LIVE: Trump’s Second Impeachment Trial Continues in Senate | Day 4 - Trump's Defense

by Nomad

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Remember This Day Forever 

Today is the fourth day in the trial of the Second Impeachment of former president Donald Trump. Trump's defense team now responds to the Impeachment Team's case against Trump and the charge of inciting the riot and attack on the Capitol Building on January 6.

WATCH LIVE: Trump’s Second Impeachment Trial Continues in Senate | Day 2 and Day 3

by Nomad

"Borderline"

Having voted in favor of the constitutionality of the impeachment of a former president, the Senate today will officially commence with the trial of Donald J. Trump. 

If yesterday is anything to go by, fur will be flying. The weak performance of Trump's defense lawyers reportedly infuriated the former president. 

WATCH LIVE: Final House Vote on Articles of Impeachment

by Nomad

Watch as history is made today.
The full House of Representatives will debate and vote on the articles of impeachment. If at least one of the articles passes, Trump will be the third president in U.S. history to be impeached. If the House decides to impeach, the Senate will hold a trial to consider if Trump should be removed from office.
No matter what the outcome in the Senate, one thing is undeniable: President Trump's lawlessness has caused an unprecedented constitutional crisis.  

LIVE: House Judiciary Committee Impeachment Hearings - Day One

by Nomad

Today, the House Judiciary Committee will hold its first public hearing in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. With proceedings set to begin at 10 am ET, the hearing will feature several legal scholars who will testify about "the constitutional grounds for presidential impeachment."

According to experts, Trump could be impeached on a number of charges based on his actions, including violating campaign-finance laws, bribery, extortion, obstruction, and misappropriation of taxpayer funds. In an ongoing effort to de-legitimatize the process, the White House has announced that neither President Trump nor his lawyers will participate.

Among Independents, Support for Trump Impeachment is Surging

by Nomad

According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released this week, there's growing support among political independents for the impeachment for Donald Trump.  

To make matters worse for the president, overall support for impeachment has risen by three percentage points since just last week. Overall, 46% of Americans said they supported impeachment and 40% said they opposed it.

Support for impeachment was relatively steady among Republicans and Democrats over the past week but it surged among independents, a group that includes people who neither identify as Democrats nor Republicans and do not favor either party when they vote. Among independents, 45% said in the latest poll they supported impeachment and 32% said they opposed it, the strongest level of support recorded in more than a year.

For Republicans who have been shielding the president from oversight, the news could hardly be worse. The persuadable independent voter has been called the "difference maker" in the presidential election.
Even Trump campaign spokesman and Deputy Communications Director for the Republican National Committee, Rick Gorka has observed:

“It always comes down to who can convince the independent voter..That is how you win the election.”

The Joseph Maguire Testimony: A Trump Official Under the Spotlight

by Nomad

This morning, Joseph Maguire will be testifying before the House Intelligence Committee, regarding his decision not to release the whistleblower's complaint about questionable- and possibly impeachable- activities by the president and close advisors.

Maguire is the current Director of the National Counterterrorism Center. He retired from the United States Navy as a Vice Admiral in 2010 after 36 years of military service.

The committee is expected to ask Macquire why he refused to release to congressional intelligence committees the report of the independent inspector general, Michael Atkinson, who deemed it "credible and urgent."

Under mounting pressure from both parties, the Trump administration backed down on Wednesday and handed copies of the complaint to House and Senate intelligence committees.

Where 2020 Candidates Stand on a Possible Trump Impeachment

by Nomad

Why One Veteran Journalist Warns about Comparing Watergate to Trump's Scandal

by Nomad

As we all grope blindly in the slimy darkness of the Trump scandal, it is perhaps natural that we attempt to make comparisons to the past, for some sort of precedent. And when the topic of a president in trouble arises, the first name that comes to mind is, of course, Nixon in the Watergate debacle.

However, one journalist who witnessed first-hand the presidential contortions and the political chess game back in the 1970s warns that comparisons are misleading for a variety of critical reasons.

