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To my many dear and beautiful girlfriends, I wish you the happiest and best ever of Valentine's. Stay healthy, be safe.
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Kim writes how the rug was pulled our from under the nasties:
The GOP’s First
2021 Victory
Ousting Liz Cheney would have reinforced
the Democrats’ nasty caricature.
By Kimberley A. Strassel
Joe Biden has decreed quite a few policy wins in recent weeks. But the biggest political win of 2021 so far may go to Republicans, with their vote this week to keep Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney in her House leadership post.
This was a victory mostly in that it
wasn’t much about Ms. Cheney at all. It was instead the party sending a message
that it remains a big tent and isn’t going to grant or revoke membership purely
on fealty to one politician, Donald Trump. Just as important, it was the party
stomping on the new Democratic and media strategy to cast the entire GOP as
extremists and kooks.
Ms. Cheney, chairman of the House Republican Conference, had
managed to irk more than a few of her colleagues over the past year,
particularly with her decision last spring to back a primary opponent of a
House colleague. This frustration boiled over when Ms. Cheney voted with House
Democrats to impeach Donald Trump and issued an aggressive statement that even
many of her backers felt inflamed the left’s bonfire.
Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy could have tried to paper over
this divide. Instead on Wednesday he held a four-hour meeting in which members
aired their grievances. He then delivered an impassioned closing speech laying
out the bigger stakes—the need for the party to get past November, to focus on
the Biden agenda, and to win the majority next year. The pitch ruled the day;
the vote to retain Ms. Cheney was reportedly 145-61. Even many of those who
voted against her did so out of broader beefs with her leadership rather than
as a Trump purity test.
Mr. McCarthy capped that success with another: the handling of
Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. At the Wednesday meeting, Mrs. Greene
finally answered questions about, and disavowed, inflammatory comments she’d
made and conspiracy theories she’d perpetuated on social media prior to her
election last year. She took to the floor on Thursday to express her regret at
having been seduced into the social-media vortex and to state that those views
“do not represent my district, and they do not represent my values.” Mr.
McCarthy issued his own statement to “condemn” QAnon, political violence,
anti-Semitism, and everything else the left has associated the right with of
late.
This came as a blow to Democrats, Lincoln Projectors and the
media, who’ve been building a campaign strategy around the claim that the GOP
is the embodiment of violence and nutballs. They’ve used the Capitol riot of
Jan. 6 to launch impeachment and to argue that Mr. Trump is the leader of an
entire party of insurrectionists. This crowd was salivating at the prospect of
the House conference exiling Ms. Cheney, the better to claim Trump thugs were
purging disloyal party members.
The press’s disappointment with the outcome was palpable, even
as it did its best to keep the headlines flowing. “Donald Trump’s backers
failed to take down Liz Cheney, but the GOP’s ‘civil war’ is nowhere near
over,” insisted USA Today. The left’s strategy is to stoke GOP division, to
keep it in the headlines, and to hobble the party’s efforts to block radical
Democratic policies. Fortunately, Republicans are belatedly cottoning on.
They are also realizing the risk of
letting Democrats and the media define them as the party of “hoaxes, lies and
collective delusions” (as the New York Times recently put it). This is why
newspapers have made a national story of Mrs. Greene, which they didn’t do to
previous congressional conspiracy theorists like Cynthia McKinney, a former
Georgia Democratic member and 9/11 truther. Mrs. Greene’s election was the
left’s opportunity to argue the GOP had brought the QAnon cult into the mainstream.
“Greene is no longer the outlier in her party across America’s vast heartland,”
CNN pronounced this week.
Yet she is, as Mr. McCarthy and other GOP leaders made clear
this week. The press is trying to muddy that clarity, by noting that Mr. McCarthy
refused to strip Mrs. Greene of any committee assignments. But punishing a
member for conduct that took place before her election to the House would have
been unprecedented.
Mr. McCarthy did offer to transfer Mrs. Greene to a less visible
committee, only to have that proposal rejected by Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.
Democrats cared more about forcing a floor vote on stripping Mrs. Greene, the
better to continue pumping the story. In a stunning break with tradition, the
majority party on Thursday moved to dictate the committee assignment of a
member of the minority party. Don’t think Republicans will forget that
precedent when they have control.
The GOP still has a
long way to go to unify after its November loss. But this week it passed a
first, big test.
And:
In the Mideast,
Biden Returns to Abnormal
He revives the Obama policy of
strengthening America’s enemies and harming its friends.
By Michael Doran
Joe Biden implicitly campaigned on Warren G. Harding’s 1920 promise of “a return to normalcy.” But his administration is returning to Barack Obama’s abnormal Middle East strategy. A normal policy would respect the fundamental commandment of sound statecraft: Strengthen friends and punish enemies. It would distinguish between them by asking two simple questions: Which states have tended to shelter comfortably under the American power umbrella? And which have instead sought to destroy the American order? Israel, Turkey and the Gulf states, led by Saudi Arabia, have functioned as pillars of the postwar American order. By contrast, for the past 40 years Iran has tirelessly opposed the American security system.
