Congress must pass a law to prevent "no evidence" impeachment

House impeachment stunt against President Joe Biden is all about re-electing Trump | Echo Opinion by Norm Eisen & Dennis Aftergut published in The Charlotte Observer and the Sacramento Bee

If you like the idea of electing Donald Trump so he can prosecute his enemies without any evidence of crimes, you’ll love the new impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden launched by last week’s MAGA House vote (led by the Bible thumper speaker Mike Johnson). 

It’s an evidence-free act of political retaliation that should be booked as a campaign contribution to Trump. Even “Fox and Friends” host Steve Doocy turned on the Republicans’ hit job, saying they “haven’t connected the dots,” and have “not been able to provide any concrete evidence.” This Republican House has the wrong priorities. 

• They won’t pass a budget. 
• They won’t address America’s inflation issues or need for better health care.

But they will do Donald Trump’s dirty work, trying to smear Biden to help Trump get elected — despite their repeated investigative face-plants. They called witness Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s business associate, to connect Biden to his son’s business dealings. The effort “spectacularly failed,” in the words of the Los Angeles Times. They said that Israeli-American citizen Gal Luft, the self-proclaimed whistleblower calling attention to alleged corruption by Hunter Biden, would testify about Biden family benefits obtained via China. But, Luft was a no-show because he was a fugitive from justice.

In October, the right wing nut case, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, called a $200,000 payment to President Biden from his brother James part of an “influence peddling scheme.” 

Fact checkers showed that the check was nothing but the repayment of a two-month loan — and that Comer had done the exact same thing with his brother. Next Comer claimed that $4,140 in payments from Hunter to his father were nefarious. It turns out they were just reimbursements for a pickup truck that Biden bought for his son’s use. Texas Republican Rep. Troy Nehls said the quiet part out loud in early December,  when he admitted that he wants to give the twice-impeached Trump “a little bit of ammo to fire back.” On the day of the House vote, he celebrated it by spilling the beans all over the floor: “Trump 2024, baby!”

This is a dangerous game, and clearly part of Trumpists’ goal to destroy constitutional guardrails on presidential power. Impeachment, once deployed as a partisan tool, loses potency as a constraint, because citizens think, “Both sides do it.” 

As a new bipartisan report on impeachment shows, however, both sides don’t impeach presidents without real facts. The authors, including a former Republican member of the House and a Republican-appointed former federal judge, conclude that the Biden impeachment is “manifestly unjustified” and “a misuse of power” that violates the 10 core criteria for impeachment. 

By contrast, the 2019 ,impeachment of Trump for abusing power — by threatening to withdraw military aid to Ukraine unless President Volodymyr Zelensky investigated Joe Biden — was based on a “wealth of evidence,” per The New York Times.

In 2021, the House impeached Trump based on “devastating evidence” about his role on Jan. 6, 2021, that has since produced a federal prosecution of the former president. 

In the partisan House vote, the retaliatory vote was based on nothing.   It was a partisan march toward a fact-free impeachment. Only citizens can stop the House GOP corruption of vital constitutional institutions like impeachment. A survey this month showed that 62% of voters in competitive House districts nationally said Congress should not impeach Biden without any evidence. Constituents of representatives who haven’t declared themselves opposed to this unmerited action can help preserve American democracy by calling officials’ offices or using social media to tell their representatives them that they must not vote for actual impeachment in the future.

Defeating the impeachment vote that is surely coming will take only three or so House Republicans to vote against it. Californians can help halt this dangerous attempt to give Trump “ammo” to blow up American democracy. 

Former U.S. Ambassador Norm Eisen was counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the first impeachment and trial of Donald Trump and is a co-author of An Analysis of the Biden Impeachment Inquiry. Dennis Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor, currently of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy.

Stop separating children from parents at the border ~ echo essay from The Week

Horrifying cover on the June 8, 2018 The Week.

Surely, American will rise in protest to this heinously evil practice!

A surge in the number of migrant children separated from their parents has sparked a furor over the Trump administration’s new “zero tolerance” policy on illegal border crossings. 

This evil policy was recently announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who warned that all border violators—including those seeking asylum from Central American violence and drug gangs—would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, with their children placed in separate custody as a form of deterrence. “If you don’t like that,” Sessions said, “then don’t smuggle children over our border.” More than 700 minors, including toddlers and babies, were separated from parents at the border from October to April, and another 600 after the “zero tolerance” policy went into effect in May. “I cried. I begged,” one 28-year-old Guatemalan father said after having his 18-month-old son taken from him. When he asked where the boy was, “no one could tell me anything.” 

