skip to main |
skip to sidebar
'Impeachment Takes a Holiday' -- Starring Nancy Pelosi
Frank Miele. Real Clear Politics
Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a “rogue leader” on Thursday, but based on what we saw last week, a more accurate assessment would be that Pelosi is the rogue leader presiding over a runaway Congress.
In her actions and words, Pelosi looked more like a wannabe Third World dictator than the hope of her nation, or even of her party. It was not enough for her to try to cut the president off at the knees with her sham impeachment vote; she also had to insult the Senate leader and try to assert House authority over the constitutionally mandated Senate role in trying any federal impeachment. To top it off, she implicitly dismissed the third branch of government by bypassing the judiciary’s traditional role as the broker between the legislative and executive branches.
That was the week that was, and it should be the final nail in Pelosi’s political coffin.
Dressed appropriately in black, she engineered the third impeachment of a president in United States history on a party-line vote with little evidence and a magical mystery timeline that oscillated between “clear and present danger” and “no big deal.”
Remember, Pelosi has been telling us for months that it was an urgent matter to unseat President Trump before he did permanent damage to the nation. Her designated impeachment czar, fellow Californian Adam Schiff, invented two non-criminal charges to be brought against the president — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress — and rammed them through three committees and the full House. We were told that the nation could not possibly wait for a court to decide on the legality of the president’s assertion of executive privilege. Too long! Too late! Trump would collude with some new foreign power to interfere in our sacred elections — possibly with Latvia now that he has used up Ukraine and Russia! It was like a giant version of Risk, the game of world domination. Pelosi was going to roll the dice until she took all of Trump’s armies off the board — at least the ones in Eastern Europe.
But then something remarkable happened. As soon as Pelosi had Trump where she supposedly wanted him, skewered by impeachment, she reversed course. Within minutes of her victory in delivering a one-party vote, she announced that the House would not transmit the historic articles of impeachment to the Senate for trial anytime soon. The problem? Well, it seems Pelosi found something more urgent than impeachment — Christmas break. (Someone get Chevy Chase on the phone. He can’t pull off Nancy Pelosi, but he will be perfect as bumbling Joe Biden. Isn’t it time for a sequel to “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation”? Maybe “Impeachment Takes a Holiday”?)
Of course, we shouldn’t have been surprised by the delay. Turns out that during the urgent mission to save the nation from the dire threat of Trump’s wicked sense of humor, there had also been time for a weeklong Thanksgiving break as well. Maybe Nancy thought the Donald would retreat to Mar-a-Lago with his tail between his legs and never come back. She must have been very disappointed. But maybe she thinks Trump didn’t really return at all. Didn’t she call the president an imposter? Or is that just another debunked conspiracy theory?
Doesn’t matter. If anything, Pelosi’s stated reason for refusing to transmit the articles of impeachment to the Senate on a timely basis was even more ludicrous than my “National Lampoon” scenario. The bottom line is that in trying to circumvent the constitutional role of the Senate and trying to delegitimize its leader, she has entered territory that is radical even for a “rogue” (her word again) political party.
“We are not sending it ... because it is difficult to determine who the managers would be until we see the arena in which we will be participating,” Pelosi said on the night when the articles were passed on a strictly partisan vote. Of course, she knew the arena because it is spelled out in the Constitution. (It’s the Senate, stupid!) And though Pelosi had a moment of clarity when she acknowledged, “It is up to the Senate to say what their rules will be,” she did everything in her power to shame, cajole and extort McConnell into running the trial according to the House’s rules — namely, that Trump gets no due process and the coddled whistleblower shall not be named.
Unbelievably, Pelosi told the truth the following morning when she admitted the entirely partisan reason why she is not transmitting the impeachment to the Senate: “Just to get this off the table right away, if we impeach the president immediately, everybody moves on to the next thing.”
D’oh! You already did impeach the president, Madam Speaker. And since when did “moving on to the next thing” become a problem? Are you admitting that the Democratic House is really just an obstructionist tool of “the Resistance”?
Trump’s subsequent summation on Twitter was concise and on point.
"So after the Democrats gave me no Due Process in the House, no lawyers, no witnesses, no nothing, they now want to tell the Senate how to run their trial. Actually, they have zero proof of anything, they will never even show up. They want out. I want an immediate trial!"
Pelosi made one other mistake in her political gambit. In her zeal to attack McConnell, she apparently forgot the Constitution mandates that the Senate trial of a president shall be presided over by the chief justice of the Supreme Court. So she’s also thumbing her nose at John Roberts by suggesting he’s unable or unwilling to run a fair trial. Based on what?
This is no surprise. There is no such thing as “obstruction of Congress” as a high crime — or even a low crime. Obstructing Congress is what all presidents do when they think Congress is wrong. It’s called the balance of power. The arbiter of that never-ending battle between the executive and legislative branches is the judiciary. Yet, as I mentioned at the outset, the House Democrats refused to seek court guidance on how to proceed when President Trump invoked executive privilege to prevent the delivery of documents and testimony to the Congress. That’s because the Supreme Court has long upheld that the executive branch does not automatically have to submit to congressional subpoenas or demands.
