See, 1) “Merrick Garland should indict Trump today. If he dosn’t, Democrats should impeach Garland tomorrow,” The Trenchant Observer, January 3, 2022; 2) “Democrats should…
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Republicans have done the Democrats and the ciountry a huge favor by blocking the creation of a special joint commission to investigate the January 6 insurrection. ..
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No, we don’t need any further commissions of inquiry to distract us from the real issues and stakes in American politics today.
What we need is a Justice Department Task Force to launch and coordinate the prosecutions of Donald Trump and his Republican co-conspirators who committed many serious felonies in their efforts to overthrow the election and the Constitution in 2020-2021. Trump should also be prosecuted for his many egregious crimes in office, including the instances of obstruction of justice detailed–with a summary of the evidence–in the Mueller Report, and the many instances of obstruction of justice through witness tampering and retaliation against witnesses for truthfully testifying in impeachment investigations.
The rule of law is at stake here.
Congress, and in particular the House, has an important role to play. Instead of spinning their wheels in yet another congressional inquiry into the insurrection on January 6, the Democrats in the House should be holding hearings into why the Justice Department has not proceeded with prosecuting Donald Trump and his co-conspirators for the many crimes he and they committed in office, including the rash of election-related crimes committed after November 3, 2021.
Putting all of these actions together, it appears that Donald Trump led a vast conspiracy, in which he enlisted the support and cooperation of Republican federal, state, and local legislators and officials, to overthrow the results of the November 3 presidential election and, consequently, the Constitution of the United States.
Why have we heard virtually nothing about federal or state grand juries investigating these alleged crimes?
There have been only a few exceptions, such as the grand jury in Atlanta where a courageous prosecutor is investigating a blatant case of apparent election interference for which there is recorded and public evidence.
Why indeed has former President Donald Trump not yet been indicted for the many crimes he has apparently committed?
When will he be indicted?
Moreover, when will his many Republican co-conspirators and accomplices in these apparent crimes be investigated and themselves indicted?
What is going on?
We are all tired of thinking about Trump and his crimes. However, democracy is a very fragile flower, and we have just seen how close we can come to losing it. If America’s first fascist president, and the many members of the Republican Party who engaged in a vast conspiracy to overthrow the Constitution, are not held accountable before the courts for the very numerous crimes which they committed, the lesson of political impunity will not be lost on others.
Americans who are too cowardly to defend American democracy by prosecuting, and insisting on the prosecution of, those who have committed criminal acts in furtherance of the Republican conspiracy to overthrow the Constitution, will have only themselves and their own passivity to blame if it is lost.
The current campaign to force Gov. Andrew Cuomo to resign may lead to his impeachment, but is not likely to lead to his conviction and imprisonment for a crime.
Instead, he is the latest object of a phenomenon in the United States, and some other places, which seeks to bypass legal and constitutional processes to achieve the immediate objective of a frenzied mob, often made possible or strengthened through the internet and social media. Non-public and dark forces may be behind some of these campaigns.
In the United States, at least three different “mobs” have contributed to what is often termed “cancel culture”, the abuse of power to achieve goals without due process and without following legally-established procedures for determining the truth of allegations, and determining appropriate and proportionate sanctions for crimes or infractions that may be found to have occurred.
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(T)he critical distinction between predatory sexual conduct–the coercion of a woman by a man to engage in sexual intercourse or other sexual conduct, on the one hand, and sexually inappropriate speech or other conduct (measured by contemporary standards), such as touching or verbal comments, on the other, has frequently been lost.
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The Democrats, and their cancel culture mobs, are serving up a powerful cultural wedge issue for the Republicans to exploit.
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So, small-minded and cynical Democrats are now endorsing mob action and circumvention of rule of law procedures to not only ascertain the veracity of the allegations against Cuomo–including those concerning nursing home death statistics, but also the nature of the punishment that would be proportionate and appropriate for the alleged infractions, should he be found guilty as charged.
Aaron Rosenberg lived offline for a year, trying to understand what it was like in order to help him understand the subject of his academic research.
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I myself experienced some of the extraordinary pull of Twitter while following in extremely close fashion political developments related to Donald Trump’s attempts to hang on to power after losing the election on November 3, 2021.
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Aaron Rosenberg’s experience is instructive. When thinking about my Twitter experience, I recall reading somewhere that the average life of a tweet is about 15 minutes.
They tell monstruous lies. They are not acting in good faith. They are silent in the face of violence. For two months they were complicit and co-conspirators with Donald Trump to overthrow the election and the Constitution.
They pay obeisance to Donald Trump, even today, after his attempted coup d’état and the Capitol Insurrection.
We should simply imagine that they are all wearing Nazi military unifirms.
When you see Senators Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Ron Johnson,
in the Senate, for example, just imagine they are wearing Nazi military uniforms. It will clear your mind.
