That reminds me of something I wrote in 2018 and came back to last spring.
In August 2018, I'd run into a lawyer friend of mine who asked me whether I — a former constitutional law professor — was all excited about the "constitutional crisis."
What "constitutional crisis"? It seems to me the Constitution is in place, working as usual. There are some legal issues in play, but what's constitutional other than that some of the various actors in the drama have positions defined in the Constitution and obtained by normal constitutional procedures? It was assumed that I would excitedly spring into action because of this assumed "constitutional crisis," but my response was that I felt distanced from all the ugly divisions, though I thought some good might ultimately come from the crumbling of the 2 political parties. They were "getting what they deserve," I said darkly, adding, "We all are." That brought the conversation in for a landing, and as I walked on, I thought, What constitutional crisis? It isn't a constitutional crisis. It's emotional politics, a national nervous breakdown.Last May, I quoted that and said "The phrase 'the constitutional crisis' must have been what everyone was talking about — what exactly was it back then? And these days we're hearing 'constitutional crisis' and what exactly is it now?" Yeah, what was it then? It was before the Ukraine phone call took place.
In the comments on that May post, David Begley started the thread with:
The Dems now claim we are in a constitutional crisis because they know that the Fake News will eat it up. Controversy generates readers and viewers. It also supports the “Trump is chaos” narrative.And I said: "Too much wolf-crying. And who wants to believe they're chaos everywhere? That's not how the human mind works."
That can serve as my reaction to yesterday's hearing with the law professors, and it's why 3 other lawprofs urging panic, anguish, and quick, dramatic action were outweighed by Jonathan Turley's telling everyone to calm down:
I get it. You are mad. The President is mad. My Democratic friends are mad. My Republicanfriends are mad. My wife is mad. My kids are mad. Even my dog is mad . . . and Luna is a golden doodle and they are never mad. We are all mad and where has it taken us? Will a slipshod impeachment make uslessmad or will it only give an invitation for the madnessto follow in every future administration?I like the way he brought in a golden doodle to calm us down.
That is why this is wrong. It is not wrong because President Trump is right. His call was anything but “perfect” and his reference to the Bidens was highly inappropriate.
It is not wrong because the House has no legitimate reason to investigate the Ukrainian controversy. The use of military aid for a quid pro quo to investigate one’s political opponent, if proven, can be an impeachable offense.
It is not wrong because we are in an election year....
No, it is wrong because this is not how an American president should be impeached. For two years, member sof this Committee have declared that criminal and impeachable acts were established for everything from treason to conspiracy to obstruction. However, no action was taken to impeach. Suddenly, just a few weeks ago, the House announced it would begin an impeachment inquiry and push for a final vote in just a matter of weeks....
Here, maybe this will help:
Anyway, what I like about that Instapundit commenter quote — "It’s always a constitutional crisis when liberals don’t get what they want" — is that it seems to me that the real impeachable offense has always been that Donald Trump got himself elected.
Posts
117 comments:
This is why I read Althouse.
It's a catchphrase, meme, or whatever to be used by democrats and the MSM. It never goes into any detail or specifics. Trump isn't rounding people up, dismissing Congress, or declaring marshal law.
The real constitutional crisis is from the left through the elimination of: 1) free speech, 2) right to bear arms, and 3) elimination of the electoral college. There is now a pursuit of the elimination of the constitution.
Annie C?
what ever happened to your cool fish logo? You should get that Back!
Otherwise, people think that you're some OTHER Annie C
(unless you ARE some Other Annie C, then Never mind L)
repost
The AP (and Drudge) have a headline that says
Democrats say they're all in
I thought; let's read this BS, and see what was REALLY said. After slogging through, i found:
At the Democrats’ private morning meeting, support for the impeachment effort was vigorous, though voting to remove Trump could come hard for some lawmakers in regions where the president has substantial backing.
so, either 'vigorous' now means: "All In", or; this sentence Actually shows that it could be 'hard' for Democrats to be "All In"
The Very Closest I could find in the article, that could POSSIBLY be construed as implying that the Democrats are "All In", was this:
The Democratic lawmakers also delivered a standing ovation to Rep. Adam Schiff...
overwhelmingly indicating they want to continue to press the inquiry
So, the Demo's are "ALL In" for Not stopping THIS EXACT INSTANT, they want to continue the inquiry; presumably in the desperate hope that a miracle will occur?
This doesn't even imply that they are all in for having a vote, let alone all in ON the vote.
NOT what came to MY mind, when i read the AP's headline, that they were ALL IN
gilbar said...
Annie C?
what ever happened to your cool fish logo? You should get that Back!
Otherwise, people think that you're some OTHER Annie C
(unless you ARE some Other Annie C, then Never mind L)
12/5/19, 4:49 AM
I'll see if I can find it again!