If Pelosi took Trump to court, she would very likely lose, and then be left with nothing but her stupid “abuse of power” complaint against Trump when clearly it is Pelosi and the House Democrats who have abused their power time and again.
Verdict: Trump wins again.
Frank Miele, the retired editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell Mont., is a columnist for RealClearPolitics. His books — including “The Media Matrix: What If Everything You Know Is Fake?” — are available from his Amazon author page. Visit him at HeartlandDiaryUSA.com to read his daily commentary or follow him on Facebook @HeartlandDiaryUSA or on Twitter @HeartlandDiary.
Dems have no choice but to march forward on Trump impeachment – although it will destroy them
Tucker Carlson: Fox News
It is here. After months of false starts and threats and endless posturing by some of the saddest, most ineffectual people in America, impeachment apparently is imminent. Barring some last-minute plot twist -- and that could happen -- Donald Trump will join Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton as the third American president ever impeached by the House of Representatives.
So Democrats have been promising to do this since before the president was even elected as president, and yet still, it feels kind of weird, surprising -- surreal, even -- that it's finally going to happen. Why?
Because impeachment -- and there's really no disagreement about this -- is a terrible idea for the country.
At this point, there's no question that Democrats can't actually remove the president, and in trying, they will only hurt themselves.
The polls are clear, and yet -- and here's the fascinating point -- they're doing it anyway. Here's Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin explaining why they're doing it:
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md.: The president's continuing course of conduct constitutes a clear and present danger to democracy in America. We cannot allow this misconduct to pass. It would be a sellout of our Constitution, our foreign policy, our national security and our democracy.
See if you can follow the logic chain -- maybe you can spot the missing link. Here's what he's arguing: Leaving a president in office until voters can decide to remove him from office if they want, is "a danger to democracy." It's a "sellout of our Constitution." OK.
So, in case you've forgotten, what is the crime that undergirds this impeachment proceeding? What is the president accused of doing?
Well in case you've forgotten, it's that Donald Trump may have delayed military aid to the government of Ukraine.
Now, keep in mind that the only purpose of aid to the government of Ukraine is to antagonize Russia. Keep in mind also that Russia is a country with more nuclear weapons than any other country on the globe.
But according to Rep. Jamie Raskin, not giving weapons to Ukraine is a clear and present danger to America. It's a "sellout," he says, of our national security to pause in our relentless attacks on Russia, even for a moment.
That's a remarkable assertion. Hard to believe he could defend that in a rational conversation but it doesn't even stand out under the current standards of political rhetoric.
There's a lot of talk like that all of a sudden. The entire impeachment saga, in fact, has become detached from reality.
Here are the most basic facts about it:
Democrats do not have the votes to remove President Trump from office. They never will have the votes to remove the president.
The point of impeachment is to remove a president. They cannot do that.
This process is doomed before it even begins. And by the way, they don't have the votes because voters don't support it.
The irony is that our democracy is working just fine.
Voters support it, in fact, less than they did. After a full month of watching public hearings on impeachment, Democrats have not gained support, they have lost it. In late October, when this began, about half the country backed impeachment. Forty-four percent said they were opposed to impeachment In the most recent polling. Those numbers have inverted.
In other words, the more people learned about impeachment, the less they wanted impeachment. That's not one person's opinion, that is the sum total of the polling. -- The numbers could not be clearer on this question. And yet, even in the face of all that data, elite Democrats still will not admit it. They're literally in denial.
Watch Democratic Party cheerleader and CNN analyst Jeffrey Toobin attack his own company's polling when it doesn't match what he believes must be true.
David Chalian, CNN political director: You see a decline from our last poll in Democratic support from 90 percent down to 77 percent.
Jeffrey Toobin, CNN legal analyst: Can I just say, my twin brother, that I don't believe that poll for one second.
Chalian: What part?
Toobin: The 90 to 77 percent. It's just I don't believe it. It makes no sense that that number would change like that. I mean, you know, life has shown us that polls are sometimes wrong, and David, that poll is wrong just because I said so, OK?
"Why don't you believe?" "Because I don't! Because I look out my window and I see the horizon that means it's flat. You can tell me the Earth is round, but I just don't believe it. Enough with your dumb numbers in your scientific theories. I just don't believe it," says the legal analyst. OK.
What you're watching, obviously, is one man degrade himself. But it's bigger than that. It's the definition of ideological extremism -- and that's the inability to change course, no matter what the evidence tells you.
So, that's the point at which this is no longer politics, of course, we left that a long time ago. What you're looking at is religion. And of course, being the Democratic Party, their religion it's always the exact opposite of what they claim it is.
So, as President Trump noted in a recent letter to Nancy Pelosi: “You are the ones interfering in America's elections. You are the ones subverting American democracy. You are the ones bringing pain and suffering to our republic for your own selfish, personal, political and partisan gain.”
