradicting the obvious will be accepted. #1 and #2 are meaningless, but don’t tell the Dems that.
Still, the Dems must grapple with the clear 17 FISA abuses. The Dems must realize that the 17 misdeeds all break against Trump. An absence of bias would make at least some of the 17 going the other way. That didn’t happen. All 17 instances have the common thread of going after Trump. A chain of one-sided misbehaviors “fails to exonerate” Comey and the gang.
The Democrats are desperate. They’ve spent 3 years peddling nonsense. Unwilling to accept the rejection of their candidate by a broad extent of the country in 2016, they are trying to salvage something from their myth-making. It’s sad to watch on tv.
And the other shoe belonging to Durham has yet to drop. Wait, that promises to be interesting.
Please watch AG Bill Barr in a speech before the Federalist Society deliver a civics lesson to the functionally illiterate mainstream press (NYT, WaPO, Mother Jones, Slate, etc.) and the entirety of the Democratic Party.
Particularly galling for them was Barr’s recognition of the Constitution’s construction of a “unitary executive”. During his confirmation hearings, he invoked the words and Democratic senators in their ignorance tried to demote the idea to a mere “theory”. It isn’t a theory. As Barr says, and he’s right, it’s a word-for-word reading of Article II. “Unitary executive” encapsulates Article II. That this has to be stated speaks volumes about the state of education and politics in modern America.
He goes further by describing the “Resistance” as, in essence, a rebellion against the Constitution. The goal of the “Resistance” is to prevent the lawful (meaning Constitutional) functioning of the executive branch. No peaceful transfer of power for them. Conducting themselves in this way, they have much in common with the Taliban and every other insurgency that we’ve faced over the past 50 years. The “Resistance” has yet to embrace terrorism, but if Trump gets a second term, Katie bar the door.
Again, take the time to watch and listen to the speech and see what the press and our textbooks are ignorant of.
Check out Chris Stewart’s (R, Utah) questioning of Marie Yovanovitch from last Friday.
Pay special attention to the start of the segment. Yovanovitch professes that she has no knowledge of bribery or any other crime committed by the president. So what, then, is this all about? Will the House Dems impeach over over a comparatively mild request (mild when compared to the Obama administration’s 2016 dirty tricks) for Ukraine to investigate the possible corruption of one of Trump’s political rivals? If so, there will be no conviction in the Senate. So why the political burlesque show? It’s about the 2020 election. The Dems have a two-track strategy of feeding red meat (impeachment) to the red-revolutionary base of the party while muddying and bloodying Trump for the general.
They tried branding Trump as an asterisk president with “Trump, the Manchurian candidate”. That didn’t work. They tried parading about the emoluments clause. That didn’t work. They’d like to get their hands on his tax returns and sift those for any dirt. But that’ll take too long. Then 2018 gave them the control of the impeachment half of Congress. Like an excited bloodhound, they have their nose in the air for the scent of anything that could be shoehorned into an impeachment charge.
So, here we are. Forget about “peaceful transfers of power” or a “honeymoon”. The Resistance was formed on Jan. 21, 2017, the day after Trump placed his hand on the Bible. It had agent provocateurs scattered throughout the bureaucratic bowels of DC. Large mainstream media was fully on-board. All elements are present for the reversal of an election that politically entrenched classes never accepted. So much for popular sovereignty.
William Taylor, left, and George Kent prepare testifying before the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2019, during the first public impeachment hearing. (Jim Lo Scalzo/Pool Photo via AP)
Has a mental smog descended on certain socio-political tribes in the American population? It’s a kind of groupthink, and each group with shared interests and much else in common is smothered by it. Is it present at National Review, both online and print? The editors and many of the contributing writers seems to have taken for granted that “impeachment is political”, as if it is “only” political. But is it? I think not.
Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Ramesh Ponnuru (l) of The National Review join Judy Woodruff of PBS News Hour to discuss the week’s political news, Oct. 4, 2019
Ramesh Ponnuru, senior editor, in his piece , “Rush from Judgment” in the October 28 issue, repeats the boilerplate. If we accept impeachment as being political, I recoil in horror for its vicious consequences.
Impeachment wasn’t always considered such. It mustn’t have been since there were so few, and only 3 presidential ones in 230 years. “Political” impeachments would have to be, by necessity, partisan in nature, especially since the onset of political parties nearly at the gitgo (Federalist, Democrat-Republican). Still, the fact is, we didn’t have our first presidential impeachment till 1868 and it was under freak circumstances. The 40th Congress in the wake of the Civil War was awash in Radical Republicans waving the bloody shirt (Republican campaign tactic to remind voters of Southern and Democrat perfidy). 45 of the 53 Senators were Republican. The R’s dominated the House 143 to 45.
