LaxPower Back-Up Stick

The Federalist Calabresi agrees: impeach and convict.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/opin ... d=tw-share

"One of us is a Republican who proudly served in the Reagan administration and voted for Donald Trump in 2016; the other is a Democrat who worked for President Barack Obama and served as a special counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during the first Trump impeachment and trial.

We have considerable political differences. But we firmly share a view that should transcend partisan politics: President Trump must be impeached again and tried as soon as possible in the Senate, either before or after Inauguration Day on Jan 20.

Mr. Trump’s most egregious impeachable offenses are inciting a violent insurrection against his own vice president, the Senate and the House of Representatives, and pressuring Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough votes for him to overturn the legitimate election result there.

An article of impeachment encompassing those acts has been introduced in the House. Once Mr. Trump is impeached — the equivalent of an indictment — by the House, Republican senators must join their Democratic colleagues and provide the two-thirds majority required to convict and remove him from office.

The Senate must also disqualify him from ever again holding any public office. That vote after conviction only requires a simple majority of 51.

With the House set to impeach the president on Wednesday, there is no real reason that a full-fledged and scrupulously fair trial cannot begin the very next day in the Senate. This is not a complex case factually. Audio of Mr. Trump’s call to Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, is in the public record. So are the president’s videotaped words inciting his supporters to march on the Capitol. The violence that followed was on television for all to see.

Nor is the law hard to understand. High crimes and misdemeanors, impeachable offenses enumerated in the Constitution, are crimes against American democracy. Mr. Trump’s incitement of an insurrection qualifies, without question, as an impeachable offense.

The Senate’s majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has said that he cannot commence an impeachment trial before Jan. 20, unless all members of the Senate agree to allow it sooner. In fact, as Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, has suggested, in emergency situations, the rules allow him and Mr. McConnell to reconvene the Senate immediately. Removing from power at once a president who has incited an attack on his own government certainly qualifies as an emergency situation.

If Senator McConnell disagrees, the House should still impeach Mr. Trump immediately, and he should be tried at any convenient time in the first 100 days of the new administration. There are precedents for such trial proceedings after officials leave office. Impeached officials can also be disqualified in a separate vote from ever holding any public office again.

Mr. Trump may seem too weak to pose a threat to American democracy now, but he has hinted that might run again for the White House in 2024. He raised $495 million during a brief period last fall in political contributions.

But not everyone who wants to occupy the Oval Office is qualified to do so. The Constitution’s framers recognized that in establishing both qualifications and empowering disqualification. It is both appropriate and necessary to bar Mr. Trump from the White House even if, as incredible as it may seem, some voters might wish to vote for him again.

We should not allow that to happen. He tried to steal the election and incited a mob to abet his wrongdoing. He is a danger to the nation and must be removed immediately and disqualified from ever holding public office again."

Steven Calabresi is a professor at the Pritzker School of Law at Northwestern, where he teaches constitutional law. Norman Eisen, a senior fellow at Brookings, was ambassador to the Czech Republic and special assistant to the president for ethics and government reform during the Obama administration. He was also a special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the first Trump impeachment.

So predictable, r's now want to focus on COVID response; instead of 2nd IMPOTUS...

Where have they been for the past 11 months!

This is going to get even worse.

apparently, according to Mikie Sherrill and others, in the immediate days before the insurrection multiple Congress people were giving tours to people who were inside the building on Jan 6, with white power shirts on during the tours, taking pictures, showing them where everything is...reconnaissance tours with congress people...guess which ones...

CU88 wrote: ↑Wed Jan 13, 2021 10:34 am So predictable, r's now want to focus on COVID response; instead of 2nd IMPOTUS...

Where have they been for the past 11 months!

Plus they are still all in on hostage taking - claiming that impeachment will rile up the R folk and cause further damage. The argument is essentially that if impeachment is passed the Ds will bear responsibility for the bad behavior of the Trumpist mob.

The right answer is to actually impeach and prosecute the cr*p out of anyone behaving badly because of it. You just encourage more insurrection if you ignore it. (And there has been plenty that has been ignored in the recent past).

RedFromMI wrote: ↑Wed Jan 13, 2021 10:43 am

CU88 wrote: ↑Wed Jan 13, 2021 10:34 am So predictable, r's now want to focus on COVID response; instead of 2nd IMPOTUS...

Where have they been for the past 11 months!