The "constitutional crisis" for Democrats and other leftists is that it is in their way as they strive to re-make America into something it has never been and was never intended to be.
A constitutional crisis sounds so much less dire than an existential threat. I can remember plenty of constitutional crises but, in politics, existential threats are a fairly recent phenomenon....Smoking Gauloise cigarettes is an existential threat to the constitution, and I'm glad that this habit never caught on in America.
A: Zelensky brought up Burisma first, and by implication the BIdens. Think how it must have stuck in the craw of Ukraine to have this petty tin horn coming into their country demanding tribute in the name of the United States be paid to his family.
B: The job the press has done pushing their propaganda has been pretty thorough. You have to keep reminding yourself of the facts, which is not easy, because if you don’t bookmark them right away, if they are pro Trump, they get quickly buried by Google.
Yeah. I loved that the dog is named "Luna". Was that a coded message that the Democrats are lunatics? Also, isn't it unusual to bring up a dog in an impeachment hearing? Is that a coded insult to Islam?
If I cared about Twitter, which I don't, I could get memes started in five minutes, and by the end of the day Turley would either be under investigation, fired, or apologizing. Turley would have created his own constitutional crisis by insulting the Prophet (PBUH), threatening Karlan (an obvious lunatic), mocking people with mental disabilities (lunatics), exposing his innocent pooch to death threats, using his dog to threaten Ilhan Omar, calling the Democrats dogs, praising the dogs that were used to hunt runaway slaves, insulting cats and Frenchmen, oppressing dogs of color, and being a racist because the damn dog is golden and not chocolate (and,hey,doesn't Trump like gold plumbing? It's more CODE!).
Althouse, the problem runs deeper. Certain parts of of the American public are acting crazy and may be crazy. And that is intended as an insult--not code.
If anything can be deemed a “constitutional crisis” it’s the Democrats in the House trying to make it an impeachable offense to seek redress in the courts.
Uslessmad vs Madnessto? Marvel Comic or pro wrestling?
I lost interest in this when I read the transcript of the call. I haven't followed it much, but I don't think anyone (except lunatics and liars) has made much of a dent in what was the sort of call I would hope Trump would have with Zelensky.
No Borders.
No Wall.
No America st all.
These are now the core principles of your Democratic Party.
Ann has a great memory as I didn’t recall her post (a good one) and certainly not my comment.
#FakeOutrage is trending on Twitter because the Left thought FLOTUS was wrong to defend her son. You see, it wasn’t really an attack on her son and her husband puts kids in cages.
Normal people can now see how crazy the Left is and that’s a good thing.
I go my my S.O. who hates Trump. She says that their where three lunatics and one reasonable person in that hearing yesterday.
I started reading Turley's blog about 8-9 years ago when Althouse was bad mouthing him. I went over and found the calm, intellectually honest, humorous man we all saw on TV yesterday. He is the real deal.
"You see, it wasn’t really an attack on her son and her husband puts kids in cages.”
I don’t read the replies on Twitter because so many of them are obviously fake outrage, like the bit about Trump putting kids in cages. If they were really outraged, it would penetrate when you demonstrated to them that it was Obama. This is what Howard was talking about when he said that the details don’t matter it’s the theater that’s important. It’s how they think. When it comes to seizing power, maybe, but when it comes to governing, the details matter a whole lot.
Skylark--you need to edit that 5:25 post. Am I correct in thinking that your Significant Other, who hates Trump, says that there were three lunatics and one reasonable person at the hearing yesterday?
Don't text and drive, my friend.
Trump's existence is a Democratic Existential Crisis.
People that buy this shit need professional help.
Meanwhile the New York Times is reduced to a DNC newsletter and no story regarding the outrageous spying on the press and the ranking member of Schiff’s committee, Nunes, never mind Trump’s personal lawyer, who has a right to chase down leads.
If it weren’t for the press, the Republicans would be the permanent ruling party or the Democrats would be forced to come back to where they were in the ‘60s. America loving defenders of labor.
Has there ever been a clearer violation of the emoluments clause than what Biden was doing in Ukraine? Or Hillary with Putin, for that matter. It’s all fake outrage.
Imagine Kaplan and/or Feldman on SCOTUS.
I just went back and re-read the Turley posts about bullshit. The second one was Althouse at her best. Spectacular! I had forgotten all about that.
Funny that Justice Roberts made his whole argument moot.
Thanks ndspinelli.
https://twitter.com/ChanelRion/status/1202489784788238339
And Yovanovitch lied under oath.
That's not how the human mind works
You’ve never lived with a woman.
Oh, also gilbar, I found that shot from fishing Lake Tawakoni.
It isn't a crisis until the democratics and their GoPe allies succeed.
Right now it is just a bunch of dishonest pieces of shit bloviating. They will not follow through.
