Our new (7 months old) nephew - Mason and his Mom, Asya and Dad, Craig.
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Below are some Op Ed's that pretty much wrap up the views I embrace regarding the Trump Impeachment process. (See 1, 1a, 1b and 1c below.)
Some personal thoughts:
a) If there are any adults in Congress they must seek to repair the damage caused by the Democrat's hate campaign against an unorthodox president.
b) FISC Judge Collyer could be criticized for coming to the party a bit late but, giving her the benefit of doubt, she stood up and sent a clear message to the FBI.
c) Petty Pious Pelosi seems she does not understand what a colossal defeat she allowed her party to receive. The fact she now tells the nation she is withholding sending the two indictments to The Senate because she seeks fairness is laughable. If Trump is such a threat to our nation why is she not acting swiftly? She is proving Trump was right - all a sham.
d) Most important of all, we must turn away from using impeachment as a political weapon and return to respecting the will of the people as determined by the election process.
e) Finally, both aisles are patting themselves on passing a budget that offers something for everyone but is destructive for We The People. At some point these elected fools will have to get serious about spending/dissipating our children's future prospects and weakening our nation in the face of our adversaries.
My assessment of prior presidents including Trump:
a) I voted for Trump and will do so again.
b) I understand he is a different kind of president and I realize every president leaves his own distinctive mark on The Oval Office.
I loved Reagan's sense of humor and ability to work with Tip O'Neil. He knew how to play poker - ask The Russians.
I thought Bush 41 was a decent man but not the best politician. He was dignified and fought willingly for our nation. His crowning achievement was the orchestration of The Gulf War.
His son was not his father in many ways but he led us through a dire period. He made mistakes in judgement and they have become albatrosses.
Clinton was a great politician who proved he could change and adjust and he balanced the budget but his personal sense of right and wrong was disastrous. He deserved the moniker "Slick Willy."
Nixon was insecure, had a chip on his shoulder but was a strategic thinker. He did not have to lie but he did and paid the price.
Kennedy brought intellect to the office but his life was cut short so we do not really know what kind of president he would have made. He was more discreet than Clinton but was also a Lothario as was his father and his Chappaquiddick brother.
Johnson was Trump-like in his Texas crudeness but he meant well. He became president at the wrong time and in the wrong way.
Trump has changed the office of the president in ways we will look back on and realize approached genius. He is a businessman who became an effective politician. His ability to stretch the truth and brashness are not endearing features but his counter punching ability, under the most difficult circumstances, and his indefatigable ability to remain upbeat are amazing. That said, he also goes needlessly out of his way to be a bully. and insulting. If re-elected, we will see whether the final chapters of his presidency measure up to his many accomplishments achieved in his first term.
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I invited comment about my views regarding working women and here is one from a very old and dear friend and fellow memo reader: "You invited comment? My comment is:
Cogent, accurate, concise summary of the United State's societal evolution over the last 70 years.
Keep it up, Dick. The world needs your voice.
With best regards, S------"
This on Trump's letter to Pious Pelosi and from a dear friend, a true patriot and a fellow memo reader: "Whether you love him or hate him, this letter from President Trump to Speaker Pelosi will go down in history as a remarkable document. As for me, I agree with nearly every word of it. And PLEASE share this with others.
Undoubtedly Trump has been unique as a President. He despises the deeply embedded functionaries of government he has encountered in his almost 3 years in office and they hate him back with a fury that has not been seen for decades on Capitol Hill. He has no affection for the deeply self-serving personal and cultural agendas of the State Dept, the intelligence community and Congress. As an outsider now deeply enmeshed in the petty and squalid intrigues of the “Deep State” he must feel like Gulliver being restrained by the Lilliputians. And yet he continues to fight. During the 2016 primary season, I was a “never Trumper”. His obnoxious style was a real turn-off for me. But I failed to appreciate the profoundly important difference between Style and Substance. Over the last 3 years he has proven me wrong. Although obnoxious, he deeply cares for my Homeland. He can certainly be rude, caustic and petty publicly. As someone who has put his toe into Capitol Hill politics, I can tell you that he only diverges from the usual “deep swamp critters” by being very public in his commentary. Most of the “Congress Critters” who are vehemently attacking him (and have been since before he was even inaugurated!) are even more spiteful, vengeful and self-serving when off the screen. I am so enraged by smooth talking politicos(e.g., Schumer, Pelosi, Schiff, Clinton and Obama) who are so willing to destroy our American Republic behind the scenes in pursuit of their real agenda- a socialist America where only the self-ordained intelligentsia have a say in how we are governed. As for Biden and his son, they epitomize what is wrong with the depraved self-serving culture of the Beltway and not only was President Trump acting in good faith towards the American people, by asking that they be investigated by an outsider, but both of these crooks should be convicted of insider trading and sent to the minimum security prison at Maxwell AFB to work on their greens-keeping skills at the Officers Club golf course for a few years( although they both deserve far worse). The DC swamp needed shaking up and this brave man is doing it! B--"
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Tel Aviv - go and experience. (See 2 below.)