“The Situation”, a Harper’s Weekly editorial cartoon shows Secretary of War Stanton aiming a cannon labeled “Congress” to defeat Johnson. The rammer is “Tenure of Office Bill” and cannonballs on the floor are “Justice”.
Yeah, the episode was political in a narrow sense but even the firebrands, chomping at the bit to get Andrew Johnson, had to pay heed to statutory violations, all emanating from the recently passed Tenure of Office Act, over Johnson’s veto. Certainly, the Act was an impeachment trap, but even they couldn’t rely on Johnson’s alleged drunkenness and overall instability in office to remove what they considered to be a huge political obstacle. There’s something about impeachment that Ponnuru and company miss. Our current chattering classes omit an earlier and widespread understanding that politics wasn’t nearly enough.
It can’t be boiled down to Ford’s specious dictum: “An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.” Ford was foolish, and so would we be to take it seriously.
Today, it’s become fashionable to reduce impeachment to politics, the easier for our social betters, deeply entrenched in our cultural centers and DC, to get Trump. If you think about it, the “politics” of impeachment stare at you in the face. The two political houses of the first branch get to pass judgment on the second political branch. They are political in nature, with their political parties and partisan fights, and are given the power to remove a president. The situation lends itself to political shenanigans; however, there’s more to the story.
Government cannot avoid “politics”, despite the progressives’ futile crusade to insulate as much of the state from the grubbiness of politics. As we learned recently, all they succeeded in doing is creating a political and unaccountable administrative state. Politics never disappeared; it just entered the bloodstream of the ever-expanding Leviathan.
Come to think of it, the third branch (judiciary) isn’t above the muck of the political sewer since many state and local judicial posts are elective posts and the federal judiciary all the way up to the Supreme Court is caught up in the power of legislating. Speak “government” – any part of it – and you will be bellowing “politics”.
“Politics” is not all there is to government, though. We get a hint in our professed belief that we are a nation of laws, not men. Overhanging the messiness of the politics of law-making is the principle of equity (basic impartiality), and after the the law is produced, the law’s adjudication demands more equity in the form of due process. We’re not perfect in our legislation. Samuel Johnson exclaimed that sometimes the law is an ass. Nevertheless, bounds are placed on our penchant to enlist the state in service of our demands at the detriment of others.
Similarly, bounds are placed on the act of impeachment. The actors are political but the process isn’t. The thing shadows normal jurisprudence. The charging power (impeachment) is in the House and a trial is conducted in the Senate. The Constitution outlines the statutory violations of “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors”. At the time of the Constitution’s writing, the new federal Congress didn’t exist and therefore it hadn’t produced a single word of statute. Thus, the list of transgressions had to be general in nature, but are still statutory nonetheless. As in a regular court hearing that it adumbrates, regular due process can’t be ignored. Congress can’t do whatever its little political heart desires.
Robert S. Bennett, a nonpartisan attorney, defended President Bill Clinton during impeachment proceedings. (NICK UT/AP 1998)
Yet, Ponnuru tries to bolster his case for “political” impeachment by dredging up the 1804 impeachment and removal of Federal District Court Judge John Pickering. Ponnuru gets the incident wrong by distilling the case against Pickering to one of “low character”.
But what of Pickering’s “low character”? The “low character” was one of observable deterioration of mental capacity, instability while performing official duties, rulings glaringly discordant with standards of jurisprudence, drunkenness behind the bench, etc. The guy was a mess and didn’t live up to his oath of office. The problem was so noticeable to staff and the other judges in the federal circuit that they acted to suspend him by moving his caseload to Circuit Judge Jeremiah Smith. Pres. Jefferson sent the evidence to impeach to Congress and it quickly became embroiled in the partisan food fight between Federalists and Democrat-Republicans. Still, if impeachment can’t be applied here, it can’t be applied anywhere, regardless of the spit and fuming of the parties.
Judge John Pickering
The “low character” of Pickering is something far more than the bumbling and coarseness of Trump; something far more than a rambling phone call to the Ukrainian president.
I suspect that a residuum of animosity exists among the editors of the magazine against the “imperial presidency” (completely understandable) alongside Trump’s 2016 attack on the magazine. If so, I’m with you, but I can’t make my indignation a selective one. Essentially, all 20th and 21st century chief executives – with the exception of the 1920’s execs – abused their powers for over a hundred years, and so deserve the adjective “imperial”. Theodore Roosevelt saw himself as ringmaster of his own political Barnum and Bailey Circus. Woodrow Wilson gave us War Socialism, which was an extension of is own vastly expanded Leviathan. After a brief interlude in the 1920’s, the electorate foisted FDR upon itself for four terms.
