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This Impeachment is an Unserious Process for Unserious People
Impeachment is not a coup. Republicans have seized on the stupidest talking point to come out of the stupidest age in American politics. Impeachment is a constitutional process the Democrats have every right to start. But the Senate Republicans have every right to reject this as partisan gamesmanship too. Impeachment is not a coup. It […] appeared first on The Resurgent.
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+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Israel and it's new defense minister send a message: ' we know where you are and we will send you to your grave.' (See 1 below.)
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Salena Zito writes about underdog who catches his tail. (Se 2 below.)
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Jussie Smollett still enjoys "Black Privilege" after his MAGA attack, which proved a set up and paid for hoax, because Jussie remains free to walk the streets of Chicago. When the alleged attack occurred liberals immediately flocked to Jussie's side, just as did Obama when he jumped the gun and accused the university policeman. Liberals defended beleaguered Jussie from Trump's White Supremacist thugs and were led by Kamala Harris.
President Trump probably only wishes he enjoyed all that supposed "White Privilege"
so he could walk free from Schiff's scurrilous attacks, lies and witch hunt impeachment effort that is going nowhere, as I believed it would.
Meanwhile, the esteemed Trump hating Harvard Professor, Larry Tribe, attacks Trump's defenders.
The radial and rabid Democrats have gone from Russian collusion (Mueller could find none), to obstruction (Mueller said maybe, maybe not - split decision), to Ukrainian quid pro quo (released transcript depicted none), then back to Ukrainian obstruction (none) and failing all of this eventually to beating his wife. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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DORIS
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1) Targeted assassinations of terrorists send double message
Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.
The Israeli missile that blasted through senior Islamic Jihad terrorist Baha Abu al-Ata’s Gaza bedroom window at 4 a.m. on Tuesday morning may have killed the man and his wife, but it also sent a broader message to Hamas and Iran.
While officials insisted this was a “one-off” operation and Israel does not intend to return to a campaign of targeted assassinations, it also demonstrates to Hamas that Israel is still perfectly capable of obtaining detailed intelligence and carrying out a precision strike. It also sends a message to Iran that Israel will not tolerate the rogue regime’s proxies attacking it.
Moshe Maoz, a research fellow at the Hebrew University’s Harry S. Truman Institute, said, “This was going to happen sooner or later.”
He hesitated to conjecture whether or not this operation was connected to the installation of new Defense Minister Naftali Bennett, who officially took office immediately after the operation, and who, according to Maoz, seeks a tougher military approach to the Palestinian terror groups in Gaza.
Maoz also questioned whether the operation was intended to influence the ongoing government negotiations currently taking place in Israel to form a proper coalition.
According to Israel’s defense establishment, the Islamic Jihad commander was responsible for the majority of the attacks emanating from Gaza in the past year, and regardless of the political situation, Israel was left with no choice but to eliminate him at this point.
Maoz questioned the options Israel has. “What is the solution here? To occupy the Gaza Strip? The price will be high on both sides, and then Israel will need to deal with 2 million Palestinians,” he posed.
He noted that in the last decade, Israel “pounded” Gaza with airstrikes but nothing came of it, and many years of negotiations have not yielded the calm that Israel desires. Equally notable was the criticism that came from both political circles and the general Israeli public near the border.
According to Maoz, Israel needs to be “more creative” in finding a solution to the Gaza problem.
'Find the right targets'
Efraim Inbar, president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, told JNS that Hamas and Islamic Jihad must have known that their indiscriminate targeting of innocent civilians would “exact a high price from Israel.”
He said he does not believe that a full-scale ground invasion of Gaza now is the right solution, and he advocates “mowing the lawn” as the right approach, by which Israel occasionally carries out operations to prevent the terror groups there from becoming too powerful or capable.
However, Inbar acknowledged that “at some time, a full-scale ground incursion will be inevitable.”
For now, he said, Israel needs to “find the right targets – the ones that are most painful.”
While former Israel Defense Forces’ chief of staff and the leader of Israel’s Blue and White Party Benny Gantz had said in the past that he would “pound Gaza” and wipe out the Hamas leadership if elected, Inbar noted that “it is easy to speak when you are not in government.”
The prime minister always has “a different perspective,” noted Inbar.
Gantz supported the targeted killing, tweeting, “The campaign against terror is continuous and requires moments when difficult decisions must be made. The political leadership and the IDF made the correct decision tonight for the sake of the security of Israeli civilians and residents of the south.”
“Blue and White will back every correct action for the sake of Israel’s security and will put the security of residents above politics,” he wrote. “Every terrorist who endangers our security should know that his days are numbered.”
Unlike Maoz, who said he believes that it is possible to negotiate with Hamas and come to an understanding with the terror group that would result in some form of peace, Inbar emphasized that Hamas and Islamic Jihad “want to kill all of us. There is no solution. Islamic Jihad and Hamas just want to destroy the Jewish state.”
