Tag Archives: Impeachment

How Should the Senate Deal with an Unconstitutional Impeachment by the House? by Alan M. Dershowitz

Posted on December 11, 2019 | Leave a comment

Abuse of power and obstruction of Congress are not even grounds for impeachment, which presents some novel and interesting legal questions. From Alan M. Dershowitz at gatestoneinstitute.org:

  • These two grounds [of impeachment] — abuse of power and obstruction of congress — are not among the criteria specified for impeachment. Neither one is a high crime and misdemeanor. Neither is mentioned in the constitution. Both are the sort of vague, open-ended criteria rejected by the framers. They were rejected precisely to avoid the situation in which our nation currently finds itself.
  • So, what options would the senate have if the House voted to impeach on two unconstitutional grounds? Would it be required to conduct a trial based on “void” articles of impeachment? Could it simply refuse to consider unconstitutional articles? Could the president’s lawyer make a motion to the Chief Justice — who presides over the trial of an impeached president — to dismiss the articles of impeachment on constitutional grounds?
  • Regardless of the outcome, the damage will have been done by the House majority that will have abused its power by weaponizing the House’s authority over impeachment for partisan purposes — exactly as Hamilton feared.
Pictured: Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi speaks on December 10, 2019 in Washington, DC at a news conference, in which House Democrats announced two articles for the next steps in the House impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

If the House of Representatives were to impeach President Trump on the two grounds now before it, the senate would be presented with a constitutional dilemma. These two grounds— abuse of power and obstruction of Congress— are not among the criteria specified for impeachment. Neither one is a high crime and misdemeanor. Neither is mentioned in the constitution. Both are the sort of vague, open-ended criteria rejected by the framers. They were rejected precisely to avoid the situation in which our nation currently finds itself. Abuse of power can be charged against virtually every controversial president by the opposing party. And obstruction of Congress — whatever else it may mean — cannot extend to a president invoking privileges and then leave it to the courts to referee conflicts between the legislative and executive branches.

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How’s That Alternative Reality Working Out For You? by Robert Gore

Posted on December 6, 2019 | 47 comments

Two plus two equals four. Epstein didn’t kill himself.

At the end of 1984, Slavery is Freedom, two plus two equals five, and Winston Smith loves Big Brother. The Party has destroyed Smith’s mind, he embraces whatever narratives it promulgates. The fictive Party has solved the conundrum that bedevils any individual or organization seeking to exercise power: coercion can exact physical compliance and the desired verbalizations, but how do you compel the subjugated to think and believe as you want them to think and believe?

Our Party, the confederation of powerful people who promulgate the narratives that always point the same direction—more government and power for the powerful, less freedom for the subjugated—has yet to reach the mind control of Orwell’s Party, but not for want of desire or effort. We know the Party’s narratives: globalism, climate change, surveillance, incarceration, political correctness, open borders, free migration, fiat debt, central economic planning, socialized education and medical care, and wars on terrorism, drugs, poverty, any regime that refuses to toe the Party line, hydrocarbons, private firearms, individual rights, privacy, precious metals and cash, and socialized education and medical care. We know the Party’s institutions: governments, central banks and their central banks, intelligence agencies, military forces, police, permanent bureaucracies, multinational corporations, multilateral economic, political, and financial institutions, foundations, universities, nonprofits, and NGOs. We know the Party’s overlapping mouthpieces: the mainstream media, think tanks, government and intelligence agency propaganda organs, crony executives and their companies, Hollywood, and academia. And we know the figureheads who stock governments and their allied institutions, and the Party puppeteers who pull their strings.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Crime, Cronyism, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Government, History, Imperialism, Insurrection, Intelligence, Law, Media, Morality, Philosophy, Politics, Privacy, Science, Society, Surveillance, Taxes, Technology, Trade, War

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Death Wish, by James Howard Kunstler

Posted on December 2, 2019 | Leave a comment

There does seem something suicidal about the Democrats’ Quixotic quest to get Trump out of office by any means but winning the next election. From James Howard Kunstler at kunstler.com:

The early winter holidays are notorious for giving people the blues, but as the last Thanksgiving leftovers slide into the stockpot, the Democratic Party was put on suicide watch. Is the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein in charge? It’s a little late to call an exorcist. The gun pointed at the Democrats’ head now is a stubby little low-caliber weapon in the person of Jerrold Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who has only grazed the party’s skull in two previous misfirings. The third time, the old saying goes, may be the charm.