When Trump gets re-elected though or they actually carry off their coup.
That is when the magic happens.
I guess that's like when a doctor is at a party and someone starts describing symptoms and wants an opinion. A Con Law professor can't just take a walk, she's expected to diagnose and prescribe at the behest of anyone she meets on the way.
I think there's actually only ever been one true Constitutional Crisis in this country. The Con Law Professor might disagree. Except she's retired and probably very happily doesn't feel she has to think about any of this stuff anymore if she doesn't want to!
Trump not only got himself elected, he's had the audacity to be a very successful and effective president.
How dare he!
Althouse said, "That's not how the human mind works "
It's not how YOUR mind works. It's not how my mind works. It's not how ninety percent of your commenters minds work. Because we can't suspend reason and find devious intent in every human act. Progressives must find fault. Otherwise their lives are empty and without purpose. They cannot sit still in the moment and just enjoy another sunrise.
I like that new word construction in the Turley quote, “uslessmad”.
"What 'constitutional crisis?' It seems to me the Constitution is in place, working as usual."
They call disagreements a crisis to evoke a sense of panic, of imbalance. They really want a change from the Framers' system of limited, divided government to one of unlimited government. And THAT should frighten everyone. We have too many examples of what that means.
"Let us face reality. The framers [of the Constitution] have simply been too shrewd for us. They have outwitted us. They designed separate institutions that cannot be unified [that's the left's scary goal] by mechanical linkages frail bridges (or) tinkering. If we are to turn the founders upside down we must directly confront the Constitutional structure they erected."
--- James MacGregor Burns
thank you Annie C!
"I started reading Turley's blog about 8-9 years ago when Althouse was bad mouthing him."
I'll give you one chance to substantiate that statement. You need only click on the Turley tag to find all my posts about him.
I criticized an op-ed he wrote about expanding the Supreme Court to 19 Justices, and he attacked me and I defended myself, etc. That's some good reading from 2012 (at least 3 posts, easily found by clicking the Turley tag).
What the hell does being king or titles of nobility have to do with this anyway? Jeez.
More projection from the Meritocracy, I suppose.
Glenn Reynolds wants to make it something like 150 “Justices.”
I think we have only two choices to avert the communist dystopia that the left has planned for us. Royalty or Islam. Islam seems the most practical, and I am not 100% joking.
Thanks for reminding me of that old 19 Justices squabble. Turley made a personal attack on me for making a personal attack on him, which I never did. I just said his proposed Court-packing plan was an expression of opposition to judicial rulings.
This is why I read Althouse.
James Earl Jones Voice: This is Althouse.
Democrat strategy for everything:
Step 1: Call something a Constitutional Crisis.
Step 2: Never let a good Constitutional Crisis go to waste.
What I took away from yesterdays theater production. The three Dem plants want to impeach President Trump, NOW, because he will get re-elected. How? Because the people are stupid and can't be trusted.
Turley agrees, at this point there is enough to investigate. POTUS seeking judicial review, is his constitutional protection, and not obstruction. If Democrats believed POTUS violated his oath of office, they could have have brought to the courts, the refusal of POTUS to allow his staff to be questioned and released the documents. Judicial review would be close to being resolved. Facts would be known. Decisions would be made on known facts, not feelings and inference.
Democrats are never asked to defend their compressed timeline.
Truth? This has never been about removing a dangerous President by impeachment, but rather an attempt to dirty up a political opponent, in an effort to defeat him in less than a year. It is an actual act of abuse of office. Not the made up theater we are being subjected to now.
What you have is a fundamental divergence of interests between the largest and most powerful segments of your population. These are real interests, not just emotional matters, issues of money and policy and power over many spheres.
You are already diverged into two principal tribes that are conscious of their identity, though both are still struggling for a name. It covers everything, it certainly isnt just about parties nor is it just about ethnicity. Both are already acting like collective units. One lot, for instance, is automatically trying to block entry of members of the other lot into professions or industries which its own members dominate. Or it is trying to destroy industries dominated by the other.
This is btw just like the strife caused by tribal jealousies in the third world. It is just like the Sinhalese preventing Tamils from going to law school, etc., simply because they arent Sinhalese.
Everything else is just symptomatic, a consequence of the fundamental, like a shaking building is the consequence of a fault in the crust.
James Earl Jones Voice: This is Althouse.
Howard Cosell Voice: This is Althouse.
Shorter Turley: It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
If we are having a great constitutional crisis, why have news of this "inquiry" quite disappeared from the front pages of the Albuquerque Morning Democrat"?
When it comes down to tribal identity and tribal interests, everything else is froth, bunting, facades, paint, transient decoration.
Constitutions are froth. The law is froth. Both can change to suit the whims of the dominant tribe and its power structure, or just the conditions of the moment during a storm. Very much so during an inter-tribal conflict where the question of preponderance of power is in serious dispute.
