Should Sen McConnell Call Witnesses? If So, Who And Why?

See Judiciary committee thread

I haven't been here all that long but if eating crow will kill a person, you should be long dead by now. Originally Posted by HedonistForever

This will be interesting. I'm torn on this. One day I agree with those that say open with a vote just like they do in the jury room before any deliberation. The jury foreman says let's take a vote and see if it will be a waste of time to deliberate.



The next day I want both Bidens, Schiff ( more than anybody ) the WB, Comey, Brennan, Strzok, Page, McCabe, Bruce and Nellie Ohr everybody that signed their name to a FISA warrant, I want the trial long enough to keep Sanders and Warren off the campaign trail.


Next day I'm back to shut it down without hearing from a sole. Originally Posted by HedonistForever

If Trump has the Republicans pretty much wrapped up, vote and fight this out in the media and with Barr.

The Dims strategy of "indicting a ham sandwich" has backfired.

I'll ask again, what if all those persons Democrats want called say the same thing, that yes indeed, the President asked for an investigation of Joe Biden who demanded and got a quid pro quo, the firing of an official in the Ukraine government in return for money promised to help fight the dastardly Russians. Holding up those funds as Trump is accused of doing for any purpose is a threat to our national security the Democrats howl. So why isn't Biden's threat of holding back money necessary for the fight also a threat to our national security and a threat to the security of Ukraine?




Did Joe Biden with his demand no matter who or how many supported it, commit the act of bribery whether with good intention or not? Who shall decide? Well, before any decision comes an investigation. The prima facie case is right there for all to debate.


So we find out from Mulvaney, Pompeo and Bolton that yes indeed, President Trump with the authority given to him by article two of the Constitution and by recently signed treaty purportedly giving the President the right to ask for an end to corruption in the Ukraine before any more dollars are released, did just that? Has that advanced the argument beyond what we already know? Is that impeachable? I and apparently many others say no. Nothing will change with testimony that Trump did exactly what he is accused of doing and no, it is not impeachable, simply as that. You may not like what he did but Democrats have not liked one single thing this President has done from the day he took office.


Unless and until somebody can point to a specific crime and make the case that this crime was committed by the President, impeachment for abuse of power, is in fact an abuse of power by the House for clearly partisan reasons wanting to get rid of Trump.


Now to the argument of an investigation of Joe Biden being "helpful" to Trump's re-election. What if an investigation proved Joe Biden innocent of any charge? Would that help Trump or more likely hurt Trump? My argument that merely calling for an investigation is no guarantee or worry for that matter. What if an investigation proves that Joe Biden acted un-lawfully or at best un-ethicaly and we now find a newly elected Republican House wanted to bring articles of impeachment against the new President Joe Biden?


This can be nothing more than a circular firing squad. We are 11 months from the election when all Americans can decide whether Trump deserves to be punished for his perceived sins or win a second term. Let the people decide whether what Trump did means his removal from office. Originally Posted by HedonistForever

Apparently we've all forgotten a sitting president can't be charged with a crime. And a crime isn't necessary to impeach. It's a vioation of trust.










Impeachment is about cleansing the office.

You still haven't explained how the legislative branch can tell the executive branch what they must do...YOU FUCKING CAN'T YOU BLATHERING NUT!! Originally Posted by bb1961

eccieuser3500 thinks the POTUS works for Congress. He doesn't understand the plain meaning of CO-EQUAL.

Look, this ain't hard. Congress has a legitimate interest in exercising oversight of the executive branch. And the POTUS has a legitimate interest in keeping his Oval Office conversations private. (No Presidential advisor will share their views openly and candidly if they can't do so in confidence.)

So what we have is a conflict of competing interests between two CO-EQUAL branches. Under the Constitution, that's where the judiciary is supposed to step in.

The reason the dim-retards don't want to go to Court is pure politics - it would take too long to obtain a decision. They want to impeach trump NOW since the Iowa caucus is just 7 weeks away.

So they are prematurely claiming trump is obstructing Congress and acting "above the law" - when all he is doing is asserting a basic Constitutional right of the executive branch that has yet to be litigated. If Trump lost and refused to comply with a SCOTUS decision, THEN AND ONLY THEN would he have committed an impeachable offense, obstructed justice or tried to act "above the law".

