We Must Not Ignore Christian Persecution Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis

https://amgreatness.com/2019/12/05/we-must-not-ignore-christian-persecution/

Editor’s note: The following are remarks delivered on November 26 to the 2nd International Conference on Christian Persecution in Budapest, Hungary. The mission of the event is “to find answers and solutions to the most neglected humanitarian and civilizational crisis of our time.”

Dear Mister President, I am here to say thank you for what you and your government have done to help Christianity. Hungary is the first country within the European Union that has actively promoted Christian based human rights.

This means most and above all, the protection of human life from conception to death. It also means the protection of marriage as a union between a man and a woman, the protection of the family, and of religious freedom.

Hungary is also, one hopes, not the only country in the European Union that has a targeted program to help Christians around the world and especially, Christians from the Middle East.

It is quite frustrating to us that we don’t hear of any such programs in our own rich countries.

The way priorities have shifted is very worrying. No one seems to take the streets for religious freedom and peace anymore.

The West seems to be more worried about global warming and animal life. But where have we come to, if plants and animals are more valued than human beings?

Even the Pope has declared a climate emergency! Of course, we all want to live in a healthy environment, but how can we accept and tolerate the most atrocious artificial proceedings, when it comes to our own species?

What on earth is more unnatural, unhealthy and traumatizing than hormone treatments for egg harvesting in surrogate moms for surrogate children? Or the traumatizing procedures for sex changes? What could possibly be more unnatural or unhealthy to body and soul than ripping babies to pieces to get them out of their mother’s womb? And the horrible practice of euthanasia happening in Europe today? All this while we insist on eating organic food?

Fraud in Higher Ed Combined with poor educational outcomes and gross indoctrination by leftist profs. Walter Williams

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/12/fraud-higher-education-walter-williams/

This year’s education scandal saw parents shelling out megabucks to gain college admittance for their children. Federal prosecutors have charged more than 50 people with participating in a scheme to get their children into colleges by cheating on entrance exams or bribing athletic coaches. They paid William Singer, a college-prep professional, more than $25 million to bribe coaches and university administrators and to change test scores on college admittance exams such as the SAT and ACT. As disgusting as this grossly dishonest behavior is, it is only the tiny tip of fraud in higher education.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2016, only 37% of white high school graduates tested as college-ready, but colleges admitted 70% of them. Roughly 17% of black high school graduates tested as college-ready, but colleges admitted 58% of them. A 2018 Hechinger Report found, “More than four in 10 college students end up in developmental math and English classes at an annual cost of approximately $7 billion, and many of them have a worse chance of eventually graduating than if they went straight into college-level classes.”

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, “when considering all first-time undergraduates, studies have found anywhere from 28 percent to 40 percent of students enroll in at least one remedial course. When looking at only community college students, several studies have found remediation rates surpassing 50 percent.” Only 25% of students who took the ACT in 2012 met the test’s readiness benchmarks in all four subjects (English, reading, math and science).

It’s clear that high schools confer diplomas that attest that a student can read, write and do math at a 12th-grade level when, in fact, most cannot. That means most high diplomas represent fraudulent documents. But when high school graduates enter college, what happens? To get a hint, we can turn to an article by Craig E. Klafter, “Good Grieve! America’s Grade Inflation Culture,” published in the Fall 2019 edition of Academic Questions. In 1940, only 15% of all grades awarded were A’s. By 2018, the average grade point average at some of the nation’s leading colleges was A-minus. For example, the average GPA at Brown University (3.75), Stanford (3.68), Harvard College (3.63), Yale University (3.63), Columbia University (3.6), University of California, Berkeley (3.59). 

The Truth is No Defense An interview with extraordinary freedom fighter Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff. Mark Tapson

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/12/truth-no-defense-mark-tapson/

As the totalitarian left advances ever more successfully toward amending or abolishing freedom of speech, it is crucial to keep in mind that hand-in-hand with curtailing the speech of those who hold “incorrect” opinions comes the enforcement of Islamic blasphemy laws, the ulterior motive of which is to shield Islam from any criticism whatsoever. This has been the longstanding goal of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the world’s largest Muslim collective, which has worked closely with leftist allies such as Hillary Clinton to promote and implement such censorship. This already has been largely embraced among the multiculturalist elites in Europe; think, for example, of today’s England, where jihadist stabbings are rampant but complaining about them in a tweet will earn you a visit and stern lecture from the police, if not actual arrest.