Witness to Watergate

Politico's Susan Glasser interviewed veteran journalist Elizabeth Drew, a Washington correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly from 1967 to 1973. Drew was at ground zero when President Nixon's met his Waterloo and kept a real time record of the event. In 1975, she published her account of the Watergate scandal in her book, Washington Journal: The Events of 1973-74.

Her book was reprinted back in 2014 before Trump appeared as a serious presidential candidate. That book, for obvious reasons, is now selling like hotcakes.

Unfit on Day One: Paul Ryan Offers an Insulting Excuse for President Trump's Fiasco

by Nomad

The Foundation Stone

It is hard to find the just one adjective to describe former FBI Director Comey's testimony before the Senate yesterday. "Riveting" for most viewers, "devastating" for Trump and his defenders but perhaps, whichever side of the political spectrum you find yourself, it was a "historical event."

Under oath, Comey made a solid case that the President knowingly attempted to quash an investigation of the alleged Russian collusion of Mike Flynn. Comey's notes claimed that Trump actually said:

I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is good guy. I hope you can let this go.

As the hearing was wrapped up, it was impossible not to conclude that the foundation stone for articles of impeachment had been solidly laid.

Brookings' Elaine Kamarck Explains the Delicate Process of Impeachment

by Nomad

One of the helpful things a blog like Nomadic Politics can do is to provide its readers with accurate information on complicated or misunderstood issues. This, in turn, can lay the foundation for an intelligent discussion based on informed opinions.

One topic which is much talked about but rarely explained in depth is the topic of the impeachment pf the president. In US history, there have been only three times this constitutional provision has been attempted.

Elaine Kamarck is, as senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at Brookings and the founding director of the Center for Effective Public Management, an esteemed authority on the way things work in politics and government.  

Tea Party Debris: How Michele Bachmann has Made the GOP America's Spoof Party

by Nomad

If the Republicans have lost credibility among voters, they have only themselves to blame. Republicans should start asking why the Tea Party leaders like Michele Bachmann were allowed to make such a joke of their party? Where was the leadership?

We have all seen them and some of us have been fooled by them. Nowadays spoof news sites are everywhere on the Net, parodying the news. And these joke pieces can often sound quite convincing. I have seen endless rolls of roaring comments on FaceBook pages about news stories that were in fact completely imaginary.

As a blog writer who attempts to verify sources, it can be dangerous. I have very nearly used spoofed news as a source in the past before asking myself. "Does that even sound plausible?" Frankly, given the present state of politics in America at the moment, it's hard to know sometimes.

The Spoof that Wasn't

That's why when I saw this news story about Michelle Bachmann the other day, I hesitated and double-checked the source.  The title read:

Michele Bachmann Claims President Obama Wants To Use Unaccompanied Children For Medical Experiments

Reading and re-reading that headline, I was a little confused. After all, Right Wing Watch is most certainly not a news spoof site. The introduction seemed straight faced.

Rep. Michele Bachmann has a new theory about the unaccompanied minors fleeing violence in Central America who have come in large numbers to the southern U.S. border: they are future victims of a liberal plot to use unwilling children for medical experiments..

Finally I decided- against my better judgment- that this was not a joke. Bachmann had actually said this. 

(For the sake of my readership, I've decided not to reproduce her claims. Why? Simply because I am not qualified to explore the minds of lunatics. If you are interested in an analysis of her delusions and how she came up with this particular fixation, then go to the link above.)

  

From Laughing-Stock...

Fortunately, the number of people who take Bachmann totally seriously has probably always been small. However, like The Incredible Shrinking Man, Bachmann's audience may be microscopic but it never quite vanishes entirely. 

In the past, Michele Bachmann has shown that no allegation against Obama is too foul or insulting or outrageous to pass up. Her refusal to just say "No" to the addiction of nuttiness has made her a regular guest on the Fox News Network. Because of that, throughout the Obama administration, Bachmann has unintentionally made a laughing stock of the Republican party. 

