And:
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Where there is smoke, there is fire. Does Rudy have anything up his sleeve? (See 1 below.)
and:
(See 1a below.)
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I literally had written much the same to David Lowe regarding Chapter 11 in his book on Morris Abram, that I just finished reading.
Because Morris eventually came to the view that Affirmative Action was not the proper way to solve inequality and many in the Civil Rights Movement, that had be friended Morris, turned on him with a vengeance, ie Vernon Jordan, Andy Young and others
All too often, those engaged in a righteous cause turn into zealots if things and supporters do no go as they believe they should. (See 2 below.)
Ironically, Dershowitz and Abram also clashed on several matters for much the same reason.
And:
Is Bret Stephens starting to suck up to Trump or is this simply a stand alone because it involved Israel? (See 2a below)
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Georgia's Governor will name Kelly Loeffler as the next Senator to replace Isakson.
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BIBI versus Trump - are the efforts to throw them out comparable? (See 3 below.)
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DORIS
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1)
Rudy Giuliani Drops BOMB On Schiff
image credit : CNBC.com
Giuliani’s been quiet recently, but now he’s coming out swinging on Schiff.
Trump’s impeachment hearings have been underway and Chair of the Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, has been in the middle of it all. Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, wanted to add more fuel to the fire and decided to make sure everyone knows what kind of person Schiff really is.
Giuliani tweeted: “@realDonaldTrump is a candidate for President. Schifty’s Committee and any other prosecutors are deliberately interfering in the 2020 election and must stop now.”
Giuliani is not playing around, so Schiff better tread lightly or there could be severe consequences for Schiff. Read the rest of the story here.
1a)
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1a)
Pelosi Just Couldn't Keep Her Mouth Shut |
Did she forget what Bill Clinton and Barack Obama did?
According to Breitbart, during a press conference held today, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) insisted that President Trump abused his presidential power for personal gain. Pelosi claims that Trump "violated his oath of office."
Pelosi stated, "[T]he evidence is clear that the president has used his office for his own personal gain, and in doing so, undermined the national security of the United States by withholding military assistance to the Ukraine, to the benefit of the Russians, that he has undermined the integrity of our elections by what he has done, again, the Russian interference being ignored by him. And third, he has violated his oath of office." You can watch the clip from her statement here.
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2) EVERY cause starts as a movement, then it becomes a business and ultimately a racket.'
Alan Dershowitz, "Dems Weaponize Impeachment"
Impeachment-seeking Democrats are weaponizng the process "to make political points," a dangerous precedent for America and the law, according to civil liberties expert Alan Dershowitz to Newsmax TV.
"There's just no crime – it's not a crime to use foreign policy to your political advantage," Dershowitz told "America Talks Live." "Presidents have been doing that since the beginning of our country, and to make that a crime, Congress would have to legislate, and they wouldn't be able to. They wouldn't be able to craft a statute that would narrowly prohibit the partisan political use of foreign policy."
"So, what we're seeing is a misuse of the impeachment power, weaponization of the impeachment power, to make political points."
Dershowitz has not seen evidence of bribery in the testimony to date.
"First of all, it can't be a bribe to get information for use in a political case," Dershowitz said. "That can't be the quid or the quo in a quid pro quo, because that's constitutionally protected. Information is constitutionally protected."
"To make that kind of the money element of a bribe would be to create a terrible, terrible precedent that would generally interfere with politics and civil liberties. So, I don't think that there's anything I heard in the testimony that would come close to bribery, treason, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."
Dershowitz told host John Cardillo, if he were the president's lawyer, he would file a motion to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to throw out the impeachment case before it reaches the Senate because it fails to designate a crime that has been committed.
"I would immediately make a motion to the Chief Justice to dismiss the impeachment on the grounds it doesn't state an impeachable offense," Dershowitz said.
Dershowitz is author of "Guilt by Accusation: The Challenge of Proving Innocence in the Age of #MeToo," vowing to keep the movement from becoming a "racket" to profit off weaponization of accusations.
"I tell the story and I warn about the abuses of the Me Too movement," Dershowitz said. "I support Me Too, but as Eric Hoffer once said: 'Every cause starts as a movement, then it becomes a business and ultimately a racket."
"And I want to stop Me Too from becoming a racket."
2a)One Thing Trump Gets Right
In this week’s Mideast news, the Iranian regime has reportedly killed more than 100 of its own people as it attempts to suppress another wave of nationwide demonstrations. The Islamic State is taking advantage of Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria to regroup. Governments in Lebanon and Iraq remain paralyzed by popular discontent. And Israel has struck dozens of targets near Damascus after intercepting Iranian rockets fired from Syria.
