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Comparisons. (See 1 below.)
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Now that Buttigieg is gaining traction Warren is on his case demanding he reveal who his clients were when he worked at McKinsey. He has responded his non-disclosure agreement prevents him from doing so.
Obviously both are in the horse race of their life and attacking each other is increasing. I never knew horses devoured their own.
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Trump vs. Schiff. (See 2 below.)
And:
The danger of shrinking the office of the president. (See 2a below.)
Finally:
Should pious Pelosi abort her idea about being a devout Catholic? (See 2b below.)
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Interesting articles:
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DORIS
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++1)Comparison of press releases: PM Benjamin Netanyahu Speaks with Russian
President Vladimir Putin
#1. Israeli press release:
PM Benjamin Netanyahu Speaks with Russian President Vladimir Putin
(Communicated by the Prime Minister's Media Adviser)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, last night (Friday, 6 December 2019),
spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The two discussed Iran, the
situation in Syria, Israel's security needs and the continued avoidance of
friction between the IDF and Russian military forces.
#2. Russian press release:
Telephone conversation with Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu
Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation with Prime Minister of Israel
Benjamin Netanyahu at the latter's initiative.
December 6, 2019 18:40
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/62263
Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu discussed the range of current issues
on the bilateral agenda, including in the context of the President of Russia"s
visit to Israel scheduled for January 2020.
In addition, Russian-Israeli cooperation on Syria was discussed.
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2) Trump vs. Schiff Is a Clash of One Titan
Hearings were hardly necessary to show that Donald Trump, in all too characteristic a fashion, took interest in his administration’s Ukraine policy only when he saw a chance to lard on Ukrainian announcements that he could throw back in the face of domestic critics who questioned his 2016 legitimacy.
A media transcript plainly shows that acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney was not referring to a Ukraine quid pro quo when he said politics will influence foreign policy and that critics should “get over it.” Ambassador Gordon Sondland merely “presumed” that Mr. Trump sought a quid pro quo from Ukraine. Why falsely characterize these men’s statements, as the Schiff report does, when doing so is unnecessary to convince anyone that Mr. Trump nevertheless envisioned a quid pro quo?
Mr. Schiff claims Mr. Trump delayed “critical military aid” to Ukraine, but offers no evidence that the aid was critical. (The missiles discussed in Mr. Trump’s supposedly incriminating call with Ukraine’s president were not even part of the holdup.) He insists Mr. Trump’s dealings undermined U.S. national interests, but a president is perfectly entitled to differ with Mr. Schiff over what constitutes the national interest. With a casualness you expect only from the media, he relies on the fallacy that wishing to examine Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election is tantamount to denying Russian meddling.
Mr. Schiff must gild the few lilies in his possession to distract from a glaring omission in his own proceedings. “Fact witnesses” were called to discuss whether there was a quid pro quo, but none were called to give evidence on whether the “quos” Mr. Trump sought from Ukraine were unfounded or illegal.
2) Trump vs. Schiff Is a Clash of One Titan
His committee’s report on impeachment is weak propaganda that doesn’t even try to change minds.
By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr
Hearings were hardly necessary to show that Donald Trump, in all too characteristic a fashion, took interest in his administration’s Ukraine policy only when he saw a chance to lard on Ukrainian announcements that he could throw back in the face of domestic critics who questioned his 2016 legitimacy.
So why does Adam Schiff feel the need to stretch every truth beyond the breaking point in a House Intelligence Committee impeachment report released this week?
Mr. Schiff claims Mr. Trump delayed “critical military aid” to Ukraine, but offers no evidence that the aid was critical. (The missiles discussed in Mr. Trump’s supposedly incriminating call with Ukraine’s president were not even part of the holdup.) He insists Mr. Trump’s dealings undermined U.S. national interests, but a president is perfectly entitled to differ with Mr. Schiff over what constitutes the national interest. With a casualness you expect only from the media, he relies on the fallacy that wishing to examine Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election is tantamount to denying Russian meddling.
Mr. Schiff must gild the few lilies in his possession to distract from a glaring omission in his own proceedings. “Fact witnesses” were called to discuss whether there was a quid pro quo, but none were called to give evidence on whether the “quos” Mr. Trump sought from Ukraine were unfounded or illegal.
