Impeachment: What Lies Beneath?

 

Reuters

The Raw

The Democrats have now revealed the hand they're going to play for impeachment.  I have been vehemently arguing against playing this game and pointing out how futile it is, but, seeing the two cards actually laid out on the table, even I am gobsmacked at what a loser of a hand they’ve got.

Of course, we have to recognize Gerald Ford’s correct point that “An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history,” and accept that the Democratic majority in the House at the present moment will determine that their two charges against Trump are impeachable offenses.

But it's equally true that an acquitable charge is whatever more than a third of the Senate considers it to be, and the issue will finally be decided by the political support the charges can muster from Republican senators and their constituents. 

Given the ideological disposition of those senators and constituents, as well as the widespread reluctance of Americans generally to impeach a president—an act that does annul an election—over any but the most serious offenses, it is hard to believe the Democrats think they will sway anybody with the thin gruel they are serving up.

Defeat or Impeach? The (Il)Logic of Impeachment

Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

I've had the displeasure to watch some hours of the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment inquiry. It’s an excruciating spectacle, alternately boring, confusing, and infuriating.

Where have the Democrats set the high-crime-and-misdemeanor goalpost today? Is it the “Russian collusion” for which Adam Schiff had “direct evidence” even before the Mueller investigation? How about the “10 different episodes of presidential obstruction of justice” for which Jamie Raskin told us “the evidence is overwhelming”? No, really, they got him on “quid pro quo”!  Or is it “abuse of power”? Wait, it’s “bribery.” Final answer. (They focussed-grouped it!) Bombshells all.

I have no interest in parsing the minutiae of the purported case Schiff is now making against Trump. (I’ll leave that to Aaron Maté, who does it so well.) I’ve said before that I think it’s political folly. Here, I would like those who are enthralled by the ongoing impeachment frenzy to focus for a moment on one glaring contradiction in the logic of the Democrats’ position—a contradiction that reveals that the Democrats are speaking with forked tongue about what they are actually trying to do.

It’s Not Unusual: The Left-Right (S)Mashup in American Politics

A number of commentators have remarked on the “unusual” political coalition of progressive Democrats and libertarian-minded Republicans that came together last week (July 24^th) in Congress to support an amendment sponsored by new Michigan Tea Party Republican Justin Amash and long-serving Michigan Democrat John Conyers, an amendment that, as Glenn Greenwald points out, would have required "the FISA court under Sec. 215 [of the Patriot Act] to order the production of records that pertain only to a person under investigation [emphasis in original]," an amendment that, in other words, required the FISA court to act in accordance with the plain meaning of the law and the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which states, in full:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The passage of the Amash-Conyers amendment, mandating respect for this constitutional right, would have effectively de-funded the NSA program that bulk collects telephone records of all Americans – an outcome the President, along with the leadership of both political parties, could not permit. To their chagrin, however, they faced surprisingly strong and widespread sentiment in favor of the amendment (and the Constitution). 

Conyers was joined by well-known progressive Democrats like Barbara Lee, Rush Holt, James Clyburn, Nydia Velázquez, Alan Grayson, and Keith Ellison, as well as by the newly-elected representative from Hawaii, Tulsi Gabbard  one of the first two female combat veterans to serve as a member of Congress, who said: “Countless men and women from my state of Hawai‘i and all across the country have worn the uniform and put their lives on the line to protect our freedoms and our liberties…I cannot, in good conscience, vote to take a single dollar from the pockets of hard-working taxpayers from across the country to pay for programs which infringe on the very liberties and freedoms our troops have fought and died for.”