The Israeli missile that blasted through senior Islamic Jihad terrorist Baha Abu al-Ata’s Gaza bedroom window at 4 a.m. on Tuesday morning may have killed the man and his wife, but it also sent a broader message to Hamas and Iran.
While officials insisted this was a “one-off” operation and Israel does not intend to return to a campaign of targeted assassinations, it also demonstrates to Hamas that Israel is still perfectly capable of obtaining detailed intelligence and carrying out a precision strike. It also sends a message to Iran that Israel will not tolerate the rogue regime’s proxies attacking it.
Moshe Maoz, a research fellow at the Hebrew University’s Harry S. Truman Institute, said, “This was going to happen sooner or later.”
He hesitated to conjecture whether or not this operation was connected to the installation of new Defense Minister Naftali Bennett, who officially took office immediately after the operation, and who, according to Maoz, seeks a tougher military approach to the Palestinian terror groups in Gaza.
Maoz also questioned whether the operation was intended to influence the ongoing government negotiations currently taking place in Israel to form a proper coalition.
According to Israel’s defense establishment, the Islamic Jihad commander was responsible for the majority of the attacks emanating from Gaza in the past year, and regardless of the political situation, Israel was left with no choice but to eliminate him at this point.
Maoz questioned the options Israel has. “What is the solution here? To occupy the Gaza Strip? The price will be high on both sides, and then Israel will need to deal with 2 million Palestinians,” he posed.
He noted that in the last decade, Israel “pounded” Gaza with airstrikes but nothing came of it, and many years of negotiations have not yielded the calm that Israel desires. Equally notable was the criticism that came from both political circles and the general Israeli public near the border.
According to Maoz, Israel needs to be “more creative” in finding a solution to the Gaza problem.
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2) Underdog politician wins in underdog town
Salena Zito
EAST LIVERPOOL, Ohio-
“How did Gregory Bricker catch the windmills he was chasing? Well, it’s not that complicated. Because everything is local, politics at its best is about community, schools, how your neighbor is doing, how the churches are doing, and how well that entire combined network of tiny moving parts is functioning for the greater good.”Click here for the full story.
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3) Impeachment as Usual
By Kimberley Strassel
Democrats have managed to turn a grave process into a dully partisan one.
Democrats have already lost their impeachment battle. That’s the takeaway from Wednesday’s first public hearing. What was meant to be a moment in history turned out to be business as usual.
Democrats laid out their best case for removing Donald J. Trump from office, repeatedly using words like “extortion,” “bribery” and “abuse of power.” Mr. Trump was accused of “presidential misconduct,” of a “shakedown scheme” and of “corruption.” He was said to have broken the law and violated the Constitution. Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro analogized the president’s actions to “attempted murder.”
What else is new? The left has been leveling similar claims since before Mr. Trump was elected. When a party spends three years baselessly accusing a president of everything from being a Russian mole to obstructing justice, from profiting off the presidency to abusing security clearances and cheating on his taxes, that party loses the credibility to say: Really, this time, we mean it. Democrats didn’t lose the war for hearts and minds on Wednesday. They lost it three years ago.
Those hearts and minds are the only prize here. The media will continue to imbue this event with gravity, to report every bit of testimony as more “bombshell” evidence against Mr. Trump. But impeachment is a political process, so the measure of its “success” is whether its supporters can convince a bipartisan majority of the country that Mr. Trump took an action worthy of removal from office. Nothing in Wednesday’s hearing came close, and the Democrats took their best shot.
For the most part, it was a five-hour slog through the minutiae of U.S. policy toward Ukraine. Even political junkies had a tough task trying to keep track of dates, meetings and the long, dizzying cast of bureaucratic players. Two State Department officials, William Taylor and George Kent, laid out their concerns over the temporary delay in security aid to Ukraine and their belief that it was driven by domestic politics.
At the same time, viewers watched the Democrats’ two star witnesses acknowledge that they had no firsthand knowledge of White House decisions on the aid. They were reminded that Ukraine got the money without launching an investigation into Hunter or Joe Biden. And they watched Republican congressmen make a persuasive case that Democrats are abusing the process by blackballing White House counsel from hearings and refusing to call witnesses from the Republican list.
A Roll Call story this week about voter sentiment on impeachment in Washington state quoted Mark Stephan, a political science professor at Washington State University Vancouver. He said most voters “are either not exactly tuned to it closely, or . . . they’re just like, ‘I can’t make anything of this. This all seems like a Washington, D.C., mess.’ ”
Given the current dynamic, it’s also hard to see how impeachment redounds to either party’s benefit. Both sides are already claiming victory and will use it as a voter-turnout tool in 2020. Impeachment is meant to be a big deal, but Democrats and the media have accomplished the disturbing feat of turning it into day-to-day partisan warfare. And the public is understandably treating it as just that: Washington as usual.