To grasp just how unacceptable it is to speak the truth about Islam in a multiculturalist society, read Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff’s jaw-dropping account of her legal ordeal in Austria, titled The Truth is No Defense, recently published by New English Review Press. Ms. Sabaditsch-Wolff is an Austrian human rights and anti-sharia activist who, as the daughter of a diplomat and then later as an ambassador’s assistant, had extensive experience living and working in Muslim countries (she was even held hostage during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait). She came to the unfortunate conclusion that sharia and Western values aren’t compatible.

In 2009 she found herself charged with “hate speech” in Austria over factual statements she made during a seminar she gave on Islam. Thus began a Kafkaesque legal odyssey resulting in her conviction for “denigrating the teachings of a legally recognized religion” – i.e. Islam, of course, because can anyone imagine that someone would ever be convicted of denigrating Christianity? Ms. Sabaditsch-Wolff subsequently took her appeal before the European Court for Human Rights, but Europe tragically has no First Amendment and therefore, “the truth is no defense” when it comes to critiquing Islam. “This is what totalitarianism looks like,” the Freedom Center’s own Robert Spencer has said of her miscarriage of justice (Spencer is one of more than half a dozen notable experts who present insightful analyses of her case at the book’s conclusion).

Ms. Sabaditsch-Wolff was recently in Los Angeles promoting her book, and graciously made the time to answer some questions.

‘Dream-Team’ Redux? By Victor Davis Hanson

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/dream-team-redux/

If Nadler had any sense, he would simply fold his tent and stop the damage he is doing to House candidates in 2020.

There was a lot of pre-hearing hype about the Democrats’ supposedly stellar academic experts, sort of analogous to the giddiness about the “dream team,” “all-stars,” and “hunter-killer” legal eagles that Robert Mueller supposedly had assembled to pick apart the Trump carrion — and they likewise proved a complete dud.

There were a number of errors that reminded us why Pelosi had originally outsourced the impeachment gambit to the duplicitous but cunning Schiff rather than to the bumbling and clueless Nadler and his Judiciary Committee, who has now all but blown up his inquiry in just its initial hours.

1) By stacking the witnesses 3–1 and ignoring Jonathan Turley, the Democrats only hyped the writ against them that they are biased and unfair. Worse still, the Republicans’ witness Turley, former Bush administration critic who had voted against Trump, came across as the far more disinterested. Could not the Democrats have found one pro-Trump professor who had soured on him and now favored impeachment? Does the self-described “snarky” Karlan have any common sense at all — or even an associate with common sense who might have warned her that her canned, preplanned smear of Barron Trump was not just boorish, but a public relations disaster?

2) We are reminded that, outside small captive audiences on campus, academics are not very good public speakers and usually argue on the basis of presumed authority rather than facts and analysis. The three partisans came across as nasal, whiney, emotional, biased, and self-referential — and their past anti-Trump tweets, and partisan careers, clips, and interviews only confirmed the current stereotypes. On Ukraine, they said the same old, same old thing in mostly the same old ways.

And the three came off like those talking academic heads in documentaries, who sometimes wish to make the most of their 2 minutes of fame by turning up the volume and animation. Turley, in contrast, is a cool veteran of televised news analysis. His op-eds are sober and judicious. And he is a skilled public debater, who knows how to keep calm and analytical. He quickly eviscerated the three with apologetic ease — and deferential smiles. So whose bright idea was it to allow three partisan mediocrities to gang up against Turley, whose  rapier thrusts are well known? Americans love underdog odds, but Turley didn’t even break a sweat in leaving gaping holes in almost every argument advanced by the experts and House panel. He may have given the best solo congressional witness performance in modern memory.

Presidential Misconduct: Some Historical Perspective By David Harsanyi

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/12/trump-impeachment-hearings-presidential-misconduct-historical-perspective/

If you think Trump’s behavior is the worst in American history, you might be insane.

This week, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee trotted out a trio of dispassionate legal experts to explain why the impeachment of Donald Trump was justified. They were there to bring a veneer of gravitas and erudition to what’s been, until now, a highly partisan affair.