When Mr. Nadler entertained Special Counsel Robert Mueller in July, he succeeded spectacularly in discrediting Mr. Mueller, and the inquisition he rode in on. It was the worst public demonstration of aphasia since William Jennings Bryan had a stroke at the Scopes Trial in 1925. Mr. Mueller’s pitiful performance detached the last sticky tendril of hope that his tortured report might avail to cast out the arch-demon in the White House. Even the Republicans on the dais seemed to feel sorry for him. True to his character as a schoolyard sap wearing a “kick me” sign on his back, Mr. Nadler just waddled away in a fog of bamboozlement, hitching his pants up to his sternum, to plot his next foolish move.

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Nunes: “Phase Two” Of The Impeachment Circus Begins This Week, by Sara Carter

Posted on December 2, 2019 | Leave a comment

It’s an insult to circuses to call the House Impeachment hearings a circus. From Sara Carter at saracarter.com:

House Intelligence Committee ranking member Rep. Devin Nunes told Fox News host Judge Jeanine Pirro Saturday, that phase two of the impeachment hearings will start this week with Chairman Jerrold Nadler who will deliberate on the constitutionality of impeachment.

Nunes said he doesn’t expect anything new from the House Judiciary Committee’s Democrat led investigation.

“Well we now know that this coming week Jerry Nadler is gonna start phase two of the circus,” said Rep. Devin Nunes, on Justice with Judge Jeanine.

“Jerry Nadler has been in the witness protection program for several months after he botched the (Robert) Mueller probe. We’re going to see how this goes supposedly they’re going to talk about the constitutionality of impeachment,” said Nunes.

So far the Democrats have not been able to show any evidence that President Donald Trump withheld any aid from Ukraine in exchange for an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. In fact, Office of Management and Budget Mark Sandy told lawmakers during Schiff’s hearing that the only reason the money was held up for a short period of time was Trump’s concern that other “countries were not contributing more to Ukraine.

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The Turnaround, by James Howard Kunstler

Posted on November 29, 2019 | Leave a comment

James Howard Kunstler has an awful lot of faith in people like William Barr, Michael Horowitz, and John Durham. We’ll soon know if such faith is warranted. SLL remains skeptical. From Kunstler at kunstler.com:

At yesterday’s Thanksgiving table, fifteen adults present, there was not one word uttered about impeachment, Russia, Ukraine, and, most notably, a certain Golden Golem of Greatness, whose arrival at the center of American life three years ago kicked off a political hysteria not witnessed across this land since southern “fire eaters” lay siege to Fort Sumter.

I wonder if some great fatigue of the mind has set in among the class of people who follow the news and especially the tortured antics of Rep. Adam Schiff’s goat rodeo in the House intel Committee the past month. I wonder what the rest of congress is detecting among its constituents back home during this holiday hiatus. I suspect it is that same eerie absence of chatter I noticed, and what it may portend about the nation’s disposition toward reality.

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Is Ukraine Vital to US Security? by Edward Lozansky

Posted on November 29, 2019 | Leave a comment

Russia could roll into Ukraine and take over, and there wouldn’t be a damn thing the US could do about. How a country so easily conquered by its next door neighbor can be vital to US security is a question that never seems to get answered. From Edward Lozansky at antiwar.com:

The ongoing impeachment inquiry of President Trump can certainly compete with Hollywood’s most successful drama or comedy shows. However, when we deal with national security issues one expects the actors, in this case members of Congress and witnesses, to tell the truth. In this case, some do, but some regrettably do not. The whole picture, said House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, Louisiana Republican, looks like a “Soviet-style” event.

As someone who grew up in the Soviet Union, I tend to agree with Mr. Scalise. When I listen to Adam B. Schiff and Co. they indeed remind me of Soviet apparatchiks who knew they were telling lies, contemptuous of the fact that their hearers didn’t believe a single word they said. These were the unspoken rules everyone had to accept – or else. But for God’s sake, we are in America, aren’t we?

When Ukraine and all other Soviet republics, including Russia, became independent states, I organized with the help of Paul Weyrich, the late leader of the Free Congress Foundation, a trilateral meeting on Capitol Hill of legislators from the U.S. Congress, Russia’s Duma and Ukraine’s Rada.

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The House Will Not Vote On Impeachment. It Will Censure Trump. By Moon of Alabama

Posted on November 27, 2019 | 1 comment

Are House Democrats smart enough not to impeach Trump? From Moon of Alabama at moonofalabama.com:

The live TV impeachment inquiry circus is for now over.  The procedural parts are ready to begin. Both sides, the Republicans and Democrats, will have to decide which tactical moves they will now make.