3a) Schiff’s ‘Obstruction’
Theory
Theory
If he were confident in his legal position, he’d want to put the case to a judge. Yet he seems desperate not to.
By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey
Is it an impeachable offense for a president to resist impeachment? House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff told CNN last week that White House officials’ refusal to testify in his committee’s impeachment probe could lead to “obstruction of Congress” charges against President Trump. At a press conference last month, he warned the White House against trying to “stonewall our investigation” and said: “Any action like that, that forces us to litigate or have to consider litigation, will be considered further evidence of obstruction of justice.”
He’s wrong. In the absence of a definitive judicial ruling to the contrary, the president has a well-established constitutional right—even a duty—to resist such demands. The Constitution authorized the House to impeach the president if it has evidence of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” but it does not require the president, who heads an equal branch of government, to cooperate in gathering such evidence. Accordingly, the Trump administration has refused to honor various document-production requests, and has instructed some current and former officials to ignore committee subpoenas.
Not all officials have complied with this instruction, but those who have—including former national security adviser John Bolton, former deputy national security adviser Charles Kupperman, chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and deputy White House counsel John Eisenberg—are acting lawfully and appropriately.
It has long been established that the president, and by extension his advisers, have two types of immunity from making disclosures to Congress. One applies to national-security information, the other to communications with immediate advisers, whether related to national security or not. Both immunities, when applicable, are absolute, which means they can’t be trumped by competing congressional needs.
The national-security privilege was most definitively explained in a 1989 memorandum from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). It noted that the privilege is anchored in the longstanding right “not to disclose state secrets,” first asserted by President Thomas Jefferson and affirmed by the courts in 1807. Although the Supreme Court unanimously rejected an assertion of executive privilege for all presidential communications in U.S. v. Nixon (1974), it “unmistakably implied,” according to the OLC memo, “that the President does enjoy an absolute state secrets privilege.”The privilege for communications with the small group of senior White House staff who are the president’s immediate advisers is equally well-grounded. The OLC first fully articulated it in 1971 under future Chief Justice William Rehnquist. The office has reaffirmed it many times under presidents of both parties in response to all manner of congressional requests.
The privilege is premised on the Constitution’s separation of powers: “The President is a separate branch of government,” a 1982 OLC memo put it. “He may not compel congressmen to appear before him. As a matter of separation of powers, Congress may not compel him to appear before it.” The president’s immediate advisers are effectively his alter egos. Compelling them to appear is the equivalent of compelling him.
This point bears emphasis. Congress also has absolute privileges from interference with its operations, including the Constitution’s Speech and Debate Clause. Under that protection, lawmakers may defy the executive branch—for example, by publicly reading classified information into the congressional record—and they have done so.
Both privileges apply to the situation at hand, in which Congress seeks information from Mr. Trump’s most senior advisers about sensitive issues of national security. Ultimately, the courts must determine whether the president may invoke these privileges and whether his advisers must comply with the Intelligence Committee’s demands. Mr. Kupperman has brought a lawsuit challenging the subpoena, which is now pending before Judge Richard Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Mr. Schiff appears to have little confidence in his legal position, because he attempted to make the case moot by withdrawing the Kupperman subpoena. House lawyers asked the court to dismiss the action on that ground. Judge Leon refused.
The House claims it doesn’t want judicial review because of another pending lawsuit involving a subpoena. But that case is materially different. It was brought before the impeachment inquiry began and involves efforts to force former White House counsel Don McGahn to testify about the firing of James Comey as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and matters related to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. It raises no question of national-security immunity, so it cannot resolve the question with respect to Mr. Kupperman—at least not in Mr. Schiff’s favor.
The House majority’s effort to avoid adjudication of its demands for testimony presents another key problem. Under Mr. Schiff’s legal theory of what constitutes an impeachable offense, the House must demonstrate that the president has engaged in quid pro quo conduct vis-Ã -vis Ukraine, where U.S. military aid was allegedly withheld to secure cooperation in investigating Hunter Biden’s association with Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company. Mr. Trump vigorously denies that he intended to withhold U.S. aid.
His state of mind is of utmost importance to the House’s case. Yet, the only witnesses who have provided testimony on the question had little if any direct contact with the president. Advisers like Messrs. Bolton, Kupperman and Mulvaney, by contrast, would have been in daily contact with him. If House Democrats are serious about impeaching Mr. Trump for his dealings with the Ukrainian president, obtaining a judicial ruling that they are entitled to this critical testimony should be their top priority.
Mr. Schiff’s claim that Mr. Trump is guilty of an impeachable offense if he “forces us to litigate” is preposterous. It is the president’s right and obligation to protect the institution of the presidency from inappropriate congressional demands. If Mr. Schiff believes he is right on the law, he should welcome the opportunity to put his case to a judge. His refusal to do so exposes the entire exercise as a partisan sham.
Messrs. Rivkin and Casey practice appellate and constitutional law in Washington. They served in the White House Counsel’s Office and Justice Department under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
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