13 Matching Annotations
  1. Feb 2021
    1. Trump’s call with Tuberville to advance his own personal political interests had to be cut short—so Tuberville could be evacuated from the Senate chamber in order to protect his life and the lives of other senators.
    2. The Black Lives Matter canard is so infuriating. 90%+ of Black Lives Matter protests were peaceful, and the <10% that were not saw scattered outbreaks of violence caused by a small minority of protesters, none of whom have been connected to the main Black Lives Matter organization but rather to anarchists of unknown affiliation. There is literally no connection whatsoever between millions of peaceful protestors seeking racial justice and an armed insurrection by far-right militants seeking to tear down American democracy in one fell swoop by storming the United States Capitol.
    3. A startling fact that Rep. Cicilline offers: even Ivanka Trump—Trump’s favorite person in the world after himself and his alter-ego “John Barron”—couldn’t get her father to speak out about the violence as it was unfolding immediately after his speech. Another stunning fact: Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy got in a screaming match over the phone with McCarthy, like Ivanka, also failing to get him to act. Trump simply would not do anything. Not for over an hour and a half, which was an eternity given what was happening at the Capitol.
  2. Jun 2020
  3. Dec 2019
    1. But there’s another, more urgent sense in which impeachment exists as an alternative to politics.

      This entire argument is vapid. Impeachment is a constitutional process, in that the constitution is a legal AND political document. But this article is a weak attempt to insist citizens care about it as an existential matter. Please.

      The result is and always will be the politics because the "jury" in this process is the Senate, whose primary concern is to represent the political interests and demands of their constituents. Thus, they are not thinking of existential matters, but political consequences.

      An impeachment trial that contradicts public opinion anywhere north of 30% risks a political upheaval which would constitute a greater threat to American society than anything that could emanate from the Oval Office. Everybody knows this and protestations to the contrary are more vacuous whining from a narrow opposition. It falls on deaf ears.

  4. Oct 2019
    1. House impeachment investigators on Wednesday summoned John Bolton, President Trump’s former national security adviser, and two other top White House officials for depositions next week, according to a person familiar with the notices. The letters took the form of voluntary requests, rather than subpoenas.

      Test - John Boulton summoned

    1. The White House has argued that the Democratic impeachment inquiry is illegitimate because Trump did nothing wrong and there’s nothing to investigate, but each new piece of information—much less federal indictments—makes that harder to sustain.

      incorrect. the WH argument is that the full house has not voted on the impeachment inquiry, meaning the WH team has no power to question witnesses or subpoena documents. in both the Nixon and Clinton impeachments, a full vote was taken by the house, ensuring the president's rights were guaranteed.

    2. The president likes to point out that some polls underestimated his support in the 2016 election and failed to predict his victory. But these impeachment polls aren’t interesting as a predictor of electoral success.

      " push" polls or polls designed to shape public opinion rather than accurately report it are what the author is dishonestly referring to here. the recent Fox News poll cited intentionally over sampled Democrats by 14% to support a false narrative.

  5. Jan 2019
    1. In fact, the Nixon impeachment left Weld with a renewed faith in the American system of government: “The wheels may grind slowly,” he later reflected, “but they grind pretty well.”
    2. The Nixon impeachment spurred Charles L. Black, a Yale law professor, to write Impeachment: A Handbook, a slender volume that remains a defining work on the question.
    3. ere is how impeachment would work in practice.
    4. The question of whether impeachment is justified should not be confused with the question of whether it is likely to succeed in removing a president from office.
    5. As a House Judiciary Committee staff report put it in 1974, in the midst of the Watergate investigation: “The purpose of impeachment is not personal punishment; its function is primarily to maintain constitutional government.” Impeachable offenses, it found, included “undermining the integrity of office, disregard of constitutional duties and oath of office, arrogation of power, abuse of the governmental process, adverse impact on the system of government.”