Plus they are still all in on hostage taking - claiming that impeachment will rile up the R folk and cause further damage. The argument is essentially that if impeachment is passed the Ds will bear responsibility for the bad behavior of the Trumpist mob.

The right answer is to actually impeach and prosecute the cr*p out of anyone behaving badly because of it. You just encourage more insurrection if you ignore it. (And there has been plenty that has been ignored in the recent past).

Agree 100%

Why are the Republicans being so divisive?

Why can't Kevin McCarthy, Gym Jordan, Liz Cheney and Mitch McConnell all get along?

Sick and tired of the R logic that we don’t need impeachment because there’s only one week left.

US life expectancy is 78.5. Should we not prosecute someone close to that age because they’re almost done?

Sick and tired of Rs taking the position that Ds are doing this because they’ve always wanted Trump out.

Big deal. Doesn’t matter. The issue is whether he committed high crimes and misdemeanors by inciting Jan 6th’s riot. Debate that. Nothing else matters.

Count me in with numbers 1, 3, and 4.
Kinda like the idea of number 2 though.

SCLaxAttack wrote: ↑Wed Jan 13, 2021 12:58 pm Sick and tired of the R logic that we don’t need impeachment because there’s only one week left.

US life expectancy is 78.5. Should we not prosecute someone close to that age because they’re almost done?

Sick and tired of Rs taking the position that Ds are doing this because they’ve always wanted Trump out.

Big deal. Doesn’t matter. The issue is whether he committed high crimes and misdemeanors by inciting Jan 6th’s riot. Debate that. Nothing else matters.

"he's not a 'clear and present danger'"....let him hold the door of the domestic terrorists.

Stand by...

SCLaxAttack wrote: ↑Wed Jan 13, 2021 12:58 pm Sick and tired of the R logic that we don’t need impeachment because there’s only one week left.

US life expectancy is 78.5. Should we not prosecute someone close to that age because they’re almost done?

Sick and tired of Rs taking the position that Ds are doing this because they’ve always wanted Trump out.

Big deal. Doesn’t matter. The issue is whether he committed high crimes and misdemeanors by inciting Jan 6th’s riot. Debate that. Nothing else matters.

100% right.

Has any GOP member of the House mounted any defense to the merits of the Articles?

seacoaster wrote: ↑Wed Jan 13, 2021 1:04 pm

SCLaxAttack wrote: ↑Wed Jan 13, 2021 12:58 pm Sick and tired of the R logic that we don’t need impeachment because there’s only one week left.

US life expectancy is 78.5. Should we not prosecute someone close to that age because they’re almost done?

Sick and tired of Rs taking the position that Ds are doing this because they’ve always wanted Trump out.

Big deal. Doesn’t matter. The issue is whether he committed high crimes and misdemeanors by inciting Jan 6th’s riot. Debate that. Nothing else matters.

100% right.

This has been FoxNation logic for about a decade now, and I've been saying this for a about a decade now. If a Republican does something bad, FoxTalkingHeads and their supporters IMMEDIATELY find someone, somewhere with a D by their name who did it. And then they talk about that, and talk about "the MSM's response to that". They will do ANYTHING to avoid criticizing and judging what the R did. And they're too far gone to understand that's what they're doing. Whataboutism.

I've broken through talking to Republicans who have pulled that game on me in person by asking-----"do you raise your kids playing this game of yours?" That stops them in their tracks-----they ask "what are you talking about?" And I respond "if your kid gets caught cheating on a test.....do you tell your kid "that's no big deal, because that other kid cheated too, and he's a democrat, so let's not talk about what you did...and instead, talk about what the Democrat-voter kid did".

F no. No self respecting Conservative parent would give two ***ts about what any other kid did. It would never enter the conversation.

This is why the party has completely fallen apart. They are 100000% unable to take accountability for ANYTHING that ANYONE that has a R by their name does. They've gone from the moral majority, to being unable to function or talk without mentioning the libs.

Think I'm wrong? Picture Rush Limbaugh if you fined him a billion dollars if he mentioned a Dem or "the libs' or the MSM on his show.

He would be unable to function. He couldn't do it. Think on that. Why the F would a Republican show spend even ten seconds talking about the libs, when, for example, he could focus on what Trump and the two years of Republican control did in terms of steering our great nation. Talk about what the Conservatives will do. Offer big policy suggestions. Discuss them. See what the viewers think.