Kevin said...
This is why I read Althouse.
James Earl Jones Voice: This is Althouse.
I will forever hear that in my head when I click on Althouse.
Stupid question: How do I find a tag that's not at the bottom of a current post? For example, yesterday I wanted to look up a post you'd written about a Maureen Dowd column. Is that possible?
Truth? This has never been about removing a dangerous President by impeachment, but rather an attempt to dirty up a political opponent, in an effort to defeat him in less than a year. It is an actual act of abuse of office.
Can we ALL AGREE, that it would be an Impeachable Offense for President Trump to be doing what Schifty Schift is doing?
Glenn Reynolds' suggestion made last year is that that the Supreme Court be increased to a total of 59 justices, serving for life as now, keeping the original 9 which would still appointed by the President, while adding 50 more Supreme Court justices who would be appointed (1 each as his or her seat becomes available) by the governors of the several states.
I've decided I like the idea. Such a system would forestall any President — along with any political party drifting too far away from what the people of the American states truly desire overall — from unduly dominating the court. Then let the Democrats, or anyone or any party, try to pack the court beyond that point!
I wanted to look up a post you'd written about a Maureen Dowd column. Is that possible?
There is a search box at the very top--left--of the home page--next to the Blogger "B." Search "MoDo."
Thanks Darrell.
Have some fun with your CNN and MSNBC watching never-Trump friends and neighbors.
Whenever they drop the phrase "increasingly lawless" ask them which laws Trump broke. Ask them to be specific, and cite the Code, Chapter, and Sub-chapters of the Federal Statutes that Trump has violated. When they say they don't know, specifically, tell them they should go home and find out and return with a comprehensive list for you.
Whenever they drop the phrase "existential threat" ask them, specifically, what threat does Trump pose to the very existence of the United States. He was elected, he may be re-elected, and he will leave office once his term is up, leaving behind a very-existing United States. He hasn't declared war on anyone, and no one has declared war on us, and he isn't threatening a civil war. He is erecting a fence at the southern border to keep the United States from being overrun with foreigners.
And now we have a "constitutional crisis" thanks to Trump. So I will ask, which parts of the constitution are being threatened by Trump.
It isn't a constitutional crisis. It's emotional politics, a national nervous breakdown.
Nope. Only the children. Keep me out of it.
Whenever they drop the phrase "increasingly lawless" ask them which laws Trump broke. Ask them to be specific, and cite the Code, Chapter, and Sub-chapters of the Federal Statutes that Trump has violated. When they say they don't know, specifically, tell them they should go home and find out and return with a comprehensive list for you.
They should be able to quote verse and chapter because the news should have told them by now.
Everything else is just symptomatic, a consequence of the fundamental, like a shaking building is the consequence of a fault in the crust.
We’ve been here before. When in the Course of Human Events......
"what I like about that Instapundit commenter quote — "It’s always a constitutional crisis when liberals don’t get what they want" — is that it seems to me that the real impeachable offense has always been that Donald Trump got himself elected."
And still you want to "see what happens" before deciding whom to vote for?
Because you do realize, don't you, that as long as the moderate women of America let the Dems get away with it, and appear to be manipulable into voting for the pro-abortion party regardless, the Dems will continue along these lines?
The question is, does your support for abortion override the Dem outrages about which you are becoming every so slightly outraged? If so, end of story -- and all further fisking becomes pointless entertainment.
Nancy Pelosi just quoted the Declaration.
For a minute I was worried she was going to declare herself Queen of the country of California.
Alas, no.
indeed, I asked two kibitzers, if trump is a dictator, what is he making us do, they were dumbfounded, they mentioned the bar on investment in cuba, (this was right around the time of the Turkish invasion) so they told me i'd come to rue the return of Islamic state, of course they aren't going to bring up London bridge,
The crisis that lead to writing a Constitution that was binding on all States was the lack in the Articles of a Strong Executive. So the founders gave us a strong executive.
But they guarded the post from being held by both foreign born candidates and from takers of Emoluments/Bribes from foreign Kingdoms. The Progressive One Worlders got a taste of our blood when we slipped up and violated both those rules just to show off that having a dark skinned President meant we were not Racists. Those Obama Globalists want the inside Fifth Column job back and only one man is stopping them.
they were verklempt over the paris accord, but I pointed out that china and india were exempt
I noticed Queen Nancy tying in the king joke from yesterday. Was that coordinated before hand or just stupidity? She seemed to choke on her words - she doesn't sound all in, she sounded resigned to the destruction it will cause, and unable to control it.
I became more angry than I thought I'd be. I figured I'd just be resigned to the stupidity, but no, it really pisses me off they are still going forward.
Glenn Reynolds is promoting this song for some reason: it's God awful.
