Former Nixon advisor and former Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan explained to MSNBC analyst Lawrence O’Donnell the meaning of high crimes and misdemeanors in one elegant sentence. Moynihan said, “It means whatever we say it means because there is no judicial review.”
Lawrence O’Donnell explained that the Supreme Court does not review impeachment decisions, making the Senate the sole arbiter of impeachment articles. The impeachment decision is not about the law or the Constitution or even tradition. It is simply about preserving the structure of government defined by three coequal branches with separate, distinct powers.
Lawrence O’Donnell did a fine job of explaining Moynihan’s view of high crimes and misdemeanors, but he failed to explain adequately why high crimes are not clarified in the Constitution. Undefined high crimes give the Senate more choices when they need to rein in a rogue president.
Donald Trump’s defense attacks Joe Biden, attacks the process, and attacks the definition of a high crime. Joe Biden’s Ukraine activities can’t justify the over-the-top pressure on Ukraine that also threatened Ukraine’s security. The process doesn’t relate to the substance of the impeachment articles. And Moynihan obliterated any legal interpretation of high crimes in one sentence.
An impartial Senator would ask if Trump’s activities exceeded his Constitutional authority in a dangerous way that would supersede Congress’s spending authority, and if the activity threatened our national security. An impartial Senator would also ask if this is a pattern with Trump. An impartial Senator would want to an open trial with documents and witnesses that Trump withheld from the inquiry.
In November, the voters will determine who should be president, and they will also rate the House and Senate on how well they carried out their duty in the impeachment process.
I played church-league basketball as a teenager. I couldn’t run fast or jump, and my shot was erratic. Once when I jumped center – It was far from big league -- and I needed some help. I put my left hand on my opponent’s shoulder as I jumped for the ball. It was the only time I won a jump ball. Everyone in the gym saw what I did except the referee. I got away with it, but I never did it again, ever. You may get away with a blatant foul once, but not twice.
Republicans are in the same boat. The Brett Kavanaugh hearings had a blatant foul. The public outcry over Christine Blasey Ford’s story was intense enough to make moderate Republicans like Senators Flake and Collins nervous. Republicans fixed the problem with a new investigation, but the investigators only talked to people who were not direct witnesses. The sham investigation gave Republicans enough cover to vote for now Justice Kavanaugh.
Republicans want to commit a similarly blatant foul in the impeachment trial. They don’t want direct witnesses who can either contradict or corroborate the evidence collected so far. Direct witnesses will make voting against the impeachment articles more difficult. Instead, Trump’s lawyers will provide cover with a complicated legal defense.
The American public still remembers the Kavanaugh hearings. An impeachment coverup will remind the voters of that old saying: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
The impeachment trial cannot be fair and open if relevant witnesses are not called to testify. The Senate is judging Donald Trump now, and the public will judge the Senate in November.
After being rebuffed by Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas unloaded in a Rachel Maddow interview. Parnas revealed many details of Trump’s Ukrainian adventure described in the impeachment articles including:
Rick Perry was involved in it. Mike Pence was involved in it. Devin Nunes was involved in it. Mike Pompeo was in on it. Lindsey Graham was in on it. Bill Barr was in on it. Republican congressional candidate, Robert Hyde was in on it. John Bolton knew about it. Mark Esper knew about it. These are in addition to the three amigos, Rudy Giuliani, Gordon Sondland, and Rick Volker.
Parnas revealed that Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was removed from her post as another quid pro quo to get dirt on Democratic rival Joe Biden.
The details of the Parnas narrative is consistent with the reams of paper documentation he provided and also lines up with the testimony provided in the House impeachment inquiries.
If you vote to prevent the aforementioned participants from testifying, then you will also be in on it in the eyes of the American people and in the historical record. You must let these individuals defend themselves. You have no choice.
Nancy Pelosi will deliver two articles of impeachment to the Senate. The articles allege that Donald Trump abused power and obstructed Congress over the now-famous favor from the Ukrainian government and the subsequent cover-up. Both articles contain serious charges that are arguably impeachable, but there is another Trumpian behavior that bothers me more, even though it is not technically an impeachable offense. Donald Trump relies on his gut while ignoring sound advice too often when he makes critical decisions.
