Cont: House Impeachment Inquiry - part 2

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Skeptic Ginger said:
You seem to have bought the argument the House should have put up with every stalling tactic the POTUS put forward just like the GOP House members are doing now.
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That's not what I've said, no. I've said that going the route they have gone weakens this Article to the point where I think it'd have trouble in a non-Partisan Senate, and certainly won't go anywhere in the Senate that actually exists.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Reform what? How?
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Bush v Gore made it to SCOTUS fast. This should happen for legal disputes surrounding impeachment, because it has a similar kind of urgency.

I don't know what mechanism caused Bush v Gore to be fast-tracked nor how to implement reforms that would achieve this for impeachment.

We have got to rethink how we conceptualize "rules" at the highest level.

If 5 of the 9 SCOTUS judges, 51 (or 66 in some cases) of the Senators, a Majority (or supermajority if some cases) of Representatives and the President all belong to the same group (or even 3 of the 4 like now) the veneer of what they have to do falls away because they don't have to do anything because there is no force to make them.

There is no higher authority to appeal to when you're dealing with this highest level of government. There's no referee to make the call. The other guy in the ring with you is going to keep low blowing you until one of you wins the fight, nobody is going to ring a bell to stop the match and tally up punches thrown versus punches landed and declare a winner.

The system worked for so long because the people in it all either had some hint of decency or at least shame or at least felt the need to pretend to. Trump has neither. He is only going to do what is he forced to do and nobody in any position to force him to stop wants to and vice versa.
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This all is a different, even more complicated problem.
 
varwoche said:
This all is a different, even more complicated problem.
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No it is the current problem, or the reason the current problem is the current problem depending on how

Everything the Democrats are doing, or indeed could do within the current system, depends on at some point in the future the Republican Party just... agreeing that they've lost and arbitrarily deciding to follow the rules rom this point on despite... *gestures at everything.*

Again this is why I harp on about the Democrats and their "Well the rule book says you've lost when you've done this! Why don't you understand it! When this happens you have to do this! IT'S IN THE RULE BOOK!" mentality.

We aren't in the "There's nothing in the rulebook that says a Golden Retriever can't play football" stage of politics anymore, we're in the "Well it clearly says right here that a golden retriever can't play football but... well the dog is still on the field and nobody can make him leave" stage.

"Okay but what happens when Trump just goes 'Okay... make me'" is not some crazy wild fringe scenario.
 
The first impeachment inquiry, "Abuse of Power" just passed. Votes were 100% along party lines; 23-17.

Second vote, "Obstruction of Congress" should happen soon and I'd be shocked if the results are any different.
 
We aren't in the "There's nothing in the rulebook that says a Golden Retriever can't play football" stage of politics anymore, we're in the "Well it clearly says right here that a golden retriever can't play football but... well the dog is still on the field and nobody can make him leave" stage.
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More like "butbut black man did this unrelated thing!!" and "that's not a purebreed golden retriever" or "it's called a football pitch, not a football field", or "582 years ago, the Dems let a squirrel play football", or some other meaningless distraction. We're past the discourse stage with the trumpkins. Now it's all whataboutisms and other debate sabotage.
 
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BobTheCoward said:
What you call problematic is the daily lives of many, many people involved in the justice system. It sounds weird to bring it up now.,
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I don't know how valid it is to consider these proceedings part of the justice system. Maybe they are but I see differences. This isn't the might of the state vs. the individual, but about one branch of government trying to call another branch to account. Institution vs. institution. Does that/should that matter? I'd have to think on it some more.
 
varwoche said:
Bush v Gore made it to SCOTUS fast. This should happen for legal disputes surrounding impeachment, because it has a similar kind of urgency.

I don't know what mechanism caused Bush v Gore to be fast-tracked nor how to implement reforms that would achieve this for impeachment.
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I'm not sure anyone knows.
 
I wish that after all the time I invested in having the hearing on yesterday, I had seen the final moments. I simply had to watch something else for a while, and missed it.
 
alfaniner said:
I wish that after all the time I invested in having the hearing on yesterday, I had seen the final moments. I simply had to watch something else for a while, and missed it.
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It was quite the anti climax. You can still catch the vote by the entire house.
 
Minoosh said:
There is a risk to forcing the issue. SCOTUS could rule that Trump is right - a president has no duty to cooperate. IMO it would be a very weird ruling, because if a president can't be indicted, and can legally stonewall any congressional query, you're creating an asinine precedent that puts a president almost completely out of the reach of the law. I don't think that would happen, but for whatever reason the House is not pushing it.
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I apparently am the only one who thinks that going the route of passing an article of impeachment for obstruction of Congress has some benefit. It will put Republican senators in the position of: 1) voting to weaken Congress; 2) voting to establish a precedent that presidents can unilaterally quash any and all congressional subpoenas, which they know could come back to haunt them when a Democrat becomes president. I am looking forward to watching how the Republicans try to worm their way past this dilemma.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
I'm not sure what relevance that question has. Say for the sake of argument that it's identical to the GOP POV - how would that alter what I've said in any way?
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Their arguments are seriously flawed.

The reason for not pursuing the subpoenas was clear, it would have done no good. That doesn't stop the GOP from pretending it was a flaw in the investigation. It's like saying the Democrats were wrong because they didn't let Trump and the GOP stall the process.

IOW: you didn't let [us] screw up the investigation therefore the investigation is flawed.
 
TellyKNeasuss said:
It will put Republican senators in the position of: ... 2) voting to establish a precedent that presidents can unilaterally quash any and all congressional subpoenas, which they know could come back to haunt them when a Democrat becomes president.
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If the situation arises, they'll just insist that it doesn't apply to Democrats for vaguely defined reasons, or just pretend that they never supported quashing subpoenas in the first place.
 
JoeMorgue said:
No it is the current problem, or the reason the current problem is the current problem depending on how
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Not really. You describe a broader, more serious problem. When urgent things take forever to reach SCOTUS, that's a stand-alone problem regardless if the overall system is broken.

I agree with you about the broader problem. The system is broken. The country is broken. It may even be irreparable and we're watching the beginning of the end. It's incredibly depressing to learn that the checks and balances we learned about in school stand on top of the honor system. With this many dishonorable characters running things, we're royally screwed.
 
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