In a cruel tweet, President Trump blamed Democrats for a “horrible law that separates children from there [sic] parents.” Aides said the president meant that Democrats and the courts had created “loopholes” in immigration law that encouraged border crossings.

The outrage over the separation policy was further stoked by a report that the federal government “lost” 1,475 children who had arrived at the border unaccompanied by a parent. But the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said the report was misleading. It said it had “resettled” 7,635 children with family members or guardians in the U.S., called a month later to check up, and did not get responses from 1,475 guardians, some of whom may fear contact with the federal government. 

When officials call guardians “and they don’t answer the phone,” said Steven Wagner, an acting assistant secretary at HHS, “you don’t assume that [the children] have been kidnapped.”

What the editorials said

Ripping wailing kids from their parents’ arms is shocking—even for an administration “as heartless as this one,” said the Los Angeles Times. No law requires unauthorized border crossers to be charged with a crime, and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly let the mask slip when he admitted that splitting up families “would be a tough deterrent.” 

Separating parents and kids is a “manifestly inhumane practice” that may inflict lasting trauma on vulnerable kids.

Trump is hardly the first president to come down hard on undocumented immigrants, said The Charlotte Observer. Presidents Bush and Obama each increased the rate of deportations, but both presidents pushed for Congress to pass comprehensive reform legislation that “better recognized the value of all immigrants and the circumstances that brought many to our borders.” 

Congressional resistance, specifically from Republicans, has “left the country with a convoluted and contradictory immigration system,” now run by a president “whose rhetoric dehumanizes both illegal and legal immigrants.”

What the columnists said

So much for the party of “family values,” said Catherine Rampell in The Washington Post. Make no mistake: “Cruelty is not an unfortunate, unintended consequence of White House immigration policy; it is the objective.” In some cases, the government is keeping migrant families forcibly separated even after court cases are over and parents are released or sent back to their home countries. Why? To inflict pain and deter others from coming.

Even Trump’s supporters should admit that “the process to which illegal migrant parents are subjected is disturbing,” said Noah Rothman in Commentary. 

It’s horribly dehumanizing to force a young mother wearing a yellow bracelet that identifies her as an illegal immigrant parent watch as government agents drag away her children. This isn’t about the rule of law; it’s something far uglier. 

“History will remember those who looked away.”

Cover illustration by Howard McWilliam.

Cover photos from Newscom, Media Bakery, Newscom

Immigration and Americanism

Immigrant families helped make this country ~ letter to the editor ~ an "echo" from The Charlotte Observer

N.C. lawmakers must speak up on Donald Trump

Enough is enough!  

I’m an American and my family originally came from the “shithole” country of Palestine. 

Proudly my father served in the U.S. Army, put himself through college, raised six kids who are contributing members of society, and has eight grandchildren who are, or will be, contributing.

I also have a son and daughter-in-law who are foreign service officers serving in what President Trump would consider another “shithole” country (Pakistan) to keep this country safe.

Immigrants are what made this country. 

When will Senator Thom Tillis and Senator Richard Burr, or Rep. Robert Pittenger, speak up?

It’s past time they did something about Donald Trump.

Debra Phelps, Charlotte NC

MaineWriter ~ Being an immigrant means being American!

When America's Attorney Generals told the truth- AG Sessions alert

An echo letter to the editor published in The Charlotte Observer, in North Carolina- remembering a time when US Attorney Generals told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Another in my series of re-blogging opinions found during random searches in various national newspapers.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions swore to uphold the US Constitution when he took the oath of office. He is also supposed to tell the truth

But, Jeff Sessions has crossed the line – twice: (MaineWriter- Remember when Attorney Generals told the truth?)

Therefore, it ought to be ‘game over’ for Sessions- letter to the editor published in The Charlotte Observer

In response to an Observer article “Records contradict Trump and Sessions on Russia disclosures” (Nov. 3): Letter To the Editor

"How many times can one lie under oath and still be Attorney General of the United States?"

Silly me; I assumed if one lied during their confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate it would be “game over.” Apparently, that is not the case now.  

Whatever the new standard might be, Jeff Sessions surely has to be getting really close to the line.~ Jack Matthews, Charlotte