But however smart people such as Michael Gerhardt, distinguished professor of constitutional law at University of North Carolina, might be, they aren’t immune from peddling partisan absurdities. Once Gerhardt argued that Trump’s conduct was “worse than the misconduct of any prior president,” we no longer had any intellectual obligation to take him seriously on the topic.

Because while I’m certainly not a distinguished professor, I am very confident that history began before 2016. Which means that, even if I concede Gerhardt’s framing of Trump’s actions — bribery, extortion, etc. — I can rattle off at least a dozen instances of presidential misconduct that are both morally and constitutionally “worse” than Trump’s blundering attempt to launch a self-serving Ukrainian investigation into his rival’s shady son.

Let’s ignore for a moment that American presidents have owned their fellow human beings, and focus instead on the fact that in 1942, the president of the United States signed an executive order that allowed him to unilaterally intern around 120,000 Americans citizens of Japanese descent. Not only was the policy deliberately racist, it amounted to a full-bore attack on about half the Constitution that he had sworn to uphold. Such an attack was a specialty of FDR’s, despite the all the hagiographies written about his imperial presidency.

Woodrow Wilson — who regularly said things like, “a Negro’s place is in the corn field” — didn’t merely re-segregate the civil service, personally firing more than a dozen supervisors for the sin of being black; he first pushed for, and then oversaw the enactment of, the Sedition Act. Wilson threw dissenters and political adversaries into prison, instructed the postmaster to refuse delivery of literature he deemed unpatriotic, and a created an unconstitutional civilian police force that targeted Americans for political dissent.

Despite Common Core Promises, U.S. Kids Repeat Poor Performance On Latest Global Test by Joy Pullman

https://thefederalist.com/2019/12/05/despite-common-core-promises-u-s-kids-repeat-poor-performance-on-latest-global-test/
On Tuesday, the latest results from a respected international test showed U.S. students making no progress in math or reading in the past 19 years. It’s the latest puncture in Common Core’s inflated promises.

Add another set of test results to the stack deflating promises U.S. leaders said justified the major arm-twisting required to switch the nation to Common Core. On Tuesday, the latest results from a respected international test showed U.S. students making no progress in math or reading since the last such exam three years ago.

This trend of no improvement on math and reading has persisted since the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) began in 2000, although U.S. kids have improved in science on the exam, which is given to 15-year-olds. Common Core, a set of national curriculum, testing, and instruction mandates the Obama administration pressured states into beginning in 2009, dictates reading and math instruction, not science.

American kids were, predictably, the worst at math. In the latest results, just 8 percent of U.S. 15-year-olds rated of excellent proficiency in math, and 27 percent rated of poor proficiency. Both of these results were below the average of comparable students’ performance developed nations.

PISA is considered “is considered a barometer of future economic competitiveness,” as The Wall Street Journal notes, because students’ reading and especially math abilities are linked with their future earnings. Math achievement is a strong predictor of gross domestic product, according to a 2016 Harvard University study. Even small increases in average U.S. math achievement, the study found, could boost American’s incomes and productivity by trillions of dollars. This is just one of many opportunity costs of rushing headlong into unproven fancies like Common Core.

“The U.S. ranking improved in all three subjects to eighth in reading, 30th in math and 11th in science, when compared with 63 other educational systems that reported data in 2015 and 2018. But Ms. [Peggy] Carr[, a U.S. federal education official,] said the improved rankings are due to score changes with other education systems,” reported WSJ.

The less atrocious reading scores are thus not much cause for celebration. And the kids at the bottom were, as always, hit hardest. According to The New York Times, “About a fifth of American 15-year-olds scored so low on the PISA test that it appeared they had not mastered reading skills expected of a 10-year-old, according to Andreas Schleicher, director of education and skills at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which administers the exam. Those students, he said, face ‘pretty grim prospects’ on the job market.”

“In the U.S., about 13.5% of students were good at distinguishing between fact and opinion on the reading exam,” WSJ reported. “Most countries have seen little improvement in scores over the past decade, despite increases in education spending, according to OECD.”
This Is Not an Outlier Result for the Common Core Era

It’s been a decade since President Obama announced federal grants in return for states jumping into Common Core before it was even written. Common Core didn’t move fully into place until about 2015, though, so we had to wait a while to see if its critics were right. But since then, just about all the evidence available has shown that at best Common Core has had none of the promised positive effects on student achievement, and likely includes demonstrable negative effects.

