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Democrats Debate Whether Trump Has Been Impeached by Alan M. Dershowitz

Posted By on December 24th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15331/democrats-impeachment-question

Under Laurence Tribe’s scenario, the House Democrats get to “obstruct” the Senate and “abuse” their power (to borrow terms from the articles of impeachment).

I believe that the Senate need not wait for articles of impeachment to be transmitted. Senators are empowered by the constitution to begin a trial now — with or without further action by the House. Just as the House has the “sole power of impeachment,” so too the Senate has the “sole power to try all impeachments.”

Tribe and the Democratic House majority, led by Speaker Pelosi, want to have their constitutional cake and eat it too: they want Trump impeached but not acquitted. Sorry, but the Constitution does not permit that partisan, result-oriented ploy. Either Trump has been impeached and is entitled to a Senate trial; or he has not been impeached and is entitled to a clean slate.

So there are only two constitutionally viable alternatives: either Pelosi must announce that Trump has not been impeached; or the Senate must initiate a trial. Preserving the status quo indefinitely — Trump remaining impeached without having a trial — is unconstitutional and should not be tolerated by the American people.

Speaker Pelosi’s unconstitutional decision to delay transmission of the articles of impeachment to the Senate in order to gain partisan advantage raises the following question: has President Trump been impeached, or did the House vote merely represent an authorization or intention to impeach — which becomes an actual impeachment only when the articles are transmitted?

This highly technical constitutional issue is being debated by two of my former Harvard Law School colleagues — Professors Laurence Tribe and Noah Feldman — both liberal Democrats who support President Trump’s impeachment.

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The 2019 Lump of Coal Awards Santa’s got a lengthy naughty list this year but these nominees deserve special opprobrium. Julie Kelly *****

Posted By on December 24th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/12/23/the-2019-lump-of-coal-awards/

It’s a good thing President Trump is making big, beautiful coal great again because Jolly Old St. Nick is going to need an ample supply this Christmas Eve. (See 2016, 2017, and 2018 for comparable supply-and-demand needs.)

This year’s naughty list is overflowing with bitter Foggy Bottom bureaucrats, silly female soccer players, a globetrotting teenaged climate change propagandist, a “squad” of freshman House Democrats, an anonymous “whistleblower,” sleepy prison guards, a TV celebrity hoaxster, and a native elder.

But since Santa is a busy guy, let’s help guide his coal-packed sleigh to 2019’s most deserving recipients:

Barack Obama’s FBI: Santa should leave the North Pole and head directly to a well-appointed mansion outside of Washington, D.C. to fill a stocking emblazoned with the name, “Chief Comey.” The bad behavior of the former FBI director has done irreparable damage to the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency, all while he enriches himself with lucrative book deals, primo punditry posts, and ego-feeding six-figure speaking gigs.

In the span of just a few years, Comey framed innocent Americans—including a three-star general—lied to a secret court, lied to the president of the United States, lied to the news media, and lied to the American people. Comey kept “memos” of his private conversations with President Trump then stole those documents from his own agency. As FBI director, he concealed from congressional leaders his bogus investigation into the Trump campaign and he told President Obama about it in the summer of 2016 even though he has repeatedly insisted he did not.

Despite his treachery, Comey somehow manages to portray himself as the victim—a victim of the Bad Orange Man, congressional Republicans, Attorney General Bill Barr, and Fox News. Comey’s poisonous conduct infected his top team, including Andrew McCabe, James Baker, Peter Strzok, and Lisa Page, among others. Big lumps of coal all around.

Adam Schiff: Santa doesn’t usually stop at the Schiff’s Los Angeles-area home, but this year he should make an exception. The wannabe screenwriter has savored his leading role in the political spotlight; Schiff cried on cue, overdramatized hackneyed monologues, and hogged the camera. Newsweek devoted its front page to #The Resistance star. During a recent Hollywood movie premiere, Schiff received a standing ovation from the B-list crowd. Legendary producer Norman Lear called him an “American hero.”