The public, whether they like Trump or not, agrees with that. The polling shows it, but the Democrats can't acknowledge that; they're stuck. So, in 2016, they went all-in on denouncing Trump -- remember this -- before the election and every one of his supporters, you, as beyond-the-pale racist, worthy of being hated. Not reasoned with or talked to, but hated and dismissed -- and physically assaulted in some cases.
But they lost anyway. And when they did lose, they refused to learn. They refused to even think for a moment about why they may have lost and instead moved seamlessly from racism into a conspiracy about Russia so bizarre they could never even fully explain its outlines. "What are you saying?" you would ask? "Russia," they would say. OK.
That collapsed. You watched happened on live television. But what hasn't changed is the rage storm they created with years of propaganda.
They whipped their voters into such a frenzy that the voters can't be pulled back now. They want blood. And so Democrats have no choice but to march forward, despite the fact that it will inevitably destroy them. And they know it will. It's almost poignant.
Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue from "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on Dec. 17, 2019.Tucker Carlson currently serves as the host of FOX News Channel’s (FNC) Tucker Carlson Tonight (weekdays 8PM/ET). He joined the network in 2009 as a contributor.
When our guardians fail us
Victor Davis Hanson, Jewish World Review
One symptom of a society in crisis is the unreliability or even corruption of its own auditors.
After all, when the watchmen have lost moral authority to watch, who can be believed or trusted? Or, as the Roman satirist Juvenal famously put it, "Who will guard the guardians?"
It was recently reported that FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith altered an email to bolster a suspicious FBI effort to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrant authorizing the surveillance of Carter Page, a onetime employee of the Trump campaign.
If true, Clinesmith helped the FBI successfully delude the court into granting what was likely an illegal request to spy on the Trump campaign. Clinesmith was reportedly expelled from special counsel Robert Mueller's legal team for cheering on opposition to the Trump presidency by writing "Viva la resistance!" in a text message discussion.
After FBI Director James Comey was fired, he leaked his own memos of private and confidential conversations with the president. Whether Comey would go to jail hinged on how the FBI would categorize his memos post facto -- as merely "confidential," or as "secret" or "top secret."
Two of the adjudicators were Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, former Comey friends and FBI subordinates. The FBI eventually ruled that the leaking of the memos was not felonious. Page and Strzok, who were involved in an amorous relationship, were later dismissed from Mueller's team for exchanging texts that showed bias and hatred toward Trump, the object of their team's investigation.
We are awaiting the results of investigations being conducted by the Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz and federal prosecutor John Durham. Both are examining whether the nation's top investigators at the FBI, CIA, and DOJ were themselves corrupt.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, recently wrapped up an impeachment inquiry to discover whether President Trump committed impeachable offenses.
Schiff himself has lied about the prior relationship between the so-called whistleblower and his own staff. He read into the congressional record his version of a transcript of a presidential conversation that was so inaccurate and misleading that Schiff was forced to relabel it a "parody."
In surreal fashion, Schiff stated that he did not know the whistleblower's identity. Then, during the hearings, he claimed that he wanted to protect whistleblower's anonymity by halting all questions about direct communications with the whistleblower -- whose identity Schiff supposedly did not know.
The whistleblower, we were initially told, was a civic-minded, nonpartisan civil servant who risked his or her career to report alleged presidential misconduct. Although the whistleblower's identity has not been confirmed, what has been reported in the press suggests the very opposite of such a glowing nonpartisan portrait.
The whistleblower went first to the House Intelligence Committee staff for guidance on how to lodge a complaint. The whistleblower's lawyer was a known anti-Trump activist who had previously boasted about the effort to remove Trump, which he compared to a coup.
The whistleblower relied on hearsay and had no firsthand knowledge of presidential wrongdoing. Critics allege that the whistleblower will not come forward to testify, as promised by Schiff, because under cross-examination the whistleblower would have to detail a collaborative association with anti-Trump partisans and Schiff's staff.
It is easy for our legal and ethical custodians to hound unpopular politicians whom the media despises, and who incur strident political opposition. Investigators and inquisitors know that any dirt they can dig up, even if questionably obtained and of dubious truth, will earn them praise.
In the case of Trump, our watchmen embraced any means necessary to reach the supposedly noble and popular ends of weakening or removing him.
But the reason we have auditors in the first place is for precisely the opposite purpose: to examine evidence fairly even if the final conclusions are likely to exonerate someone deemed boorish and crude by most of federal officialdom.
In other words, our investigatory agencies should function like the First Amendment, which primarily serves not to protect free speech that we all admire but to protect unpopular speech that most prefer not to hear.
The moral test of our Justice Department, the congressional opposition and the FBI was to give even an often unpopular president some semblance of a fair audit.
All three so far have flopped miserably.
Their failures remind us why nearly 2,000 years ago Juvenal believed that society could not outsource to supposedly exalted moral officials the final authority to judge others.
Instead, we must count only on ourselves.
Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, a professor of classics emeritus at California State University at Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services.
