Nancy pelosi

When House Democrats passed their $3 trillion coronavirus ‘relief’ package late last week, they also jammed through a rules change on proxy voting that fundamentally transforms the nature of the House of Representatives and junks centuries of tradition. Because of a change to House rules, members will now be able to submit their votes from afar. They will not have to travel back to DC to vote: they can instead send their ‘yea’ or ‘nay’ to a colleague, who will submit it on their behalf. One member can submit up to 10 votes at a time, meaning that the will of the House, which normally takes 218 members in the chamber, could be determined with only 21 members physically present.

The Democrats are taking their stand on the coronavirus crisis in an untenable position. It is like building a defensive redoubt in a valley surrounded by hills in the hands of the enemy (like the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1955, as President Eisenhower warned them). Whether this is tactical stupidity by the president’s enemies or strategic genius by the president or — more likely — a bit of both, is not clear except to insiders. Readers will recall that the Democrats charged out of the gate on the issue of taking science seriously and reacting comprehensively; the president picked up the gauntlet, brought prominent scientists forward, and 'flattened the curve'.

Tara Reade, a former Senate staffer for Joe Biden, claimed in an interview last month that the former vice president had put his hand up her skirt and digitally penetrated her in 1993. Since the March 25 interview, new evidence has emerged that seems to corroborate Reade's story: her mother called into Larry King's radio show about the incident in 1993, and her brother, a friend, and a neighbor all recall being told the story by Reade. Nonetheless, despite making multiple media appearances in the month since the allegation, Biden has not addressed Reade's claim directly, though his spokespeople have denied it on his behalf. The former VP is nonetheless holding a 'Virtual Women’s Town Hall' on Tuesday.

The State of the Union is like that annual meeting where the boss says it was a triumphant year as the business continues to be overleveraged. And in that spirit this week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, upon completion of the charade de hubris shredded her meeting (speech?) handout into tiny pieces behind the Commander-in-Chief, as he finished his remarks to the applause of half the room. The optics were stellar or childish depending on who you talked to. Democrats hailed Pelosi’s actions as a brave act of defiance earning Pelosi a #Resistance brand on her left shoulder the next time the 'Squad' has a meeting.

Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh condemned Nancy Pelosi for ripping up a copy of President Trump's State of the Union address at the end of his speech. ‘She might as well rip up any plans for attracting independent voters,’ Murtaugh told The Spectator.‘Pelosi and the Democrats sat on their hands through all of the good news for Americans in that speech. It’s a sad place to be when good news for America is bad news for Democrats.’ https://twitter.

Lamar Alexander said that Donald Trump engaged in 'inappropriate' behavior as though he had yelled at a guest at a swanky Mar-a-Lago dinner or forgotten to thank someone for a gift. Thanks to Alexander, Trump will get off scot-free for his Ukraine caper. He won’t even have to endure the indignity of watching his former national security adviser John Bolton lace into him for making goo-goo eyes at Russian president Vladimir Putin and for attempting to work over Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.For Democrats, Alexander’s refusal, or, if you prefer, failure, to stand up to Trump and vote for any witnesses was confirmation that the GOP has completely gone to POT — the Party of Trump.

The third presidential impeachment in US history has now reached the Senate. Like the first two, this one is almost certainly going to lead to presidential acquittal. An old saying given definitive expression by Ralph Waldo Emerson (and recently adapted by The Wire) warns that you should 'never strike a king unless you are sure that you shall kill him'. Congress may not be risking royal reprisal here, but it is teaching all Americans — including all future presidents — a fateful lesson in institutional impotence. After this, who is ever again going to take the threat of impeachment seriously? Congress has called its own bluff.

Did we just witness an historic event, the impeachment of only the third president in the entire history of the Republic? Or was this a case of accusatio interrupta: impeachment interrupted by an untimely withdrawal from Nancy Pelosi? The speaker of the House, unhappy at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s obvious contempt for the House proceedings, has suggested that she might not file the charges with the Senate. In which case, the Senate could not hold a trial. In which case, Donald Trump could neither be exonerated nor convicted. In which case, he would not have been impeached by the House, but only 'impeached'. It’s amazing what semantic potency can reside in a pair of quotation marks.

Like a bona fide member of Congress, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has opted to seize defeat from the jaws of victory. Pelosi, a stern purveyor of the truth and the criminal justice system, has indicated that she will withhold the Articles of Impeachment leveled against President Trump until '[Congressional Democrats] see what [Senate Republicans] are doing … so far, we have not seen anything that looks fair to [Democrats].'Fairness — the building blocks that American politics are built upon — requires an interesting examination into what exactly a fair political impeachment trial would look like on the Senate side.History tells us the Senate has been known to curate a world-class community theater show.

