Miriam: Thanks for the information. I am aware of status of Ms Pelosi, her
position in the House, her outlook and her ambitions.
My opinion-she surely is not a Tip O’Neill !
She is the first impediment to the impeachment of The Donald. If she has a
change of heart then the next impediment is Senator McConnell.
Here I think Mitch is the smarter of the two.
Richard
Sent from my iPhone
On May 25, 2019, at 7:44 AM, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Richard
Nancy Pelosi is House Speaker. She's not in the Senate. She is a Corporate
Democrat and she's been resisting the move by the younger Dems to impeach,
But yesterday, she was getting a lot of pressure.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of R. E. Driscoll Sr
Sent: Friday, May 24, 2019 9:37 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Trump Deserves Impeachment. Does US House Have
the Integrity?
Miriam:
The Senate has Nancy Pelosi stopped.
Richard
Sent from my iPhone
On May 24, 2019, at 7:02 PM, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Carl,
The Dems in the House are split. The Corporate Dems, the leadership, don't
want to rock the boat. They're afraid that they'll alienate swing voters by
impeachment proceedings. But the leftist Democrats, the newer, young folks,
the ones aligned with Bernie and with Social Democrats of America, want to
impeach him. Pelosi has been strongly resistant up to this point.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Friday, May 24, 2019 8:31 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Trump Deserves Impeachment. Does US House
Have the Integrity?
This congress may well go down in history...or what time we have left, as
the most spineless, yellow bellied, chicken hearted, congress.
Between a House that can't make a move in any direction, and a Senate that
has a majority of "No Nothings", it's embarrassing to call myself an
American.
Carl Jarvis
On 5/24/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Trump Deserves Impeachment. Does US House Have the Integrity?
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
24 May 19
“I’m not a crook.” – Richard Nixon, February 26, 1973
“I don’t do cover-ups.” – Donald Trump, May 21, 2019
The theatrics at the White House on the morning of May 22 were
especially surreal as the president who doesn’t do cover-ups stormed
(by all accounts) out of a scheduled meeting to discuss national
infrastructure and rushed to a pre-arranged press conference in the
Rose Garden where he said he wouldn’t work with Democrats on anything
until they stop investigating him. Because he doesn’t do cover-ups?
Strictly speaking, that’s kind of true.
Withholding
documents, preventing witnesses from testifying, refusing to testify
himself – Trump does all that openly, so it’s not a cover-up so much
as a stonewall.
Either way, evidence gets withheld. Or as the president went on to
tell the assembled press corps:
I think most of you would agree to this, I’m the most transparent
president, probably, in the history of this country.
What was truly transparent was the falseness of the president’s claim
that he couldn’t work with Congress at the same time House committees
are investigating him. Is he subtly admitting a disability that could
trigger his replacement under the 25th Amendment? Or is that being
covered up? And will it be stonewalled? Ironically, the president’s
view of investigations is a mirror image of House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi’s view of impeachment, that the House can’t do two things at
once, pursue impeachment and pass good legislation. Her view is as
transparently false as the president’s. How long has it been
transparently obvious that the president will keep pushing Congress
into a submissive corner until the Congress pushes back?
There are so many issues, large and small, where the Trump
administration has demonstrated either limited transparency or none
that listing them all would be daunting to impossible. Consider just
a few areas involving war and peace where the American people are
getting much more dishonesty than transparency – Iran, Venezuela,
Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, central Africa, among others. Domestically
there are the obvious black holes where the country expected
disclosure on the president’s tax returns, on his separation of
private interests from government business, on his reckless handling
of security clearances, or on his multiple failures faithfully to
execute the laws of the United States as required by the Constitution.
The suffering he causes ranges from children dying in US custody to
the environment and the planet dying from US predation.
Later in the day, the White House continued the counter-attack, tweeting:
“This week, Congress reminded Americans exactly why its public
approval rating is 20%.” The White House tweets go on a familiar
attack against a do-nothing Congress of the bipartisan sort we’ve
heard for self-serving, empty decades. Then the tweets get to
specifics and the spectacle is absurd.