Pitchforks and Fundraising Pitches: How the Threat of Impeachment has Backfired on the GOP

by Nomad

After so much loose talk about impeaching President Obama, the GOP appears to be scoring own goals for Democratic campaign fundraising efforts.

In yet another example of a Republican self-inflicted wound, the Washington Post yesterday reported that, due to the threat of impeachment from top conservatives, the Democrats are cashing in big time.

Only Themselves to Blame
The Post article explained that the the Democrats' congressional campaign arm managed to rake in $2.1 million over the weekend, thanks, analysts say, largely because of the casual (and largely groundless) talk from House Republicans of impeaching President Obama.

Democrats have consistently used impeachment -- a prospect that has been floated by several prominent conservatives but has not been embraced by most of the Republican establishment -- to fill their campaign coffers and their polling has shown that fear of an impeachment attempt as well as the House GOP's current attempts to sue President Obama have the potential to drive midterm turnout on the left.

As the House Rules committee marched forward with a legal action against the president and his use of executive action, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has collected more than 114,000 donations since last Thursday.

If, fundraisers warn, the Democratic party loses control of both chambers of Congress, the next step will be impeachment.
Fear-mongering or a likely scenario? 

That depends on which side of the aisle you sit. Using the dread of a long and tiresome (and expensive) impeachment process- which could drag out for the remainder of Obama's presidency- appears to be a effective fundraising pitch for the Democrats.  

And the most humiliating part is that the successful pitch was laid in their laps by the Republican Tea Party rogues. 

The Importance of Impeachment: How the Tea Party is Abusing Constitutional Procedure

by Nomad

Since the first presidential impeachment in 1868,  the procedure has proved to be a terribly imperfect tool. However, even when not applied, its existence is essential for the Republic. 

David Stewart's book, Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln's Legacy is a fascinating study of a constitutional crisis. The book is set against the period immediately after the war of rebellion when the nation was attempting somehow to put the country back together. Just to show you how easily things can go terribly wrong, Lincoln's best intentions turned out to be a colossal misjudgment.

Not many historians have pointed out that Lincoln was, in fact, neither Republican nor Democrat in this second term. He was the candidate for the National Unity Party and he chose as his vice-president, Andrew Johnson, was a Southern Democrat. (Imagine that? A single ticket made of both parties?) 

Had Lincoln not been murdered, the constitutional crisis of presidential impeachment would have been avoided. However, the new president's suspected loyalty to the defeated South, his position that states had the right to their sovereignty- even after what most saw as outright sedition- were too much for some in Congress to bear. When faced with an unyielding Republican minority (every bit as querulous and uncompromising as today's Tea Party) determined to unseat the president by hook or crook, the 17th President's arrogance and stubbornness made impeachment unavoidable. 

It's a good read. And the story of how and why the Radical Republicans attempted to use the process of impeachment to remove President Johnson gives a lot of insight into the ways elected representative under partisan stress can lose track of their primary mission.

Another Losing Battle: The GOP Takes Up Arms Against Obama's Gun Control Initiative

by Nomad

In the “it would be funny, if it were so embarrassing” files we see this latest entry about Obama's gun control initiative, announced yesterday. 
According to a Florida-based Conservative site, The Shark Tank:

Congressman Steve Stockman from Texas has taken aim against President Obama’s forthcoming executive orders that will further restrict gun rights by “eliminating funding for implementation, defunding the White House, and even filing articles of impeachment” against the President.

A statement like this doesn’t really surprise people anymore. Americans have come to expect this kind of toxic nonsense from Texas. Earlier this month, Stockman took up the NRA’s proposed solution to gun control ( more guns! for everybody!) by introducing a bill that would repeal mandatory “gun-free zones” around schools. 

It’s the usual GOP answer, pile a heap of insanity on top of the mountain of crazy already there and call it done.