I encourage you to read and thoughtfully consider this editorial in the Washington Post today, and understand what this impeachment is really all about and what it means if it is ignored.
The editorial notes, referencing the president's legal team, that
The defense brief they filed Monday argues that the president “did absolutely nothing wrong” when he pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to launch investigations of Joe Biden and a Russian-promoted conspiracy theory about the 2016 election. It further contends that Mr. Trump was entirely within his rights when he refused all cooperation with the House impeachment inquiry, including rejecting subpoenas for testimony and documents. It says he cannot be impeached because he violated no law.Think about that last sentence, and think about this:
- Snitty Snitty Bill Barr, the United States Attorney General, believes that a US Attorney or Special prosecutor can determine that a that a president has committed a crime, but that a sitting president cannot be charged with the crime that the prosecutor identified.
- president Trump's attorneys have argued in federal court that the president could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in New York City and be immune from prosecution, significantly expanding on the initial point of this scenario, which is that even if Trump did that, he wouldn't lose any votes.
are, in effect, seeking consent for an extraordinary expansion of his powers. An acquittal vote would confirm to Mr. Trump that he is free to solicit foreign interference in the 2020 election and to withhold congressionally appropriated aid to induce such interference. It would suggest that he can press foreign leaders to launch a criminal investigation of any American citizen he designates, even in the absence of a preexisting U.S. probe, or any evidence.I'm not sure any Senator who goes along with that line of thinking really wants that to happen, especially if they consider the personal impacts on them. Pretend, for instance, that a spine miraculously appears and a Senator decides to go against the president on something he feels strongly about (other than not being impeached, of course). Say one of them decides to
- vote against his insane buildup of our military, on which we already spend more than then next seven highest-spending countries combined, and more than the rest of the world, another 140+ countries, combined?
- vote against his stealing appropriated money and putting it on the border wall?
- vote against his vast expansion of welfare for paid leave, child care and all the rest?
- vote against an environmental regulatory repeal that will jeopardize his or her constituents should a heinous failure of an energy company occur? (You know, a burst pipeline, or a coal mine collapse, poisoned water from a pig farm, or a few thousand fracking earthquakes...)
They already know that going against him now may lead to the threat that he'll withhold his "full and complete endorsement" - but if they were to cross the un-indictable and unimpeachable asterisk president? Who knows which country he'll call upon to dig up dirt on them? I'm thinking Senators might want to check their junket itineraries for their entire time in office to see what they're up against...
And, think about the consequences of allowing this expansion of power should someone else get elected this fall: picture a President Sanders asking a foreign country to investigate an opponent of 'Democratic Socialism' or a President Biden having a friendly foreign government dig up dirt on all of the nepotism hires in the government, or a President Buttigieg having an equality-centric foreign country go after anti-gay politicians and their families, or a President Warren asking another country for help in digging around in DNA databases for dirt on political opponents...
Those investigations would need no evidence of a crime; they could be done merely to satisfy the whims of a petulant, thin-skinned president acting like - well, acting like the current president.
And, think about the consequences of allowing this expansion of power should someone else get elected this fall: picture a President Sanders asking a foreign country to investigate an opponent of 'Democratic Socialism' or a President Biden having a friendly foreign government dig up dirt on all of the nepotism hires in the government, or a President Buttigieg having an equality-centric foreign country go after anti-gay politicians and their families, or a President Warren asking another country for help in digging around in DNA databases for dirt on political opponents...
Those investigations would need no evidence of a crime; they could be done merely to satisfy the whims of a petulant, thin-skinned president acting like - well, acting like the current president.
Now, the likelihood that any of the leading Dems would resort to that kind of nonsense is pretty darn low, but ignoring the actions for which the president was impeached and focusing on who is bringing the charges, or on the process under which the issues were investigated, voted on and approved presents a huge personal risk to all current and future politicians. Because none of those actions could be considered an abuse of power, and all of them would be perfectly acceptable in the world the president's defense contemplates.
And it's also dangerous for regular folks like me. I mean, I've slammed Trump on Twitter, on this blog, on Facebook, in bars and restaurants, in letters to my Congressman, while walking down the street with my husband, while talking to myself as I worked in my garden; I curse a cardboard cutout of him, I shake my fist at him when I watch news clips of him telling bald-faced lies - and I'm not the only person who'll read this who does that.
