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Ruth King

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A Secret Ballot for Impeachment Would Be a Terrible Idea By Jim Geraghty

By on November 12th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/a-secret-ballot-for-impeachment-would-be-a-terrible-idea/

Over at Politico, Juleanna Glover, a former adviser for several Republican politicians, floats the idea that President Trump could be removed from office if three Republican senators insist upon a secret ballot for the vote on removal, and stand with Democrats to block any rules for impeachment that would involve on-the-record votes.

It is hard to describe just how terrible an idea this is. It would represent senators trying to avoid accountability for their votes, during an exercise that is supposed to be a legislative effort to hold the president accountable for his actions. This country has never forcibly removed a president from office. For such a consequential and historically important vote, the idea of senators being able to not tell the public how they voted — or to publicly claim they voted one way when they secretly voted the other — is unthinkable.

We all know why some senators would want a secret ballot; plenty of Republican senators who privately can’t stand Trump and who would strongly prefer a President Pence would vote to remove Trump from office if they knew they wouldn’t face punishment in a subsequent GOP primary. In a 75-25 vote in favor of removal, all 53 Republican senators could insist they were among the “no” votes, with no official record to contradict them. (This might apply to relatively Trump-friendly red state Democratic senators like Joe Manchin, too.)

 

If Trump really is an unconstitutional menace who is abusing the power of the presidency for his personal interests, stopping him ought to be worth losing a Senate seat. And if this action isn’t worth losing a Senate seat over, then it’s hard to see how it is worth removing a president. In 1998, this country established the precedent that a president suborning perjury did not warrant removal from office. The bar is set high, and it ought to be set high. If a senator wants to say, “we’re less than a year from a presidential election, let the people decide if this justifies ending Trump’s presidency,” they’ve got that option, too.

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Prediction: No Impeachment By Charlie Martin

By on November 12th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/prediction-no-impeachment/

I’m afraid I’ve run out of metaphors for the “impeachment inquiry.” “Clown show” — I like clowns. The ad vendors and corporate won’t let me spell out “(excrement) show” without bowdlerization. “Death march,” maybe.

In any case, you know what I’m talking about — the ongoing kangaroo court inquiry in which the main complainant “whistleblower” is anxious to testify until his long-time connections with the people who are pushing the inquiry, as well as his long-time connections with the corrupt inner circle Trump would like Ukraine to investigate became known — at which point he became so scary that you can’t name him on Facebook, as if Eric Ciaramella were Voldemort in the children’s books.

Of course, if Ciaramella was not the whistleblower, his attorney — the one who was bragging that the “#coup” was on in January 2017 — could just say “Eric Ciaramella is not the whistleblower” instead of threatening people with meretricious legal arguments to suppress his name.

Which is “Eric Ciaramella.”

In fact, one of the most curious aspects of the “inquiry” has been just who may, and may not, testify — along with the fact that the fabled Adam Schiff is the only decider of who is called to testify.

Why, it’s almost as if there’s something that worries the Democrats about cross-examination of the guy that was their star witness a couple of weeks ago.

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The Wrong Immigration Debate As a new study shows, the question is not whether newcomers prosper in the United States—but whether their generational progeny will keep moving upward. Kay S. Hymowitz

By on November 12th, 2019

https://www.city-journal.org/intergenerational-mobility-us-immigrants

The New York Times has not been in the habit of publishing heartening stories about the American dream in recent years, but last week, the editors made an exception, with an article recounting the findings of a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, showing that the sons of low-income immigrants are moving up the economic ladder—as they have since the Ellis Island era. After the article appeared, the Times reporter, Emily Badger, tweeted: “There is a lot in this study tweaking talking points in the current immigration debate.” I’d put it differently: there is a lot in this study suggesting that we’ve been having the wrong immigration debate.

The study itself, “Intergenerational Mobility of Immigrants in the U.S. over the Last Two Centuries,” won’t give any final answers to our immigration dilemmas, but it merits attention for its remarkable reach. The three authors, all economic historians, linked the incomes of immigrant fathers and their American-born sons in three generational cohorts—1880, 1910, and 1980—from 20 of the major sending countries. (They didn’t include daughters, whose economic outcomes are trickier to evaluate, given name changes and shifting employment patterns for women.) The sending countries vary dramatically over time. The 1880 group, for example, came mostly from Northern and Western Europe, or more specifically, from Germany, Ireland, and England; the 1910 cohort, meantime, hailed from Southern and Eastern Europe. Finally, the 1980 faction is dominated by exiles from Latin America and Asia. (The authors pass over the period between 1924 and 1965, when immigration was highly restricted.)

