NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Andrew McCarthy: In Trump impeachment trial, Senate right to block new witness testimony By Andrew McCarthy

Posted By on January 31st, 2020

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/andrew-mccarthy-in-trump-impeachment-trial-senate-right-to-block-new-witness-testimony

The Senate was right to vote Friday against hearing new witness testimony at President Trump’s impeachment trial. The Democrats’ demand for new witnesses at the trial was a red herring – a talking point that had some surface appeal but, upon scrutiny, was nonsense.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and the other impeachment managers claim that there have been no witnesses in the trial. They said before the Senate voted 51-49 Friday to block more witnesses that if Republicans did note vote to approve subpoenas for former National Security Adviser John Bolton, among other top current and former administration officials, that the trial will be a “sham” – an exercise in “cover-up.” You can’t have a real trial, was their refrain, unless witnesses are called.

It is nonsense. There have been plenty of witnesses. Schiff’s problem is that the additional witnesses he wanted to call would not change what has already been proved in any meaningful way.

Obviously, what’s happening in the Senate is not a trial in any familiar sense. We are used to judicial trials. Impeachment presents something completely different, a Senate trial. The Senate is a political body, not a law court.

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New Bolton Book Allegations Drop Hours ahead of Vote on Witnesses By Zachary Evans

Posted By on January 31st, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/new-bolton-book-allegations-drop-hours-ahead-of-vote-on-witnesses/

New reports of the contents of former White House adviser John Bolton’s book have surfaced hours before the Senate is scheduled to vote on whether to call witnesses in the impeachment trial of President Trump.

According to the New York Times, Bolton writes in his forthcoming book that Trump directed him to assist in the pressure campaign to coerce Ukrainian officials to conduct investigations against Joe and Hunter Biden during a May meeting at which the president’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, and White House counsel Pat Cipillone were present.

During the meeting, Trump directed Bolton to set up a meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Giuliani, who was then planning a trip to Ukraine to discuss the opening of the Biden investigation with government officials. Giuliani on Friday denied he was present at such a meeting, while Trump said Bolton’s alleged account was wrong.

The Times’ Sunday report on Bolton’s book, The Room Where it Happened, disrupted Republicans’ blanket opposition to calling witnesses in the impeachment trial. After unanimously resisting Democrats’ calls for Bolton to testify, moderate Republicans began to waver on Monday.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

More Selective Editing of American History By John Yoo

Posted By on January 31st, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/more-selective-editing-of-american-history/

Today, the president of the University of California, Janet Napolitano, decided to remove the name of John Boalt from the law school building at the University of California at Berkeley. Boalt undeniably made racist remarks opposing Chinese immigration to California in the late 19th century which added to the forces that results in the passage of the infamous Chinese Exclusion Act.

I have taught at Berkeley Law (as we are supposed to call it, rather than Boalt Hall, as it was known for decades) for 27 years (unbelievably to both conservatives and liberals). I think that Boalt was flat wrong in his views and that the nation erred in its policies on immigration during this time. If I had my way, we would increase legal immigration even now by a factor of 2x and 3x, rather than considering its restriction.

 

But I am saddened to see my great university following the herd of other colleges that are selectively editing American history. The answer to the sad moments of the past is not to remove people and events from our collective memory, but to remember them and learn from them. Shall we next re-sculpt Mount Rushmore because Washington and Jefferson owned slaves and Roosevelt liked war, and remove the Washington and Jefferson monuments from the National Mall? Closer to home, shall we end the Jefferson lectures at Berkeley for the same reasons? Shall we edit out the names of chancellors and university leaders who worked on the nuclear bomb because the politically sensitive on campuses today reject that WWII ended with Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The End of Impeachment? By Jim Geraghty

Posted By on January 31st, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/democrats-forgot-to-begin-with-the-end-in-mind/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_

On the menu today: With Tennessee senator Lamar Alexander declaring, “there is no need for more evidence to prove something that has already been proven and that does not meet the United States Constitution’s high bar for an impeachable offense,” the Senate’s impeachment trial might be wrapping up as soon as today. If impeachment is indeed coming to a close, it’s time to focus on a strangely unasked question in much of this: Whom were the House impeachment managers trying to persuade? And did they seem like a group that was primarily focused on changing the minds of Republican senators?