Don’t underestimate this sign of Mr. Schiff’s disingenuousness. However much the media lies about it now, a Ukrainian official allied with the then-Poroshenko government spoke openly to the Financial Times in 2016 of his work to ensure Mr. Trump’s defeat. Ditto the Bidens: Mr. Trump may be barking up the wrong tree in some ways, but Joe Biden is not just Mr. Trump’s present-day “political rival.” He is a former vice president who, when tasked to help clean up corruption in Ukraine, allowed his unqualified, drug-addict son to receive a lucrative board seat at a Ukrainian company under investigation for corruption.
These are subjects whose illegitimacy must be proved, not just assumed. And yet missing from the final report is any evidence that broaching them with the Ukrainians amounted to the crimes of bribery, extortion or campaign-law violation that Mr. Schiff once told us it did.
Instead, Mr. Schiff insinuates a motive he’s not prepared to state clearly, one designed as much to rescue his own reputation as slur Mr. Trump’s. This is his report’s reference to Mr. Trump as a president “elected in 2016 with the benefit of an unprecedented and sweeping campaign of election interference undertaken by Russia in his favor.”
In fact, Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society painstakingly examined the social-media evidence and found Russia’s impact on the election to be trivial. More to the point, the authors concluded: “If the biggest win for Russian information operations is to disorient American political communications, then overstating the impact of those efforts actually helps consolidate their success.”
Bingo. Mr. Schiff may not be a Russian agent but he qualifies as a Kremlin asset in the sense that Hillary Clinton has been known to use the term. Example: Nothing in Mr. Trump’s words and actions, and nothing in the testimony of any witness, supported the claim with which Mr. Schiff began his hearings, that Mr. Trump asked Ukraine to “make up dirt, lots of it” on the Bidens.
Is this not the kind of shameless twisting of the facts the Kremlin’s own propagandists use to sow discord and bitterness? Mr. Schiff later lied and said he was engaging in “parody,” but anybody can listen to his remarks and hear him insisting his rendition is the accurate “essence” of Mr. Trump’s “rambling” presentation.
Which raises a question. Festooning their impeachment case with lies and innuendo of the sort Mr. Schiff specialized in during the collusion fiasco is hardly a way for Democrats to win over the noncommitted. Indeed, why allow someone so discredited with Trump voters and Middle America to be the face of this effort in the first place? Answer: Because we’re having this impeachment for no other reason than to appease the House left and save Nancy Pelosi’s speakership when and if Donald Trump is re-elected.
2a) Impeaching Trump for Obstructing Congress Would Harm Checks and Balances
Among the grounds for impeachment being considered by the House Judiciary Committee is that President Trump obstructed Congress by refusing to have members of the executive branch comply with Congressional subpoenas without orders of the court. This ground was given the imprimatur of the academic experts who testified for the Democrats. These experts, however, were not only wrong; their opinions pose a real danger to civil liberties and checks and balances. Moreover, it is highly questionable that these experts would have said that citizens must always comply with Congressional subpoenas without a judicial order if the political shoe were on the other foot.
2a) Impeaching Trump for Obstructing Congress Would Harm Checks and Balances
Among the grounds for impeachment being considered by the House Judiciary Committee is that President Trump obstructed Congress by refusing to have members of the executive branch comply with Congressional subpoenas without orders of the court. This ground was given the imprimatur of the academic experts who testified for the Democrats. These experts, however, were not only wrong; their opinions pose a real danger to civil liberties and checks and balances. Moreover, it is highly questionable that these experts would have said that citizens must always comply with Congressional subpoenas without a judicial order if the political shoe were on the other foot.
I came of age during the McCarthy era, when Congressional committees issued subpoenas to suspected Communists, fellow travelers and lawyers who represented left wing radicals. Civil libertarians challenged these subpoenas in court, sometimes winning, sometimes losing. But no liberal accused them of doing anything wrong by refusing to comply with Congressional subpoenas until and unless a court ordered them to comply. Now, however, anti-Trumpers are demanding impeachment for what they would have praised during the McCarthy era.