Into this thicket of trouble, Mike Pompeo announced on Monday that the State Department would reverse a 41-year-old legal opinion claiming that Israeli settlements in the West Bank were inconsistent with international law. The decision has garnered outsized attention, as if it’s another gratuitous Trumpian obstacle on the road to peace.
It’s not. To paraphrase Ariana Grande, we have one less problem without it.
I rarely have anything positive to say about Donald Trump’s foreign policy, and his overall approach to the Middle East is damaging and potentially disastrous for the United States and Israel alike. America cannot turn its back on the region, as Trump would like to do, and imagine the Middle East will return the favor. And Israel will not be safe in an America First world in which allies like the Kurds are cavalierly betrayed and enemies like Iran are only haphazardly confronted.
But let me give the administration some credit: When it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, at least it isn’t stuck in a time warp, hanging on to hoary shibboleths.
Among those shibboleths: That the conflict can be solved by returning to the status quo ante 1967, or at least an approximation of it. That peace between Israel and the Arab states hinges on delivering a Palestinian state. And that settlement construction is the principal obstacle to peace.
This is all nonsense. The pan-Arab campaign to “liberate” Palestine began two decades before Israel controlled an inch of Gaza or the West Bank. Resolving the territorial dispute arising from the 1967 war does nothing to solve the existential issues arising from Israel’s creation in 1948. Relations with much of the Arab world have flourished in recent years, not on account of any progress on the Palestinian front, but because Arab states see Israel as a capable ally against an imperialist Iran.
As for settlements, Israel withdrew all of its settlers and soldiers from the Gaza Strip in 2005. The result was more war, not less. What began as a moment of hope rapidly descended into a Palestinian civil war. That was followed by a Hamas victory, three major wars, and innumerable bloody skirmishes. Now we have an endless limbo in which Israelis live under constant threat, Gazans chafe under a remorseless tyranny, and groups like Palestinian Islamic Jihad somehow have the means to acquire and fire hundreds of rockets at Israeli civilian targets.
Whatever else one might say about the administration, at least it understands that it would be worse than useless to demand that Israelis repeat the experiment on a much larger scale. Reversing a legally shaky opinion that does little more than drive American policy down a familiar cul-de-sac advances nobody’s interests, including those of the Palestinians.
I say “legally shaky” because it was never clear just whose territory Israel supposedly occupied when it wrested the West Bank from Jordanian control in a defensive war: Jordan’s claims to the area weren’t internationally recognized, either.
The more important point is that no progress can be made by repeatedly exhuming an increasingly distant past. As a matter of principle, Israel needs a two-state solution because it should not indefinitely rule (even indirectly) people who do not wish to be ruled by Israel. As a matter of survival, Israel also requires that a Palestinian state have neither the ambition nor the means to devote itself to Israel’s ultimate destruction.
The core problem with the past half-century of failed peacemaking efforts has been the facile assumption that meeting the need for two states would ultimately fulfill the requirement for security. The lesson of experience has been the opposite. The failure of Palestinians and their international enablers to satisfy that requirement — or even feign concern for it — has only made the need seem like little more than a remote abstraction to most Israelis.
This presents its own dangers. Having a right to build settlements is one thing. Having the right and exercising it wisely are separate things. A wise Israel needs to understand that it will have to compromise with the Palestinians at some point, in conditions that make compromise possible.
Opposition leader Benny Gantz, who on Wednesday failed to assemble a ruling coalition, gets this. Benjamin Netanyahu, who lately has promised to annex parts of the West Bank, does not. We’re a long way from knowing which of them will become prime minister.
In the meantime, the administration’s ruling on settlements cleans out some of the cobwebs under which thinking about the conflict has moldered. Good. Peace, if it comes, will not be the result of a diplomatic solution, much less as part of a legal argument over the Geneva Convention. It will happen as a cultural evolution, in which a new generation of Palestinian leaders dedicate themselves to building up the institutions of a decent state rather than attacking those of their neighbor; and in which Israelis have the wisdom to wait for those leaders, if necessary for decades.
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3) Are Netanyahu's indictments the same as the push to impeach Trump?
By Jonathan Tobin
After years of rumors, leaks, a bitter politicized debate and endless delays, Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit finally announced that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was to be indicted on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three separate cases. It caused Netanyahu's opponents to celebrate and his supporters to rage against what they believe is an unfair process. It also left everyone wondering how this unprecedented development would impact the already confusing stalemate that has left Israel without a governing coalition and on the brink of a third election within a year.
Coming as it does now, the indictments raise obvious parallels with the efforts by Democrats to impeach Netanyahu's political ally, President Donald Trump.
No one should be above the law, and it's hard to prove that anyone behind the pursuit of Netanyahu was motivated by political objectives. Yet these indictments seem contrived. They appear more a case of officials searching for a pretext to prosecute a specific person rather than the result of an investigation into an actual crime or selective prosecution. And the cheers from the Israeli left have little to do with a defense of the rule of law and everything to do with the prosecutors having done more to take down Netanyahu than his political opponents have ever achieved. Over and above the effort to oust him now, there's no denying that the impending indictments damaged his prospects in the two elections held this year.