Three details of Iran’s strategic position could make it more
dangerous in the near future. First, the Persian Gulf contains five of the
world’s 10 largest proven oil reserves, and Iran threatens to dominate the
region. Second, Tehran is increasingly allied with both Russia and China.
Third, outreach to Iran by the U.S. has deeply angered most of America’s Middle
Eastern allies.
A normal policy would seek to contain Iran. Every president
since Jimmy Carter regarded Iran as a threat—except Mr. Obama. His flagship
policy was the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, to which Mr. Biden is
dedicated to return. The JCPOA won’t contain Iran. Its sunset clauses create a
clear path for Iran to obtain nuclear weapons. By lifting sanctions, it
supplies the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps with cash.
Mr. Obama also dispensed with
traditional military deterrence. Tehran saw a green light to expand and arm its
militia networks. By the time Mr. Obama left office, Tehran held substantial
sway over four Arab capitals: Baghdad, Beirut, Damascus and Sana’a. Donald Trump returned to containment. While
revitalizing deterrence and imposing sanctions, he also supported military and
intelligence operations by allies, especially Israel, against Iran and its
proxies. A new coalition of regional states developed and was formalized in the
Abraham Accords.
Mr. Trump established significant leverage over Tehran. Mr. Biden appears intent on squandering it. Consider his Yemen policy. One of his first moves was to announce a review of the Trump administration’s designation of the Houthi movement as a terrorist organization. Iran is building up the Houthis as a Yemeni counterpart to Hezbollah. As Hezbollah threatens Israel with precision-guided rockets and missiles, so the Houthis are threatening Saudi Arabia. At the same time, the Houthis provide Iran with a perch on the Red Sea, which guards the approach to the Suez Canal from the Indian Ocean.
Instead of forcing Iran to retreat, the Biden administration is
working to drive out Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally, which intervened in Yemen to
stop Iran’s advance. In his first major foreign policy speech, delivered
yesterday, Mr. Biden announced an end to all support for operations in the
Saudi-led war, including arms sales. Following on the review of the Houthi
terrorism designation, this will embolden Iran and demoralize Saudi Arabia and
all American allies who are threatened by Iranian aggression.
The arms ban comes after a previously announced review of arms
sales to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. The administration bills
the review as “pro forma,” but in reality, it is a threat. If Riyadh and Abu
Dhabi work with the Israelis against America’s return to the JCPOA, Washington
will cut off their arms supply.
In returning to a policy of containment, Mr. Trump was at least
partly motivated by a desire to erase Mr. Obama’s legacy. It is only natural
that Mr. Biden’s national-security team, which with few exceptions was also Mr.
Obama’s team, would feel a reciprocal urge to erase the Trump legacy. But
that’s no basis for a superpower’s foreign policy.
Abandoning containment, gutting deterrence, squandering
leverage, downgrading allies and enriching enemies—these are the essential
components of the Obama-Biden strategy. For a superpower to embrace such an
approach isn’t only abnormal; it is alarming.
Mr. Doran is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
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The impeachment trial in the Senate is based on hate and is a fraudulent attempt to punish Trump because he sought to take the establishment's power away.
What rabid Democrats have done is deprive the falsely accused of the time to prepare a proper defense. It is as if the Senate of The United States has embraced a posture that aligns them with courts run by kangaroos.
What to Expect from Trump's Upcoming
Impeachment Trial
The U.S. Senate is scheduled to begin a trial on
impeachment of Donald J. Trump officially announced for "the week of"
February 8. According to C-SPAN,
that means 1:00 P.M. EST on February 9, 2021. C-SPAN allows you to
watch, live or whenever is convenient on demand, on a special web page.
Here is a preview for thinking Americans of some
things to look for. You will be watching something like playing the
Super Bowl in five minutes, with the best of players slipping and falling all
over each other. No one can elegantly mash a two- to four-week trial
into only a couple of half-days, while the Senate also conducts other business
in the morning. compression will harm Trump's due process.
Each side has submitted briefs. The
Democrat impeachment managers released an 80-page trial brief in
small print. Trump's new lead attorneys, Bruce L. Castor, Jr. and
David Schoen, submitted an "Answer" from Donald
Trump later the same day on February 2, 2021. It is
only 13 pages in big type plus a conclusion and signature block.
However, that was not Trump's trial
brief. It was a reply to the Articles of Impeachment. It
is in the style of "the allegations of paragraph 48 are denied in part and
admitted in part." That sort of thing.
