Yep. Strange that there was such a delay. Usually there’s a week delay, but the hearings lasted for two weeks and ended almost a week ago. You would have expected to start seeing some effect about two weeks ago.
I am glad to see that. We’ll have to see if it can hold.
If things keep breaking about Giuliani, maybe that will help to keep things lifted.
Rudy Guiliani. For months now the mere mention of his name has made political pundits immediately smile and/or shake their heads. He’s a punch line.
After making a jackass of himself on TV countless times, while at the same time being implicated in everything, they put him in a box, kept him off TV for a while.
Then he comes back, day one, and says he has “insurance” if the president comes for him. The president’s personal attorney :smack:
And then he claims that his insurance is a big file on the Bidens which he threatens to release if Trump gets any ideas.
WTF???
I’ve never heard that Clinton coerced Lewinsky into performing sex acts, and I don’t think it’s reasonable that a power differential necessarily means coercion occurred. It’s a very common element, and it should be used as a warning sign, but it isn’t the whole of it. Plus, the case against Clinton wasn’t about the sexual acts, it was about him lying about those acts, and I think modern Democrats would be quicker to call out Ken Starr as being in the wrong for asking the questions in the first place, as they came out of what was a witchhunt prosecution trying desperately to dig up anything on a very popular Democrat.
It’s hard to imagine that today, the power imbalance between the most powerful person on earth and an intern is something that would be brushed under the rug by Democratric politicians in the way you suggest – especially politicians whose constituencies are the most concerned with civil rights, prevention of sexual harassment, etc. After all, we are talking about the Democratic Party which, upon taking power in the House, immediately instituted rules prohibiting even consentual relations between members of Congress and their staffs.
For Pelosi and other Democrats to explain how a congressman cannot under any circumstances have a sexual relationship with a member of his staff, but the President can, is the sort of gymnastics that should make no sense to anyone. Even McDonald’s has forced out its CEO over a relationship with a subordinate that doesn’t seem to have any element of coercion to it. I just don’t see that the Democratic electorate would argue that the President should be held to a lesser standard of behavior than the head guy at a fast food chain.
I heard this morning (no cite – on the radio) that House Dems might wrap up the inquiry by next week.
Why?
We’ve just had a decision that (if appeals fail) will compel WH staffers to appear. We have decisions pending that should make Trump’s tax forms available. It seems as if charges of obstruction, money laundering, conspiracy and more may be plausible to make in the next few weeks.
The testimony to date has been damaging but not crippling. Why stop now?
I would have just said “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me”
I feel bad for Adam Schiff. He’s trying to meet so many competing interests and balance it all fairly.
There’s a large number of people in this country who feel this matter should go to election, and the closer we get to that election and the impeachment process drags on, the more strident they become in holding this position. I think it’s a dangerous, unsupported position, but they hold this view nonetheless – and they vote. Dems do not wish to risk alienating this block of voters.
More notably, the longer the impeachment process lasts, the more uncertainty it interjects into the lives of many Democratic senators who happen to be running for president. All will be made to stick around for the trial in the Senate. McConnell has said that trial will run 6 days a week. When will they campaign? How can they plan their campaign events? What if the impeachment trial stretches past Super Tuesday in March, as it very likely could? The Democratic National Convention is on July 13th. Schiff is trying to stay out of these people’s way. If you think Bernie was screaming about “rigged” in 2016, wait till you hear his act for 2020 if the Dems engage in a long, protracted process.
Most pundits agree that the Senate vote is a foregone conclusion to not remove Trump. If Dems also believe this is true, then the worst thing they can do is hamstring their candidates to keep them from winning the 2020 election.
That’s what I believe the reasoning to be, anyway.
ETA: Schiff has also said that bringing the current impeachment proceedings to a swift end does not preclude the committees from continuing their investigations, even as they learn more crimes may have been committed. I think he’s splitting the baby best he can under the circumstances.
Sorry, one more thing:
While we have a great District Court ruling from Judge Jackson on this issue of testifying, it will be appealed, and appealed again to the SCOTUS. There will not be a definitive ruling for many more months. That has always been the goal of Team Trump: Just delay and hope the Russians will help keep him in the White House in 2020. And as we all know, Team Trump includes most Senate Republicans.
Ok, sorry sorry, one more more thing:
I was gaming this out in my head as I stacked wood. There’s one more person the timing of all this benefits. Michael Bloomberg. Are we sure he’s working for the Democrats? Personally, I find him to be of a rather autocratic bent and can’t think of anyone I’d like less to represent Dems after Tulsi Gabbard. Billionaires watch out for billionaires, and as I heard it well put by someone recently, Bloomberg is just Trump with better table manners.