Were the House Impeachment Managers Even Trying to Persuade GOP Senators?

In Steven Covey’s bestselling book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, his second habit is to “begin with the end in mind,” which means to “begin each day, task, or project with a clear vision of your desired direction and destination.”

In all likelihood, reaching 67 votes in the Senate to support the removal of the president was probably impossible. House impeachment managers had to try to convince, at minimum, 20 Republican senators to vote to remove. This means that targeting their message to persuade a rebellious senator such as Lisa Murkowski wasn’t enough. The message would have to be designed to persuade senators right in the middle of the GOP caucus who usually vote with the president and who have no inherent desire to see him removed from office. House impeachment managers were asking Republican senators to sign off on something that had never happened in 230 years. (George Washington took the oath of office to be president in 1789.)

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

There Is No Strict Legal Test of Impeachment By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on January 31st, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/there-is-no-strict-legal-test-of-impeachment/

It’s an eye test, a political determination, and even great lawyers trip up when they frame it as a legal question.

When you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And when you’re a lawyer, particularly a constitutional scholar and criminal-defense practitioner of Alan Dershowitz’s caliber, everything looks like a legal problem.

Not everything is. Impeachment is not. Not principally.

Professor Dershowitz, for whom I have great respect, got a bit carried away in what was otherwise a bravura performance in the well of the Senate on Wednesday night, when he offered a constitutional defense against President Trump’s impeachment. As will be clear momentarily, I have never agreed with Dershowitz’s impeachment theory. Yet the excerpt of his argument at the Senate trial that has critics up in arms was a case of misspeaking; it was not an outrage that would effectively turn the president into a dictator.

I believe Dershowitz was trying to make the uncontroversial point that executive acts a president subjectively believes are in the national interest do not become impeachable just because the president simultaneously believes such acts will help him politically. But Dersh garbled the point — which also occasionally happens, even to those of us who are not 81 and lack the professor’s vigor. Taken out of the context of his broader argument, he could be misunderstood as having asserted that, if a president believed his own reelection was in the national interest, no executive act he took in furtherance of being reelected could be impeachable.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Chief Justice Roberts Blocks Question From Sen. Paul About Ciaramella, Allows Question About Schiff Staffer Debra Heine

Posted By on January 31st, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/01/30/chief-justice-roberts-blocks-question-from-sen-paul-about-ciaramella-allows-question-about-schiff-staffer/

For the second day in a row, Chief Justice John Roberts refused to read a question submitted by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) that mentioned the name of Eric Ciaramella, the alleged “whistleblower” at the center of the case who was outed by RealClearInvestigations.

Senators have been submitting questions to Roberts who asks them on behalf of the senators. The legal team and impeachment managers each have five minutes to respond to each question. On Wednesday, Roberts blocked Paul from posing a question that would have named the alleged whistleblower, as well.

After receiving Paul’s question card, Thursday afternoon, Roberts said, “The presiding officer declines to read the question as submitted.”

The Chief Justice did not explain why he rejected the question, which did not identify Ciaramella as the whistleblower.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Brexit: Nigel Farage takes Britain out of Europe with a stellar flourish By Monica Showalter

Posted By on January 31st, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/01/brexit_nigel_farage_takes_britain_out_of_europe_with_a_stellar_flourish.html

Brexit goes through today, and Britain is finally independent, free from the clutches of the European Union.  It’s a great event regardless of how it happens, but in this case, it was cool beyond description. 

It all ended with a pretty amazing flourish, one that told us a lot about both the European Commission and newly sovereign Britain itself.  Chief Brexiteer Nigel Farage made his last speech before the European Commission, which was a great scolding and call to shut down the whole operation altogether, which was subversive enough.  But he drove it even farther. 

Here was the great final moment:

Farage and his buddies ended the whole thing by explicitly waving the British flag of sovereignty right in the faces of all the angry little European Commission eurocrats, even as they sputtered and cut off his mic.