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DORIS
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++1)This Impeachment Folly
The Resistance wins in the House, but will it now lose in 2020?
The Editorial Board
House Democrats voted Wednesday evening to impeach Donald Trump but, media high-fives aside, what have they accomplished? They have failed to persuade the country; they have set a new, low standard for impeaching a President; Mr. Trump will be acquitted in the Senate; and Democrats may have helped Mr. Trump win re-election. Congratulations to The Resistance.
Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Jerrold Nadler have said in the past that impeachment must be bipartisan to be credible, and they have achieved their goal—against impeachment. In the actual vote, two Democrats voted against both articles and a third voted with them against one. New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew voted no and may switch to the GOP. All Republicans voted against impeachment.The impeachment press will deride the GOP as either afraid of Donald Trump or moral sellouts. But note that even the 20 GOP Members who are retiring from the House and not running for another office voted against impeachment. GOP Members like Peter King (N.Y.), Jim Sensenbrenner (Wis.) and Will Hurd (Texas) have been unafraid to break with party leaders or Presidents in the past.
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The problem isn’t GOP consciences, it’s the weak and dishonest Democratic case for impeachment. One issue is the unfair House process. Democrats refused GOP witness requests in the Intelligence Committee, denied the GOP a hearing day in the Judiciary Committee, and rushed the impeachment debate and vote. They claim impeachment is a serious, solemn moment but then sprinted to judgment to meet the political needs of swing-district Members who want it over fast.
On the substance, Democrats have taken an episode of Mr. Trump’s reckless foreign-policy judgment and distorted it into broad claims of bribery and extortion. The evidence of weakness is that their own articles of impeachment include no allegations of specific crimes.
Instead they watered them down to “abuse of power” and obstruction of Congress. The first is so general that the majority can define it to be anything. Impeachment doesn’t require a criminal offense, but the virtue of including a violation of law is that specific actions can be measured against it. That is why every previous impeachment included charges of specific violations of law.
This time Democrats have pulled a legal bait and switch. First they alleged an illegal quid pro quo. After doing focus groups with voters, they switched to bribery and extortion. Then they dropped those in the formal articles of impeachment, only to reassert them again on Monday in a 658-page Judiciary Committee document justifying impeachment. Can’t they at least be honest enough to charge Mr. Trump with the specific acts they claim he committed?
In their other Judiciary staff document on the history of impeachment, Democrats cited with approval the Republican impeachment of Andrew Johnson. They claimed that while the articles of impeachment cited Johnson’s violation of the Tenure of Office Act, Republicans were really impeaching him for undermining Reconstruction.
This is a giveaway that Democrats are impeaching Mr. Trump not for Ukraine, but because they believe he is simply unfit to be President. Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff has been explicit in justifying impeachment to prevent Mr. Trump from being able to “cheat in one more election” in 2020—a pre-emptive impeachment.
Where is that in the Constitution? Democrats are defining impeachment down to a tool of Congressional ascendancy that will threaten any President of the opposite party who becomes unpopular.
The second article—resisting Congressional subpoenas—boils down to impeaching Mr. Trump because he has gone to court to protect the powers of his office. Every modern President has done that on some issue, including Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. The article of impeachment claims Mr. Trump has gone to court “without lawful cause or excuse,” but Democrats won’t even give the courts the chance to define what is a lawful cause.