Trump's lawyers need to also file an actual
trial brief. However, Castor and Schoen came on board only late last
week. A case of this magnitude and complexity (more complex than you
might think, with lifetime disqualification from public office and even
criminal prosecution possibly down the line) would normally afford six months to
eighteen months before going to trial. So Castor's and Schoen's
Answer for Trump was thin.
Trump's new lawyers hit hard on a "bill of
attainder." The U.S. Constitution absolutely forbids two
things: an ex post facto law
and a bill of attainder. An ex post facto law means
that Congress criminalizes something only after you did it
already. In fact, the Democrats are changing interpretations so
severely that they are violating the ex post facto prohibition.
A "bill of attainder" is a legislature singling
out a person for punishment rather than enacting a law of general
application. Because the prohibition in the Constitution is
absolute, Trump's lawyers raise it as a total bar.
In other words, they have put tyrannosaurus rex
teeth into the argument that you cannot impeach a former
president. They belabor the circumstances that the articles of
impeachment have created: "a class of one" with only Donald Trump in
the class.
That supports both an equal protection violation
and a bill of attainder violation. They come close to arguing equal
protection, but it sounds as though they ran out of time before hammering that
point home.
Now, clearly, everyone is focused on whether
Trump is disqualified from holding any political office in the
future. That could include something like serving on a board, not
just running for president. Democrats have made clear that their
goal is to not face Trump at the ballot box on November 5, 2024. How
convenient and banana republic–like to disqualify political
opponents. The Democrats' fever is practically an admission that
they might lose a rematch with Trump.
The news media have been in a fit over whether
or not Trump (his lawyers) will argue that the 2020 election was
stolen. Don't bet the farm on Castor and Schoen being that brave,
because most lawyers are really not. But typically trial lawyers
would be mystified by the question "are you going to argue A or
B?" As my law professor asked in a (pretend) stunned
expression: "Why do I have to choose only
one?" A good trial attorney would be required to hit and smash
each and every accusation against his client, in a row. Leaving any
accusation alive is not in a trial lawyer's DNA.
Amazingly, though, Trump's brief reminds us that
the Democrats are actually required to prove that the election was not stolen. The
articles of impeachment do not merely open the door and allow Trump to prove
there was election fraud. They accuse Trump of falsely claiming there was fraud in the election,
thereby inciting protests.
Can you cry "fire!" in a crowded
theater? Well, is there in fact a fire? Then
yes. A prosecutor would have to prove there wasn't any fire.
In order to prove their case, the impeachment
managers are actually required to prove that Trump's statements were
false. The burden of proof is on the Democrats to prove that there
was no fraud anywhere in the election. If Trump's statements
were true or he reasonably
believed they were true, then the articles of impeachment fail. And
Trump should be able to respond. Of course, the Senate won't
tolerate that or allow that much time.
Trump's lawyers hit hard on whether Trump's
statements were incitement. They argue not only that Trump was
exercising his rights of free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment, but
also that the impeachment trial violates Trump's constitutional rights for that
reason. Trump's Answer argues that the Constitution
"specifically and intentionally protect[s] unpopular speech from
government retaliation."
The impeachment managers effectively admit that
Trump called for peaceful lobbying of the Congress, which is an exercise of
their right under the First Amendment to peacefully assemble and "petition
their government for redress." On page 14, their brief quotes
Trump as saying:
I hope the Democrats,
and even more importantly, the weak and ineffective RINO section of the
Republican Party, are looking at the thousands of people pouring into
D.C. They won't stand for a landslide election victory to be stolen.
This is the classic purpose of a lawful and
peaceful protest. Many dozens of protests gather every year in D.C.
for this very same purpose: to gather in large numbers and make their demands
be known to their elected politicians. Every protest is intended to
change the government's policies, positions, or actions.
The Democrats accuse Trump of whipping up his
supporters. But their brief is an 80-page rhetorical screed that
whips up their own supporters with inflammatory rhetoric. This is
where most attorneys will probably try to be too nice and
respectable. Most won't even know what hit them in a rhetorical
sandstorm. The brief is filled with opinion and incredibly
cites the Washington Post as evidence.
The Democrats' brief continues the false
narrative that Trump generated the protests. They actually say Trump
"announced" the "Save America March" — which was organized
by others. Women for America First filed for a permit from the Park
Service. The protest at the Capitol was planned earlier than
December 23. The Capitol Police media office is staying mum about
the permit issued for the northeast corner of the Capitol grounds. But
Trump did not suggest that anyone go to the Capitol. There was
already a 1:00 P.M. demonstration with a permit pre-planned on the Capitol
grounds.
The Answer also challenges the way that the
articles of impeachment commingle and confuse allegations of different events
and charges, in violation of Senate Rules and the Constitution. In
that way, it is impossible to know if senators are all voting for the same
charges or some voting for a few charges and others for different charges.
Totally neglected by everyone: the January 2 phone
call. But I'm out of space. Maybe in another installment.
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