Liberals, and all other Americans, have every right to demand better - even at the constitutional crisis level.
"...it seems to me that the real impeachable offense has always been that Donald Trump got himself elected."
This has been obvious to many of us since Trump's inauguration.
If a dog named Luna ran through the woods and picked up some Lyme-infested arthropod passengers, would they be 'Luna ticks'?
As much as I appreciated Turley, especially as a foil to the three idiots, I was disappointed in the section of his statement quoted above. It felt like he was virtue signalling. Who is he to critique a foreign policy phone call that has been lied about from the beginning? Why not rather expose the mischarcterizations, if he is going to mention it at all? And I don't need his analysis about anger - he's not my therapist. My anger at the Democrats is completely justified.
As Tony Soprano would say, skip the preamble.
The Constitutional Crisis is coming from inside the House!
Andrew- it was so he wouldn't be written off as a Trumpist.
If it weren’t for the press, the Republicans would be the permanent ruling party or the Democrats would be forced to come back to where they were in the ‘60s. America loving defenders of labor.
I agree and would point out that the Democrats are an appendage to the Media, not the other way around as so many say. The Media desires to rule.
constitutional crisis
Socialist Unicorn Tits
It's odd that liberals would be concerned about a 'constitutional crisis' since they don't like the constitution anyway. Obama said it was just a bunch of 'negative rights.' Warren wants to get rid of the electoral college. Dems used to love the First Amendment and hate the Second. Now they hate both.
Is there anything in the U.S. Constitution that liberals like? Seriously. The only Constitutional right they defend to the hilt is abortion. Which isn't actually in the Constitution.
We are facing a Constitutional crisis, or at least issue, and it isn’t what the Dems are claiming, but rather what they are doing, and that is mainstreaming the use of impeachment for purely political purposes. It used to be that impeachment was restricted to actual flagrant lawbreaking on the part of the President. But they have changed the standard to be mere political expediency. As Turkey pointed out yesterday, if the Dems can’t resist impeaching Trump, this will become somewhat routine, and completely lose its opprobrium.
But what also should not be ignored is that mainstreaming impeachment essentially significantly shifts the balance of power between the Executive and Legislative branches. To see some of what is going on, note that one of the things that drove the impeachment inquiry is that Trump asserted Executive Privilege in order to prevent the House Democrats from acquiring the mountain of information and evidence that the FBI had passed to the Mueller investigation, and then was augmented by them, with millions of pages of documents, hundreds of interviews, etc. The Dems wanted this desperately, because much of it was political dirt on their opponents, collected at taxpayer expense, much of it illegally using tools created to protect National Security (esp FISA Titles I and VII).
This goes back to the Nixon impeachment. He asserted Executive Privilege to protect himself from prosecution, etc. the Supreme Court essentially said that an impeachment investigation overrides Executive Privilege. I think that it was very likely Lawfare (hired by Palsi, Schifty, and Wadler) that put this together - that merely declaring impeachment gets the House all sorts of benefits, including overruling Executive Privilege, as well as piercing grand jury secrecy. And the definition of High Crimes And Misdemeanors has always been a bit vague, which leaves Irtysh up to the House to decide. Just do a bit of judge shopping (which they did), and off to the races. For the first time in over 230 years, the House now has the weaponry to oversee and investigate the day to day operation of the Presidency. Which puts the President essentially under Congress, and no longer an equal branch of government.
That is the Constitutional crisis.
My personal constitutional crisis is over, as we have found a source for decent coffee in Bilbao. Even instant.
Something that has also been visible during the last year is the Democrat’s attack on a strong Unitary Executive theory. The aspect that we saw on display with Schifty’s “hearing” was providing legitimacy of the permanent bureaucracy separate from the President. Bureaucrats were essentially given equal, if not superior, standing, to the President in regards to conducting foreign policy. Essentially, part of the justification for impeachment is that those bureaucrats didn’t like the President’s foreign policy as it relates to the Ukraine. They put their interpretation above his, because they were the supposed experts (though the “whistleblower” appears to be only 33).
For most of us here, this is really dangerous Constitutional territory. According to the Declaration of Independence, governance of the people can only be legitimate if based on the consent of the governed. Yet, according to the rules in place at the time (our Constitution) we indicated our consent through the election of Trump as President. We did not elect the bureaucracy, and therefore did not consent to their rule. And, as a result, their rule cannot be legitimate, when it isn’t subject to the President’s will. Instead, it is tyrannical.
Bruce Hayden- that is excellent analysis. Everyone should read it. Send it to Bongino
Cute dog, I’ve no idea why the relevance.
The King thing was coordinated. There was a set up question by a Representative that got the Barron quip, it was planned.