Like I said, it ain't hard to figure out. Unless you're a dim-retard who insists on spewing falsehoods and pretending Congress is a pre-eminent branch rather than a co-equal one.

I'll ask again... Originally Posted by HedonistForever

Hedonist - I just waded through this lengthy thread. You are unusually clear-headed and articulate. Thank you for contributing. I agree with nearly all of your comments. Please keep posting your common sense. Five years ago I would have been saying the same things. Today I read many of the posts here and cringe. I have neither the time nor the patience to school the retards anymore. But I feel some relief seeing you take on that thankless role.

Here's a well-reasoned WSJ editorial you will appreciate:


The Incredible Shrinking Impeachment

The Democratic grounds for ousting Trump are weak—and damaging to constitutional norms.

By The Editorial Board
Dec. 11, 2019 7:15 pm ET


So that’s it? That’s all there is? After all the talk of obstruction of justice, collusion with Russia, bribery, extortion, profiting from the Presidency, and more, House Democrats have reduced their articles of impeachment against President Trump to two: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Honey, we shrunk the impeachment.

Democrats on the Judiciary Committee will vote as early as Thursday on the text of the two articles they unveiled Tuesday, and then they will rush it to the floor next week. It’s enough to suspect that Democrats understand they are offering the weakest case for impeachment since Andrew Johnson, that the public isn’t convinced, and so they simply want to get it over with.

At least Johnson was impeached for violating a specific statute, the Tenure of Office Act, by firing Edwin Stanton as Secretary of War. There was wide agreement that Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton violated criminal statutes. In this case Democrats don’t even try to allege a criminal act.

Whatever happened to bribery and extortion? Democrats spent weeks talking them up as the crimes of Mr. Trump’s Ukraine interventions. They had turned to those words after focus groups with voters found them more compelling than “quid pro quo.” Yet suddenly they’re gone. Have Democrats concluded that Mr. Trump’s actions aren’t illegal under statutes that have specific meaning?

Democrats have retreated instead to charge “abuse of power,” a phrase general enough for anything Congress wants to stuff into it. They don’t even pretend any more to prove a quid pro quo. Instead they assert that Mr. Trump, in his phone call with Ukraine’s president, “solicited the interference of a foreign government” in the 2020 election “in pursuit of personal political benefit.” They also assert that this “compromised the national security of the United States and undermined the integrity of the United States democratic process.”

Their problem is that Mr. Trump didn’t withhold military aid to Ukraine, and even if he had he would have merely been returning to Barack Obama’s policy of denying lethal aid. How would that have jeopardized national security? Every President also solicits actions from foreign leaders that he hopes will help him politically at home.

We don’t condone Mr. Trump’s mention of Joe Biden in his call to Ukraine’s President, which was far from perfect and reflects his often bad judgment. But “abuse of power” on this evidence is a new and low standard for impeachment that will come back to haunt future Presidents of all parties.

As for corrupting the 2020 election, even if Ukraine had announced an investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden, Mr. Trump couldn’t know how effective it would be, how long it would take, or whether it might even exonerate them. The election is still a year away. If the mere announcement of a foreign government’s investigation into corruption can poison a U.S. election, then American democracy must be weaker than even its enemies think.

The second Democratic article is weaker in that it amounts to impeaching Mr. Trump because he is resisting their subpoenas. “Without lawful cause or excuse, President Trump directed Executive Branch agencies, offices and officials not to comply with those subpoenas,” the article charges.

His lawful cause is defending his presidential powers under the Constitution. Every modern President has to some extent or another resisted Congressional or special-counsel subpoenas. Nixon and Mr. Clinton did until they lost at the Supreme Court. House Democrats are refusing even to fight in court, claiming impeachment gives them plenary power to see all documents and any witnesses they want.

This ignores that the Constitution stipulates co-equal branches that each have the right to defend their powers. If Democrats are right in their claim, then every President essentially works for Congress. We should skip elections and let Congress choose the President.

Democrats also claim the emergency of time, and as usual Rep. Adam Schiff puts this case in the least credible way. “The argument ‘why don’t you just wait?’ amounts to this: Why don’t you just let [Mr. Trump] cheat in one more election? Why not let him cheat just one more time?,” Mr. Schiff told the press as the articles were unveiled.