Thanks for your detailed set of answers. I’m with you on deploring this position. What do these people think, that a president should never be impeached, no matter what he does? I find it hard to believe there are people who would actually vote for Trump because they feel that way, but they could just throw up their hands and not vote at all.
Doesn’t this allow a precedent to be set that, as long as your impeachable act is in the last 18 months of your term, you’re in the clear?
But who’ll pay attention to the committees’ findings once the impeachment is over? They’re sure not going to impeach him again. And anything that comes to light after the inquiry will be easy for the GOP to handwave away as more partisan witchuntery.
Will any future president ever be impeachable for anything? I don’t dispute anything you’re saying, but these things should take days, not months. What’s so hard about deciding a subpoena is valid?
Don’t Biden and Buttigieg also benefit, since they’re not bound by the Senate schedule?
House Judiciary Committee will be holding hearings next week on the constitutional basis for impeachment.
Isn’t Gym Jordan on that committee, too?
And how is Doug Collins? I don’t know much about him, is he anything like Devin Nunes?
The first House Dem (that I’m aware of) has come out against impeachment: Washington Examiner - House Democrat backs down from impeachment: ‘I don’t see the value of kicking him out of office’
Have any House Republicans come out in support of it?
ETA: It seems, perhaps, that Lawrence isn’t clear on what her position is:
I suspect she got a LOT of heat for breaking ranks, and has been whipped back into line now.
In theory, the law is the law.
But that theory ignores little realities like that you can write down on a piece of paper a rule like, “You must say ‘Hello’ to everyone you meet.” And if you put that rule in front of 1000 humans, a couple of them will deny that you have to say “Hello” to everyone you meet, and explain to you how the rule on the page leads to that ruling. If you look back through GD, you’ll be able to find some genuine nutballs who will give as plainly bizarre readings as that.
Back during the post-9/11 era, the attorney general interpreted the law so that torture was legal rather than being a crime against humanity. After a couple of years, the Supreme Court ruled that this interpretation was stupid and wrong. But, until that point, for a few years, torture was legal. And the basis of illegality, after the Supreme Court decision, was that the attorney general interpreted the SC decision as nullifying his interpretation.
Today, the Federal laws are based on the interpretation of the law, as given by the US Attorney General Bill Barr.
Bill Barr can interpret the law just as widely as we could ever imagine. He could interpret it to mean that the sky is purple, not blue, and if the SC goes against him he could agree with them but then offer a new interpretation saying that the sky is chartreuse and this will have to be fought all of the way to the Supreme Court again because it’s a different argument from before and the judicial branch has to give deference to the Executive and presume faithful intent; or, he could simply interpret their ruling as an agreement with his interpretation, despite the plain text saying otherwise. All of the FBI and attorney generals, ultimately, obey the US Attorney General and follow his instruction not the Supreme Court.
In theory, there are protections against this sort of silly and horrifying sort of activity. The Senate approves the Attorney General, they can impeach him, and the President can fire him.
But there’s zero ambiguity about the matter that torture is a national and global crime, onto which the US is a signatory. And yet, we only ever debated whether it was moral and everyone - including here on the board - largely ignored the fact that the government had simply interpreted the law away and that there was never anything like a penalty for that nor did we do anything to prevent that sort of thing from happening again.
For every subpoena, the executive branch simply has to switch to a new argument and force it to go through the entire depth of the court system to get slapped down.
If they run out of creativity, they can simply interpret the SC ruling in their favor.
Well, it is embarrassing to walk back statements that way. But to her credit, she did not pull a Mulvaney and start off by trying to set the record straight and in so doing provide additional evidence of a crime.
Because Dems aren’t interested in doing a *thorough *job in their impeachment hearing. They are only interested in saying that they had them. There, we’ve done our jobs, Trump will never be thrown out of office in the Senate trial anyway, obstruction charges laid out by Mueller are just oh so confusing that the public will never be able to understand them, we just want to get this shit over with as soon as possible so we can get back to the election, and blah fucking blah. I understand the politics behind it, but as for me I see this as mostly a gutless and feckless shirking of their duty to uphold the US constitution.
Censure, while not meaningless, will be meaningless to trump. How does public shaming, which is essentially what censure is, affect someone with no sense of shame? He placed that perfect call the very day after Mueller testified. If the House doesn’t vote to impeach, what will he do the day after that? If the Senate doesn’t vote to convict and remove, what will he do the day after that?
So how do you view the Republicans in light of their actions during this?
At this point, I suspect President Trump will declare himself exonerated in just about any plausible scenario: either the House doesn’t vote to impeach or the Senate votes for acquittal.