Donald Trump’s inability to take advice makes him uniquely unqualified for office because his gut instincts are not reliable and prone to being irresponsible. Trump’s inexperience was all too evident in the Kurdish blunder and in the Ukraine gambit. In October, I predicted that Trump’s go-it-alone style would continue to create messes.
It has taken just three months for Trump’s next bad gut reaction when he ordered the killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani. Based on the conflicting stories conflicting stories explaining why the General was killed, Trump doesn’t have the imminent threat needed to justify the killing, but he ordered it anyway. Result: There was the beginning of a war footing between the US and Iran until tensions eased, but Iran uncorked their nuclear program, and they want US forces out of the Middle East. The Iran situation is far from over.
Donald Trump will continue to favor his gut over the sound advice of experienced professionals because he won’t admit that most of the time his gut is clueless about international politics and other things. Trump’s gut poses a bigger danger than his impeachable offenses.
Tensions between Iran and the US have escalated steadily after the US backed out of the Iran nuclear deal. The most recent series of events started on Dec 27 when a US contractor was killed in a rocket attack. The US blamed Iran-backed fighters. In retaliation the US attacked militia sites in Iraq and Syria, reportedly killing 25 fighters. This led to the storming of the US embassy in Baghdad. Finally, Iranian General Soleimani was killed in a US drone attack.
Donald Trump claimed that General Soleimani was planning more attacks against the US. Trump also claimed that Soleimani had killed thousands of Americans, and that he was hated in Iran. In fact, Soleimani was very popular in Iran. The other claims have not been verified, to my knowledge. Based on Trump’s poor relationship with the truth and his demonstrable hostility toward Iran, I am very skeptical at best.
Trump may have unwittingly revealed his motives for his verbal and real attacks on Iran when he criticized Barack Obama repeatedly during Obama’s first term. In a 2011 tweet, Trump wrote:
“Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He's weak and he's ineffective. So the only way he figures that he's going to get reelected — and as sure as you're sitting there — is to start a war with Iran.”
Former UN Ambassador Susan Rice said on MSNBC that Donald Trump has put America on a war footing with Iran. For the sake of Americans being put in harm’s way, I would hope that Trump’s move makes good sense, but his documented struggles with the truth and his own statements say otherwise.
CrowdStrike is the name of a US Cyber-security company with the simple mission to combat computer attacks against major businesses. Two of its customers are the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee.
CrowdStrike is also a conspiracy theory propagated by conservatives and endlessly repeated by Donald Trump. It is a theory because it is offered without proof and has been thoroughly debunked on a fact basis and on a common-sense basis.
The theory alleges that Democrats rigged their server to frame Russia as the hacker in the 2016 elections and that the mysterious server is now somewhere in Ukraine. Russia hacked the DNC servers, and the servers are still in the US, and CrowdStrike is not owned by a Ukraine oligarch. CrowdStrike should be a nonstory, but it isn’t.
Trump reenergized the conspiracy theory when he referred to CrowdStrike while asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for a favor, but he is not the only one,
When Fox Journalist Chris Wallace stated that the entire intelligence community said it was Russia, who interfered in the 2016 elections, Senator John Kennedy replied, “Right, but it could also be Ukraine.” Other Republicans also finger Ukraine. The list includes Devin Nunes, Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Chuck Grassley, Richard Burr, Lindsey Graham, and Ted Cruz.
These Republicans are obviously trying to establish a valid motive for Trump’s Ukrainian demands. they are defending provably false theories. The Republicans are all intelligent individuals who know how to navigate the maze of Washington politics. What then, motivates them to make such ludicrous claims about provably false theories?
I don’t know what motivates them, but I must conclude that these Republicans think the US voters are really stupid.
A teacher once divided our class into two groups, I was in the larger group. The teacher asked the two groups to negotiate over a set of goals. My group decided to forgo negotiating because we had the majority, and we irritated the teacher. In hindsight, I see that the class exercise was a lost opportunity to learn how to negotiate from strength. I didn’t know what we had lost, until now.