In the context of legislative subpoenas to members of the executive branch, there are reasons for concern in addition to those based on the civil liberties of ordinary citizens. There is the separation of powers and checks and balances. Unlike in parliamentary democracies, in which the legislative branch is superior to the executive and judicial branches, under our system, all three branches are co-equal and designed to check the excesses of each other. As Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist Papers, the judicial branch gets to decide whether actions of the other branches comport with the Constitution. If they do not, they are void, because the constitution is the supreme law of the land.
The president, as head of the executive branch, is entitled to challenge in court legislative subpoenas that demand material that may be subject to claims of privilege. He is also entitled to insist that the legislature obtain a court order before the executive branch complies. That is how checks and balances work. The president should not be impeached because he takes seriously our system of checks and balances.
Even if the president were wrong in challenging these subpoenas, his being wrong would not come close to being an impeachable offense. What do the Democratic experts claim it is? Treason? Bribery? A high crime? A high misdemeanor? It is none of the above and is, therefore, not a basis for impeachment. President Andrew Johnson was impeached for refusing to comply with a statute enacted by congress which he believed was unconstitutional. Not only do many historians and legal scholars believe that was a wrongful impeachment, but the Supreme Court agreed with Johnson that the statute he violated was unconstitutional. Johnson was narrowly acquitted by the Senate, but his impeachment by the house was an abuse of power, because he had not committed any of the criteria for impeachment specified in the constitution.
Congress is not above the law. It cannot simply ignore the words of the Constitution even if a majority of its members want to impeach the president. For Congress to impeach President Trump for abuse of Congress would be an abuse of power by Congress.
So despite the partisan opinions of the Democratic academic experts, Congress should not include abuse of Congress among its list of impeachable offenses. Nor should it include any counts that do not fit the specified Constitutional criteria. Since the evidence adduced thus far fails to establish treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors, Congress should not vote to impeach. If it does vote to do so along party lines, it will be acting unconstitutionally and placing itself above the supreme law of the land.
Alan M. Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law Emeritus at Harvard Law School and author of The Case Against the Democratic House Impeaching Trump, Skyhorse Publishing, 2019, and Guilt by Accusation, Skyhorse publishing, 2019.
2b) Pro-Abortion Pelosi's Convenient Catholicism
If House speaker Nancy Pelosi is a "practicing Catholic," then Sen. Elizabeth Warren is an American Indian. If she is a practicing Catholic, then one hopes that one day, she gets it right. You cannot be in fundamental disagreement with a fundamental doctrine of the Catholic Church and then wrap yourself in its vestments to proclaim you don't hate anybody.
2b) Pro-Abortion Pelosi's Convenient Catholicism
If House speaker Nancy Pelosi is a "practicing Catholic," then Sen. Elizabeth Warren is an American Indian. If she is a practicing Catholic, then one hopes that one day, she gets it right. You cannot be in fundamental disagreement with a fundamental doctrine of the Catholic Church and then wrap yourself in its vestments to proclaim you don't hate anybody.
Funny: Cafeteria Catholic Pelosi doesn't invoke her Christian conscience when she supports her caucus's abortion-until-birth infanticide policy, the ultimate separation of mother from child. There is no worse brutality than what an unborn child feels at the hands of a surgeon's tools. It is a fact that forceps kill more children than guns. A detention center on the border or the deportation of those who have had their due process and have a deportation order lawfully issued by a judge doesn't even come close.
Pelosi did not respect faith-based communities and other organizations, such as her Catholic Church, when it came to Obamacare's attempt to force them and the institutions they administer to provide insurance that pays for abortions and contraceptives. When it comes to Catholics and pro-life people acting on their religious conscience, she fights them quicker than you can say "Hobby Lobby." As LifeSiteNews reported during a recent abortion funding battle:
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi blasted Catholics for fighting for the right not to perform or fund abortions, describing their abhorrence for supporting abortions as "this conscience thing," in remarks to the Washington Post.Last month, during a debate in the House over a bill to stop abortion funding in the health care bill and to strengthen conscience rights on abortion, Pelosi had described the bill as "savage," claiming that it would allow doctors to let women "die on the floor" because they could refuse to perform an abortion.
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