President Trump

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The U.S. Senate’s Abdication of Responsibility


It is Sunday, January 26, 2020 and President Trump’s legal counsel has finished its opening remarks. I cannot help but wonder why they even bothered? Ah! The old magician’s trick of sleight of hand. They know full well that their client is guilty as charged but they are thinking in terms of his winning the next election and not of discrediting the House Managers’ case as put forth. They are simply deflecting and trying to confuse the American public by offering facts that have virtually nothing to do with the case at hand. And you should expect more of the same come Monday and Tuesday.

To their shame, Republican Senators have announced, in so many words, that they are part of the President’s defense team. They are going to vote to acquit regardless of how compelling a case for removal is put forth. And the House Managers knew this before the Senate hearings even began. So why do they persist?

In 1999 the case against President Bill Clinton was on a single charge, lying to Congress. And the Senate, then as now, rather evenly split between parties, came within one vote of removing him! What was the lie? He told Congress that he did not have sex with Monica Lewinsky. The right move at that moment in history was to censure Clinton but not to remove him. They probably would have gotten enough votes for censure! Clinton took advantage of an all too willing Lewinsky and the Republicans that it unseeming but a “high crimes and misdemeanors?” Not even close.

The most damning charge against President Trump is his obstruction of Congress charge which the Federal Circuit Court in D.C. has already ruled to be true. Republicans do not like that decision and have appealed the ruling which will probably be affirmed and they then will push it into a very conservative U.S. Supreme Court counting on the justices to overturn the lower court’s ruling. Should that come to pass, and it will likely take two years time for that court’s ruling, then our democratic republic is compromised. The Constitution’s checks and balances between the three branches of government will no longer exist. With the Constitution compromised, our republic could fail.

The world has a lot of democratic governments but ours stands alone with each branch keeping the other two in check. The President can, for example, veto a bill that he does not believe is in the best interest of the country. That bill must then be passed by a 2/3rds majority of Congress to become law. The U.S. Supreme Court can hear cases where the constitutionality of a law is challenged. That happened in the 1990s when Congress approved the President’s right to do a “line item veto” in the nation’s annual budget. The U.S. S.J.C. overruled Congress saying that it was indeed unconstitutional. The Congress has the right to subpoena persons and records from any agency in the executive branch it deems it needs when it finds an executive decision to be questionable. But the President refused flatly to allow for either and was therefor put in “contempt of Congress,” a felony under both statute law and the Constitution.

Republicans know full well that Trump is barred from ignoring a subpoena as ruled by the U.S. S.J.C. in previous filings and as born out by the Nixon and Reagan investigations.

If senate Republicans allow Trump to be victorious, then all future presidents can simply point to this point in time and claim it is within their right to do as they wish. That of course creates an imbalance of power, an anathema to what those who wrote the constitution had in mind.

There are always those who, regardless of the strength of facts presented, will vote to acquit. But to know at this juncture that a 53-47 final vote of removal will occur is about as disgusting a turn of events as can happen. Can you imagine a serial killer who demands a bench trial (a trial where there is only the judge to decide an accused’s fate), who happens to be a beautiful woman, is found innocent because the judge liked how she looked? That is exactly what is happening now because, even though this does not look like a courthouse, there are 100 judges in attendance and 53 of them simply like how President Trump looks.

This will certainly be a travesty of justice and we will be the worse for it.

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The Future of America?


When March 2020 arrives, I will celebrate birthday number 71. I have seen a lot and traveled at lot during those years. I lived in three different countries, Korea, Italy and Micronesia, and been witness to their way of living. I have visited the Middle East, most of Western Europe to include Poland and the Czech Republic. I have also been to 44 of our 50 states. There was much to be seen and learned. I wish I could say I saw it all and learned to an expert level but that just is not true. But what I did see and learn was uniformity.

It did not matter what country I visited, Korea, Syria, or any state, everyone is about the same. Those people I met, Palestinians, Cypriots, Marshallese, each was friendly and welcoming. And so my takeaway from this is that it did not matter what country I was in, people are not political parties, religions, rich or poor, they are just people who are making their way through life in their own particular way. I never expected people to speak English. I always believed the language barrier was mine to be broken down and that usually worked. And those times when the other person did speak English, well, that was a bonus of which I always was grateful.

One thing which was common to almost all the people I visited was they were very nice but hamstrung by the governments which claimed to represent them. I seldom found that to be the truth. I visited Syria, for example, in 1972. That was only five years removed from the 7-days war Israel fought which brought extreme fear and unrest to the entirety of the middle-east. But walking among the people, you would not know that. In Syria, a country which at the time had no U.S. Embassy, the fact that I was American, something that was known when I crossed the border from Lebanon to Syria, seemed of little or no consequence to the military who controlled the border crossings. And once we reach Damascus, the entire bus of people I was with was treated with great warmth and to my surprise, the tour was done in English. There, at the Central Mosque, I learned that in Islam it is believe the head of John the Baptist lies in that Mosque and he is considered a prophet in their religion. And soldiers visiting the golden cage at the spot where the head lies, kneeled and cried before moving to a corner of the Mosque which faced Mecca where they prayed.

Today, when I think of a country, I never think about its government but of its people because they are the true representatives of their country, not their elected officials.

America today is in the most unfortunate position of having a President who has shown no appreciation for the absolute necessity of America getting along with the rest of the world. Worse, it appears this President has taken America backwards and into a 2nd Cold War. When you deal with the devil, as is the case with Putin in Russia and Kim Il in North Korea, it is necessary to present yourself as the protector of those countries they would seek war, to include America itself.

