Tag Archives: Mitch McConnell

On the the Senate – to try Trump

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mconnell_impeach

I. PRELIMINARY REMARKS.

A. IMPEACHMENT PREP BY THE HOUSE.

The “delay” in passing the articles of impeachment from the House to the Senate is “timely enough.”

Whatever advantage may have been obtained by Speaker Pelosi, by withholding the articles of impeachment until mid-January, I expect that the time was used:

a. To identify and prepare the managers,
b. To assign critical roles to try the case,
c. To draft the written and oral arguments to launch the prosecution at the Senate trial,
d. To prepare to present the evidence the House already found proving the articles of abuse and obstruction beyond any reasonable doubt. and, I hope,
e. The leadership and managers prepared a ground game to attack the unfair trial that the Senate Majority Leader has planned for the impeachment trial.

[The articles of impeachment]

B. THE DELAY OBTAINED SOME ADVANTAGES.

No question, Speaker Pelosi’s delay over the congressional recess, scared Senate Majority Leader McConnell to jump the gun, and say outright he was going to protect Trump at the trial. You don’t usually get a tribunal to confess it’s bias against your cause.

Next up, there’s Trump, who is so strong when bullying, but characteristically cowardly in defense. Continue reading →

Fight Starting Right Now

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fightfistFIGHT NOW.

You can’t bargain with a malevolent legislative dictator. Mitch McConnell.

There will not be any agreement. That’s what he‘ll say first thing Thursday Am.

You have to charge the senate, like you are real prosecutors, who know how to defend a case against a biased tribunal, and appoint the managers now, and make the motions you make at trials, demand the recusal of some senators, and subpoenas for witnesses for the trial, ones we’ve deposed and had public testimony, and you demand that Roberts enforce these necessary steps.

Let the Senate overrule Roberts if they can.

Try the case in the Senate and before the nation. All the jurors that matter.

Don’t create an impasse that you can’t break – giving McConnell the control of the game, by demanding he do what we already know he will never do. He has no shame.

Am I the only one who observed what happened to Chuck Schumer’s demand.

We humiliate ourselves by asking for anything from McConnell. What do we do when he says pound sand? Pout. Retire from the field?

Get into the trenches now and fight for what’s right, to restore the nation to its original promise.

The motions should be sent to the Chief Judge, to the leaders of the Senate, and to Trump’s counsel, as you would in any civil case. And ask for dates to be heard on these critical significant motions.

PROTEST – THROW THE BUMS OUT!

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Judge Kavanaugh Confirmation Protest on the Hill (Photo – J. Flannery)

Judge Kavanaugh Confirmation Protest on the Hill (Photo – J. Flannery)

The Honorable William O. Douglas went to Columbia Law School, taught at Yale, and found his way to the U.S. Supreme Court as an Associate Justice, courtesy of FDR.

He was a hero of mine.  I wanted to clerk for him but he said he only took on clerks from out west from whence he came. This is not to say I would have gotten the clerkship if he got his law clerks from New York, from his alma mater and the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.

I wish Justice Douglas were alive today to write and speak to the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh.  He would surely join former Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, a Nixon appointee, who objected to Kavanaugh, as unfit for service as an Associate Justice because, in large part, of Kavanaugh’s express partisan bias.

Douglas wrote “Points of Dissent” when I was young but still smart enough to get his meaning.

It was a discussion of the law and facts at the time, that is, in the 60s and early 70s.

It was about the right and scope of First Amendment “free speech” exertions.

Like then, to paraphrase Douglas’ article, we are suffering under “a climate of conformity” among the political class.  It is dominated by “a narrow spectrum of social and political opinion,” almost entirely autocratic and discriminatory. It is a toxic condition sustained by slander, scapegoats, and entirely anti-intellectual.  In effect, it pushes back individual rights and freedoms presumed to exist at law and in practice, but gravely endangered.  Wrong-headed know-nothing politicians are dismantling and compromising historic institutions of government including our courts that the founders established in 1787.

Some are amazed that this attack on Justice Kavanaugh has prompted dissent.  Really?  The day after Mr. Trump’s inauguration, women marched on Washington to protest Mr. Trump’s callous disrespect for women.  Mr. Trump could have chosen a nominee without Kavanaugh’s shortcomings but Trump cared more that this nominee might also protect him from the ongoing Mueller investigation. Continue reading →

A nation on the mend?

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capitaldawn - 1Our Chief Executive, Mr. Donald Trump, and the Republican Caucus, headed up by Majority Leader McConnell and Speaker Ryan, have run together as only the worst pairing in a three-legged race could.

Mr. Trump strikes out at his “partners” while the 3-legged race is in progress, hurling slanders and trash talk at his “trusted” aides and Senate “allies.”

The undignified and repeated bashing of various public and elected officials follows closely on Mr. Trump having earlier extolled the same persons in the most oleaginous phrasing.

Many suffer cognitive whiplash if they take Mr. Trump’s twitterings seriously.

Our unseemly Senate debate in the Republican Caucus has gone on for months weighing how much we’ll pay for war and a wall and reducing taxes for the rich at the expense of providing affordable health care to millions of Americans who will be ill or die without the care.

James Madison, in Federalist 49, cautioned that we need to be wary of a government composed of three departments, designed to check and balance each other, if ever two of those three Departments become dominated by the same faction.

Madison referenced Thomas Jefferson’s concerns that “the weaker departments of power” be able to withstand “the invasions of the stronger” and, if two Departments become so strong and unified, Jefferson insisted we must convene to alter or correct our constitution.

If the people are “the only legitimate fountain of power,” then such an encroachment requires “an appeal to the people themselves …”

Madison conceded that “every appeal to the people … carr[ies] an implication of some defect in the government.” Continue reading →