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THEIR SAY: DINGELL BELLS, DINGELL BELLS DINGELL ALL THE WAY!

Posted By on December 24th, 2019

John Dingell called Donald Trump an “imbecil” but when he died President Trump lowered the American flag in his honor. The widow Dingell responded by voting for impeachment. The President mused that the late Senator might be in hell and even Republicans gripped their corsets and denounced him.

Please read these two columns on John Dingell’s “legacy.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/12/dingell_and_civility_in_politics.html

Dingell and civility in politics By Matthew May

John Dingell probably would have laughed at President Donald Trump’s allusion that Dingell was perhaps “looking up” at the political scene. It is no exaggeration to say that of all of the politicians on the scene since 1955 (Dingell’s first year in the House of Representatives), nobody knew better than he that politics ain’t beanbag. Crude jokes and allusions are part of the game. 

During one of my two stints as an intern in his offices, Dingell would often jovially announce that he was stopping into the bathroom by saying “Time to salute the president” (who happened to be Bill Clinton at the time). He was not above telling what he thought were amusing stories about Ronald Reagan’s forgetfulness at the 40th president’s expense.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/12/hellish-legacy-dingell-family-daniel-greenfield/

The Hellish Legacy of the Dingell Family If you’re going to drain the swamp, you’ve gotta call it out. Daniel Greenfield.

A decade ago, Time Magazine unveiled an in-depth article on the death of Detroit. One of the politicians whom the article blamed for Detroit’s woes was Rep. John Dingell.The Dingell clan has held a congressional seat outside Detroit since 1932. Their 87-year tenure has not coincidentally coincided with the decline of a thriving industrial city into a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

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The Zinn Education Project Lying about history, lying about fundraising. Mary Grabar

Posted By on December 24th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/12/zinn-education-project-lying-about-history-lying-mary-grabar/

On “Giving Tuesday,” the Zinn Education Project, a non-profit that provides free downloadable K-12 lessons adapted from the late communist historian Howard Zinn’s bestselling history, A People’s History of the United States, solicited donations. Proudly announcing that the 100,000 mark of teachers registered at the site had been reached, the email declared, “We depend solely on individuals like you for support” and “the Zinn Education Project receives no corporate donations. We depend on individual donations and family foundations.” It reminded potential donors, “Your contribution will make an impact, whether you donate $5 or $500,” and—giving the game away—“Many of the students in high school today will be voting in 2020.”

The lessons encourage classroom use of Zinn’s “history,” a book first published in 1980 and riddled with deceptive quotations, leading questions, critical omissions, logical fallacies, plagiarism, and blatant falsehoods. The Zinn empire continues to grow, thanks in no small part to its escalating use in classrooms, aided by the revision of the Advanced Placement U.S. History course guidelines to the far-left during the Obama administration. The entire Portland, Oregon, school district has adopted A Young People’s History of the United States for eighth grade.

The 100,000 registrants have grown from the 84,000 figure I had when I put the final changes into my book, Debunking Howard Zinn, in the spring. To counteract the force feeding of this blackened history on young teenagers, the Oregon Association of Scholars is hosting a drive to put my book in Portland schools and libraries (details on making tax-deductible contributions here).

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The Founders Feared Tyranny More Than Partisan Rancor Because fierce division is a right and expectation in free societies. Bruce Thornton

Posted By on December 24th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/12/founders-feared-tyranny-more-partisan-rancor-bruce-thornton/

Maybe it’s the Christmas season, or maybe it’s the grotesquely rabid partisanship of the Democrat impeachment follies, but we’re hearing a lot of moaning and groaning about “partisan rancor” and what a threat it is to our “democracy.” But tyranny, not “partisan rancor,” is what we should fear, for freedom is the foundational good that our government was designed to protect.

An example of this misunderstanding about partisanship can be found in some comments by a very smart political analyst. He writes that the “partisan bitterness that is dividing us into two warring camps . . . is the greatest threat American democracy faces today. Democracy cannot exist when a country is divided into two camps, each of which sees the other as an enemy rather than an adversary. Democracy relies on the suspension of partisan rancor in the interest of the nation.”