Any number of people have done the same, some with different targets: Clinton. Obama. Sanders. Biden. Buttigieg. Warren. Pelosi. Schiff. Nadler. AOC. Ilhan Omar. Rashida Tlaib. Maxine Waters. The list is endless, on both sides. Do you really want a president to be able to investigate me, or you, or your family members, just because said president has his or her panties in a knot?
Lots of people with much larger audiences than mine criticize and castigate and challenge this president, every single day - many of them members of the media, or as the asterisk president calls them, the "enemy of the people." Do we even know which reporters he has had investigated, or is having investigated right now for the simple offense of telling the truth, calling out one of his lies, or spouting an opinion? No - we don't.
We honestly have no idea how far astray
his anger, his thin skin, and his unfettered pride have taken him -
or will take him in the future.
or will take him in the future.
Beyond that, the editorial also notes that under his defense scheme, a president could "flatly refuse all cooperation with any Congressional inquiry" in total disregard of the United States Constitution, which gives the House the power to impeach the executive. And,
it would establish that no president may be impeached unless he or she could be convicted of violating a federal statute - no matter the abuse of power. Those are principles that Republicans will regret if they conclude that a Democratic executive has violated his or her oath of office.If they can't selfishly protect themselves and their own longevity, and they aren't willing to selflessly protect you and me, is it too much to ask that they simply uphold their oaths and protect the Constitution?
We'll see - we surely will - and we may not have to wait all that long to find out.
The idea of launching an investigation or tarnishing someone's reputation with no due process does seem awfully dangerous. Deadly even...
ReplyDeleteWhat if we had a situation where a person could make a claim with little or no merit based solely upon their own interpretation of a situation, and have another individual stripped of their rights, jailed or murdered in front of their family?
What if the same courts that authorized that death warrant was now capable of suspending other rights indefinitely?
"Swatting" and "Extreme Risk Protection Orders" are the same thing as the type of political hunting you are referring to, it just depends on who makes the request.
-Nephew
I disagree, Bert. Swatting and ERPOs are two vastly different things, and different still from the presidential abuse of power without legal or constitutional recourse we're looking at here. That would be more like what dictators are allowed to do, and last i looked, the US of A is not a dictatorship.
ReplyDeleteSwatting is a citizen/moron taking revenge on someone - not a governmental act - and intended to harm someone. ERPOs are governmental acts - performed in the interest of safety - when requested by a limited population of people authorized to make the request, and the request is adjudicated by a duly elected or appointed jurist who makes the decision based on the evidence provided. Given that in many cases (at least as I understand it) the police will be involved in making the request, and they are hugely supportive of the 2A, the risk is intentionally limited that someone will be harmed by this - knowing that the point is to prevent someone from being harmed. Remember Marjory Stoneman Douglas? That showed us first hand the reason why ERPOs are desired as part of the toolkit, and what happens when law enforcement fails to act.
The issue being the same stems from lack of process.
ReplyDeleteSlicking the normal controls in the name of safety is always an attractive option when you are on the better end of the deal. The idea that cops are pro 2A ignores the fact that an over militarization of the police forces at the local level (sponsored by our friends at the DHS/DoD) coupled with an out of touch public has created an us vs. them situation which is perpetuated by the race card being constantly tossed around to shift people's attention among other things.
The 84 year old police and military veteran who was actively serving as a crossing guard that got his guns taken for simply noting the failure of the police who were supposed to be guarding the school is a favorite of mine. Didn't matter who he was, what his record reflected, or the context of his conversation, the police state was happy to lock down around him and treat him like a criminal on the word of a diner waitress with no training and no due process.
While I agree that the US is not a dictatorship, blanket policies, over use of case law to justify actions and the incursions of politics and personal feelings into the judicial process via the media circus have eroded the high ground we once had.
Ignoring that attacks happen where guns aren't, at a rate 98% higher than where they are, we are still left with the fact that people are not presented a proper picture of how the ERPO systems work. People will kill. Gun owners in general are substantially less likely to be criminals, until a media populace votes themselves into a paycheck or housing program and out of their rights and privacy.