While severely ailing for the last four years, The Republican Party entered its death throes and died on February 13, 2021.
This constitutional argument had been twice rejected by the full Senate, which under the Constitution has the sole authority to determine how it will proceed in impeachment cases.
Consequently, not only did the 43 Republican Senators violate their oaths of office and their oaths to do impartial justice, but they also violated the Constitution’s provision that the Senate is the sole arbiter of how it should proceed in an impeachment case, and the decision on constitutionality the Senate reached in exercising that power.
Journalist’s have been too intellectually lazy to understand and
report these details. Instead, they glibly write that Republican Senators who voted to acquit Trump justified their actions on a “technicality”.
Far from being a “technicality”, the bad-faith argument these apologists for Trump used to try to hide their craven cowardice involved fundamental precepts of the Constitution, including binding Senate determinations of whether the trial was constitutional or not.
Although the House Impeachment Managers lost their case for conviction in the Senate, they put forth a brilliant case, which convinced 57 of the 100 Senators to vote to impeach Trump.
Now, the battle must be taken to the court of public opinion, and to the polls in 1922, 1924, 1926, and beyond.
The great political challenge we all now face is to find a way to dismantle Trump’s propaganda bubble and alternative universe, so that rational people, no longer fearful of fascist mobs and voters, can resume a politics of reason.
Yet let us not lose sight of the great success of the House Impeachment Managers in presenting a compelling case, Let us also not lose sight of the fascist challenge that America faces, and the hard work that remains to be done to overcome it.
Democratic Impeachment Managers need to slow down, and give Republican Senators time to change their minds. Brilliant lawyering. Not so good on understanding psychology. The…
Let there be no doubt about it. The American body politic is infected by a cancer. That cancer threatens the existence and survival of American democracy. Currently all of the antibodies and forces defending the body politic are fully engaged in fighting the cancer.
The cancer on the American body politic must be killed, with the political equivalents of chemotherapy, radiation, and even surgery where necessary.
Unlike a human body, the American body politic does not have the expected lifespan of a single human life. In the case of an individual fighting cancer, remission for five or ten years might, in some cases, be regarded as a “success”.
This is not the case with the American body politic, however. A five or ten year remission of the cancer would not be sufficient to save the life of a democracy that is already 244 years old.
The cancer is represented by the current Republican Party, and most but not all of its Senators and Representatives in Congress.
Now, 50 Republican senators face a similar moment of truth.
Will they honor their oaths of office to uphold the Constitution and to defend their country against all enemies foreign and domestics, “so help me God”?
Will they honor their solemn oaths to do impartial justice in accordance with constitutions and laws in the impeachment trail of Donald J. Trump, “so help me God”?
Or will they betray their oaths, the American people, and their country, kowtowing and genuflecting instead before the false god who threatened our democracy, who attempted to stay in power through a coup d’état, the last act of which was the Capitol Insurrection?
…But you know that they have sold their souls to the Devil, that they have entered into Mephistophelean bargains they hope will give them continued political life, just as Goethe’s Faust sought to prolong his life.
These 50 Republican Senators have one last shot at redemption: they can honestly evaluate the charges in the Article o impeachment and weigh the evidence, which will lead them ineluctably to a decision to convict Donald Trump for the his attempted coup and the Capitol Insurrection on January 6, 2021.
Their decisions will mark their lives and careers for all time. It is as if their children and grandchildren, and further descendants could read on their tombstones, “He (or she) voted to honor his (or her) oaths and to save the Republic,” or “He (or she) voted to betray the Constitution and his (or her) country, and for the false god Donald Trump.
Throughout their lives, they will have to face their children and grandchildren, and every one they know or may come to know, and answer that question.
If they make the wrong choice, the shame of that choice will mark them for the rest of their days.
The 44 Republican Senators who voted to not proceed with the Senate impeachment trial today, on the alleged ground of unconstitutionality, today entered the first…
The Senate Democrats have the power to establish by a vote of 50+1 that the vote on whether or not Donald Trump is guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors” shall be taken BY SECRET BALLOT.
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But Article I of the Constitution provides that 1/5 of the members present can require a recorded vote. So even a Democratic-imposed secret ballot might not really provide a secret vote.
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No one said any of this simple. Nonetheless, Democratic Senators need to figure these details out, and use them to their full advantage.
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Democratic Senators need to overcome their fear of Trump and his supporters, and USE THEIR RAW POWER TO ENSURE A SECRET BALLOT on the vote to convict or acquit Trump.
A SECRET BALLOT could give Republican Senators an opportunity to rid their party of Trump, to redeem their party from its current position of being THE PARTY THAT IS THE ENEMY OF DEMOCRACY, and to start rebuilding a Republican Party based on principles of democracy and the rule of law.
