Trump’s foes might give America a new & better government

Summary: A new political regime struggles to be born in America, where Congress becomes a parliament – removing the President from office when he loses the support of a majority of its members. The Democratic Party’s fire-breathers in the House might start a crisis that makes this happen, changing our system of governance forever. It violates the spirit but not the letter of the Constitution. It might be a better system.

Ignore what they said.

“The Mueller Investigation Was Always an Impeachment Probe“

By Andrew McCarthy at Nation Review.

“Mueller’s report is 448 pages long. His press-conference remarks took less than ten minutes, and the substantive discussion of obstruction was but a fraction of that. In those fleeting moments, what were the precious few highlights from the report that Mueller wanted Americans to grasp? They were, first, that the OLC guidance dictated that the president could not be charged; and second, that if Mueller were convinced that the president had not committed a crime, he would have said so …but he did not say so – in Mueller’s constitutionally offensive, hyperpolitical articulation, he would not “exonerate” the president.

“There is only one rational explanation for this performance. Mueller wants Congress and the public to presume that if it were not for the OLC guidance, it is very likely that he would have charged the president with obstruction – maybe not an absolute certainty, but nearly so. …

“Mueller’s staff is looking at this as if they were congressional impeachment counsel. Their objective is to get their evidence to Congress bearing something close to the stamp of an indictable felonies. …For partisan lawyers who saw their special-counsel gig as an opportunity to play congressional impeachment counsel, it is Mission Accomplished.”

Team Mueller was never acting as prosecutors, investigating to see if a crime was committed and if charges could be filed (either now, or after Trump’s term of office ends). It was an attack on Trump. Now they can say “mission accomplished.” They have consumed much of Trump’s time and political capital, crippling the first two years of his term. Now, if the seeds Team Mueller has planted bear fruit, comes the circus of impeachment – to damage the remaining two years of Trump’s term.

Prelude to a Fiasco

James Howard Kunstler at his website.
Reposted with his generous permission.

You’d think that Robert Mueller might know what any licensed attorney-at-law in the land tells a client in a tight spot with a lame alibi: better keep you mouth shut. Instead, Mr. Mueller crept Sphinx-like out of the Deep State woodwork on little cat’s paws and in a brief nine minutes blabbed out a set of whopperish riddles much more likely to get himself in trouble than the target of his hinky inquisition.

The key whopper was that he could not make “a determination” on an obstruction-of-justice charge against Mr. Trump because guidance policy from the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel had said some years ago that a sitting president can’t be indicted. That is not what he told his boss, Mr. Barr, the Attorney General (and a roomful of the AG’s staffers who heard it), in person when he delivered his final report a few weeks ago.

Upon receipt of that report, Mr. Barr asked the Special Counsel three times whether his inability to conclude anything on an obstruction charge was due to the OLC guidance, and three times Mr. Mueller answered “no.” {Much like Caesar refusing the crown of Rome three times.} Mr. Barr relayed this on-the-record in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee and, as averred above, he has plenty of witnesses. It should not be hard to reach a determination on who is telling truth here.

In fact, Mr. Mueller could have declared that he found chargeable obstruction crimes were committed based on the evidence, and also demurred to press them at this time – leaving them available to federal prosecutors until after the president was out of office, one way or another. The reason he didn’t is that Mr. Mueller does not want the case to come to trial, ever, because he would lose badly and his reputation would be destroyed. Consider that in any trial, the defendant gets to call witnesses and make his own case. The evidence for gross prosecutorial misconduct on the part of Mr. Mueller and his associates is mountainous compared to the molehill of Mr. Trump’s temper tantrums over the seditious hoax he was subject to. And that matter is now moving in the direction of adjudication.

So instead, Mr. Mueller has set in motion a potential political crisis as momentous as the Civil War, but completely unlike it. Knowing that congress can impeach the president on just about anything – especially this president, publicly reviled like no other before him – he served congress the platter of material to use in the form of his final report, and pretty much dared them to not go forward with it. Get this: it is a ruse. The object is solely to divert the nation’s attention with an impeachment circus, allowing Mr. Mueller to slip away harmlessly into history without sacrificing his own reputation in a courtroom.