On the latest U.S. tests for fourth and eighth graders in reading and math, as I wrote in October, “For the third time in a row since Common Core was fully phased in nationwide, U.S. student test scores on the nation’s broadest and most respected test have dropped, a reversal of an upward trend between 1990 and 2015. Further, the class of 2019, the first to experience all four high school years under Common Core, is the worst-prepared for college in 15 years, according to a new report.”

This spring, a federally funded study done by pro-Common Core researchers found, to their surprise, “that [Common Core] had significant negative effects on 4th graders’ reading achievement during the 7 years after the adoption of the new standards, and had a significant negative effect on 8th graders’ math achievement 7 years after adoption based on analyses of NAEP composite scores.”

“The study found not only lower student achievement since Common Core, but also performed data analysis suggesting students would have done better if Common Core had never existed. The achievement declines also grew worse over time,” I wrote this spring.

In 2018, we also saw declines among U.S. college entrance exam results:

ACT scores released earlier this month show that students’ math achievement is at a 20-year low. The latest English ACT scores are slightly down since 2007, and students’ readiness for college-level English was at its lowest level since ACT’s creators began measuring that item, in 2002. Students’ preparedness for college-level math is at its lowest point since 2004.

In 2017, I noted the achievement decline of American kids on another international test, this one about reading: “The decline was even more pronounced among the lowest-performing American students. On this test, U.S. students have made no statistically significant improvement since 2001. The 2016 slide is especially notable because 2016’s fourth graders have spent virtually their entire schooling inside public schools forced to shift their instruction to fit Common Core.”

In 2015, former U.S. Department of Education official Ze’ev Wurman discussed early warning signs on a raft of other important tests:

The recent 2015 NAEP [Nation’s Report Card national] results showed a first ever significant decline of 2-3 points – about a quarter of a grade-level worth – in mathematics at both grades 4 and 8, and in grade 4 reading. The decline was broad and deep in most states with just a handful of exceptions, and even formerly excellent states like Massachusetts were not immune. But NAEP scores are only the most recent sign of decline.

The ACT scores have been stagnant in the last couple of years, but they show a slight decline since 2009. The SAT scores stayed level since 2007, until they dropped this year on both verbal and math.

AP course taking in AB and BC calculus has been rising steadily over the years, yet the number of students who scored a passing grade this year – 3 and above – has plateaued in BC calculus and actually declined in AB calculus for many demographic groups.

We Were Scammed, America

In 2009, President Obama described Common Core as “higher and clearer standards and assessments that prepare a student to graduate from college and succeed in life.” He promised that his package of reforms centered on Common Core would “raise the quality of education from kindergarten through senior year” and that “America’s children, America’s economy, and America itself will be better for it.” Almost a decade later, the results are in, and the promises broken.

In 2010, Obama Education Secretary Arne Duncan promised the nation that Common Core and it’s associated tests would be a “game-changer in K-12 education.”

“High standards and high expectations are the first step toward higher performance,” he assured a convention of newspaper editors in 2013, giving the example from Tennessee to support his contention that Common Core would reduce achievement gaps between the United States’ top and bottom students. The opposite has happened: On PISA, the latest National Assessment for Educational Progress, and other test results, the gap has only grown since Common Core.

It wasn’t just Democrats making these false promises about a generation of children and billions in taxpayer spending. Jeb Bush frequently described Common Core as “higher standards for reading and math” that were key to improving student achievement nationwide. Top Republicans like Senate Education Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, Mike Pence, Ronald Reagan Education Secretary Bill Bennett, Florida Gov. Rick Scott (now a U.S. senator), and numerous other GOP governors, publicly supported the initiative. The Wall Street Journal’s biggest editorial complaint early on appeared to be not that Obama’s education ideas like Common Core were unsupported by good evidence, but that he might not have enough leverage to get states deeply enough into them.

And then there were the dozens of special interest groups, largely flush with huge amounts of cash from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, paid to promote the idea. Michael Petrilli of the supposedly conservative Thomas Fordham Foundation is representative of this group. He went around to especially red legislatures telling, for example, Tennessee lawmakers when they had qualms about Common Core that ” the faithful implementation of these standards will help many more young people—including Tennesseans—be prepared for success in college and career.” False.

