Time To Stand Up And Be Counted...

[Lord Jim]

I want to deal with a couple of things that friends of mine have brought up recently...

I heard Joy Reid this morning trying to claim that Clinton was impeached for "nothing". I don't see any value in re-litigating the Clinton scandal, but he wasn't impeached over "nothing" . Nor was he impeached for "getting a blowjob" (A facile myth which I see some die-hard Clinton apologists have resurrected.)

Bill Clinton was impeached for obstructing justice, violating his oath of office, perjury, suborning perjury, abusing his power and misusing public officials. His purpose for doing so was to deny justice to a private citizen (Paula Jones) whom he had exposed himself to and assaulted (and we can know for a fact that Jones was telling the truth because of knowledge of Mr. Bill's anatomy that she would not otherwise have had) and protect himself politically.

This was certainly not "nothing". It was a series of grave lawless acts that the person who had taken an oath to faithfully execute the law engaged in order to try to serve his own political benefit and deny justice to a private citizen. In my opinion at the time, and in my opinion today, he fully deserved to be impeached for what he did, he should have resigned, and given his failure to resign, should have been removed from office by the Senate.

All of that having been said, it is also completely irrelevant in considering the situation of the current President Of The United States...

What Bill Clinton did or didn't do 20 plus years ago doesn't matter. What positions Democrats and Republicans took 20 years ago regarding the Clinton impeachment are irrelevant. It doesn't matter that Lindsey Graham was right 20 years ago and Gerry Nadler was wrong; what matters who is who is right and wrong today...

Even though I believe that Bill Clinton's actions easily rose to the level to justify his early departure from office, the level of corruption, criminality and abuse of power of Donald Trump is, by any reasonable yardstick, exponentially worse...

Clinton sought to deny justice to a single individual for his own political and legal benefit; with his relentless (and expanding) efforts to undermine the Constitution and the rule of law, Trump seeks to deny justice for his own political and legal benefit to all 325 million of us...

Here's another thing a friend of mine who has been agonizing over his support for Trump (he's no Trumpanzee; he's a 401K Trumper) tried to argue to me recently...

"If the situation were reversed, the Democrats in Congress wouldn't be behaving any differently than the Republicans are now"...

I'm certainly not one of those who believes in the inherent moral superiority of Democratic office holders, so...

If we had a President with a D next to their name engaging in the exact same sort of war on truth, efforts to undermine the rule of law and our international standing and general vileness as this one, but who was also appointing liberal judges and pursuing other policies in line with Democratic Party policies (raising taxes, slashing defense, throwing money at public sector unions, etc.) and who consistently maintained an 80-90% approval rating with those calling themselves Democrats...

I'm happy to stipulate that Democratic members of Congress would not likely be leading the charge to Impeachment...There would most likely be a lot of reaching for rationalizations, foot dragging and trying to look the other way going on...(and there would also be a few who would be outright collaborationist)

But again, while that may all very well be true it is also completely irrelevant...

We don't have "the reverse situation"; we have the situation we have...

And even if the political cost for a Republican lawmaker is higher than it is for a Democratic lawmaker to Do The Right Thing it doesn't excuse them from their Constitutional obligation to Do The Right Thing... (which BTW in my opinion is just a theory; there's no way to know what the political dynamics will be once the full tale of Trump's malfeasance is laid out for American people on national television. It might very well be the case that those Republicans who have the courage now to stand up and insist on Trump being held accountable would be politically rewarded.)

Trump's lawlessness represents a current and ongoing existential threat to the very nature of the Republic that we have been bequeathed by the sacrifices of generations of Americans who preceded us. The Republic that we want to be able to pass on to the generations that will follow us. We have never before in our nation's history had a person in the Presidency who threatens the fundamentals of this country the way this one has and does...

What Bill Clinton did 20 years ago, or how Democrats and Republicans would act if the situation was reversed, just doesn't matter at all with stakes this high...

It's time for all members of the Congress who genuinely care about the well being of the country and the oath they took, regardless of party or what they imagine the personal or party political cost to be, to stand up and be counted...

[Burning Petard]

There is an opinion piece in the NY Times yesterday on this topic:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/opin ... hnson.html

It develops the idea that the first presidential impeachment (1868 against Johnson) is far more informative to American national politics today than the resignation of Nixon or the failed impeachment of Clinton.

Also of interest to me is that John A. Bingham was part of the Congressional committee which drew up the articles of impeachment. A month ago I had never heard of this politico. Then I read "Sacred Liberty" by Steven Waldman, which is an account the development of religious freedom in the USofA. There I learned that Bingham was the primary drafter of the 14th Amendment. That amendment is crucial in the idea of all our personal freedoms today. Before that, the 'Bill of Rights' was only a limit on the Federal government and carried no restrictions on the behavior of local or state governments.

snailgate.

[Lord Jim]

Interesting article SG, thanks for posting that...