EAllusion wrote:The most remarkable thing about today's hearings to me was how overt the witnesses were in saying that if Trump is not removed, US democracy is or may very well be lost. I agree, but that is a very strongly worded argument to be putting to the nation in an environment where Trump is almost certainly not going to be removed.
I hope you're wrong that Trump is almost certainly not going to be removed. I still think it not unreasonable to hope there are enough Republican Senators sufficiently disgusted with Trump, with enough of a conscience, and/or sufficiently concerned about negative backlash from enough of their constituents for supporting Trump, to vote for conviction.
I think the Democrats erred in not getting a Federalist Society star or two to be in their pool of witnesses. The arguments on the history and nature of impeachable offenses expresses by the non-Turley lawyers are mainstream to the point of being textbook. Mixing up the partisanship of the field would've highlighted this fact better.
I agree there too. Perhaps they will yet get one or more of these to testify against Trump, at least in the actual impeachment trial itself.
No precept or claim is more likely to be false than one that can only be supported by invoking the claim of Divine authority for it--no matter who or what claims such authority.
“If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you.”
― Harlan Ellison
mikwut wrote:Robert Turley is without question correct in several points he made. One I would believe wholeheartedly is that finding obstruction of justice without first going to Court is simply wrong.
mikwut
The President's obstruction goes beyond ordering defiance of subpoenas / not turning over documents.
That aside, the Constitution doesn't place the Courts in front of Congress on this particular matter. It's a blanket refusal in defiance of Congress's control of the impeachment power.
In the full context of his arguments here, Turley ended up arguing that Congress cannot impeach without more evidence from more witnesses, but Trump has almost limitless capacity to obstruct the testimony of those witnesses. While I don't think the arguments he used to get the are correct, the result ends up being that the Constitution is an easily self-defeating document and a simple loophole puts a corrupt President above the law in most practical circumstances.
mikwut wrote:Robert Turley is without question correct in several points he made. One I would believe wholeheartedly is that finding obstruction of justice without first going to Court is simply wrong.
mikwut
I would agree if what the President had done was made a good-faith assertion of privilege over documents to which it might apply and then had a lawyer assert objections based on privilege when appropriate at depositions. But that's not what he did. He simply refused to produce any documents and instructed witnesses not to appear. But in the case of simply giving the House the single finger salute, I see no obligation of the House to go to the Courts.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
"When I said, in my phone call to the President of Ukraine, 'I would like you to do US a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.' With the word 'us' I am referring to the United States, our Country," Trump tweeted.
...”I would like to have the Attorney General (of the United States) call you or your people.....” This, based on what I have seen, is their big point - and it is no point at a all (except for a big win for me!). The Democrats should apologize to the American people!
If this is referring to what I think it's referring to, (It's the Ukraine call, right? Right?) the man has utterly gone out of his mind. This is toddler stuff. Except the toddler is a full grown man and completely full of @#$%.
Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up.
Chinese Proverb
mikwut wrote:Robert Turley is without question correct in several points he made. One I would believe wholeheartedly is that finding obstruction of justice without first going to Court is simply wrong.
So if the operation was a success can consider the Jews to have been blown?...err, I mean blue-n....blue-ed...blue-ified...
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires...seek discipline and find your liberty I can tell if a person is judgmental just by looking at them what is chaos to the fly is normal to the spider - morticia addams If you're not upsetting idiots, you might be an idiot. - Ted Nugent
EAllusion wrote:The most remarkable thing about today's hearings to me was how overt the witnesses were in saying that if Trump is not removed, US democracy is or may very well be lost. I agree, but that is a very strongly worded argument to be putting to the nation in an environment where Trump is almost certainly not going to be removed.
I hope you're wrong that Trump is almost certainly not going to be removed. I still think it not unreasonable to hope there are enough Republican Senators sufficiently disgusted with Trump, with enough of a conscience, and/or sufficiently concerned about negative backlash from enough of their constituents for supporting Trump, to vote for conviction.
I think the Democrats erred in not getting a Federalist Society star or two to be in their pool of witnesses. The arguments on the history and nature of impeachable offenses expresses by the non-Turley lawyers are mainstream to the point of being textbook. Mixing up the partisanship of the field would've highlighted this fact better.
I agree there too. Perhaps they will yet get one or more of these to testify against Trump, at least in the actual impeachment trial itself.
"When I said, in my phone call to the President of Ukraine, 'I would like you to do US a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.' With the word 'us' I am referring to the United States, our Country," Trump tweeted.
...”I would like to have the Attorney General (of the United States) call you or your people.....” This, based on what I have seen, is their big point - and it is no point at a all (except for a big win for me!). The Democrats should apologize to the American people!
If this is referring to what I think it's referring to, (It's the Ukraine call, right? Right?) the man has utterly gone out of his mind. This is toddler stuff. Except the toddler is a full grown man and completely full of @#$%.
Jim Jordan tried out this defense at yesterday's impeachment hearing. It's self-evidently ridiculous, but Trump apparently liked it enough to use it a full three months after the call summary came out.
How does this negate anything I said? I never said he was a Republican. I said he is the only legal expert the Republicans called to testify.
And did you bother to read the link you provided? If you did, then you understand he isn't an across-the-board Liberal. For instance, he believes that gun ownership is an individual right and that the individual mandate is unconstitutional. On November 21, 2014, Turley agreed to represent House Speaker John Boehner and the Republican Party in a suit filed against the Obama administration alleging unconstitutional implementation of the Affordable Care Act. On October 11, 2016, Libertarian Party candidate for President, Gary Johnson, announced that if elected Turley would be one of his two top choices for the Supreme Court seat that remained open following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
More importantly, he's being an absolute hypocrite in the way he is defending Trump after the way he attacked Clinton.
"One of the hardest things for me to accept is the fact that Kevin Graham has blonde hair, blue eyes and an English last name. This ugly truth blows any arguments one might have for actual white supremacism out of the water. He's truly a disgrace." - Ajax
How does this negate anything I said? I never said he was a Republican. I said he is the only legal expert the Republicans called to testify.
And did you bother to read the link you provided? If you did, then you understand he isn't an across-the-board Liberal. For instance, he believes that gun ownership is an individual right and that the individual mandate is unconstitutional. On November 21, 2014, Turley agreed to represent House Speaker John Boehner and the Republican Party in a suit filed against the Obama administration alleging unconstitutional implementation of the Affordable Care Act. On October 11, 2016, Libertarian Party candidate for President, Gary Johnson, announced that if elected Turley would be one of his two top choices for the Supreme Court seat that remained open following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
More importantly, he's being an absolute hypocrite in the way he is defending Trump after the way he attacked Clinton.
I don't follow Turley all that closely, but he is enough of a public figure for him to have a preestablished reputation in my mind as a professional contrarian. As part of that, this isn't the first time he's been brought into the limelight to play the role of "I'm a Democrat, but I believe this position Republicans are pushing that mainstream experts tell you is crazy is actually good."
I don't remember this Turley op-ed from when it was originally published, but it is being circulated a lot now:
If Congressional Democrats were smart enough to let sharp, prepared surrogates do their questioning, what he was saying there as couterpoint against what he was saying yesterday would've been a fruitful line to go down. They could've easily pressed him to talk himself into knots or get testimony out of him that damages the Republican position. While their hand-picked witnesses were on-the-ball, the Democrats really flubbed the context of the hearing.