"'There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.' Those words are as true today as when Abraham Lincoln spoke them."

"As I said last summer when mob violence gripped our streets, so I say again about the mob violence at our nation’s Capitol last week: those persons responsible should be held accountable in the courts to the full extent of the law. The House has passed an article of impeachment against the president, but the Senate under its rules and precedents cannot start and conclude a fair trial before the president leaves office next week. Under these circumstances, the Senate lacks constitutional authority to conduct impeachment proceedings against a former president."

Tom Cotton says, in a statement (which I'm quoting in full).

"The Founders designed the impeachment process as a way to remove officeholders from public office—not an inquest against private citizens. The Constitution presupposes an office from which an impeached officeholder can be removed. Fidelity to the Constitution must always remain the lodestar for our nation. Last week, I opposed the effort to reject certified electoral votes for the same reason—fidelity to the Constitution—I now oppose impeachment proceedings against a former president. Congress and the executive branch should concentrate entirely for the next week on conducting a safe and orderly transfer of power. After January 20, Congress should get on with the people’s business: improving our vaccination efforts, getting kids back to school, and getting workers back on the job."

Click on my "Tom Cotton" tag. Tom Cotton is getting a lot of things right. 

Remember the poll I had on November 23? "Trump voters only please: If you had to pick the 2024 GOP nominee right now: Trump/Tom Cotton." I said, "My poll, my options — do your own poll if you don't like the constraints." Tom Cotton looked like the most apt alternative to me at the time. And you Trump voters who answered the poll — or whoever answered the poll — chose Cotton over Trump, 55% to 45%. Let me see how that choice is holding up:

Trump voters only please: If you had to pick the 2024 GOP nominee right now:

Trump

Tom Cotton

 

pollcode.com free polls

Biden shows no leadership... I mean... Biden tries to stay above the fray.

The NYT headline is "As Trump is impeached for a second time, Biden tries to stay above the fray."

... President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has maintained a studied cool, staying largely removed from the proceedings... Mr. Biden’s focus on the governing challenge ahead... it also underscores the contrast between his cautious, centrist approach to politics and the anger of many Democratic officials and voters over Mr. Trump’s assaults on democratic norms.

Actually, this little article is rather critical of Biden, even with that coolness spin. He's "removed," "above the fray," but is that good? Some people would like him to express hotness — anger and leftism — not this "cautious, centrist approach."

I like cool, calm centrism. My problem with Biden is that he's not imposing his restraint on his party, just standing back and standing by* as his party goes on a wild pursuit of something other than "the governing challenge ahead."

I have to give this post my "Democratic Party in Trumpland" tag. That tag should be relegated to the dustbin of the blog's archive. But the Party loves the stomping ground of Trumpland. They don't want to leave. They don't care about the dawning of Bidentime. 

______________________ 

 * Reference: 

 

"Some say the riots were caused by Antifa. There was absolutely no evidence of that. And conservatives should be the first to say so...."

"The President bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters. He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding. These facts require immediate action by President Trump, accept his share of responsibility, quell the brewing unrest and ensure President elect Biden is able to successfully begin his term. The President’s immediate action also deserves congressional action, which is why I think a fact finding commission and a censure resolution would be prudent."

Said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, speaking on the House floor in yesterday's debate on the impeachment.

Watch Trump get impeached — live.

"This was not a protest, this was a well-organized insurrection against our country that was organized by Donald Trump."

Said Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts, Chair of the House Rules Committee, opening the debate this morning on the Article of Impeachment, quoted in "The House begins debating impeachment charge against Trump." (NYT). McGovern asserted that he looked into some people's eyes and "saw evil." I'm seeing the live vote embedded at the Times, and it is strictly along party lines...

... even though the text of the article says "Republicans were fracturing over the vote." And:

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, has embraced the effort as a means to purge Mr. Trump from the party, according to people who have spoken to him, and at least five House Republicans planned to vote to impeach.

I'm interested in seeing how the proof will be accomplished. McGovern sets a high bar in calling it "well-organized" and an "insurrection against our country" and saying that this organizing was done by Trump. 