Democrats have turned up the resistance to 10, and Trump counter attacks. It’s actually healthy the conflict, it’s exposing to sunlight a lot of hidden issues through abuses of the process by the Democrats.
Ann Althouse said...
I just said his proposed Court-packing plan was an expression of opposition to judicial rulings.
12/5/19, 6:43 AM
Depends. Is the court one is attempting to pack actually making [grounded in actual law] judicial rulings or are the rulings all based on feelz?
One person's "packing" is another person's defense of the law...
It's never good when something like this happens and you have to wonder if it's your friends.
But, that's life with cops.
They ain't no saints....
True constitutional crises are rare. But the media, politicians and people like to use buzz words and to feel like they invented them. The Atlantic tried that with Trump "building an autocracy," but it didn't catch on.
It is an embarrassing time to be a lawyer and an American!
Another aspect of the show trial from Monday was the left wing “Law Professors” claiming that the Mueller Report provided additional grounds for impeachment. The very obvious problem there is that the allegations of Obstruction of Justice in the Mueller Report were completely dependent on the Lawfare rewrite of the one Obstruction that took parts of the statute out of context, throwing them together, to effectively convert the specific intent Mens Rea into a general intent requirement. This allowed, for instance, the firing of Comey to have supposedly been Obstruction, because Trump intended to fire him, in the midst of a criminal investigation, despite the firing have been for cause, for having lied to him, and it turns out that Trump couldn’t have had the specific intent to interfere wit a criminal investigation, because one of Comey’s lies to Trump had been that there wasn’t a criminal investigation, when there had been.
Notably this reinterpretation of that Obstruction statute has never been tested in court, partially because the prosecutors knew it would never fly, it violated centuries old rules of statutory construction, and partially because it violated the official DOJ OLC statutory interpretation of that statute. The problem here is that Trump and his attorneys would have had no rational reason to believe that he was violating that Obstruction statute in the cases that were cited in the Mueller Report. For over 230 years, one of the core Article II Executive Powers has bee the firing of principal officers, like Comey. They would have you believe that the DOJ is now exempt from that power.
This is what those three “law professors” were advocating when declaring that the Mueller Report provided additional grounds for impeachment.
We did not elect the bureaucracy, and therefore did not consent to their rule. And, as a result, their rule cannot be legitimate, when it isn’t subject to the President’s will. Instead, it is tyrannical.
This goes back to Wilson and the origins of "Progressivism." Rule by experts was his concept and it took Harding and Coolidge to slap it down after the war. Of course FDR revived it and the War allowed it to continue. The Cold War kept it going and we are now dealing with the consequences of the end of the Cold War.
I think that it was very likely Lawfare (hired by Palsi, Schifty, and Wadler) that put this together - that merely declaring impeachment gets the House all sorts of benefits, including overruling Executive Privilege, as well as piercing grand jury secrecy.
But, and this is a big BUT, they have to vote the impeachment resolution in the House and they have not done so.
"Too much wolf-crying. And who wants to believe they're chaos everywhere? That's not how the human mind works."
The "human mind" has nothing to do with this. Progs will believe whatever serves their cause.
Some human minds, in any case, are sensitive to the chaos meme. Once upon a time, after all, some Hill voters were led to think Trump meant chaos. The chaos meme worked then, and Dems have good reason to think it may still work with timid women.
And I wonder what the meaning of "too much" is here. Too much to make watching enjoyable? Or too much in that Althouse now finally sees "what happens," writes off the Dems, and makes "plans" for 2020? In other words, the usual esthetic objection, or an actual political judgment?
“But, and this is a big BUT, they have to vote the impeachment resolution in the House and they have not done so.”
My understanding is that the line, when it comes to piercing Executive Privilege is the establishment of a proper and/or legitimate impeachment investigation. Not the actual vote on impeachment, but rather the investigation to determine whether impeachment is justified.
What has been interesting to me, this time around, is that the Dem House leadership has tried to incrementally instigate or establish a impeachment investigation sufficient to pierce Trump's invocation of Executive Privilege. First, they started with the initial inquiry established by fiat by Speaker Palsi in consultation with committee chairs Schifty and Wadler. They actually got a couple of Obama appointed judges to buy onto that. Or then maybe when the entire House (on an almost completely partisan vote) authorized Schifty’s HSCI to run his basement star chamber impeachment investigation. I think that a third leftist judge signed on there. Or then maybe, as happened this week, when Schifty’s HSCI through the “impeachment” over the wall to Wader’s Judiciary Committee, where the “impeachment” investigation should have been in the first place. Except that Wadler isn’t going to have much chance to litigate this given the push by Palsi and her leadership team to wrap most of this by te end of the year.
We are back to "Trump had no right to fire Comey""
wow.
BleachBit-and-Hammers said... [hush][hide comment]
We are back to "Trump had no right to fire Comey""
wow.