During his years as President, Barrack Obama made serious in-roads in diplomacy with Iran. That was extremely important for peace in the Middle-East and has since been undone by the present administration. When Russia invaded the Crimea, the present President offered no help to the Ukrainian government to stem that incursion. To Russia, that was not a test of the Ukrainian military but of the resolve of the rest of the world, America in particular, to intervene against an illegal act and yet no one did anything. Now Putin knows he can retake former USSR territories with impunity. Are Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania next? Or is he setting his sights on Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and the other former USSR satellites of that region?

The United States has in place rules for countries where corruption is an issue which can limit or completely withhold U.S. aid to such countries. But what if they become targets of the Russian government. Do we stand by and watch it happen or do we form a coalition to stem any such incursion? Remember now, in even the most corrupt nation, the average person is honest and hard working and deserving of protection of his freedom. Right now, America is not that country and what a shame that is.

Over the past three years, America has acted shamefully towards the rest of the world. Its isolationist policy, its arrogance, and its ignorance, in the form of its lack of action, of issues problematic to most of the world, makes America a country upon which the rest of the world cannot rely. Is this who we really want to be? We desperately need a leader who has a healthy respect for the power of good diplomacy and a diplomatic policy the rest of the world will once again respect. We need a new President.

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The Impeachment of a President


I believe the word “impeachment” may be the least understood word in the lexicon of the average American.  Except in extraordinary times, such as these, the word gets little usage.  This is probably in large part due to its being a word primarily used in legal circles and not in ordinary language.  I therefore offer the definition of “impeachment” as stated by the Merriam Webster Dictionary, on-line version.

  1. “to charge with a crime or misdemeanor specifically : to charge (a public official) before a competent tribunal with misconduct in office”
  2.  “to cast doubt on, especially, to challenge the credibility or validity of . . . a witness”

At the time of the writing of our Constitution, Americans had been forced to live under the “tyranny” of a monach who set rules for his subjects without having any fear of recourse from his subjects.  Our Constitution quite pointedly changed that making an otherwise properly elected or appointed official, the rule below does not strictly apply to the Presidency, to be removed from office.

Article 2, Section 4, reads, simply: “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

That’s all it says, nothing more.  In the on-going hearings involving President Trump, the U.S. House of Representatives acts in the same manner as a grand jury in state government.  It is charged with recommending, or not, that charges be brought forth against a particular person.  In the case now before the Congress, the Judicial Committee acts as the prosecutor.  In the case of the impeachment hearings, the Intelligence Committee first and then the Judiciary Committee, brought forth witness who testified under oath what they knew first hand.  Such first hand information is described as, but not limited to, “I heard,” “I saw,” “I was told (by the accused or his agent)”, etc.

The Republicans, relying on the general ignorance of the general public, decried the use of secret hearings.  But in common law, such things are quite regular, and in some cases, secret grand juries, are convened and consider what is being offered.  In the end, if a grand jury finds that there is more evidence to support charges being brought than not, their job is simply to advise the prosecutor to bring forth such charges.  In this case the prosecutor, the House Judiciary Committee, has seen fit to recommend bringing forth such charges.  This is a recommendation to the full House of Representatives who vote on having the charges sent to the senate for prosecution.  In this case a simple majority is all that is required.

Those charges are given to the U.S. Senate where a trial is held.  This is the first point where the defendant and his attorney have the opportunity to present their case.  The defense also has a statutory right to all documents collected and considered by the grand jury, in this case the House Committees.

The Senate President receives the charges and decides if the case should be heard.  In this case Sen. McConnell has already stated that he will hear the case.  At that point the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court becomes the legal advisor of the proceedings.  He otherwise has no standing.  But the rules for conducting such proceeding in the Senate are largely non-existent.  Senate President, Mitch McConnell, upon receiving the charges, has the power to simply dismiss the charges and there would be no senate trial.  He has said, however, that he will convene a trial.  But then he can expedite the trial.

One possible scenario is that Sen. McConnell has the charges read to the Senate at which point he calls for a vote on each of the charges.  A two thirds majority is required to convict and where Democrats are in the minority to begin with, there is little chance of a conviction.

The problem facing Republican Senators, many of them lawyers and former prosecutors, is they know, despite the railings of their House counterparts, that their is in fact sufficient evident for each of the charges to be brought, particularly the contempt of Congress charge.  Their remedy, and their out, is they want this article of impeachment’s legality to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.  Their logic is that since the court is now decidedly conservative, such a charge would be tossed out as having no merit.  But this is not a sure thing.  The U.S. saw this when during the 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt loaded the court with what he believed to be liberal judges who would rubber stamp his decisions.  He found out otherwise when that court ruled the Civilian Conservation Corps (C.C.C.) to be unconstitutional.

This happened again when Justice David Souter, who was put on the court by Pres. George H. W. Bush, turned out to be a moderate who was as likely to vote with the more liberal part of the court as with the conservative.  Do we have such a justice today?  I don’t know.

The biggest problem facing all but the most conservative Republicans, is they know their is truth to both charges.  If the Intelligence Committee and Judiciary Committee showed nothing else, each showed that Republicans consistently chose to attack the charges rather than defend the President’s actions.  Is that not in and of itself an indictment of the President?

The question at hand is:  If the Democrats knew upon convening the impeachment query that the end result would be the President is not removed, then why proceed?  The answer is simple.  Time and again, the Democrats in this process have used their oath of office, the same oath their Republican colleagues took, which is to uphold the Constitution.  Republics of the 1990s used this very same tact towards Pres. Clinton but find it objectionable when used towards Pres. Trump?  You simply cannot have it both ways.

It is my belief that Republicans do not want a proper trial in the Senate, particularly on the Obstruction of Congress charge, because they know the President’s guilt is clear to anyone who cares to observe.