Tag: constitutional crisis

The GOP is escalating a historic constitutional crisis over impeachment

AlterNet logoAs headlines and news hosts proclaim the historic weight of Wednesday’s impeachment of an American president, there’s a barely spoken murmur of malaise that few are willing to state out loud: it just doesn’t feel that historic. For conservatives, it’s a barely registered bump on the road to either Trump’s re-election or some version of a Second Civil War. For liberals and progressives, Trump’s impeachment provides less an exclamation of justice than a notice of strategic defiance. This act may ultimately be designed less for immediate accountability than to ensure the opposition party acted appropriately to this lawless president in the eyes of history.

This is not the Democrats’ fault. Impeachment feels less historic than it should because the Republican Party has utterly abandoned its sense of shame and responsibility to the country. The unprecedented event Wednesday was less about the impeachment itself than the Republican Party’s unanimous refusal to hold to account a corrupt tyrant clearly unfit for office. If it feels like our democracy is slowly spiraling out of control, that’s because it’s true.

First, the obvious: President Trump is so clearly guilty of attempting to bribe and extort Ukraine that it hardly requires repeating here. His own doctored transcript states the case bluntly even as he declares it “perfect”; multiple witnesses that he appointed corroborated his guilt during Congressional testimony; and Trump’s own Chief of Staff openly admitted as much in a public press hearing—he likely thought it was so obvious that it was better to brazenly deny that Trump’s behavior was a problem than to attempt to deny it happened at all. Continue  reading

Trump and Nunes torch tradition of trust between Congress and FB

The following article by Douglas M. Charles, Associate Professor of History, Pennsylvania State University, was posted on the Conversation website February 3, 2018:

President Donald Trump’s attacks on the FBI may have reached a climax.

In an apparent attempt to discredit Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, staff of the House Intelligence Committee on behalf of its chair Republican Devin Nunes of California, wrote and on Feb. 2 released a four-page memo based on confidential information made available to them by the FBI. It outlines alleged improprieties in the FBI’s investigation, specifically the monitoring of Trump’s former campaign adviser Carter Page.

Nunes in 2017 was forced to step aside from the committee’s Russia investigation because he was seen as taking direction from the Trump White House. Continue reading “Trump and Nunes torch tradition of trust between Congress and FB”

Constitutional crisis? What happens if Trump decides to ignore a judge’s ruling.

The following article by Aaron Blake was posted on the Washington Post website February 5, 2017:

President Trump has spent the better part of the past 24 hours bashing a U.S. district judge’s decision to temporarily halt his travel ban executive order.

First came a White House statement calling the ruling “outrageous” (the word was later taken out). Then came Trump’s many tweets, which were scattered throughout the day Saturday and actually seemed to question the judge’s authority. And then, in its appeal, the Trump administration said the lower-court judge shouldn’t be “second-guessing” the president. Continue reading “Constitutional crisis? What happens if Trump decides to ignore a judge’s ruling.”