For each group, the researchers compared the immigrant pairs with native-born fathers and sons. They found that upward mobility between first- and second-generation immigrants has remained a constant in U.S. history, regardless of the sending country. As the Times put it: “The adult children of poor Mexican and Dominican immigrants in the country legally today achieve about the same relative economic success as children of poor immigrants from Finland or Scotland did a century ago.” In fact, immigrant sons were 3 to 6 percentile points more upwardly mobile than the sons of American fathers.

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Adam Schiff’s ‘ham sandwich’: Not an inquiry, just a show By Andrew McCarthy

By on November 12th, 2019

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/469880-adam-schiffs-ham-sandwich-not-an

The most familiar metaphor about criminal investigations is, of course, that a prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. Like all good metaphors, there’s enough exaggeration in it to make a strong impression. It resonates, though, because it conveys the entirely accurate sense that a grand jury is a one-sided affair. We’re wired to believe there are two sides — at least — to every story. That’s why the grand jury rubs us the wrong way.

And that’s why the impeachment show — not inquiry show — that Democrats are running should really rub us the wrong way. 

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and his House Intelligence Committee are taking the show public this week. The inquiry he’s been running is, he claims, analogous to a grand jury investigation: It’s a preliminary investigative stage before the inquiry’s transfer to the Judiciary Committee for the formal consideration of articles of impeachment. 

Grand juries, however, never go public. And that is precisely because they are intentionally one-sided. They are kept secret by law to avoid prejudicing the suspect.

Prejudice is exactly what Schiff is aiming for, however. The point is not impeachment; it is to wound President Trump politically.

To be clear, Schiff’s grand jury analogy is bogus. Congress is not a grand jury. Grand juries are designed to be at least somewhat objective — a body of impartial citizens who, by constitutional mandate, must be satisfied there is probable cause that a crime has been committed before the state is permitted to indict and try a citizen presumed to be innocent. In theory, the grand jury is there to protect the suspect from an overbearing prosecutor. Here, House Democrats are the overbearing prosecutor, not the protective grand jurors.

What is happening in the House is a political exercise. Schiff is a hyper-partisan. With the anti-Trump media leaving his absurd grand jury analogy unchallenged, he exploits it when it is useful, namely, when telling Republicans they will not be permitted to call their witnesses, and he puts the analogy aside when it is not useful, namely, in convening one-sided public hearings.

As a matter of due process, Schiff’s made-for-TV spectacle is a bad joke. That was underscored this past weekend when (a) Democrats gave Republicans a ridiculously short deadline to propose their own witnesses, whom Chairman Schiff reserved the right to veto; (b) Republicans duly proposed witnesses on the issues of Democrats’ collusion with Ukraine in the 2016 election campaign and in possible corruption; and (c) Schiff, as predictably as sunrise, ruled the GOP’s witnesses irrelevant.

In point of fact, the witnesses that Republicans seek to call are entirely relevant to what would be at issue in an impeachment trial, to wit: Is any misconduct by the president alleged in an article of impeachment sufficiently egregious that he should be removed from power?

But, see, a grand jury is not a trial. 

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Bolivia: That Was Quick! Francis Menton

By on November 12th, 2019

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5&

It was barely more than a month ago — October 3 to be exact — that I made fun of a big spread the previous day in The Nation, declaring the country of Bolivia to be the latest, greatest “Remarkable Socialist Success Story”! This was in the midst of the run-up to the October 20 election, in which Socialist hero President Evo Morales was to stand for his fourth term. By October 24, Morales had claimed outright victory in the election, and a mandate to serve another five years..

And then yesterday, Morales may or may not have resigned. That was quick! How could this all have gone so wrong so fast?

