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Archive of Articles in the "Impeachment" Category

Friday Talking Points -- A Cinder Block On The Scales Of Justice

[ Posted Friday, March 1st, 2024 – 19:37 UTC ]

This week, the Supreme Court didn't just stick a thumb on the scales of justice for Donald Trump, it tossed on a cinder block instead. By delaying any decision -- for months and months -- on Trump's ludicrous claim to total immunity from everything and anything he's ever done, the court will allow Trump to win even if he loses his appeal. Because Trump's main objective in the January 6th insurrection case against him is to delay, delay, delay. The Supreme Court is aiding and abetting this scheme in rather blatant fashion.

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Friday Talking Points -- A Slow Sort Of Week

[ Posted Friday, February 23rd, 2024 – 18:08 UTC ]

Because this week had a federal holiday at the start of it, Congress is off on vacation for two entire weeks. Nice work if you can get it, eh?

It's not as if they don't have anything to do, either. When they return, the Senate will hold the first impeachment trial for a sitting cabinet member ever (although "trial" may be overstating it, since it may be over before it even begins, with a simple vote to dismiss the nonsensical articles of impeachment the House finally was able to pass), the House will be under pressure to pass some sort of military aid for Ukraine before their soldiers are reduced to fighting with pointy sticks, and Congress will be staring at yet another government-shutdown deadline at the end of the week. Those are just the big things on the congressional plate, mind you. But after all their hard work (at not getting anything done on time), they all needed two weeks of relaxation, obviously.

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Biden Impeachment Investigation About To End Not With A Bang But A Whimper

[ Posted Wednesday, February 21st, 2024 – 16:43 UTC ]

T. S. Eliot wrote a poem that seems entirely appropriate to quote from today, since it aptly sums up the Republican effort in the House of Representatives to find something -- anything! -- to use to impeach President Joe Biden. After more than a year of digging, they have found less than nothing. Their one crown jewel of an accusation was brought by a man who is now being charged with lying about the entire thing to the F.B.I. Which is why the final lines of "The Hollow Men" seemed appropriate to quote (emphasis in original):

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but with a whimper.

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Friday Talking Points -- Grinding Exceedingly Fine

[ Posted Friday, February 16th, 2024 – 18:04 UTC ]

That headline comes from the end of an aphorism that goes back to the time of the ancient Greeks: "The wheels of justice turn slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine." Today, the wheels of justice just ground out a penalty of $355 million for Donald Trump, for committing serial fraud in his New York businesses -- which we certainly found to be an "exceedingly fine" result of the case (an "exceedingly fine fine," maybe?). The $355 million can now be added to the $88 million Trump is already on the hook for, after losing two other civil cases (the defamation cases brought by E. Jean Carroll). Plus, in today's ruling, two of Trump's children were fined $4 million each, as well as a $1 million fine for another member of the Trump Organization (making it a $364 million penalty, in all). This was the capstone to a week watching the slow grind of multiple court cases Trump is currently ensnared in, so we thought it was an appropriate place to start our column this week.

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Scheduling Trump's Trials

[ Posted Thursday, February 15th, 2024 – 16:58 UTC ]

Donald Trump will finally be forced to sit in a courtroom to answer criminal charges against him in a trial before a jury of his peers. This trial will begin on March 25th, the judge overseeing the case ruled today. This was the originally-scheduled date for the courtroom drama to begin, which Trump's lawyers tried unsuccessfully to push back as far as they possibly could. The judge just flat-out rejected their pleas for delay, so jury selection will begin late next month.

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Counting Noses In The House

[ Posted Tuesday, February 13th, 2024 – 16:28 UTC ]

As I write this, there may or may not be a second impeachment vote happening later today in the House of Representatives. Republicans tried to impeach the secretary of the Department of Homeland Defense last week and suffered a rather embarrassing loss, so one would assume that this time around the speaker will do a better job of counting noses before the vote takes place -- and also that this time the vote won't happen if Republicans don't have enough. As we saw last week, the difference of one vote can indeed be critical in such a closely-divided House.

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Friday Talking Points -- A Disservice To Actual Working Clowns

[ Posted Friday, February 9th, 2024 – 19:29 UTC ]

This was a very bad week for Republicans in Congress, pretty much all around. The Speaker of the House proved incapable of counting votes and thus saw two big defeats on the floor, and over in the Senate the Republicans cut off their noses (elephant trunks?) to spite their faces in a spectacular turnaround from their own basic bargaining position. GOP incompetence was on display on both sides of the Capitol, to put it bluntly.

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GOP Leadership Vacuum

[ Posted Thursday, February 8th, 2024 – 15:55 UTC ]

Donald Trump is, without doubt, the leader of the Republican Party right now. He is cruising to the Republican presidential nomination and the party's base has rallied around him almost to the exclusion of all others. But below the level of Trump, there is a growing leadership vacuum in the party, as everyone scrambles to bend whichever way the Trump winds happen to be blowing at that particular moment, while still attempting to hold the party together. This lack of secondary leadership came to the fore this week in three notable ways.

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Trump Loses Immunity Appeal

[ Posted Tuesday, February 6th, 2024 – 17:12 UTC ]

Donald Trump is still not king. That's the upshot of today's ruling from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, when stripped of all the legalese. He did not enjoy some divine right to do whatever he pleased while he was president, and he does not have some "Get Out Of Jail Free" card to use now that he is not president anymore. We are a country of laws, and everyone -- up to and including current and former presidents -- must obey them or ultimately have to face the consequences in a courtroom.

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Friday Talking Points -- Rightwing Heads Exploding

[ Posted Friday, February 2nd, 2024 – 18:46 UTC ]

New monthly employment numbers were released today showing a surprisingly-high 353,000 new jobs were created in January. The stock market is currently setting new all-time highs. The American economy has recovered from COVID far faster and far better than all other major countries, in fact. Inflation has come back down, gasoline prices are down, and wages are up (growing faster than inflation). Signups for Obamacare hit another record this year (outpacing last year's record by five million!) and America has the lowest uninsured rate in history. Domestic oil production is also setting records. So what are conservatives obsessed with in reaction to all this good news? Taylor Swift. No, really....

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