Republican Senators are in a similar position. They have the numbers, and they can skip the formalities of a trial and just vote to acquit Donald Trump. Democrats can’t stop them. Republicans might get Donald Trump off, but they don’t know what they would lose.
They would violate the integrity of their impeachment oath, which calls for an impartial trial based on the facts. Unfortunately, this oath doesn’t mean much to Mitch McConnell or Lindsey Graham. Both have announced their allegiance to politics over facts. Integrity isn’t as persuasive as it used to be.
McConnell and his fellow Republicans seem to have forgotten that the world doesn’t end at Pennsylvania Avenue and that a whole nation is watching. Even though voters have split down the middle over impeaching and removing Donald Trump, a decisive majority of folks, including some Trump supporters, want a fair trial with witnesses. They want to make their own decision over the verdict, and the 2020 elections are less than a year from now.
Mitch McConnell is in a tenuous position whether he runs a fair and open trial or he doesn’t. His best option is to let the process play itself out. Let the trial run its course. Let the Democrats make their case with witnesses. And let Trump make his case, if he has one.
Harvard Constitutional Law Professor Noah Feldman says that Donald Trump’s obstruction of the House impeachment investigation robs Congress of its job to impeach and puts Trump above the law. Feldman makes a strong case, but Donald Trump’s gauntlet thrown at the House Democrats, and, by association, Congress should make supporting Trump much harder for members of Congress.
Trump challenged Congress when White House Counsel Pat Cipollone wrote:
“Trump and his administration reject your baseless, unconstitutional efforts to overturn the democratic process. Your unprecedented actions have left the President with no choice. In order to fulfill his duties to the American people, the Constitution, the executive branch and all future occupants of the office of the presidency, President Trump and his administration cannot participate in your partisan and unconstitutional inquiry.”
In speaking for the President, Cipollone implies that Trump’s claim of innocence makes the impeachment inquiry unconstitutional. The President is not authorized or qualified enough to determine the constitutionality of an impeachment. If Congress lets him get away with this flimsy concept, they will render the impeachment process impotent and useless. Without the threat of impeachment, Trump has a free pass to do anything he wants and, as an unintended consequence, make the legislative branch irrelevant. They will make the president a king.
All Senators and Representatives, Democrats, Independents, and Republicans alike, have no choice. If they want to retain Congressional power and influence, they must impeach. Otherwise, they might as well close the doors of Congress and go home.
When Sinclair Broadcasting reporter James Rosen asked Nancy Pelosi, if she hated Trump, he got a lot more than he wished for. Nancy Pelosi responded to Rosen’s question with a civics lesson and a stern rebuke. Everyone should hear Pelosi’s view on impeachment. Whether you agree or disagree, she explains eloquently why today’s moment in history is taking the path it is on.
First, Pelosi listed things she did not consider impeachable: Donald Trump’s failure to do anything about gun violence, his cruelty toward dreamers, his denial of climate change. These are for elections. [The impeachment] is about the Constitution and about how Trump violated his oath of office, she said. In a couple sentences, Pelosi narrowed the scope of impeachment to the limitations and responsibilities outlined in the Constitution, and her interpretation will probably be the rule going forward.
The success or failure of past impeachments and history tend to validate Pelosi’s view. But the consolidation of power around the President has been trending long enough that expanding executive power has become a natural tendency of Presidents from both parties. The all-powerful President is an old idea going back to the beginning when George Washington rejected it.
With Pelosi’s particularly narrow view of impeachment, we have a President who will most likely be impeached and may be removed from office, but he has also exercised presidential power at an unprecedented level. With a narrow view of impeachment, Congress may find reining in the next President too difficult. And the next President may like his or her new powers too much to go back voluntarily, as George Washington once did.
I received a comment on social media pushing the idea that global warming is overblown. The so-called news article reviews the book Global Warming Temperatures and Predictions by physicist William Lynch. The book describes a mathematical model of the atmosphere and shows how the model projects a cooler, more normal future. The author, however, doesn’t understand that the carbon cycle on which climate change theories rely is much more complex than a mathematical model of the atmosphere.