To start with, there was the small problem of allowing the electoral machinery to be fully controlled by people loyal to the incumbent bent on re-election. Surely then, wouldn’t Morales’s people have no problem turning any remotely close result into a clear victory? Sometimes what seems like an advantage may not turn out that way. As it happened, the governing rules required the leading vote-getter to achieve a margin of 10 points or better over the runner-up to avoid a run-off. As returns came in on election night, Morales was leading, but by less than the 10 points. Then suddenly, officials suspended reporting the results for 24 hours. When the count was supposedly complete on October 24, Morales claimed 46.95% of the vote, to 36.6% for his top opponent, Carlos Mesa. Sure, Evo!

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The Death Throes Of A Party: Is Pelosi Planning To Shaft Schiff? Tyler Durden

By on November 12th, 2019

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/death-throes-party-pelosi-planning-shaft-schiff

Is it possible that Rep. Adam Schiff was hung out to dry by the devious Ms. Pelosi, feeding his vanity to be a one-man impeachment wrecking crew, knowing that the congressman from Hollywood would utterly blow it? Hmmmmm. Begins to look that way as Mr. Schiff’s House Intel Committee goes public this Wednesday with its soviet-style format on full display.

Well, first, why? Why allow this nitwit to stage an ersatz impeachment only to see it fail? Perhaps to cancel the Jacobin menace metastasizing in the Democratic Party and get on with the business of winning the 2020 elections — with old-school candidates hand-picked to end-run the gang of fantasists currently on display.

The House Speaker must sniff the odor of failure in the wind.

Joe Biden, smiling cretinously, blunders through the primary venues with a big red “L” plastered on his forehead, often uncertain of what state he’s landed in, or what direction to face the camera. Everybody over twelve in this land knows that his kid Hunter was on the grift in Ukraine, plain and simple, and that Joe assisted in the operation. Color him toast.

Elizabeth Warren has been caught lying very publicly twice now, first as a phony Cherokee Indian (for career advancement in academia), and lately claiming falsely that she was canned from a teaching job years ago for being pregnant (with a 2007 tape of her out telling a contradictory story). Of course, that’s just the cherry-on-top of her dazzlingly unsound policy proposals to bankrupt the nation. Doesn’t look like she can reel it all back in and pretend to be a credible person in time for a full-on campaign

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Guess Who Was Called a ‘Fascist,’ Back in the Day By Ira Stoll

By on November 12th, 2019

https://www.nysun.com/national/guess-who-was-called-a-fascist-back-in-the-day/90902/

Bigotry. Fascism. A threat to women’s rights. Alliances with foreign dictators. A president as entertainer, trampling labor and the environment.

It sounds like the contemporary complaints against President Trump.

Actually, it’s a 1984 newspaper advertisement from “Scholars Against the Escalating Danger of the Far Right.”

“With Ronald Reagan as its performing star in the White House, the Far Right is attempting to take over the Republican Party,” says the ad, published in the November 2, 1984, New York Times and signed by, among others, Carl Sagan, Linus Pauling, Corliss Lamont, Stephen Jay Gould, John Hope Franklin, Gloria Steinem, and Frances Fox Piven.

“Four more years of Reaganism…would see a sweeping attack on civil liberties. Four more years of Reaganism would also bring us closer to a nuclear Holocaust. Unlawful intervention in Central America threatens us with a new Vietnam,” the ad claims.

It says Reagan sought “to stifle women’s rights, including the right to legal abortion.” The ad says that under Reagan, “The Civil Rights Commission is anti-civil rights, the NLRB is anti-labor, the EPA is anti-environment. The Administration champions special privileges for the elite while life for the working people, the poor and minorities deteriorates.”

“There is a scent of fascism in the air,” the ad pronounces, warning that a second Reagan term would unleash “more bigots and chauvinists.”

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Bloomberg Will Hit an Iceberg By Charles Lipson 

By on November 12th, 2019

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/11/12/bloomberg_will_hit_an_iceberg

Michael Bloomberg is so wealthy he couldn’t fritter away his fortune, even if he tried. But he’ll make a good start if he spends $100 million or more to win the Democratic presidential nomination. It’s a fruitless quest.

He must be smart enough to know it. That’s why he is merely “exploring a run” and hasn’t jumped in yet. Still, the glittering prize of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. dazzles even the shrewdest eyes, and it may have dazzled Bloomberg’s.