First, this common claim that we are at a moment of unprecedented partisan division ignores a lot of history. What about the Civil War and the decades leading up to it? We were divided into two literally “warring camps,” and that divide culminated in over 700,000 dead Americans. Yet our democratic republic not only survived, but became a world power, which was made possible in part by the lancing of the moral infection of slavery, and the confirmation that the union could not be broken into vulnerable sections and become easy prey for foreign powers.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Pompeo Champions the Faithful He wants to make religious freedom the centerpiece of U.S. human-rights policy.By Walter Russell Mead

Posted By on December 24th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/pompeo-champions-the-faithful-11577144946?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

Christmas is anything but a season of peace and joy for millions of Christians around the world today. Not since the death of Stalin have Christians in so many places faced the levels of discrimination, violence, imprisonment and even death on account of their religion that they do today.

After more than a century of intermittent genocide, persecution and forced removals, ancient Christian populations in much of the Middle East are on the edge of extinction. Iraq’s Christian population, estimated at 1.4 million as recently as 2003, fell by almost 90% in the chaos that followed the American invasion. Roughly three quarters of Syria’s Christian population, estimated at two million before the current civil war, are refugees. Once a substantial percentage of the Arab Palestinian population, Christians are rapidly disappearing from the Palestinian territories. Egypt still retains a large Christian population, but Copts face pervasive discrimination and, especially in rural areas, violence.

Persecution hangs over beleaguered Christian communities in much of the world. Christians in sub-Saharan Africa face violence from Boko Haram fighters. In Pakistan no Christian is safe from false charges of blasphemy. Hindu mobs in India have attacked churches. In Indonesia, radical Islamists attempt to disrupt the traditionally peaceful relationships among the country’s religious groups.

The most alarming developments are taking place in China. As authorities in Beijing work to enforce ideological conformity and restrict debate among China’s 1.4 billion people, the Christian population is experiencing heightened scrutiny and pressure. Crosses have been pulled down from church roofs, and churches have been bulldozed. More ominously, the biometric monitoring and close surveillance that has been used to crush Tibetan Buddhists and the Muslims of Xinjiang has been systematically introduced into Christian churches across the country.

P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Woke Harry Potter Fans Defenestrate J.K. Rowling Over Trans-Critical Tweets The same people who spent days generating a Harry Potter reference for their protest signs have called for J.K. Rowling’s literary exile, labeling the author a ‘cruel,’ ‘transphobic’ ‘bigot.’By Kristin Tate

Posted By on December 24th, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/12/24/woke-harry-potter-fans-defenestrate-j-k-rowling-over-trans-critical-tweets/

J.K. Rowling ✔ @jk_rowling
Dress however you please.Call yourself whatever you like.Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill

J.K. Rowling has been overtaken by dementors of her own making. After committing the grave sin of defending a woman who stated that transgender women are biologically male, the British author is being dragged on Twitter and beyond by many of those who, prior to last week, were her greatest admirers. Rowling’s dramatic fall from grace is a sign that her semi-divine status has been a colossus with feet of clay all along.

Since its debut in 1997, Harry Potter has been the best-selling book series in history, encompassing about a half a billion tomes. The first book alone sold more than 120 million copies—or quadruple that of a true political masterpiece, “1984.” Rowling went from almost homeless to a billionaire practically overnight.

Of course, the original texts that spawned a film and media franchise weren’t meant to be a blueprint for political change, but for far too many young people that’s exactly what happened.

For all of its fanciful settings and adventures, Harry Potter attracted both kids and one of the most toxic fan bases known to humankind. The mythos of Pottermania even inspired almost spiritual fervor.

In the absence of true religion, people tend to fill that part of their psyche with something else, even unintentionally. This isn’t a tract on the early 2000s wave among some Christian leaders who believed Harry Potter’s magic was somehow a pact with the devil. Instead, many in the sub-30 generation made a god in their own image: one suppressive to outside thought and that papers hard questions over with a Latin-sounding spell.