The Kelp problem is a good example. Kelp is one of nature’s most efficient tools for pulling carbon out of the carbon cycle and thereby out of the atmosphere. Some climate scientists recommend building huge kelp farms in the Pacific Ocean with the purpose of removing carbon from the air.
Unfortunately, natural kelp growths are having their own problems. The kelp is disappearing at alarming rates along the California coast. The culprit is an infestation of sea urchins that eat the kelp stalks growing out of the ocean floor. The kelp infestation started when one of their natural enemies the sea star or starfish were wiped out apparently from the introduction of a virus.
Scientist don’t know why the virus arrived, but they suspect that warmer ocean waters may have led to their introduction. Losing the kelp beds is a big problem.
William Lynch doesn’t seem to understand that the global warming problem lies not in the air but in the oceans, and the sea urchin story tells us that harm to the oceans can also harm us in ways we can’t always predict.
The Republican arguments against impeaching Donald Trump have evolved as the hearings progressively described a well-defined event with strong impeachment overtones. It was hearsay. It was a faulty process. The witnesses are foreign agents. Now, Republicans own up to Trump’s “inappropriate behavior”, but you can’t impeach Trump over a phone call, so they argue. Impeachment is too extreme, they say.
The scope of Trump’s actions is bigger than a phone call. It extends to the actions of a small group of Trump associates performing an old-fashioned shakedown of Ukrainian government officials. The shakedown continued until Sep. 11, 2 days after the Inspector General acknowledged that the Whistleblower Report was credible. It extends to an attempted takeover of a Ukrainian energy company. It apparently extends to pressure on Ukraine that hid evidence against Paul Manafort. It may even extend to the 2016 election when the Trump campaign team had a cozy relationship with influential Russians.
Donald Trump has a history of working around the rule of law that goes back to his days as a landlord in New York City. Donald Trump has never respected authority and still ignores it even as President of the US. Donald Trump’s actions push the boundaries of presidential power, and no amount of reasoning will change him.
Donald Trump’s actions provide the perfect opportunity to define when impeachment is not too extreme. When a president has a pattern of abusing power egregiously and will not change his or her behavior, then impeachment becomes the last resort. We have reached the last resort with Trump, and Congress has no choice.
II was encouraged when Nancy Pelosi used the word ‘bribery’ to describe the allegations against Donald Trump. Democrats finally realized that Quid Pro Quo isn’t always a crime. Quid Pro Quo is a crime only when it can be associated with a real crime like bribery or extortion. With all the lawyers in Congress and all the lawyers at their disposal, it is surprising that Democrats had to resort to focus groups to learn a simple legal concept. Conservative media are also ill-informed when they make a big deal of the Democratic focus groups. Apparently, Washington is so wrapped up in politics, that they have forgotten simple, common sense.
Some politicians vote with political courage. Heidi Heitkamp showed courage with her vote against the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh and was not reelected because of her vote. Too many politicians with courage lose their jobs, and those politicians that remain are more political and less courageous.
Democrats understand, as do Republicans, that impeachment should not be political, but politics play a part. When Republicans accuse Democrats of trying to incite a coup, they are firing up their base, and when Democrats hear the same testimony in public that was collected in private, they are trying to convince voters that their case has merit.
The impeachment inquiry will be carried out in the House, and the impeachment trial will be conducted in the Senate. Throughout this process, brave witnesses will testify, and a real narrative will be revealed, but the politicians who matter will not be listening to the facts. They will be listening to their constituents. It is therefore paramount that you pay attention to the testimonies and the details of the events because it is you who may decide how the impeachment story unfolds.
Steve Bannon testified for the prosecution in the Roger Stone trial. Imagine that. Bannon complained that he was forced to testify before, during, and after his testimony. Even so, Bannon established the link between the Trump team and WikiLeaks and Roger Stone. Chalk one up for the prosecution.
