Friday, December 20, 2019

Democrats Corner the Market in Stupid

Having already cornered the market in anti-Semitism Congressional Democrats are now trying to corner the market in stupid.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, having forced her caucus to vote for articles of impeachment, now announces that she is not in a hurry to send said articles over to the Senate. She believes that she can dictate the conditions for the trial. Strange, and ultimately stupid thought.

To that Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman, a man who testified before the House Judiciary Committee in favor of impeachment points out to Pelosi that if she doe not send the articles to the Senate… well then, Trump has not been impeached.

Feldman comments:

If the House does not communicate its impeachment to the Senate, it hasn’t actually impeached the president. If the articles are not transmitted, Trump could legitimately say that he wasn’t truly impeached at all.

That’s because “impeachment” under the Constitution means the House sending its approved articles of to the Senate, with House managers standing up in the Senate and saying the president is impeached.

As for the headlines we saw after the House vote saying, “TRUMP IMPEACHED,” those are a media shorthand, not a technically correct legal statement. So far, the House has voted to impeach (future tense) Trump. He isn’t impeached (past tense) until the articles go to the Senate and the House members deliver the message.

Emeritus Law Professor Alan Dershowitz offers the same point:

It is difficult to imagine anything more unconstitutional, more violative of the intention of the Framers, more of a denial of basic due process and civil liberties, more unfair to the president and more likely to increase the current divisiveness among the American people. Put bluntly, it is hard to imagine a worse idea put forward by good people.

Denying President Trump and the American people a trial in the Senate would constitute a variation on the title of my new book, "Guilt by Accusation."

President Trump would stand accused of two articles of impeachment without having an opportunity to be acquitted by the institution selected by the Framers to try all cases of impeachment. It would be as if a prosecutor deliberately decided to indict a criminal defendant but not to put him on trial.

This would deny him the right to confront his accusers and to disprove the charges against him. 

Stupid is as stupid does. The thorough woke Congressional Democrats have boxed themselves into an indefensible corner.

4 comments:

trigger warning said...

IMO, she's withholding transfer for the imminent resignation or death of Ginsburg. I've argued elsewhere that the entire post-Mueller impeachment circus has been energized by "Ginsburg prepping" (and a "Tip o' the Hatlo Hat" to Harry Reid, BTW).

UbuMaccabee said...

This seems equally plausible:

That 6e material is the motherlode of opposition research. FBI 302's, hundreds of anti-trump witnesses, massive speculations and accusations, wiretap results, surveillance results, nat sec letter results...

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/12/19/impeachment-as-a-means-to-an-end-and-not-the-end-itself/

They want the information that Weissmann gathered in the Meuller investigation on Trump and his entire family. This trove is a goldmine of oppo research courtesy of our federal investigative agencies. That's why the obstruction charge.

sestamibi said...

Left unsaid here is the number of hardcore Dem votes who won't even show up next election. The leadership was so hot for this and now backed off, and those Dem reps who won close races or are in Trump districts who put their whole reps on the line for party discipline are now dead meat.

RNB said...

"...it is hard to imagine a worse idea put forward by good people." These are not good people.