All of this is reason enough for House Republicans to vote no and for the Senate to acquit. Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader, is demanding to hear from witnesses like John Bolton whom the House refused to subpoena. Mr. Schumer wants to feed the impeachment maelstrom as well as prevent Republicans from calling Hunter or Joe Biden. The GOP is under no obligation to play along and, based on the House evidence, Senators are justified in voting to acquit without hearing anyone.
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As for the politics, Mr. Trump is now likely to be the first impeached President to run for re-election. Democrats clearly hope the Scarlet “I” will work against him, but Mr. Trump will tout the partisan vote as illegitimate and his Senate acquittal as vindication. He will also argue that Democrats and the media never accepted his 2016 victory and tried to overrule the verdict of voters. He will be right.
How this argument will play out is impossible to predict, but note that Mr. Trump’s approval rating has been improving amid the impeachment debate. Support for impeachment hasn’t increased. Millions of Republicans who dislike Mr. Trump’s character and behavior are nonetheless repelled by the attempt to oust him months before another election.
Removing Mr. Trump from office outside of an election won’t banish Trumpism or reduce political polarization. Mr. Trump’s voters would see it as an elite coup, and Mr. Trump would not go quietly into exile. A more rational opposition would understand this, accept his victory in 2016, and focus on defeating him at the ballot box. The Ukraine intervention could be part of that electoral indictment.
Instead Democrats want to overrule the electorate’s vote in 2016 and pre-empt it in 2020. If Mr. Trump wins re-election, the folly of this impeachment will be a major reason.
1a) Where’s the Liberal Outrage?
Would Joe Biden or any other Democratic president let the FBI’s discredited behavior become the norm?
By Daniel Heninger
Some readers objected—went ballistic—when it was suggested in this space recently (“The Democrats’ Fractured Fairy Tales”) that absent the now-discredited Russia-collusion narrative, “we would have had a ‘normal’ presidential term.”
To be precise: Yes, the Trump personality still would have maddened millions daily, but the mad, mad world of Donald Trump would have been about immigration, climate change or other issues inside the orbit of real, workaday politics, national court injunctions and all.Instead, Wednesday saw official Washington light the equivalent of a rubber-tire bonfire—House Democrats voting to impeach President Trump. The vote climaxed the Beltway’s three-year delirium over Donald J. Trump. To judge by the coverage, there’s been nothing like it since the feds nailed John Dillinger.
Well, it’s not too soon to survey the ruins. Driven by the collusion narrative, the past three years have done significant damage to America’s institutions—especially the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
On Tuesday, in one of the most astounding public documents in years, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in Washington announced that its relationship with the FBI is broken. The simple, direct title of the court order is In Re Accuracy Concerns Regarding FBI Matters Submitted to the FISC. What follows is the obliteration, by a federal court, of the FBI’s reputation. The order ends with a demand that the government submit in detail what it plans to do to restore that reputation. Like the Horowitz report, you have to read this order’s four pages to get a sense of the substantive drama playing out behind the scenes of the impeachment melodrama, which reached a comic apotheosis with Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s House-floor recital of the Pledge of Allegiance (shades of Aunt Bethany in “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation”).
One has to be mad to think this sad event was worth what we’ve been through the past three years. Last week a reader wrote to say what has been happening in Washington called to mind Costa-Gavras’s 1969 movie “Z,” a paranoid thriller about a country whose politics and legal machinery have descended into a duplicitous, incomprehensible hall of mirrors. The FISA court order to the FBI, coming a week after the Horowitz report, suggests the American system remains sturdier. Maybe.
The Horowitz report described in detail the flaws and even malfeasance in the FBI’s four warrant applications to the FISA court, from 2016 through mid-2017, to conduct electronic surveillance of—in the court’s pointed words this week—“a U.S. citizen named Carter W. Page.”
The court continues, “In order to appreciate the seriousness of that misconduct,” it is necessary to review the FBI’s legal obligations under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
The law provides that an application for a warrant requires “probable cause.” The agent filing it “swears to the facts in the application,” which “cannot be solely based on activities protected by the First Amendment.” A primary purpose of these rules is “to protect the fourth amendment rights of U.S. persons.” And because “the government does not face an adverse party”—the target isn’t represented in court—the government “has a heightened duty of candor.”