FDR at one of his famous fireside chats.
And, ohhhh, there’s FDR. He presents a special case of defilement of the Article II powers. Not only was he given carte blanche to destroy something that was rationalized as farm “surpluses” (march livestock to the death pits, bribe people not to be productive) in the Agricultural Adjustment Act – thus giving “adjustment” a sinister ring – and to impose socialistic cartelization on nearly the entire American economy in the quasi-fascistic National Industrial Recovery Act, he was profligate in the application of his new-found powers for his personal political benefit. He was famous for lavishing taxpayer largesse on supporters and rejecting it for opponents. No wonder the guy got four terms.
We ought not to leave this very special political specimen without mentioning his persecution of Samuel Insull. Just like the Elizabeth Warrens of today, FDR wanted scalps for the Depression in a grotesque display of unrestrained reductionism and vicious class warfare. Insull was a successful businessman with his own holding company (the industrial equivalent of a broad-market mutual fund) that was responsible, by the way, for electrifying much of the country. It collapsed in the market crash, thousands lost their investments, and FDR was elected as the avenging demon. Insull fled. Our president-as-tsar went hither and yon to hunt him down, using his executive powers for a political vendetta in a manner that would make George III cringe.
Samuel Insull jailed after his extradition from Turkey in 1934.
Well, His Majesty’s imperial guard caught up with Insull in Turkey and brought him back in irons. Insull was soon marched off to 3 separate trials and before judge and jury was promptly acquitted of all charges. Is there a moral to the story? It might be that the innocently accused will win in the end (or, then again, maybe not), but not till after personal ruination. He died penniless in a Paris subway in 1938.
Do I need to mention LBJ, Nixon, and Clinton? Clinton had a hard time keeping his fly zipped, was caught in flagrante delicto with an intern, feebly tried to intimidate witnesses, and lied before a federal grand jury. He was allowed to finish his term, but a warning to minors was issued (probably unsuccessfully as per the Epstein case).
Going further down history lane and we arrive at Obama. Is it any surprise that a community activist would give us a community activist presidency? Let’s see, we had Fast and Furious, which was an attempt at entrapment of the Second Amendment. A border agent got killed in that one. Let’s see, there was the use of the IRS as an attack dog against Tea Party opponents. Let’s see, there was Obama’s discovery of his “phone and pen” to issue imperial decrees. And, finally, let’s see, we had the recruitment of the intelligence agencies and the FBI into his Praetorian Guard in a bid to defame Trump. A full accounting has yet to be written for that sordid tale.
And then there’s lowly Trump. He’s accused of soiling the office in a feeble and rambling conversation with the president of … Ukraine, of all paces. Trump comes off as a piker when compared to his predecessors.
Expect more excursions into impeachment-based political vengeance if impeachment is distilled to mere politics. Our penchant for divided government (different parties controlling different branches) would create a conga line down impeachment lane. Every two years could produce the precursors of impeachment lynch mobs. Is that what the Framers had in mind? Is it healthy for our system of governance to be constantly on the brink of volume 11? Once we become inured to the political cannabis high of impeachment, what’s next? The meth of civil war?
Nothing good can come of “political” impeachment. It’s not only wrong. It’s dangerous.
Gerald Ford (R. Mich.) as quoted in the Congressional Record for April 15, 1970: “An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers [it] to be at a given moment in history.”
President Ford appears in 1974 at a House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing regarding his pardon of Richard Nixon.
Does Ford’s famous comment on impeachment make sense? Kinda, if you don’t have anything else to go on. Well, Yale law professor E. Donald Elliott and his mentor, Yale law professor and Dean Harry H. Wellington, would ask you to reconsider. Ford’s comment stems from a highly contentious legal philosophy called positivism or “legal realism”. Positivism straitjackets the meaning, purpose, and assessment of law to “the acts of government officials”.
Ok, so what’s the rub? Simple, according to Wellington, the idea lacks a “theory of mistake”. The concept has no place for the law being wrong. To put it bluntly, it is what it is. Thus, it’s a convenient theory for freeing up the law from any connection to morality. The 20th century’s thugocracies – fascism, communism, Maoism, Stalinism, Jim Crow – found it useful. And so do our own progressives and law-making guiding lights. Perform an official act and there’s no need to rack your conscience about the morality of it. Just do it, as Kaepernick intones.