3) Are Netanyahu's indictments the same as the push to impeach Trump?
By Jonathan Tobin
After years of rumors, leaks, a bitter politicized debate and endless delays, Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit finally announced that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was to be indicted on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three separate cases. It caused Netanyahu's opponents to celebrate and his supporters to rage against what they believe is an unfair process. It also left everyone wondering how this unprecedented development would impact the already confusing stalemate that has left Israel without a governing coalition and on the brink of a third election within a year.
Coming as it does now, the indictments raise obvious parallels with the efforts by Democrats to impeach Netanyahu's political ally, President Donald Trump.
In both cases, a conservative leader is being pursued on what their foes purport are corruption charges, but which their supporters believe is a thinly veiled attempt to criminalize political differences. Detractors of both Netanyahu and Trump believe that the investigations into their respective behavior are a defense of ethics, government accountability and democracy itself. Their supporters feel that the charges, even if they were true, are infractions that are too trivial to be prosecuted and are, in any case, flimsy excuses cooked up to discredit a politician that they weren't otherwise able to defeat at the polls.
Democrats think they are holding Trump accountable for illegal behavior in dealing with Ukraine, while Republicans dismiss the seriousness of the allegations and think the only purpose of the impeachment investigation is to try to damage the president they despise on the eve of his re-election campaign. Their disagreement is not only about the facts of the case, but also about the whole point of the exercise.
That's also true about the charges against Netanyahu.
His enemies speak of the three cases against Netanyahu as grievous crimes. But it's hard to portray them as anything but tissue-thin charges that seem unlikely to stand up in a court of law. In one, he is accused of accepting expensive gifts of champagne and cigars with no obvious quid pro quo involved. The other two involve Netanyahu's attempts to persuade media barons to give him favorable coverage; in neither case did the effort succeed. Nor is there any specific law prohibiting such efforts even if a deal was struck.
No one should be above the law, and it's hard to prove that anyone behind the pursuit of Netanyahu was motivated by political objectives. Yet these indictments seem contrived. They appear more a case of officials searching for a pretext to prosecute a specific person rather than the result of an investigation into an actual crime or selective prosecution. And the cheers from the Israeli left have little to do with a defense of the rule of law and everything to do with the prosecutors having done more to take down Netanyahu than his political opponents have ever achieved. Over and above the effort to oust him now, there's no denying that the impending indictments damaged his prospects in the two elections held this year.
What is different about the two leaders' problems is that it is not a Knesset committee that is hounding Netanyahu. It is the Israeli police and the public prosecutor's office — now backed up by an attorney general who was once an aide to the prime minister — responsible for the indictments.
Although the law doesn't require Netanyahu to resign if he is indicted, it is very difficult to imagine anyone governing with legal charges hanging over him. Even a favorable resolution of the case can't happen quickly enough to prevent him from suffering the possible consequences of the indictment in terms of his deposition by the Likud or being rejected by voters at the next election in the spring. As a result, it seems highly likely that his long run in power will end sometime in the next several months.
By contrast, Trump is subject to what is essentially a political process, in which a narrow partisan majority can impeach a president in the House of Representatives, but only a super-majority (67 votes) can mandate his removal from the presidency if the Senate convicts him. And since there is no bipartisan consensus about the gravity or even the criminality of his behavior, Trump will remain in office no matter what happens in the House.
The nature of the charges is also very different.
Trump is accused of abusing the powers of his office and official misconduct. Netanyahu is being prosecuted for personal behavior in terms of accepting gifts, as well as political maneuvering in the case of his attempts to persuade media outlets to give him favorable coverage.
Viewed objectively — and even if one rejects the Democrats' accusations — Trump's alleged offenses are more serious than those hurled at Netanyahu. But the Israeli leader's legal and political prospects are far dimmer than those of the American president, who will almost certainly serve out his term and still have a reasonable chance of re-election in spite of the clamor against him.
At the heart of both controversies is a political divide that will never be bridged by legal arguments for or against either man's conduct. Whatever you think of the conduct of either man, both impeachment and the indictments seem more like efforts to influence or supersede the political process by legal means than a quest for justice. Indeed, it's difficult, if not impossible, to assert that the attempts to depose them are completely unrelated to politics.
So long as such efforts are not backed by a broad consensus that crosses party lines — rather than only by those who are happy to see Netanyahu and Trump taken down by any means, be it political or legal — both processes will be tainted and viewed as political exercises. Whatever the ultimate outcome of either impeachment or the Netanyahu charges, the warring camps will never accept an outcome that goes
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