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Voters Love the Trump Economy By Matthew Continetti

Posted By on December 24th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/voters-love-the-trump-economy/

President Trump divides Americans, but the Trump economy unites them. The latest issue of the AEI Political Report, edited by my colleagues Karlyn Bowman and Eleanor O’Neil, is chockablock with positive assessments of the economic scene. More Americans (38 percent) say their personal financial situation is improving than getting worse (20 percent). A two-thirds majority says now is a good time to find a quality job, slightly down from the record 71 percent who said so last May. A similar majority says it’s “not very worried” about losing one’s job.

  

Seventy-one percent of registered voters say the economy is either “very” or “somewhat” strong. Seventy-three percent say it’s either “excellent” or “good.” And a 72-percent majority says the economy either will “get better” or “stay about the same” in the coming year. As Bowman and O’Neil point out, “Americans are almost always more optimistic about their personal lives than they are about the country.” Current economic conditions give Americans plenty of reasons to be optimistic. Along with President Trump.

HISTORY Comments turned off

Recalling the Battle of the Bulge By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on December 24th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/recalling-the-battle-of-the-bulge/

Seventy-five years ago, at the Battle of the Bulge (fought from Dec. 16, 1944, to Jan. 25, 1945), the United States suffered more casualties than in any other battle in its history. Some 19,000 Americans were killed, 47,500 wounded and 23,000 reported missing.

The American and British armies were completely surprised by a last-gasp German offensive, given that Allied forces were near the Rhine River and ready to cross into Germany to finish off a crippled Third Reich.

The Americans had been exhausted by a rapid 300-mile summer advance to free much of France and Belgium. In their complacence, they oddly did not worry much about their thinning lines, often green replacement troops or the still-formidable Germany army. After all, Nazi Germany was being battered on all sides by Americans, British, Canadians and Russians. Its cities were in ruins from heavy bombers.

Yet the losing side is often the most dangerous just before its collapse.

In retreat, the Germans were shortening their interior lines. They had the element of surprise, given confident allies who assumed the war would soon be over.

The cold December weather would ground the overwhelming number of Allied fighters and bombers. The Germans aimed their assault through the snowy roads of the Ardennes Mountains to bowl over inexperienced or exhausted U.S. divisions.

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German Parliament: Its Resolution to Ban Hezbollah is Just a Legal Charade by Soeren Kern

Posted By on December 23rd, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15324/german-parliament-hezbollah

Germany, however, has refused to ban Hezbollah’s “political wing,” which continues to raise funds in the country. A German foreign ministry official, Niels Annen, has said that such a ban would be counterproductive because “we focus on dialogue.” His comment has been understood to mean that the German government does not want to burn bridges with Hezbollah’s sponsor, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

“We don’t have a military wing and a political one; we don’t have Hezbollah on one hand and the resistance party on the other…. Every element of Hezbollah, from commanders to members as well as our various capabilities, is in the service of the resistance, and we have nothing but the resistance as a priority.” — Hezbollah’s deputy secretary general, Naim Qassem.

Germany’s Social Democratic Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, however, has refused to ban Hezbollah in its entirety. He recently repeated the German government’s distinction between Hezbollah’s legitimate and illegitimate activities in Germany.

“It remains to be seen to what extent the German federal government will…actually ‘exhaust all the resources of the rule of law’ to stop Hezbollah’s money laundering and terrorist financing in Germany.” — Bild, December 19, 2019.

The German parliament has passed a non-binding resolution that calls on the German government to ban the activities of the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah — Arabic for “The Party of Allah” — in Germany.

The measure — supported by center-right Christian Democrats and the center-left Social Democrats, the two major parties that make up Germany’s ruling coalition, and also by the classical liberal Free Democrats — has been hailed as “important,” “significant,” and a “crucial step.”

The resolution, however, falls short of a complete ban on Hezbollah and appears aimed at providing the German government with political cover that would allow Germany to claim that it has banned the group even if it has not.