12/5/19, 10:48 AM
I guess I never saw the edit of the Constitution that says "serve at the pleasure of the President unless he is a Republican" but then my copy is quite old...
Birkel said...
Nancy Pelosi just quoted the Declaration.
For a minute I was worried she was going to declare herself Queen of the country of California.
If only! The USA would be much better off without California.
And I say that as someone who would be personally inconvienced by it. As I live in Washington State, which would be very likely to go with California (and Oregon) into Kurt Schlichter's world ...
Looks like Pelosi is going for impeachment.
https://news.yahoo.com/pelosi-announces-articles-of-impeachment-trump-144351166.html
I guess she found Turley's thoughts uncompelling. Have we possibly overestimated Nancy's smarts? Or have the Dem Crazies become a Juggernaut?
Whether the Democrats don't have the votes to impeach (and there will be dissenters) or not, they have a crisis on their hands.
I'd love to know what Abigail Spanberger (D, Virginia, representing a pro-Trump district) is thinking right now.
Can Comey be the one that Trump shoots in Times Square?
Can Schiff?
“ Stupid question: How do I find a tag that's not at the bottom of a current post? For example, yesterday I wanted to look up a post you'd written about a Maureen Dowd column. Is that possible?”
Use the search box to find the term in any post, then if it has the tag you can click on it.
Or you can use this code https://althouse.blogspot.com/search/label/insults — replacing “insults with the word I use as a tag. You have to replace spaces with %20
As in https://althouse.blogspot.com/search/label/Trump%20and%20foreign%20policy
I think Nancy has lost her confidence in Nadler who has botched the two hearings his committee has conducted.
Even the Wall Street Journal, which except for Kim Strassel as been fairly hostile to Trump, is off the team.
Enthusiasm over entrepreneurship is now found in every corner of society—even, apparently, within the federal bureaucracy. Witness after witness in last month’s House impeachment inquiry hearings referred to “the interagency,” an off-the-books informal government organization that we now know has enormous power to set and execute American foreign policy.
The first to testify before the House Intelligence Committee, State Department official George Kent, seemed to conceive of the interagency as the definitive source of foreign-policy consensus. That Mr. Trump’s alleged decision to withhold military aid to Ukraine deviated from that consensus was, for Mr. Kent, prima facie evidence that it was misguided.
Next up, Ambassador William Taylor told the committee that it was the “unanimous opinion of every level of interagency discussion” that the aid should be resumed without delay. Fiona Hill, a former National Security Council official, gave the game away by admitting how upset she was that Gordon Sondland, President Trump’s ambassador to the European Union, had established an “alternative” approach to helping Kyiv. “We have a robust interagency process that deals with Ukraine,” she said.
What is the interagency, and why should its views guide the conduct of American diplomatic and national-security professionals? The Constitution grants the president the power to set defense and diplomatic policy. Where did this interagency come from?
Not good for the Deep State and its Democrat/Media allies.
I would have called the paramedics had I encountered an old man who looked like Nadler does at this hearing.
https://twitter.com/DigitalForests/status/1202473717823090693
"I'd love to know what Abigail Spanberger (D, Virginia, representing a pro-Trump district) is thinking right now.”
She’s thinking they will take care of her if she "does the right thing," she will be “made.” It’s Pelosi’s thinking I would love to understand.
AA: "...That brought the conversation in for a landing, and as I walked on, ..."
Pilots know that any landing you can walk away from is a good one.
I have two theories, one is that they really have something, but they can’t make it public until they vote and get it legally, and the other is that they are “thrown.” Once they started down this course, it’s like being thrown through the air, everything you do or don’t do affects the outcome and there is no going back. If they give Trump the victory of backing down, it’s four more years and he controls the courts, gets his people into the intelligence agencies and FBI, Democrat voters are dispirited.
This is high stakes gambling, and it is gambling, nobody can know or control the outcome.
"...you can use this code https://althouse.blogspot.com/search/label/insults — replacing “insults with the word I use as a tag. You have to replace spaces with %20"
Special thanks to Bob Boyd for his "Stupid question" and to Althouse for the answer. I've been meaning for awhile to ask the same question. I just wonder why the answer isn't more obvious Does Blogger have a Help function for readers (my stupid question, I guess)?
"I have two theories, one is that they really have something, but they can’t make it public until they vote and get it legally"
This makes sense, but I think they'd have initiated a real impeachment inquiry before now if they did.
I also think the gloves are off and there's no way the Republicans let them get away with whatever fast one they pulled to get it in the first place.
Skylark, if 19 Democrats vote against impeachment, it's over. I'd almost bet Pelosi is pulling for this.
Some of the 2018 Dem freshmen are from pro-Trump districts. At least one (Spanberger) was elected because the Republican incumbent took the seat for granted. She knows she is not a sure thing for 2020 if she offends her constituents.