“Not fixing our immigration system” – by letting the administration
kill children without consequence? “Not rebuilding our infrastructure”
– by letting the president leave the room without looking at a lengthy
proposal?
“Not lowering prescription drug prices” – how are any of these
Congressional failures when there is absolutely no administration
proposal on the table?
The apparent trigger for Trump’s pre-planned morning tantrum was
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s commentary coming out of a Democratic
Caucus meeting.
She concluded by expressing her understanding of the caucus consensus:
We believe that it’s important to follow the facts. And we believe
that no one is above the law, including the president of the United
States. And we believe that the President of the United States is
engaged in a cover-up – a cover-up.
Although the Democratic Caucus meeting was closed to media coverage,
there’s little question that it was devoted in part to questions of
whether and when to initiate formal impeachment proceedings against
President Trump. Pelosi and other Democratic leaders have been
avoiding, evading, slow-walking the impeachment issue for years now,
but increasing numbers of Democrats are saying both publicly and
privately that time’s up, the president is dictating the way the
government runs, and this is fundamentally unconstitutional. The
morning theatrics look like the president calling Democrats’ bluff.
And it could be a catalyst for the Democrats calling the president’s
bluff. No matter what, it’s a long winding road ahead with an unknown
destination.
Just before the Democratic Caucus meeting, Democratic congressman Al
Green from Houston appeared on Democracy NOW to urge the principled
case for initiating formal impeachment hearings now. In the fall of
2017, Rep. Green was the first member of Congress to introduce formal
articles of impeachment against President Trump. At the time, the
Republican majority voted in lockstep not to consider the question. A
majority of Democrats, led by Pelosi, also voted against even
discussing impeachment.
Almost surely what Al Green said on Democracy NOW is what he said at
the Democratic Caucus meeting. He was careful not to make it an issue
of Pelosi’s leadership, but rather a test of constitutional principle:
… where the House itself is on trial in the court of public opinion.
The question is: Will we allow the time-honored system of checks and
balances to be destroyed by this president? Your news report has
indicated that he has resisted. In fact, he’s stonewalling. He
doesn’t allow subpoenas. He doesn’t allow witnesses to testify. And
the question is: Will he then amass this enormous amount of power
that the Framers never intended him to have? This is the equivalent
of becoming a monarch. We don’t want a monarchy; we want democracy.
And impeachment is the means by which we maintain the check on the
president so as to keep the balance of power.
Rep. Green is asked the standard journalistic cliché question, so
what’s the point of impeaching the president in the House when the
Senate will never convict him? It’s not as though that prediction is
a fact. At best it’s a current likelihood. But the process of
impeachment is long and illuminating as it winds through
investigation, examination, and passage of the articles of
impeachment, and then a full trial in the Senate presided over by the
Chief Justice. To predict now what the Senate will do after a year or
more of all that is presumptuous. It is to assume that evidence will not
matter.
And the cliché question dismisses any question of principle, justice,
constitutionality. Green answers the question directly:
Nowhere in Article 2, Section 4 of the Constitution does it say that
the House must have a Senate that will agree with it. What it says
is, if the president commits impeachable acts, then we must move forward.
That’s what it gives us the prerogative to do. It does not require
that Republicans agree with us. It does not require that the public
agree with us. What it requires is that we act on principle, not
politics, that we put the people above our political party. It
requires that we decide that we will not allow the moral imperative
to be trumped by political expediency. This is really not about
people in the House of Representatives. It’s about the people in this
country and whether we are going to allow this president, who has
demonstrated that he’s ruthless, lawless and reckless—whether we are
going to allow him to destroy the system of checks and balances.
As to particular impeachable offenses, Rep. Green first cites
obstruction of justice. In the case of Richard Nixon, the first
article of impeachment voted by the House Judiciary Committee in 1973
was for obstruction of justice. The charges against Nixon included
making false or misleading statements, influencing witnesses,
withholding evidence, interfering with investigations, approving
payments to witnesses, and hinting at pardons.