Do you have any idea what a fiasco this set-up is? …The US government itself will be discredited and crippled. At one end of Pennsylvania Avenue, you’ll have the impeachment circus in which the misdeeds of the RussiaGate perpetrators will be revealed in all their naked political indecency; and at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue you’ll have many of the same government officials involved in all that indecency marched into courtrooms to be tried by Mr. Barr’s prosecutors on charges possibly as grave as treason.

On the sidelines, you will see something like a fight to the death between the White House and the rogue leviathan that the nation’s “intel community” has grown into – like the ghastly, slime-dripping creature that stowed away on the spaceship Nostromo in the horror movie Alien.

In his farewell performance, Mr. Mueller declared that he considers himself unavailable to testify before congress in whatever proceedings they convene going forward. That’s rich. If you take him at his word, he said that if called, he would simply refer to his 448-page report, where all the mysteries of existence may be found – like the Old Testament Yahweh laying his Good Book on the table before the cringing multitudes. It will surely come as a surprise to Mr. Mueller that he is actually not Yahweh with such supreme powers, but a mere mortal who has fucked up mightily in the service of an earthly political conspiracy. In the event, he may find himself citing not his fabulous RussiaGate report, but the Fifth Amendment to the constitution.

That’s what we have to look forward to in the months leading up to the 2020 election, if it can even take place during what may be an epic paralysis of government verging on sickening collapse.

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Lawfare, leading to a new structure of American government

“An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history; conviction results from whatever offense or offenses two-thirds of the other body considers to be sufficiently serious to require removal of the accused from office.”
— Gerald Ford speaking in the House on 15 April 1970; recorded in the Congressional Record.

Both Democrats and Republicans have sought to overturn elections. That is only natural, since both parties are contemptuous of us. The Democrats sought to remove Reagan. The Republican sought to remove Clinton. Now it is the Democrat’s turn (They said Clinton’s perjury was insufficient grounds. How quickly would they impeach Trump if they proved his perjury?) Eventually the Republicans will try. What will happen when one party succeeds?

 “Impeachment clauses and
the different meanings of ‘constitution’ in the United States of America“

By Denis Baranger, professor of Public law at Panthéon-Assas University.
From Responsibility of the Head of State (La responsabilité du chef de l’État).
Volume 12 of the Colloques Collection (October 2009).

Baranger’s essay discusses the meaning of violating the constitution, the clashing authority of Congress and the President to determine what the Constitution says, and the inevitable involvement of values and morality in determining what violates the words of the Constitution. It is valuable reading for those who want to understand what might lie ahead.

Baranger forces us to realize we can interpret the 175 words describing the impeachment process in many ways. If a majority in the House and two-thirds of the Senate decide that Trump must go, they can remove him. That would require bipartisan support, politicians voting for the usual combination of patriotism and short-term political advantage.

But once done, Congress will see that it can be done again. They will have crossed the Rubicon, after which American’s government will never be the same. The second time is always easier. The requirement for a super-majority in the Senate means that it will always be rare, but this leash on the imperial presidency and empowerment of Congress might create a firmer foundation for the Republic.

For more about this, see The GOP might impeach Trump, changing our politics forever – for the better.

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If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about the Constitution, about ways to reform America, about Trump and the new populism, about Russiagate, and especially these…

1. Important: A 4th of July reminder that America is ours to keep – or to lose!
2. Conservatives tells us not to worry about the Constitution’s death.
3. We’ve worked through all 5 stages of grief for the Republic. Now, on to The New America!
4. America isn’t falling like the Roman Empire. It’s worse.

Recommended books about the Republic’s peril

The Executive Unbound: After the Madisonian Republic by Eric Posner, professor of law at U of Chicago — He advocates an imperial presidency, the opposite of the path described in this post. It puts us on the fast track to fall of the Constitution.

Impeachment: A Citizen’s Guide by Cass R. Sunstein, professor of law at Harvard (2017). A measured and comprehensive look at this critical and seldom discussed (until recently) subject.