Jim Crow in the deep South. The intimidation of blacks at a polling place is depicted here.Jim Crow as segregation in water fountains.Oskar Dankner, a Jewish businessman, and Edele Edelmann, a Christian woman, are humiliated in public for having an intimate relationship. The signs read: “As a Jewboy, I always invite only German girls up to my room!” and “I am the biggest sow in town and only have dealings with Jews.” Cuxhaven, Germany, July 27, 1933
The Dems agree, “Just do it” – impeachment that is – even if untethered from the Constitution’s standard of “treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors”. Though it must be admitted that quid pro quos, the firing of an ambassador, disagreements over foreign policy, and a person’s deportment as president don’t quite fit the Constitutional bill. For Schiff and company, no matter. Make it “official” even if it’s based on rank innuendo, hearsay, and politically useful bureaucratic carping.
Plenty of injustice was committed under the banner of legal positivism. Just because a past Republican mouthed the dangerous nonsense doesn’t make it any less dangerous.
Accounts of the last moments of Abū Bakr al-Baghdadi depict him retreating into a tunnel with a dead end and blowing himself up with three of his children. The tale proves that a dead end is what you make of it. For al-Baghdadi, it was off to his 70 virgins (I don’t know where the kids ended up in Islamist theology.). For the Democrats in their incessant drive to impeach Trump, similarly at a dead end of facts, they are weaving a fairy tale in order to create the illusion of the light of dastardly and impeachable offenses at the end of the tunnel. The reality is that there is nothing but a wall of rock and compacted dirt.
Let’s see, we’ve experienced a “whistleblower” complaint which proved to be a collection of hearsay water cooler and lunch room talk among the minions of the administrative state.
The conspirators couldn’t spin the call at the center of their scheme because Trump released the transcript to everyone on the planet. Then the story is repeated, nothing much added, in the tales spun by others vaguely mentioned in the initial yarn. If anything is added, it’s nothing but feelings of anger of people who are upset about how the president is conducting foreign policy. They’re flabbergasted that an elected official – the president – would dare skip over they’re unelected, self-anointed wisdom. Then they’ve attempted to establish a “quid pro quo” as if something that is common in the course of foreign relations is somehow illegal, while it clearly isn’t. What does all this add up to? Nothing!
Shakespeare spun a tale of “Much Ado About Nothing”. The Democrats are trying to steal the mantle of master poet laureate. Their fiction, though, says more about them than Trump.
The Coriolis Effect: the natural bending of global air and water currents due to the earth’s rotation on its axis.
The global oceanic gyres from the Coriolis effect.
I’ve often wondered why liberals since the late 19th century have a reflex to lean ever further left. The tendency is very pronounced in today’s Democratic Party. Propositions that were soundly rejected only a couple of years ago have morphed into near dogma in the party. Take for instance the almost universal embrace of gargantuan social engineering in Green New Deals; or the racially charged seizure of wealth from one generation to fund awards to a current and specific racially-favored group 150 years removed from the wrong; or the open and broad avowals of faith in socialism, while, for some, still denying it; or the proud espousal of confiscatory taxation in spite of its historically ruinous effects (JFK would be shocked.).
Aleksander Solzhenitsyn presents a possible answer in the second volume of his 3-part historical novel, “The Red Wheel: November 1916”. In describing the rise of Russian left radicalism in the decades prior to the 1917 revolutions (there ended up being two in March and October), he compares the liberal’s leftward reflex to the natural phenomena of the Coriolis effect. Here’s how he puts it:
“Just as the Coriolis effect is constant over the whole of this earth’s surface, and the flow of rivers is deflected in such a way that it is always the right bank that is eroded and crumbles, while the floodwater goes leftward, so do all forms of democratic liberalism on earth strike always to the right and caress the left. Their sympathies [are] always with the left, their feet are capable of shuffling only leftward, their heads bob busily as they listen to leftist arguments – but they [are] disgraced if they take a step to or listen to a word from the right.” (p.59)
Aleksander Solzhenitsyn
Makes sense to me. Daniel Pipes in his magisterial works on the Russian Revolution described the blind spot in the outlook of the liberals as they deposed the Tsar in March of 1917 and tried to build a constitutional republic. If there was a threat, they were convinced it would come from the right. They ignored the warnings of the intelligence services that left extremists, the Bolsheviks, were arming and planning a seizure of power. Low and behold, Petrograd was left mostly undefended and the rest of Russian history thereafter is one of villainy and misery.
The 1930’s Holodomor, or Stain-engineered famine to destroy peasant resistance in southern Russia and the Ukraine.New arrivals to the expanding chain of concentration camps as part of Stalin’s war against the peasants in the 1930’s.