Any
of that sound familiar? The Mueller Report lists numerous instances
of presidential behavior that could be construed as obstruction of justice.
More than 800 former federal prosecutors have indicated that if
anyone but the president had committed the same acts, that person
would have been prosecuted. Mueller left the question to the House. Rep.
Green argues:
“That
obstruction of justice is something we cannot allow to go unchecked.”
He makes no effort to provide a comprehensive list of Trump’s
impeachable offenses, but he emphasizes one area that is the epitome
of “high crimes and misdemeanors” as contemplated in the Constitution:
But I also have contended, and still contend, that the president has
infused his bigotry into policy. I think this is impeachable, as well.
I have indelibly imprinted in my brain that baby standing at the
border crying while she is being separated from parents. This is not
what a great country does. We cannot allow a president to talk about
African country as “s—hole countries” and then engage in the process
of developing an immigration plan.
We can’t have a president who is going to say that there are very
fine people among the bigots, the racists, the xenophobes, the
homophobes, who were in Charlottesville, where a woman lost her life
protesting against bigotry, and do nothing about it. His bigotry is
worthy of his being impeached.
Rep. Green dismissed the president’s claim that Congress couldn’t
work with him and investigate him at the same time. He framed his
answer in the context of the reality of presidential behavior:
We can work with the president and still fulfill our constitutional
responsibility. We must do so. Now, working with the president is not easy.
He will give you an answer today, and then he will negate the answer
tomorrow or later today or perhaps in the same sentence that he gives
you the answer. So, I am all for working with the president, but I’m
not for allowing the constitutional mandate that has been accorded
the House of Representatives to be obliterated because we want to try
to appease a president, who clearly has demonstrated that he’s not in
the business of making reconciliation with us in any way. He doesn’t
want to negotiate; he wants to dictate.
Rep. Green rejected another journalistic cliché question: well, what
if Trump welcomes impeachment proceedings, what if you’re playing
into his hand politically and not getting important legislation like
the Green New Deal done? This is a muddled question, hobbled by
prediction based on no evidence. The House has already passed
important legislation (such as H.R.1, election reform) that the
Senate may never consider. The Senate cannot avoid an impeachment
trial. There is no reason to suppose the House won’t continue to pass
important legislation (maybe even a Green New Deal, if it’s ever
rendered in the form of a bill). The question is rooted in
ill-considered assumptions that are most likely false (depending on
House leadership – oh, that again). As far as one can tell, the
Democratic strategy for 2020 includes the creation of a host of
desirable health, economic, justice and other bills that Republicans can
either pass or run against.
As for Trump inviting impeachment, Rep. Green doesn’t buy it. He
calls it a reverse psychology trick. He says Trump’s bluffing.
Following through with articles of impeachment would call that bluff.
That would create an unpredictable dynamic that would depend first on
the strength of the evidence presented to the Senate. And if the
evidence is strong that the president committed impeachable offenses,
and the Republican Senate votes NOT to convict, how will that play with
American voters?
As for the alternative, Rep. Green sees it as unacceptable:
And if we don’t impeach, here’s what the president will say. He will
say that the Democrats had the House by overwhelming numbers. He will
say that they did not impeach me. He will say, “By their inaction, I
have been vindicated, I have been exonerated.” Mr. Mueller did not
exonerate him. Why would the House of Representatives exonerate him?
And he will say, “By virtue of this, you ought to elect me”—meaning
him, President Trump—“president again.” And let me share this with
you. He will make a powerful argument that we were complicit, in a
sense, in his actions by not having our action in the House of
Representatives.
That’s a credible scenario as far as it goes, but it omits anything
else that may happen between now and November 2020, including not
least the choice of a Democratic candidate. As it stands now, Trump
is forcing the House to choose between impeaching him and caving in
to him. Even if the House calls his bluff and impeaches him,
Democrats and the country may lose the election. But if the House
caves and allows the president to continue on his law-defying
dictatorial path, then the election might well be irrelevant.
Email This Page
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio,
TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the
Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of
America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine,
and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and
Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work.
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