Bannon played the recalcitrant witness when he equivocated over Roger Stone’s role in the 2016 election. Prosecutor Michael Marando asked Bannon about Stone’s relationship with WikiLeaks, and Bannon’s response was evasive. Marando reminded Bannon and the court of Bannon’s Grand Jury testimony in which he said that everyone generally believed that Roger Stone was the key access point to Assange.
The prosecution team used the Grand Jury transcripts because they contained key evidence in their case against Roger Stone. If there is one nugget in those transcripts, there must be more, and they would most likely be relevant to current or past House inquiries. But AG Bill Barr won’t release the transcripts to Congress, even though a clear precedent was established during the Nixon investigation.
The Mueller Probe Grand Jury transcripts are a historical, and some might say, public record of a flagrant attack on a US Presidential election. Congress should have access to those records, and the public deserves to know the important facts. What transcript details are so important that they must be hidden from public and Congressional view? We shouldn’t need to try a court case to learn the hidden secrets in the Mueller probe.
Postscript: Judge Beryl Howell ordered the DOJ to provide Congress with the secret grand Jury testimony related to the Mueller Report, but the DOJ appealed the order. As of this writing, the order is on hold, pending appeal.
A Trump supporter, who was interviewed on a major network said that she had read the transcript [of the Ukraine phone call] and did not find anything wrong. When I read the transcript, I found some red flags, but I felt the red flags needed corroboration. Meanwhile, Donald Trump keeps harping about his perfect phone call, and his supporters seem to agree. They are all trying to equate the phone call to Monika Lewinski’s blue dress, but the comparison doesn’t hold up.
The quid pro quo in the Ukraine is much bigger than a phone call. Rudy Giuliani was trying to investigate the Bidens for at least a year, and Ambassador Gordon Sondland and Special Envoy Kurt Volker were helping Giuliani in his pursuit of Biden dirt. But that’s not the end of the Ukraine tale. There was another quid pro quo. US Javelin missiles were a bargaining chip used to halt Ukraine’s help in the Manafort investigation, according to reports.
The quid pro quo also has unintended consequences. The execution of Trump’s deal apparently required secrecy, because Trump, Giuliani, Rick Perry, and others ran a State Department style operation outside the State Department and created conflicting US policies toward the Ukraine, thus undermining US relations with Ukraine.
The Ukraine deal was more than one phone call. It covered relations with Ukraine spanning at least two years and will probably complicate US policy in Ukraine for years to come. So, why do news pundits still focus on those eight words, “I would like you to do us a favor, though”? They are doing Trump a big favor when they should be covering the whole story.
I am a globalist, not by choice, but out of necessity. In a globalist’s world, denying globalism just doesn’t make sense anymore.
The formation of NAFTA and the EU made apparent the dangers and opportunities of multi-national trade agreements. True, they disrupt local economies, but it seems that nations intertwined in a trade agreement become codependent and are less likely to start a war. Economic disruption can be fixed, so it might be a fair price for peace.
Two challenges face the world: dealing with global warming and colonizing Mars. One is necessary, and the other is inevitable. The success of both tasks will need total cooperation from most nations. A nationalist approach in which each nation is a competing island will not succeed. If we want to prevail, we will need a global approach from many or most nations, especially the key ones who will play a leading role.
Globalism needs a framework of cooperation that necessarily means conceding some of each nation’s sovereignty. The loss of sovereignty should concern everyone, and it is the clarion of the nationalists. But the solution is already in front of us.
After the American Revolution, there were 13 independent colonies. They could have formed 13 small countries, but they decided that uniting was better. They agreed to form a union of states in which each state retained most sovereign rights, but they ceded some rights to the central government. The United Nations and the European Union are variations on the same pattern. Resolution of our global problems can use this same framework.
Advances in technology, transportation, and communication have all made our world smaller and more interconnected and more codependent. The world has become a village of nations, and we must join it if we want to remain influential.
Donald Trump’s betrayal of Kurdish allies reshuffled Middle Eastern politics in ways that harm the US. American influence has diminished because Middle East countries and countries around the world don’t trust us. The US has also lost its footing in the Middle East and has elevated Russia as a key player in the region.