Metaphor, anyone?  It was the mother of all metaphors, a Britain that asserted its sovereignty in waving its symbolic flag as its soulless eurocrat masters got angry and tried to stop it, not on political grounds, not because they were afraid the other member-states might follow, but on petty rules grounds, little administrative state foot-stamping, insisting on cookie-cutter order and obedience, no exceptions, in the face of a newly freed state that just asserted that it can do what it wants.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Washington needs to anticipate Iran’s next provocation By Lawrence J. Haas

Posted By on January 31st, 2020

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/480649-washington-needs-to-anticipate-irans-next-provocation

Signs are mounting that in Tehran, which faces rising pressures at home and abroad, the country’s powerful hardline conservatives are circling the wagons, raising the odds of still more Iranian global provocations. The question is whether Washington – which continues to tighten the economic screws on Tehran – is ready for what might come next.

In the latest conservative effort to solidify power, the country’s Guardian Council recently barred 9,500 prospective candidates (almost two-thirds of the 14,500 prospective candidates) in next month’s parliamentary elections, from running. The 12-member Guardian Council – an unelected body that includes six designees of the nation’s ultimate authority, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei – routinely bars hundreds if not thousands of would-be candidates from elections because they’re not conservative enough or committed enough to the regime’s revolutionary goals. This time, however, the barred candidates include nearly a third of the current parliament. The signal was clear. The Council not only wants to prevent new reformist candidates from winning office; it also wants to purge the parliament of members it considers too moderate.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

Warren’s ill gotten fortune. Schiff’s dealing with “whistle blower” Eric Ciaramella

Posted By on January 31st, 2020

Peter Schweizer Explains How Warren Built Her Fortune by Aiding Big Corporations She Routinely Rails Against

www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/01/30/exposed-peter-schweizer-explains-how-warren-built-her-fortune-by-aiding-big-corporations-she-routinely-rails-against/

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) made millions of dollars through her role in rewriting portions of U.S. bankruptcy law and assisting big corporations in navigating the laws she helped write at the expense of the victims of their practices, Government Accountability Institute (GAI) president and Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer revealed during a discussion on his book Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite on Breitbart News Daily.

https://theothermccain.com/2020/01/30/eric-ciaramellas-name-is-not-a-secret-and-teamtrump-only-hires-winners/

Eric’s Ciaramella’s Name Is Not a Secret, and #TeamTrump Only Hires Winners

This report consists of a long thread of Twitter posts. Fascinating and highly expositive. EVERYONE knows that Ciaramella is the ‘whistleblower’!! – The nasty hound dog Schiff insists that his ‘ID must be protected’ when he knows full well that Ciaramella is a household word among everyone involved in this disgusting farce.
Click on URL above to scroll down through the Tweets.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Two Reasons Why Continuing A Little With Impeachment Might Not Be Such A Bad Thing  Francis Menton

Posted By on January 31st, 2020

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-1-30-two-reasons-why-continuing-a-little-with-impeachment-might-not-be-such-a-bad-thing

As of this writing it looks like the impeachment farce in the Senate may end as early as tomorrow. The Democrats’ “more witnesses” gambit appears to be fizzling out — although that is not a certainty until the vote is taken. I suppose that ending this thing is for the better. However, I do have a couple of reasons why having it continue for at least a little while longer may not be so bad.

The first is that there is an obvious witness for the President’s side to call, someone whose testimony could be the first real “bombshell” in this whole matter. No, it is not Joe or Hunter Biden. I have seen the Bidens mentioned dozens of times as potential witnesses to be called by the President, and it doesn’t make any sense to me. As indefensible as the Bidens’ conduct in Ukraine may be, calling them as witnesses would likely turn into a net negative for the President. As a general matter, if you can avoid it, you never want to call a well-prepared hostile witness who is devoted to defeating your case. When you start questioning such witnesses, they will almost certainly follow the strategy of ignoring whatever questions you may ask and delivering pre-prepared self-serving monologues justifying their own position. Rarely will a judge give you any meaningful relief to get the testimony focused on what you want.

The President’s counsel calling Joe or Hunter Biden would be like the House managers seeking to call the President himself, or somebody like William Barr or Mike Pompeo. Those people are just not going to say anything unfavorable to the President if they can possibly avoid it. Instead you call people like Alexander Vindman and Marie Yovanovich. People who think that their stellar performance in office has been ignored. Even better, people (like Yovanovich) who have been fired by your target, and maybe have also been insulted by your target and have a powerful motive to use their testimony to get revenge.