What lies in store for us as we approach the momentous date of November 2020? We have a president wounded by the incessant drumbeat of an increasingly radical left Democratic Party with numerous allies in the media, academia, entertainment, and among the campus and street mobs. His opposition, the Democratic Party, has become the vanguard of the radical left’s implementation of an all-encompassing transformation of all of society to fit their warped vision.
Antifa protesters burning American flags.
Will the political Coriolis effect in modern America duplicate the misery foisted on Russia? This is the time for some serious adult thinking on the question … before it is too late.
Proverbs 18:17 (ESV): The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.
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A 1930’s Stalinist show trial in the Soviet Union.Adam Schiff (l), chairman, and some of the House Intelligence Committee members.
The madhouse in DC over impeachment is more reminiscent of Stalin’s show trials during his purges than American jurisprudence. The House spectacle is all about a predetermined verdict being sold behind a facade of serious-sounding rubbish. The American public is being misled. Putin is taking notes.
The Democrats have been on a jihad since November 8, 2016. The latest gambit hinges on a nefarious Trump “quid pro quo”. If the ploy was limited to that, it’s a nothingburger. “Quid pro quo” literally means “something for something”. If that was all there was to it, it’s a very thin reed to support a massive structure of impeachment. Does the Louisiana Purchase remind you of anything? International relations are almost solely conducted on a quid-pro-quo basis.
Really, though, what the show-trial prosecutors are trying to conjure is something more: a quid-pro-quo-or-else. And that, the call’s transcript doesn’t support. The “favor” doesn’t mention the Bidens till further down in the conversation. At the top of Trump’s mind is the skulduggery conducted against him in 2016. The Bidens were an afterthought. Many interpretations are possible whenever a verbal conversation is put to paper, but you can’t say that only Schiff’s reading is the viable one.
The “or else” part is the withholding of a weapons sale, or so they say – while confusing a “sale” with “aid”. Well, whatever, the Ukraine got the weapons a month later. The only president to withhold military aid to Ukraine was Obama. And further, Zelensky and his government wasn’t even aware that they were being allegedly coerced. It’s a strange quid-pro-quo when quid has no knowledge of the purported quo. This is nonsense on stilts.
US javelin missile. It was the key part of Trump-approved weapons sale to the Ukraine.
Schiff and his sorcerers have to create the illusion of a grand evil out of thin gruel. How? It’s simple: control the process! In other words, hold a show trial but call it something else. The Dems liken this charade to a grand jury. They’re right in an infantile way: charges (articles of impeachment) come out of it. But there the resemblance ends. It’s a strange grand jury proceeding when people representing the defense (Republicans) are present alongside people representing the prosecutors (Democrats). Instead, the whole affair has the adversarial characteristics of a trial. As such, the situation cries for full due process, not the secret hearings with Schiff the only one allowed to call witnesses and his serial leaking of cherry-picked statements to make his fiction seem like non-fiction. All the while, the Republicans are muzzled by keeping the thing secret. This is scandalous.
Another underhanded excuse is often bellowed to make the outrage more digestible. The process is said to be exclusively “political” in nature. But is that true? No. Impeachment is a blend of politics and statute. If “politics” was the sole driving force, once we developed political parties in the late 18th century, opposing parties controlling the Presidency and Congress would be embroiled in impeachments right and left. The fact that we have had so few impeachments tells us something. It tell us that something more than the fulfillment of political vendettas should be at the core of the process. It must be anchored in a clear and unmistakable violation of the Constitution or a serious criminal statue. A high bar is required, not the low bar of grotesque interpretations of paper transcriptions of phone calls or previously Court-approved exercises of executive privilege.
U.S. President Bill Clinton points while being asked questions regarding his relationship with former White House intern [Monica Lewinsky] during his videotaped interrogation before a grand jury on August 17. The four hour videotape was released by the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee along with 2,800 pages of [Lewinsky] case evidence.If Trump is guilty, what of Obama’s use of his “phone and pen”? He created by his lonesome new categories of immigration law violators to be free of those same laws. Is this an example of the Article II branch acting like the Article I branch? What about “faithfully executing the laws”? Or how about the Fast and Furious episode in an entrapment scheme against our Second Amendment? Have we forgotten the IRS vendetta against Obama’s political opponents? There’s more here against Obama, using Pelosi’s standard, than there ever is against Trump.
Republicans, remember this time. It’s no holds barred regarding impeachment. The Democrats have unleashed the tactic of hiding election loss anger and ideological and policy disagreements under spurious claims of misbehavior. You too, Republicans, can follow the same show trial script when the time comes.