People get upset that the gun vote folks focus on that issue so much, but the question is never inverted. It's easy to hide behind the "save the children" but hard to address dying cities, substandard education, poisoned water, and mass migrations out of socialist tax hell states.
That heavily taxed state drops talented and gifted education programs left and right, adopts common core and a kid who can read legal documents gets a bonus homework spelling words like "Their."
Maybe if the demons do their counting right they can reopen the classes and state parks with the money they save by releasing the rapists, stalkers, arsonists and drug dealers.
We as a country are letting ourselves become dependent upon, misguided by and subservient to the thinly veiled ruling class at an astonishing rate.
It's hard to resist the changes being forced on you when you cannot understand the language of the laws, your representatives no longer represent you, and your last means of defense and power balancing have been systematically removed.
Watching states and communities die, and having no legitimate choice in where you live and work changes your perspective.
Swapping rifles with a Romanian immigrant, and discussing the saddening change of direction towards the place he fled while celebrating the one thing that separates citizens from becoming subjects is a powerful thing. More significantly, his was a classic American symbol, a 1903 Springfield, and mine a 1943 Izhevsk Mosin-Nagant, the and type he was trained on as a boy.
Two Americans, both serving but with wildly different backgrounds, both knowing what it's like to see a state suppress it's people's right to bear arms, but one with the firsthand knowledge of the end result.
More on state death at the hands of or favorite socialist children... VA HB1627 would make someone like you into a criminal for voicing your opinions or punching the beloved cutout.
ReplyDeleteWho knows how far the demons would stretch their definitions of what constitutes harassment or ill intent, but I'm sure the lawyers you'd need to properly fight the state machine would cost more than any lay person could afford.
-Nephew
I think I'm OK under HB1627, because shaking my fist and cursing the way I do it is not a threat. As opposed, of course, to the way the person on whom my cardboard cutout is based does it, which IS a threat. He should stay out of Virginia.
ReplyDeleteOn the gun thing, I land in the same spot here as I do whenever you and I have these conversations, or when I have them with other people: gun owners are good guys right up until they make a choice to be a bad guy - as is the case with the majority of our mass shooters, who have used legally owned legally purchased guns with very bad outcomes. That will not change no matter how many times we talk about it. And while I have to live with restrictions on my speech, I'm OK with that, understanding that there are times when the collective right is greater than my individual right. For the same reason, I'm OK with reasonable restrictions on guns which won't restrict a person from getting a gun if they're good to have one based on our laws. And I'm OK with domestic abusers not being able to keep their guns, and I'm OK with taking guns away from a person who is exhibiting mental issues which could jeopardize him/herself or others -- those in my eyes are reasonable, and wouldn't impact anyone who shouldn't be impacted.
That said, ERPOs -- and EVERY OTHER LAW WE HAVE - are dependent upon them being applied carefully and in accordance with the rules associated with them. That SOME police officers are jerks with issues (whether they're militarized or not) does NOT mean that we must abandon all laws - OR that we must abandon any and all attempts at gun regulation, or bail reform, or anything else.
On the bail thing, we need to look at how offenses are classified -- plain and simple. And if we can't allow judicial discretion to determine whether or not we take a gun away from a domestic abuser, we surely can't allow judicial discretion to determine whether a person is held on $500 bail or $5000 bail, right? If they can't be trusted, they can't be trusted. That's the slippery slope here - no one wants someone let out with $0 bail, but if the judge is going to set bail at $250, what difference will it make? They're still going to be out. And no one wants mandatory no-bail rules for many of these crimes, because as soon as it's *their* family member rotting jail for something stupid, all bets are off.
We want everything to work exactly the way we want it to work - for us - but we can't have that because we are a society of 331,000,000+ - we're NOT 331,000,000+ individuals each entitled to whatever legal rules and justice (or lack thereof) we want.
And the reason why my argument about unfettered presidential power is different? Because the bobblehead defense is that neither our constitution nor our legal system is allowed to interfere with that power. All of the other stuff, there is redress in some form.
I can't do anything to alter your view of our society, but I can argue that we have one, and we deserve to have one where there is officially no one person who is above the law.