But Mr. Trump didn’t cheat to win in 2016, as Robert Mueller’s Russia collusion investigation demonstrated after two years of looking. As for 2020, the Constitution includes no clause for pre-emptive impeachment to prevent acts that a President might commit.

Democrats wrap these charges in high-toned rhetoric about “this solemn day” and quotes from Benjamin Franklin. But they are essentially impeaching Mr. Trump because they despise him and the way he governs.

This is the classic standard of “maladministration,” which the Founders explicitly considered but excluded from the Constitution as grounds for impeachment. They did so because they feared that partisan Congresses would too easily impeach Presidents of the opposite political faction on this subjective basis, rather than for serious offenses.

In their wisdom, the American people seem to have figured all this out. Despite one-sided lobbying by the impeachment press, the polls show that a majority opposes removing Mr. Trump from office. This may be the real explanation behind the Democratic move to shrink impeachment. Democrats now want a fast and furious vote to satisfy their most anti-Trump partisans, dump the mess on the Senate, and campaign on something else.

They shouldn’t get off that easy. By defining impeachment down, they are turning what should be a rare and extraordinary constitutional remedy into a routine tool of partisan warfare. They are harming constitutional norms, as the liberals like to say.

Americans will decide in 11 months whether Mr. Trump deserves to remain in office. But they should also keep the impeachment vote very much in mind when they decide whether Democrats deserve to keep the House.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-inc...nt-11576109728

I think it would have been really, really ugly trying to impeach Obama. Honestly, it could have been painted along racial lines. Not party lines. As erroneous as it might have been to think that, the base is the base for a reason. Originally Posted by eccieuser9500

Yep. That's why it never happened. Or one of the reasons. The other reason is because Republicans have principles. They didn't want to define impeachment down by pursuing an effort that was largely partisan, would divide the country, and would debase the meaning of "high crimes and misdemeanors".

eccieuser3500 thinks the POTUS works for Congress. He doesn't understand the plain meaning of CO-EQUAL.

.... Originally Posted by lustylad

Pelosi wants to burn the Constitution in order to protect it.

what galls me even more than impeachment is the dims lying sanctimonious reason, their fake fealty to the constitution

as to the calling of witnesses in the senate, the dims in the congress say the evidence is clear and undisputed, while schumer in the senate says we need more testimony and evidence

what galls me even more than impeachment is the dims lying sanctimonious reason, their fake fealty to the constitution... Originally Posted by nevergaveitathought

Which is more fake, their pretend fealty to the Constitution or their claims to know what the Founders (those old, white racists) intended?

Which is more fake, their pretend fealty to the Constitution or their claims to know what the Founders (those old, white racists) intended? Originally Posted by lustylad

equally fake as fake is fake

and as fake as Pelosi's praying unless she has one of the world's most compartmentalized brains

Pelosi wants to burn the Constitution in order to protect it. Originally Posted by gnadfly

She has to read the Constitution to know what’s in it.

So they are prematurely claiming trump is obstructing Congress and acting "above the law" - when all he is doing is asserting a basic Constitutional right of the executive branch that has yet to be litigated. If Trump lost and refused to comply with a SCOTUS decision, THEN AND ONLY THEN would he have committed an impeachable offense, obstructed justice or tried to act "above the law".
Originally Posted by lustylad

nope.. Executive Privilege is a relatively recent concept, albeit a true and relevant idea under narrow circumstances.. this aint one of them, Trump knows it, but is making an end-run around the impeachment process, knowing the delay equals obstruction. nice try, though.

nope.. Executive Privilege is a relatively recent concept, albeit a true and relevant idea under narrow circumstances.. this aint one of them, Trump knows it, but is making an end-run around the impeachment process, knowing the delay equals obstruction. nice try, though. Originally Posted by Chung Tran

There's so much incorrect about your post but go ahead and finish the Kool-Aid.

HF and LL - thank you for the well thought out posts.

+1

There's so much incorrect about your post but go ahead and finish the Kool-Aid. Originally Posted by gnadfly

that's what you guys do.. post and RUN, LOL.. you have no rebuttal. right-wing Nut Jobs.