He told the Indiana legislature when it also had the same concerns, a “reason to stay the course with the Common Core—perhaps the most important reason—is to raise student achievement. I can’t guarantee that—it depends on aggressive implementation at the local level. But I can tell you that what you were doing before Common Core (and your raft of recent reforms) wasn’t working.” Well, we threw that spaghetti against the wall, and it failed to stick. Whoops!

All these people used their power to promote the idea that Common Core would be a good use of taxpayer funds and institutions and the next generation of American children. They were all wrong. And being wrong has cost them just about nothing. Petrilli’s next project, for example, is coediting a book out in 2020 and backed by more conservative foundation money titled “How to Educate an American: A Conservative Vision for Tomorrow’s Schools.” Bush still puts on big “education reform” conferences every year that bill plenty of the same education soothsayers whose prophecies have failed American kids. They’re underwritten by donors who apparently don’t look for a track record of success from the people they write huge checks to.

This failed project may not have put a dent in the careers of its biggest boosters, but Common Core has cost American children, and the nation, not only a huge amount of wasted time and money, but precious opportunities to actually achieve more, better, and faster. We’ve been scammed. Who will pay for the losses inflicted upon the nation by people who owed us a return on our investments and instead gambled it all away?

“Taxpayers and families deserve real results for their money,” Petrilli told the Wisconsin legislature reconsidering Common Core in 2013. Yes, yes we do.
Joy Pullmann (@JoyPullmann) is executive editor of The Federalist, mother of five children, and author of “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids.” She identifies as native American and gender natural. Her latest ebook is a list of more than 200 recommended classic books for children ages 3-7 and their parents.
Photo U.S. Air Force / public domain

Adam Schiff Is Watching Obtaining phone logs of political rivals is a stunning abuse of congressional power. By Kimberley A. Strassel

https://www.wsj.com/articles/adam-schiff-is-watching-11575591692?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

Fanatics can justify any action, and House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff this week demonstrated where that mindset leads. In his rush to paint Donald Trump as a lawbreaker, Mr. Schiff has himself trampled law and responsibility.

That’s the bottom line in Mr. Schiff’s stunning decision to subpoena the phone records of Rudy Giuliani and others. Mr. Schiff divulged the phone logs this week in his Ukraine report, thereby revealing details about the communications of Trump attorneys Jay Sekulow and Mr. Giuliani, ranking Intelligence Committee member Devin Nunes, reporter John Solomon and others. The media is treating this as a victory, when it is a disgraceful breach of ethical and legal propriety.

If nothing else, Mr. Schiff claims the ignominious distinction of being the first congressman to use his official powers to spy on a fellow member and publish the details. His report also means open season on members of the press. Mr. Giuliani over months has likely spoken to dozens of political figures and reporters—and the numbers, dates and length of those calls are now in Democrats’ hot little hands. Who gets the Schiff treatment next? If you think politics is ugly now, imagine a world in which congressional partisans routinely track and expose the call lists of their political rivals and disfavored media.

If we’ve never had a scandal like this before, it’s in part because it is legally dubious. Federal law bars phone carriers from handing over records without an individual’s agreement. The statute makes some exceptions, including for federal and state law-enforcement agencies.

But not for lawmakers. “There does not appear to be any basis to believe that a congressional committee is authorized to subpoena telephone records directly from a provider—as opposed to an individual,” former Attorney General Michael Mukasey tells me. CONTINUE AT SITE

Schiff Impeaches Biden His broad definition of bribery would capture Joe’s work in Ukraine.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/schiff-impeaches-biden-11575591017?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Speaker Nancy Pelosi made the least surprising news of the year Thursday by announcing that the House will proceed to impeach President Trump. Once she fired the “inquiry” missile, it could never be called back.

The question now is what precisely the articles of impeachment will say, and in particular we wonder if they will include the charge of bribery. If they do, Joe Biden should prepare for a Senate grilling.

Recall that Adam Schiff, the leading House impeachment advocate, has been floating a capacious definition of bribery that bears no relation to current law. “Well, bribery, first of all, as the Founders understood bribery, it was not as we understand it in law today. It was much broader,” he told NPR. “It connoted the breach of the public trust in a way where you’re offering official acts for some personal or political reason, not in the nation’s interest.”

Mr. Schiff repeated this definition during his Intelligence Committee hearings, and Senator Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) made the same point this week when he claimed in the Washington Post that “federal law defines bribery as the solicitation of ‘anything of value personally’ by a public official ‘in return for’ an official act.”