If Rush and Fox did this? Our entire national conversation would change immediately. And we'd ACTUALLY have conservatives governing again. And that would be ENORMOUS for the health of our great nation. We need them. We NEED conservatives mucking in, and legislating.


The libs don't do this, btw. My facebook feed is FILLED with libs bitching about some of Biden's cabinet picks. They know what Kramerica knows----Biden is a corrupt DC politician, who will line his pockets and the pockets of his buddies, and think that "that's just how things are done...nothing wrong with it". The libs call him out for it. They know he isn't working for them, and don't buy his BS.

SCLaxAttack wrote: ↑Wed Jan 13, 2021 8:15 am

SCLaxAttack wrote: ↑Tue Jan 12, 2021 11:45 pm

old salt wrote: ↑Tue Jan 12, 2021 10:35 pm

Typical Lax Dad wrote: ↑Mon Jan 11, 2021 2:55 pm

ggait wrote: ↑Mon Jan 11, 2021 2:47 pm Emily Rainey, a 30-year-old psychological operations officer stationed at Fort Bragg, told the Associated Press she led 100 members of a conservative advocacy group in North Carolina to Washington, D.C., on Wednesday "to stand against election fraud."

“I was a private citizen and doing everything right and within my rights,” Rainey told the Associated Press on Sunday.

Rainey resigned after military officials said they would investigate her participation and whether any other enlisted military joined her for the Washington events, CBS News reported on Monday.

This gal certainly has 1st Amendment rights as a private citizen. But JFC -- how is she qualified to do her job??????

She's a psy ops professional. But couldn't detect that she had been successfully psy op-ed by Trump's obvious Big Lies and BS?????

What the heck is wrong with all these military folks involved in this?

They love their country and are willing to fight for something.

Rainey doesn't appear to be an out of control case like Babbitt. Looks like she had a pretty good Army career going until she took a stand over the closing of her kid's playground. No indication yet that she, or any of her group did anything illegal at the Capital.

https://www.walikali.com/emily-rainey

Do you know where she resides, with her kid, in relation to that playground ? She obviously chose to be an activist & pursue a political agenda over a career in the Army. I wonder if she's married to her baby-daddy who is also reportedly in the Army & if he's an officer ?

Uh, no. Downtown Park on Broad Street in Southern Pines is not her kid’s playground. I’ve played there plenty of times with my grandkids. It’s a gated public playground. It’s also less than 20 minutes from Camp MacKall which is where she was probably working as she was assigned to her particular special ops group.

As an officer in the USA, particularly one selected to support the organization she did, she should have been a lot smarter than to break the law, and especially a law so politically sensitive, in the town abutting her assignment.

The adage “don’t poop where you eat” is appropriate.

I don’t care if she lives in the townhouses on South Ashe across the street from the swing sets. It’s not “her kid’s”. It’s a public park with rules. If she wanted to be an activist she should have resigned first.

Good point about the child’s father. It won’t surprise me in the least. She obviously doesn’t care about rules, and If he’s in an ODA the odds are 11 of 12.

I'm looking for information, not & argument, as to when & why she became radicalized. Was it before the playground incident & did she choose that spot to generate a public confrontation to publicize her movement or was that the spark that started her on the road to crazy town & the destruction of her Army career, & if she had a viable career before she became an outspoken public advocate. I'm trying to understand the vets who get involved & why. Babbitt & Rainey, along with the retired USAF pilot, who claimed he just picked up the zip ties, are the one's with the most detailed reporting, so far.

Live House Vote Results: Trump Impeachment https://nyti.ms/3bCxRLK

T**** impeached. Again. Wonder what he will tweet? Oh . . . .

Dis, time to change the thread title. Again.

Impeach and imprison the subversive TRAITOR!


Now, let's have a conviction and a long term prison sentence. And Biden better not even think of granting a pardon.


LOCK HIM UP!

U.S. House has impeached President Trump for inciting deadly riot at U.S. Capitol; first president to be impeached twice. nbcnews.to/35BseK2

Lost the popular vote twice; one term president; impeached twice.

TBD if he'll add "only president ever convicted by the Senate."

Winning!

seacoaster wrote: ↑Wed Jan 13, 2021 1:23 pm Has any GOP member of the House mounted any defense to the merits of the Articles?

... none or one. Mostly a lot of apples vs oranges and arguing we don't want to piss off the terrorists, we should consider their position.