Then, clearly, the FISA court challenges the FBI’s credibility: “The frequency with which representations made by FBI personnel turned out to be unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession, and with which they withheld information detrimental to their case, calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable.”
The order, signed by Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer, gives the government until Jan. 10 to provide a “sworn written submission” of what it intends to do to ensure the accuracy of future FBI applications to the court. It demands “an explanation of why, in the government’s view, the information in FBI applications submitted in the interim should be regarded as reliable.”
Where’s the liberal outrage? After the Horowitz report’s release, Sens. Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein—presumably the party’s distinguished elders—delivered unequivocal defenses of the FBI’s behavior, with Mrs. Feinstein citing “unsupported attacks on the agency.” I’d say the “justified predicate” for the first FISA application is looking rather paltry, at best.
If Joe Biden or any of the others wins the presidency, would they appoint an attorney general who will pursue the reforms demanded by the FISA court? Or would a Democratic president let business as usual become the “norm”? This is a question voters will have to decide in November. But I’d like to hear a moderator in Thursday’s Democratic debate ask it.
Finally, isn’t it time for FBI Director Christopher Wray to leave the building and address the country in a highly visible speech? The FBI is in the throes of a historic crisis of credibility, no matter how “few” were involved. The American people deserve an apology—from someone.
1b) What if Monica Had Taken the Stand?
Had the Senate called witnesses to testify in 1999, it might have convicted Bill Clinton.
By Jonathan Turley
Imagine if Monica Lewinsky had taken the stand as a witness in President Clinton’s 1999 impeachment trial. Imagine the drama of the young former White House intern sitting in the well of the Senate recalling how the president encouraged her to sign a false affidavit after learning that she would be a witness against him. It would have been an unforgettable moment. But it didn’t happen for the simple reason that few in the Senate wanted to hear such evidence.
During the Clinton trial, the House impeachment managers were surprised to learn that the upper chamber’s Republican majority agreed with Democratic demands not only to bar live testimony but to limit depositions to three witnesses and take them in private. It was a decision that might have determined the outcome of the trial. Soon the Senate will have to decide whether to replicate the same constraints on the trial of President Donald Trump.
Whether witnesses are required at a presidential impeachment trial is an open question. The 1868 trial of Andrew Johnson resembled a criminal proceeding. The House managers called 25 prosecution witnesses and Johnson’s defense team called 16 witnesses. During the Clinton impeachment, the issue of witnesses came up during House Judiciary Committee hearings. As an expert called to address the constitutional standards, I explained that the Framers didn’t explicitly require witnesses in the House or the Senate but there was likely an expectation—drawn from English impeachments—that witnesses would be called at a Senate trial.
While I favored calling witnesses, the issue wasn’t clear-cut because the underlying investigation into Mr. Clinton had spanned years. Two independent counsels had interviewed dozens of witnesses. Rather than call the same people to testify again, the House decided to rely on the massive record supplied by independent counsel Kenneth Starr. Senate Democrats not only opposed calling witnesses; all but one voted to dismiss both articles without any trial. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer—who has demanded that witnesses be called in the Trump impeachment trial—as a freshman in 1999 disdained witness testimony as “political theater.”
In the end, the senators considering whether to remove Mr. Clinton from office heard only excerpts from depositions by three witnesses—and even that was over Democratic objections.
Here is what they—and the public—didn’t hear. Ms. Lewinsky gave an interview to A&E last year revealing that Mr. Clinton encouraged her in a 2:30 a.m. phone call to submit a false affidavit to the independent counsel. This raises the possibility that the president committed a variety of crimes, from suborning perjury to witness tampering. Apparently, when Mr. Clinton learned that Ms. Lewinsky was on the witness list in Paula Jones’s sexual-harassment lawsuits, he did what many Democrats have accused Mr. Trump of doing: He called a witness to influence her testimony.
Moreover, Ms. Lewinsky claimed in the interview, she called Vernon Jordan, one of his friends and political allies, and he took her to meet Frank Carter, a lawyer who had her sign an affidavit denying any intimate relationship with the president. She says Mr. Jordan also offered the inexperienced 24-year-old a job with Revlon, where he was a board member.
