Yeah, it's on
by digby
Trump likes to say he can't be impeached because he's doing such a good job. But then he doesn't know what the job is, still, after two years, so perhaps that truly is a misunderstanding. And he is saying the Democrats want to impeach him because they are afraid to face him in 2020. Apparently, he has bought his own hype that he won big in 2016 and that he's really very popular today.
I suspect that impeachment won't succeed. But I do think it's inevitable in the House and that it is a good thing to lay out the whole bill of indictment against him to present to the Republican congress and the American people. If the GOP refuses to take it up, that's on them and the people will decide if they all should be rewarded with re-election in 2020.
Considering the bill of indictment against Trump that we already know of it's hard for me to believe that most people will see it as an overreach. It's their duty.
By the way, Tlaib didn't say this off the cuff. Here's an op-ed she co-authored in the Detroit Free Press today:
President Donald Trump is a direct and serious threat to our country. On an almost daily basis, he attacks our Constitution, our democracy, the rule of law and the people who are in this country. His conduct has created a constitutional crisis that we must confront now.
The Framers of the Constitution designed a remedy to address such a constitutional crisis: impeachment. Through the impeachment clause, they sought to ensure that we would have the power, through our elected representatives in Congress, to protect the country by removing a lawless president from the Oval Office.
We already have overwhelming evidence that the president has committed impeachable offenses, including, just to name a few: obstructing justice; violating the emoluments clause; abusing the pardon power; directing or seeking to direct law enforcement to prosecute political adversaries for improper purposes; advocating illegal violence and undermining equal protection of the laws; ordering the cruel and unconstitutional imprisonment of children and their families at the southern border; and conspiring to illegally influence the 2016 election through a series of hush money payments.
Whether the president was directly involved in a conspiracy with the Russian government to interfere with the 2016 election remains the subject of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. But we do not need to wait on the outcome of that criminal investigation before moving forward now with an inquiry in the U.S. House of Representatives on whether the president has committed impeachable “high crimes and misdemeanors” against the state: abuse of power and abuse of the public trust.
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Each passing day brings new damage to the countless people hurt by this lawless president’s actions. We cannot undo the trauma that he is causing to our people, and this nation. Those most vulnerable to his administration’s cruelty are counting on us to act — act to remove the president and put this country on a path to true justice.
The Framers distinguished the impeachment power from the power of a criminal prosecution. While Congress has the impeachment power to prevent future harm to our government, prosecutors have the power to seek punishment for those who commit crimes. But it is not Mueller’s role to determine whether the president has committed impeachable offenses. That is the responsibility of the U.S. Congress.
Those who say we must wait for Special Counsel Mueller to complete his criminal investigation before Congress can start any impeachment proceedings ignore this crucial distinction. There is no requirement whatsoever that a president be charged with or be convicted of a crime before Congress can impeach him. They also ignore the fact that many of the impeachable offenses committed by this president are beyond the scope of the special counsel’s investigation.
We are also now hearing the dangerous claim that initiating impeachment proceedings against this president is politically unwise and that, instead, the focus should now shift to holding the president accountable via the 2020 election. Such a claim places partisan gamesmanship over our country and our most vulnerable at this perilous moment in our nation’s history. Members of Congress have a sworn duty to preserve our Constitution. Leaving a lawless president in office for political points would be abandoning that duty.
This is not just about Donald Trump. This is about all of us. What should we be as a nation? Who should we be as a people? In the face of this constitutional crisis, we must rise. We must rise to defend our Constitution, to defend our democracy, and to defend that bedrock principle that no one is above the law, not even the President of the United States. Each passing day brings more pain for the people most directly hurt by this president, and these are days we simply cannot get back. The time for impeachment proceedings is now.
The wingnuts are all whining about her "incivility."
You'd think she grabbed them by the pussy or something.
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