Tag Archives: ethics

“I Have Seen Dictatorships”

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Ex-US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, says so. And she insisted, in her op-ed, that she and her colleagues had no obligations to her bosses:

When civil servants in the current administration saw senior officials taking actions they considered deeply wrong in regard to the nation of Ukraine, they refused to take part.

They, and she, also refused to resign. All of them simply presumed to disobedience and to a veto authority over their bosses’ instructions.

She went on:

We need to stand up for our values, defend our institutions, participate in civil society and support a free press.

Indeed. But in order for Yovanovitch and her fellows to do so, they need to consider the Progressive-Democrat mirror into which they stare, and to think about the Progressive-Democratic Party’s communications arm, our NLMSM masquerading itself as an independent press, for which Yovanovitch is writing her… apologia pro vita sua.

And this cri de coeur:

I have seen dictatorships around the world….

I suppose that, for a woman so timid she’s intimidated by an unfavorable job performance review, any government might look like a dictatorship.

Bipartisanship and Unity

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…Progressive-Democrat style.

The leader of the Progressive-Democratic Party in the House—formally and having regained it from a claque of freshman Representatives—demonstrated her willingness to work with Republicans at the beginning and at the end of President Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech.

At the beginning, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) walked away from the traditional and protocol introduction of the President of the United States

Members of Congress, I have the high privilege and distinct honor of presenting to you the President of the United States.

She abbreviated her office’s introduction to

Members of Congress, the president of the United States.

Then, at the end, she tore up his speech and made a spectacle of it.

This is how Party intends to work with Republicans and with Americans in general who have a different view of things.

The Whining and Smearing Will Continue

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House Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes (R, CA) says that after President Donald Trump is acquitted of all impeachment charges, the Progressive-Democrats’ baying won’t let up.

I just can’t imagine that [House Intelligence Committee Chairman] Adam Schiff, after three and a half years of this nonsense, and [House Judiciary Committee Chairman] Jerry Nadler are not going to continue this. Right? They are going to go back and subpoena [ex-National Security Adviser] John Bolton.

True, and they’ll do more. They’ll also be subpoenaing their favorite White House denizens, Mick Mulvaney, Mike Pompeo, Robert Blair, Michael Duffey, and anyone else they can think in order to keep the calumnies coming.

They’ll do more than that.

Congressmen Al Green (D, TX) and Maxine Waters (D, CA) have promised as much in the last couple of months with their commitment to introduce new Articles of Impeachment if the Senate votes wrong.

Other members of the House Progressive-Democratic Party caucus, like Hakeem Jeffries (D, NY), have promised as much in the last couple of months with their commitment to have more general “investigative” hearings if the Senate votes the wrong way. These will be the vehicles for commanding Mulvaney, Pompeo, Blair, Duffey, et al., to submit themselves.

The nature of that hanging-on also has been made clear. House Judiciary Committee Chairman and Impeachment Trial House Manager Jerry Nadler (D, NY) said during the trial that any Republican voting against the Progressive-Democrats’ case would be dishonest and participating in a coverup. He’ll continue against any dishonestly disputatious House Republicans.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman and Impeachment Trial House Manager Adam Schiff (D, CA) proclaimed, during his trial summation, that the Trump defense team had been misleading, misrepresenting, and lying to the Senate about the facts of the case. He’ll continue against any dishonestly disputatious House Republicans.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) said Republicans would be cowards if they didn’t vote in favor of witnesses, and when the Senate voted against hearing the demanded witnesses, he said they had been cowardly.  He went on to suggest that the 2020 elections now would be rigged to guarantee a Trump reelection. He’ll continue to beat that drum whenever he sees a camera or a microphone.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) said last fall that President Donald Trump was an illegitimate President, and she announced after the Senate’s witness vote that no vote for acquittal would be legitimate. She’ll yell that out at every opportunity.

Sadly for our nation, Nunes is right. The Progressive-Democrats won’t let go, no more than they’ve let go of their loss in 2016.

Unifying

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Ex-Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton says current Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders (I, VT) isn’t a unifier for the Progressive-Democratic Party. Clinton complained to Emily Tisch Sussman that

Unfortunately his campaign and his principal supporters were just very difficult and—really, constantly—not just attacking me but my supporters[.]

However.

Did Clinton unify the Progressive-Democratic Party? No, not with the shenanigans she and Party elite (possibly separately from her) pulled to block Sanders’ ascent in the 2015-2016 campaign season and the shenanigans being pulled now to block Sanders’ evident success—not least of which is the DNC changing the debate rules right before the next debate to enable an Evil 1%-er to buy his way onto the debate stage after he’s made a point, ever since he entered the race, of telling voters in early primary States that they’re just too trivial to matter.

Nor did Clinton unify the nation after she’d seized Party’s nomination in 2016—she moved actively to divide it.

Clinton is in no position to talk.

Of course Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D, MI) doesn’t help Sanders’ case with her booing of Clinton (her weak walk-back notwithstanding).

A Chief Justice’s Proper Presiding

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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) tried to con Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, serving as Presiding Officer in the Senate’s trial of the House’s impeachment case, into taking an active role in that trial rather than honoring his duty as impartial presider.

Schumer proposed that, should the Senate vote regarding calling witnesses end in a tie, Roberts should exercise his authority as Presiding Officer to cast a tie-breaking vote. After all, he said, Chief Justice Samuel Chase did that during the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson 150+ years ago.

I have a parliamentary inquiry. Is the chief justice aware that in the impeachment trial of President Johnson, Chief Justice Chase, as presiding officer, cast tie-breaking votes on both March 31 and April 2, 1868?

Which Roberts promptly dismissed as concerning trivial matters.

The one concerned a motion to adjourn. The other concerned a motion to close deliberations. I do not regard those isolated episodes 150 years ago as sufficient to support a general authority to break ties.

Then he closed out the matter.

If the members of this body, elected by the people and accountable to them, divide equally on a motion—the normal rule is that the motion fails.
I think it would be inappropriate for me, an unelected official from a different branch of government, to assert the power to change that result so that the motion would succeed.

An excellent shut-down of the Minority Leader cynical “inquiry.”