President Trump paraded his latest acquisition, Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a defector from the Democratic to the Republican party, at a meeting in the Oval Office this afternoon. Van Drew, who wore a dark blue three-button suit, crimson red tie and white shirt with gold cufflinks, not only dressed in Trump regalia but pretty much sat by mutely — other than to proclaim his 'undying loyalty' — as his new master bragged about poll numbers that he claimed showed him clobbering his Democratic rivals. Kellyanne Conway and Vice President Mike Pence were on hand as witnesses for the induction ceremony.Though he may be simmering about impeachment, Trump continues to make an outward show of bravado. All he needs, if a Washington Post report is accurate, is a 7 percent solution.

‘Breaking news’ sirens sounded over the Twitter webs when Nancy Pelosi announced she is instructing House Democrats to draft articles of impeachment against President Trump. I hope you’re all sitting down. I’m as shocked as you are. Shocked!Of course, no news is breaking here. Pelosi is doing what anyone with a political pulse knew was inevitable when the Democrats took the House in 2018. It was only ever going to be a question of how and when. The head-scratching part of the ‘when’ is that Pelosi’s announcement comes only a day after the House committee hearings featured a professor at Hogwarts and a woman throwing full-sized cats at Rep. Matt Gaetz.

We recently learned that House Democrats are concentrating their impeachment drive on ‘bribery’ because focus groups liked it better than other terms Democrats have floated. The term never appeared in previous testimony; no one accused President Trump of bribery or even mentioned it. That omission is only a minor obstacle, apparently.Focus-group testing is widely recognized as the best way to deal with grave constitutional matters, as well as marketing breakfast cereals and e-cigarettes. It is not surprising, then, that legal scholars are scouring focus groups throughout American history to see what light they shed on the Trump impeachment.The most important of these earlier focus groups was that of the Founding Fathers, secretly convened in Philadelphia in 1787.

The Republican party is trying to box the Democrats in over impeachment. This morning, as the Washington Post reports, the National Republican Congressional Committee hand-delivered moving boxes to House Democrats such as Virginia’s Jennifer Wexton and Abigail Spanberger. Committee spokesman Chris Pack explained, ‘We gave moving boxes to the Democrats who are going to be packing up their offices next November due to their obsession with impeachment.’ But the person who actually appears to be moving on is President Trump himself. It seems he filed papers in September to change his official residence from New York to Florida, which has no state income tax. Ivanka, Jared, Don Jr.

The most important thing to know about Democrats’ impeachment inquiry is this: it is not about removing President Trump now; it is about damaging him now so he can be defeated next year. Impeachment normally seeks to remove the president (or a federal judge) from office. A successful House vote is only the first step. The Senate needs strong evidence to convict, and House leaders try to provide it with their investigation and public hearings. That’s what we learned in seventh-grade civics. But Nancy Pelosi is not in middle school. She is teaching postgraduate courses, and she knows a Republican Senate is very unlikely to convict Donald Trump without a lot more evidence than has been brought to light along with a groundswell of public support.

The Democratic party and the chattering classes are playing a dangerous game with impeachment. Their are two modern precedents — Nixon’s resignation before his probable impeachment in 1974 and Bill Clinton’s actual impeachment in 1998. But neither is comparable to the contemplated impeachment of Donald Trump. All impeachments are partisan, but this one is in doubly bad faith: it has no chance of succeeding in removing Trump, and it has no chance of acquitting him in a way that will strengthen faith in the country’s institutions. The only outcome possible is to confirm for Democrats and Republicans alike the idea that 2020 is a regime-change moment, for reasons that go far beyond Trump.

We’re told over and over by fair-weather constitutional scholars that impeachment is a 'political process.' Which is to say: it’s not strictly to do with statutes being violated or any narrow legalistic calculation, but rather a wholesale consideration of the power dynamics within the American system of government. Let’s therefore examine one of the central political arguments presented by advocates of impeachment, namely Nancy Pelosi, whose about-face on the issue this week has ensured several months of all-consuming national melodrama. Announcing that a formal impeachment inquiry has been initiated, Pelosi declared that Donald Trump had 'betrayed' the country.

Is Donald Trump going to be impeached? Nancy Pelosi is not giving herself much room to maneuver: once a Democratic-led committee of inquiry is assembled, its results are a foregone conclusion. It will recommend impeachment — to fail to do so would only strengthen the president and make Democrats look stupid on the eve of an election. As things are, Pelosi evidently found the pressure from within her party already too great to withstand: her sense of the political risks of impeachment was outweighed by her sense of the danger to her own position from continuing to resist it. So the die is cast. Perhaps this tells us, too, that Joe Biden’s support for the Democratic nomination is dwindling behind the scenes.