Running would be a rare mistake in a career that led him to vast riches and the mayoralty of America’s largest city. (It’s no South Bend, but there are those who love it.) Bloomberg made his money by recognizing a lucrative gap in the market for economic information. To trade stocks, bonds, currencies, and commodities, market participants need real-time information, bundled with sophisticated software to make sense of it. Bloomberg saw the need, thought he could fill it better than anyone, and could charge steep fees to do it. He was right, and he executed his design perfectly. He is still tops in the field, still making a mint from it.

Now, Bloomberg sees another gap, this one in the Democratic presidential field, where no center-left candidate dominates. Both Joe Biden and Mayor Pete Buttigieg have obvious weaknesses and Amy Klobuchar has all but disappeared. Bloomberg is right in saying the whole field is weak, most candidates are too far left to win in November, and the center lane is not too crowded. He’s also right in saying that President Trump is vulnerable despite the strong economy. And he’s right in thinking that his age is no barrier. At 77, he is still energetic and sharp enough to do the job.

Where Bloomberg is wrong is thinking he can captivate a Democratic base that has moved sharply left since Barack Obama left office. He’s wrong, too, if he thinks policies that worked in New York City will appeal to contemporary Democrats.

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RUTHIE BLUM: NETANYAHU’S BULLSEYE ON IRAN

By on November 12th, 2019

https://www.jns.org/opinion/netanyahus-bullseye-on-iran/

Of all world leaders, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been the most vociferous in warning of the danger to the Jewish state and the rest of the world posed by Tehran in general and by its race to obtain nuclear weapons in particular.

(November 12, 2019 / JNS) The Israeli Air Force conducted a strike in Gaza in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, killing Islamic Jihad senior commander Baha Abu al-Ata. According to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the bloodthirsty Palestinian terrorist, responsible for multiple rocket barrages on Israel from Gaza, was a “ticking time bomb.”

In other words, his death was a necessary step in preventing a series of imminent terrorist attacks on innocent Israelis. It was also a message not only to Islamic Jihad, but to Hamas—ruler of the terrorist enclave—that recent Israeli threats about a major military campaign in Gaza being inevitable were not empty. As Netanyahu has been emphasizing for the past few months, Hamas can’t keep blaming Islamic Jihad for launching missiles as a way of avoiding an Israeli ground invasion, such as “Operation Protective Edge” in the summer of 2014.

The trouble with the hit on Abu al-Ata, of course, is that it sparked a heavy—albeit anticipated—round of revenge attacks, sending Israelis across the south and center of the country into bomb shelters, and prompting the Israel Defense Forces to launch further airstrikes on targets in Gaza, among them an Islamic Jihad training facility and underground facility for the manufacture and storage of weapons.

The Home Front Command, which clearly was given a heads up prior to the targeted killing and the likely response it would elicit, is treating the situation seriously, keeping a wide geographical berth on high alert, and out of school and many public buildings.

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In private speech, Bolton suggests some of Trump’s foreign policy decisions are guided by personal interest By Stephanie Ruhle and Carol E. Lee

By on November 12th, 2019

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/private-speech-bolton-suggests-some-trump-s-foreign-policy-decisions-n1080651

The former national security director was especially critical of the president’s handling of Turkey, according to multiple sources present for his remarks.

Former national security adviser John Bolton derided President Donald Trump’s daughter and son-in-law during a private speech last week and suggested his former boss’ approach to U.S. policy on Turkey is motivated by personal or financial interests, several people who were present for the remarks told NBC News.

According to six people who were there, Bolton also questioned the merits of Trump applying his business acumen to foreign policy, saying such issues can’t be approached like the win-or-lose edict that drives real estate deals: When one deal doesn’t work, you move on to the next.

The description was part of a broader portrait Bolton outlined of a president who lacks an understanding of the interconnected nature of relationships in foreign policy and the need for consistency, these people said.

Bolton has kept a low public profile since he left the administration on Sept. 10, and efforts by Democrats to have him testify in the House impeachment inquiry into the president have stalled. But his pointed comments, at a private gathering last Wednesday at Morgan Stanley’s global investment event in Miami, painted a dark image of a president and his family whose potential personal gain is at the heart of decision-making, according to people who were present for his remarks.

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