Ms. Lewinsky said that she was terrified and that the president had assured her that “I could probably sign an affidavit to get out of it.” She also said that Mr. Carter assured her that if she signed the false affidavit, she might avoid being called as a witness. Messrs. Carter and Jordan have denied that they urged Ms. Lewinsky to lie.
Imagine, again, the most riveting moment that never occurred in an impeachment. Ms. Lewinsky might have taken the stand and told senators that Mr. Clinton not only had an affair with a young intern but also pressured her to lie under oath. She might then have described how her lawyer had allegedly advised her to sign a false affidavit. Even before the #MeToo movement, such testimony would have put many Democratic senators in a difficult position.
While one of the articles of impeachment referred to Mr. Clinton’s “encouraging” Ms. Lewinsky’s false statements, had she publicly testified about what the president said in his early morning phone call, it would have been evidence of subornation, witness tampering and obstruction of justice. It would have destroyed the argument made by his defenders that he did nothing but lie about a personal affair.
Mr. Turley is a professor of public interest law at George Washington University. He served as lead defense counsel in Judge Thomas Porteous’s 2010 impeachment trial. He testified as an expert witness in both the Clinton and Trump impeachment hearings.
1c)The FISA Judge Strikes Back
She orders the FBI to shape up after its abuses, but that isn’t nearly enough.
The Editorial Board
Our media friends want to ignore the FBI’s abuse of power in seeking secret warrants to spy on Carter Page, but the country deserves a thorough accounting and clean up. One step in the right direction arrived Tuesday when a clearly outraged head of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court told the government to shape up and fast.
In a blistering order that she made public, presiding FISC Judge Rosemary Collyer responded to last week’s Inspector General report on the FBI’s dishonest applications. She notes that the FBI appears before her court without a competing pleader, and that the government thus “has a heightened duty of candor to the [FISC] in ex parte proceedings.”
She adds that the IG report found “troubling instances in which FBI personnel provided information” to the court “which was unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession.” FBI officials also hid information from the court that was detrimental to their claim of probable cause that Mr. Page was an “agent of a foreign power.”
Judge Collyer’s order demands that the government, no later than Jan. 10, inform the court “in a sworn written submission” what it has done and plans to do to make sure future FISA warrant applications aren’t tainted. This is useful and is the first public evidence we’ve had that the FISA judges believe they were deceived.Yet it also underscores how the FISA process dilutes political accountability. The FBI has tried to say its applications were kosher because a court approved them, while the court now fingers the FBI for deception. But so far no individuals have been held accountable, and the abuses would never have been discovered without the digging of former House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes.
Congress created FISA in the late 1970s to protect against previous FBI wiretap abuses. Clearly it hasn’t worked, and more bureaucratic hurdles won’t stop FBI officials who lie or alter email evidence. Injecting judges into secret executive-branch national security decisions was always a mistake, and now we know it abets abuse more than prevents it.
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2) Forbes names Tel Aviv 2nd-best place to visit in 2020
Israel’s White City is named as the second hottest destination to visit in the world, after Las Vegas.
Between its sandy beaches and vast array of culinary delights, Tel Avivians already know that they live in one of the best cities in the world. Now though, it seems that what was once the best-kept secret in the Middle East has transformed into a mainstream holiday destination.
In fact, late last week Forbes named Israel’s White City as the second hottest destination to visit in the world. Tel Aviv follows Sin City in Forbes' list and is described as “ancient history” meets “modern living ... along Israel’s Mediterranean coast.” It gave a shoutout to Jaffa’s Setai hotel, a luxury hotel renovated from an Ottoman Empire Police station for those really looking for the old-meets-new experience that the city embodies.
The article also cited Tel Aviv’s unique Bauhaus architecture, which is recognized by UNESCO as a reason to visit.
Yuval Rotem, Director-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, welcomed Forbes’ praise for the city, saying: “We invite everyone to visit this incredible city and our beautiful country this coming year!”
Of course, this is isn’t the first time Forbes encouraged its readers to visit Tel Aviv. Just last May, it ran an article listing the top five reasons to visit the city.
Other destinations to grace the list were Macau, Nashville, and Okinawa.
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