Tag Archives: ethics

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.”

Nothing to See Here

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Recall that in the aftermath of an initial Flynn pushback against the charges against him, the prosecutors in his case withdrew their recommendation for a lenient sentence and demanded significant jail time.  Recall further that in response to that, Army Lt Gen (ret) Michael Flynn has moved formally to withdraw his guilty plea with an excoriating list of prosecutorial and FBI transgressions as his grounds.

Among the misbehaviors listed in Flynn’s plea withdrawal motion are

  • no actual record of Flynn’s statements to FBI agents exists
  • the original handwritten FD-302 witness report from a critical FBI interview is “missing”
  • subsequent versions of that 302 have been “edited” by allegedly anti-Trump FBI officials

In response, those same prosecutors now have withdrawn their harsher sentence demand and said they’d accept probation and no jail time.

They’ve been caught persecuting Flynn rather than prosecuting him, and they don’t want to have that exposed in open court. They’re hoping they can buy off Flynn with this latest move.

Move along.