The Whining and Smearing Will Continue

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

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

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.”

A Cost of Impeachment

It seems the Progressive-Democrats’ attempt to impeach President Donald Trump was not all that fiscally expensive as such things go.

According to an estimate from the Heritage Foundation in December, the [Progressive-]Democrat-led House of Representatives inquiry, and eventual impeachment of Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress on December 18, cost taxpayers an estimated $3.06 million.

That compares with the effort against ex-President Bill Clinton (D):

According to CNN, the independent probe into Clinton cost taxpayers $80 million in 1994.

That bill includes the Senate trial, while the Heritage Foundation estimate doesn’t include the Senate’s in-progress impeachment trial, but it’s unlikely that the Senate trial will cost $77 million.

It should be no surprise, though, that the House’s seemingly slapdash effort was done on the cheap. The present effort has never been about actual impeachment and removal; it has been solely an effort to conduct a prolonged smear campaign and with that to prejudice the 2020 election.

Gun Control

Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg is a strong fan of gun control to the point of, ultimately, seizing all of our guns.  He’s even running a Super Bowl ad to that effect. Tim O’Brien, one of Bloomberg’s senior campaign advisors even says about the ad and its gun control subject,

This [gun question] is something that touches families. It most profoundly touches communities of color.

You bet it does. Gun control was something enormously expanded by the Democratic Party to disarm newly freed blacks so they could more easily be lynched by the Democratic Party’s KKK.

Now the Progressive-Democratic Party, and its leading politicians, want to continue that disarmament; they want to prevent blacks, and Hispanics in this 21st century, from being able to defend their families from thugs; they want to maintain gun free zones so people of any skin color or religion are unable to defend themselves.