Voila, the charge is that Donald Trump solicited a bribe when he tried to withhold a White House meeting or military aid to Ukraine’s new President in return for investigations into corruption and Joe and Hunter Biden. Mrs. Pelosi says the witnesses summoned by Mr. Schiff “corroborated” the bribery charge.

We’ve argued that Mr. Schiff’s definition of bribery wasn’t true for America’s Founders and isn’t true today. And we were pleased to see support this week from impeachment scholar Jonathan Turley in his testimony to Congress. “On its face, the bribery theory is undermined by the fact that Trump released the aid without the alleged pre-conditions,” Mr. Turley said, adding that “this record does not support a bribery charge in either century.”

As for current bribery law, Mr. Turley noted, the “Supreme Court has repeatedly narrowed the scope.” The Court specifically ruled out the promise of a meeting as a corrupt “official act” in McDonnell (2016). Numerous corruption cases have been thrown out as a result, including one against New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez. The delay in military funds also fails under bribery law given that the aid was ultimately delivered and there’s doubt Mr. Trump even had the statutory authority to deny it.

Impeachment really is a pathetic clown show Somebody needs to say to Schiff and Nadler: ‘You’re fired’ Roger Kimball

https://spectator.us/impeachment-pathetic-clown-show/

First it was COLLUSION! Can you believe it? Trump was colluding with the Russians to steal the election from its rightful owner, H.R. Clinton. For a brief and shining moment, ‘collusion’ filled the airwaves and cyberspace. The president of the United States was colluding with Vladimir Putin, whose puppet he was. John Brennan, the excitable talking head who somehow became director of the CIA despite voting for Gus Hall, perpetual candidate for the US presidency on the Communist ticket, declared that Trump’s behavior was ‘nothing short of treasonous.’ Yikes.

That show had a good run, almost two years. But it collapsed like an abused soufflé after Robert Mueller’s expensive fishing expedition failed to hook any fish, at least any implicating the president in wrongdoing, to say nothing of treasonous wrong doing. Mueller’s pathetic performance before Congress probably counts as a form of elder abuse. This was supposed to be the spectacle that delivered the coup de grâce to the impossible orange man. Instead, it was a demonstration of the liabilities of senile incapacity. We spent $34 million for this?

In any normal world, that would have put paid to the Democrats’ greatest ever expedition, the unremitting search for a crime to which their preordained verdict — impeachment! — could be attached.

But this is not a normal world, it is our world, one in which such Soviet style of justice — show me the man and I will show you the crime — applies to anything involving Donald Trump. Still, though the animus remained, ‘collusion’ had to be retired.

Next up was Ukraine and a supposed ‘quid pro quo’. Repetitio mater memoriae: for a couple of weeks, the blank spot in the media’s script that had been occupied by ‘collusion’ now featured this new tort: Trump promised to give the Ukrainian president something in exchange for something. Exactly what those somethings were was a vague and shifting series of conjectures, undercut by denials on the part of all the principals that anything was offered for anything. 

Turley: Democrats offering passion over proof in Trump impeachment By Jonathan Turley

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/473171-turley-democrats-offering-passion-over-proof-in-trump-impeachment

The most dangerous place for an academic is often between the House and the impeachment of an American president. I knew that going into the first hearing of the House Judiciary Committee on the impeachment of Donald Trump. After all, Alexander Hamilton that impeachment would often occur in an environment of “agitated passions.” Yet I remained a tad naive in hoping that an academic discussion on the history and standards of it might offer a brief hiatus from hateful rhetoric on both sides.

In my testimony Wednesday, I lamented that, as in the impeachment of President Clinton from 1998 to 1999, there is an intense “rancor and rage” and “stifling intolerance” that blinds people to opposing views. My call for greater civility and dialogue may have been the least successful argument I made to the committee. Before I finished my testimony, my home and office were inundated with threatening messages and demands that I be fired from George Washington University for arguing that, while a case for impeachment can be made, it has not been made on this record.

Some of the most heated attacks came from Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee. Representative Eric Swalwell of California attacked me for defending my client, Judge Thomas Porteous, in the last impeachment trial and noted that I lost that case. Swalwell pointed out that I said Porteous had not been charged with a crime for any conduct, which is an obviously material point for any impeachment defense.