Which brings me back to a question I was asking weeks ago. Why hasn't Nancy called a formal vote to authorize impeachment proceedings? The vote she did eventually call was merely to lay out the "rules" they were going to follow in the proceedings they were already unilaterally pursuing. I believe it's the real reason they haven't issued contempt of congress citations - they know they won't stick. Standing committees can issue subpoenas on the subject matter they oversee. The "House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence" doesn't have oversight here. The Ukraine business would logically be the purview of Foreign Affairs. [does a quick google search] Ah HA, the reason it hasn't gotten anywhere near Foreign Affairs is that Nancy foolishly put Ilhan Omar and Ted Lieu on the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee. The only other democrat I've ever heard of is Cicilline, but I can't remember why. I suspect she also wanted to keep it away from Lee Zeldin and Ken Buck.
I'd love to know what Abigail Spanberger (D, Virginia, representing a pro-Trump district) is thinking right now.
That she has it sewn up because Virginia is now a company town.
Connor Lamb and Joe Cunningham are in a bad way.
Republicans are going to gain seats in the House.
As I live in Washington State, which would be very likely to go with California (and Oregon) into Kurt Schlichter's world ...
Nope. Transform boundary (cali) vs subduction boundary (WA). Arizona Bay would be created and we wouldn't feel a thing up here.
“ The Ukraine business would logically be the purview of Foreign Affairs. [does a quick google search] Ah HA, the reason it hasn't gotten anywhere near Foreign Affairs is that Nancy foolishly put Ilhan Omar and Ted Lieu on the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee.”
Even so, I don’t think that the House has A1S1 oversight authority over the Ukraine call is because it was purely an Executive function. Foreign relations is one of the president’s plenary powers. The closest it comes to Legislative is the slight delay in sending the Ukrainians the aid money. But the standard there is that it had to be disbursed by the end of the (Federal) fiscal year, which it was.
Althouse, you failed to put a Turley tag on the original bullshit post in 2012:
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2012/06/dont-like-supreme-courts-decision.html
Maybe so, Bruce, but my point is narrower: that HPSCI clearly doesn't have subpoena power in this instance, whether A1S1 or A1S2. I keep seeing claims along the lines that "permanent committees have subpoena power", as if committee chairs are somehow entitled to subpoena any citizen, at any time, on any topic. Fuck that.
And I submit (again) that Nancy knows this, and it's one reason they haven't taken the time to follow through. They know that they'll eventually lose in court. That, in addition to the reports that are about to come out.
I am amazed and amused at Althouse’s dog picture in this post. It is a golden doodle with a Trump hairpiece. Brilliant job by Meadehouse.
People have their heads so buried in this nonsense that they missed the best visual joke of the day. Go back and read the transcript of the call, then look at the dog again, and have a laugh.
At the Democrats’ private morning meeting, support for the impeachment effort was vigorous, though voting to remove Trump could come hard for some lawmakers in regions where the president has substantial backing.
Common theme on the news. Admiting each Dem will not follow their particular conscience or convictions, but will do what is more likely to benefit them personally.
Support was vigorous. Non-supporters kept their mouths shut or lied.
They gave a standing ovation to Schiff, but it was nothing compared to the ones Stalin used to get, even in absentia.
The last time we entered The Twilight Fringe, there was great progress.
"The use of military aid for a quid pro quo to investigate one’s political opponent, if proven, can be an impeachable offense." This is just wrong. I'll give an example to illustrate why. Suppose the president hears a report that a presidential rival murdered a prostitute in a foreign nation, and the foreign nation is not investigating for reasons of its own. Note that there is no US crime, no US jurisdiction, and no US law enforcement interest. Is there still a public interest in determining the truth of the matter? Yes, of course. Indeed, so much so that it would be entirely proper for the president to insist upon the foreign nation investigating this report, even threatening to withhold appropriated military aid to force it to do so, and this would be so even if the president's sole motivation was to knee-cap his rival. Would this act be an impeachable abuse of power? Of course not. The issue is whether the investigation being requested is legitimate or not. Here that turns on whether there's a public interest in learning about the Bidens' soft corruption. Your mileage may vary on this but that seems to me, and to a lot of other people, to be a close question. It's certainly not the equivalent of asking a foreign leader to manufacture false evidence about a presidential rival, which would clearly be an abuse of power.
"The use of military aid for a quid pro quo to investigate one’s political opponent, if proven, can be an impeachable offense."
While such behavior if true is distasteful, is it illegal? So far I've heard nobody quote the law that states such behavior is illegal. And we all know that if the roles were reversed, Biden was president and Trump Jr. engaging in corruption in the Ukraine, that the Democrats would be howling that 'nobody is above the law' with the media cheerleading for an investigation.
Post a Comment