The Middle East is an important region. Under all that sand and desert lies an oasis of oil, about half of the world’s known oil reserves. Middle Eastern countries produce about 28% of the world’s oil, enough oil to foment decades of fighting.
Russia has expanded its foothold and influence in the Middle East as the US retreats. Russian control over Middle Eastern oil would be a huge security risk to the US.
Let’s face facts. In spite of new sources of oil imbedded in US shale rock, the US still imports about half of its oil, and a bunch of it comes from the Middle East. Any disruption in the supply of oil makes people nervous. Consider how the attacks on Saudi refineries reverberated all the way to Washington DC.
We may never achieve true energy independence, but there is a path to more independence if we are ready for the challenge. 69% of oil consumption in the US is for transportation, and the least efficient modes of travel are by plane and by passenger car. Switching to electric cars while expanding the power grid with renewable sources of electricity would go a long way toward reducing our thirst for oil.
When Donald Trump traded away the Kurds and threw the Middle East into crisis, he unwittingly added another reason for switching to solar and wind, besides global warming. What hoax will he use to explain away renewables this time?
Barack Obama said that Donald Trump is uniquely unqualified for office, but what exactly did he mean?
Could it be Trump’s propensity to be corrupt as exhibited by the activities in Ukraine that are well documented? Trump is accused of extorting the Ukraine President in an attempt to smear Joe Biden. He is also apparently involved in a money laundering scheme perpetrated by two indicted associates of Rudy Giuliani.
Maybe Obama meant Trump’s refined ability to be disloyal as shown by his abandonment of Kurdish fighters in Syria? The Kurds shed more than their share of blood in the fight to defeat ISIS, but Trump apparently gave Turkish President Recep Erdogan the greenlight to attack our Kurdish allies. The Turkish attack left Kurds fleeing for their lives. Even as Trump received universal condemnation, he found a way to defend his decision.
The common thread that makes Trump uniquely unqualified is his total inability to accept alternate advice. Trump set up a shadow diplomatic channel to Ukraine that bypassed all State Department protocols and also allegedly rejected advice from John Bolton against calling the Ukraine President. Trump did it anyway.
Donald Trump first broached the Syrian troop issue in 2018, but his advisors pushed back, citing the safety of the Kurdish allies, so Trump bided his time. He announced his decision to allow a Turkish assault only after he gave Erdogan the OK. No one was going to stop Trump.
Trump’s notion that he is his own best advisor is probably his most dangerous facet. There is no check on Trump when he is wrong. So far, Trump’s go-it-alone decisions are not working out. I am not looking forward to the next time that Trump decides to ignore someone else’s advice without thinking.
The sordid details surrounding the withholding of military aid to extort an investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden are mostly established and mostly confirmed by Donald Trump’s public statements. As bad as those details seem, they are worse.
The scandal is made worse because the players have conflicting goals. Congress wants the Ukraine government to prevail in the Donbass conflict enough to approve a $390 million aid package. Donald Trump apparently believes that getting dirt on the Bidens and winning the 2020 election is a higher priority, so he extorted the Ukraine government by withholding the aid package.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky just wants to prevail, preferably with Donbass intact, so he promised to investigate the Biden’s at least twice. Rudy Giuliani has investigated in the Ukraine for nearly a year but found no credible evidence, maybe because there is none. I suspect that Ukraine investigators will disappoint Trump once again. Meanwhile Russian despot Vladimir Putin would like a bigger foothold in Ukraine. A win in Donbass would help Putin, and any delay in US aid is welcome.
The events involving the Ukraine remind me of a Keystone Kops movie.
None of the players want the same thing, and the worst conflict is between Congress and Trump. The clash between them weakens our national security and threatens our national goals. It makes one wonder exactly where Trump’s goals lie: with Congress’s goal to preserve Ukraine, with Putin’s goal to advance Russian territory, or just Trump’s personal goal to win the 2020 election.
But things are really worse. The US influence over Ukraine and surrounding countries will suffer for years. And they could be even worse. How many other countries around the world have dealt with Trump’s double-dealing and subsequently lost trust in the US? Likely more than one.