Adam Schiff, who presided over the investigative part, wrote to his colleagues that he wants to immediately move forward:

As required under House Resolution 660, the Committees are now preparing a report summarizing the evidence we have found this far, which will be transmitted to the Judiciary Committee soon after Congress returns from the Thanksgiving recess.
…
Chairman Nadler and the Members and staff of the Judiciary Committee will proceed in the next phase of the impeachment inquiry.

Nadler will write up articles of impeachment which will be referred to the whole House to vote on them. No Republican is likely to vote for impeaching Trump. It would be political suicide to do so. The Democrats have 233 Representatives and need 218 votes for a majority decision. They can afford a few abstentions but not too many.

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Posted in Crime, Cronyism, Government, Intelligence, Investigations, Politics

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A dozen document troves that could change the Ukraine scandal if Trump released them, by John Solomon

Posted on November 27, 2019 | Leave a comment

By all means, release every single relevant document in the Ukraine matter. From John Solomon at johnsolomonreports.com:

There are still wide swaths of documentation kept under wraps inside government agencies like the State Department that could substantially alter the public’s understanding of what has happened in the U.S.-Ukraine relationships now at the heart of the impeachment probe.

As House Democrats mull whether to pursue impeachment articles and the GOP-led Senate braces for a possible trial, here are 12 tranches of government documents that could benefit the public if President Trump ordered them released, and the questions these memos might answer.

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Trump in Wonderland: Off With His Head? by Martin Sieff

Posted on November 26, 2019 | 1 comment

The impeachment is something right out of Alice in Wonderland. From Martin Sieff at strategic-culture.org:

Donald Trump’s millions of detractors without doubt see him as The Mad Hatter: But, no: He’s Alice. The President of the United States has disappeared down the rabbit hole and he’s in Wonderland – Complete with a Red Queen (Nancy Pelosi) shouting “Off with his head!”

The great mistake foreign observers make observing the latest farce in Washington is assuming that there must be some order, rationality and linear logic behind it. There is none. It is Politics According to the Marx Brothers

This is a show trial – incompetently planned and directed with hundreds of crazed scriptwriters: The Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee, their staffs and the salivating Mainstream US Media are writing and rewriting the script as they go along.

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President Trump’s Defense, by Robert Gore

Posted on November 26, 2019 | 33 comments

Democratic representatives should think twice before they vote to impeach President Trump.

I thought I had said all I was going to say on “Ukrainegate” in my article “Make the Truth Irrelevant.” Then I read a column on the Internet by Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan whose very title: “Trump’s Defenders Have No Defense” (WSJ, 11/21/19) bespeaks its idiocy. Unfortunately, it also represents a lot of what’s being peddled by the mainstream media.

How would Noonan or anyone else outside Trump’s circle know whether he does or does not have a defense when the rules of the only body that has pursued the case against him preclude him from offering a defense? In the House impeachment hearings, Trump’s defenders cannot call their own witnesses, cannot confront the whistleblower whose complaint launched the case, cannot challenge hearsay evidence and have it excluded, and cannot probe the motives or possibly illegal behavior of his accusers.

Noonan further embarrasses herself with the following: “As to the impeachment itself, the case has been so clearly made you wonder what exactly the Senate will be left doing. How will they hold a lengthy trial with a case this clear?” She reveals her own ignorance of the law and facts of this particular case, and complete lack of decency or sense of fair play, rendering such a judgment after hearing only one side of the case.

Noonan has prompted this analysis of possibilities concerning Trump’s defense in a Senate trial. It assumes that standard American judicial rules, procedures, and principles will be in force during the trial. Disclaimer: I am a lawyer, but I am an inactive member of the California Bar Association and have never practiced law.

The best case for a defense attorney is one in which the attorney can say: Assume what the prosecution is saying is true, my client has not broken the law or committed a crime. During his phone call with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, President Trump asked for investigations of three matters, but he did not explicitly link receipt of US aid that had been held up to Zelensky conducting those investigations. Suppose, for argument’s sake, that he had either explicitly asked for that quid pro quo or that Zelensky could reasonably infer he was asking for such a quid pro quo. Trump’s first line of defense would be to challenge the ubiquitous characterization—at least among Democrats and the media―of such a link as a crime.

According to the transcript of the call, Trump asked Zelensky to look into the company Crowdstrike, which has been the only entity allowed to examine the DNC servers that were allegedly hacked by the Russians. In a related query, he alluded to possible Ukrainian involvement in initiating the Russiagate fiasco. Later in the phone call, he said: “There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me.”

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