ADDED: I'm interested in this notion that you can look into eyes and see evil. I remember how ludicrous it seemed when George W. Bush said he looked into Putin's eyes and "got a sense of his soul" — and decided he was "straightforward and trustworthy." 

But here's an article from 2011 in Scientific American, "The Eyes Have It/Eye gaze is critically important to social primates such as humans. Maybe that is why illusions involving eyes are so compelling." That's about the relatively objective issue of misperceiving where eyes are looking. Harder to study whether there is evil in there! 

Do courts allow witnesses to testify about what they feel they saw in someone's eyes? I have not researched this question, but I believe it would not be acceptable to testify "I looked into his eyes and saw pure evil." 

"House Democrats on Monday introduced an article of impeachment against President Trump for inciting a mob that attacked the Capitol last week, vowing to press the charge..."

"... as Republicans blocked a separate move to formally call on Vice President Mike Pence to strip him of power under the 25th Amendment.... Democratic leaders were confident it would pass, and pressured Republican lawmakers to vote with them to beseech the vice president, who is said to be opposed to using the powers outlined in the Constitution, to do so. It was a remarkable threat. If Mr. Pence does not intervene 'within 24 hours' after passage and the president does not resign, House leaders said they would move as early as Wednesday to consider the impeachment resolution on the floor, just a week after the attack.... Last minute changes were made late Sunday to include a reference to the 14th Amendment, the post-Civil War era addition to the Constitution that prohibits anyone who 'engaged in insurrection or rebellion' against the United States from holding future office. Lawmakers also decided to cite specific language from Mr. Trump’s speech last Wednesday, inciting the crowd, quoting him saying: 'If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.'"

The NYT reports.

Here's the text of the article of impeachment.

I note that the Trump quote they included did not make my list "The 7 most violence-inciting statements in Donald Trump's speech to the crowd on January 6th"! I thought "fight like hell" sounded too much like ordinary politics to make the list. We fight for our rights, we fight in political campaigns, we fight in court. Are we going to outlaw the word "fight"?! We'll be descending into Newspeak.

"As the book nears publication and details spill out, many congressional Democrats quickly assailed Mr. Bolton for not telling his story during the impeachment proceedings and instead saving it for his $2 million book."

"Mr. Bolton explains his position in the epilogue, saying he wanted to wait to see if a judge would order one of his deputies to testify over White House objections. Once the House impeached Mr. Trump over the Ukraine matter, Mr. Bolton volunteered to testify in the Senate trial that followed if subpoenaed. But Senate Republicans voted to block new testimony by him and any other witnesses even after The New York Times reported that his forthcoming book would confirm the quid pro quo. Some of those Republican senators said that even if Mr. Bolton was correct, it would not be enough in their minds to make Mr. Trump the first president in American history convicted and removed from office. Mr. Bolton blames House Democrats for being in a rush rather than waiting for the court system to rule on whether witnesses like him should testify, and he faults them for narrowing their inquiry to just the Ukraine matter rather than building a broader case with more examples of misconduct by the president. 'Had a Senate majority agreed to call witnesses and had I testified, I am convinced, given the environment then existing because of the House’s impeachment malpractice, that it would have made no significant difference in the Senate outcome,' he writes."
From "Five Takeaways From John Bolton’s Memoir 'The Room Where It Happened' describes Mr. Bolton’s 17 turbulent months at President Trump’s side through a multitude of crises and foreign policy challenges" by Peter Baker (NYT).

ADDED:

Wacko John Bolton’s “exceedingly tedious”(New York Times) book is made up of lies & fake stories. Said all good about me, in print, until the day I fired him. A disgruntled boring fool who only wanted to go to war. Never had a clue, was ostracized & happily dumped. What a dope!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 18, 2020

"President Trump has taken historic, aggressive measures to protect the health, wealth and safety of the American people — and did so, while the media and Democrats chose to only focus on the stupid politics of a sham illegitimate impeachment."

"It’s more than disgusting, despicable and disgraceful for cowardly unnamed sources to attempt to rewrite history — it’s a clear threat to this great country."

Said a White House spokesman statement, quoted in The Washington Post, which sought a response for its article, "U.S. intelligence reports from January and February warned about a likely pandemic." From the article, published last night:

The intelligence reports didn’t predict when the virus might land on U.S. shores or recommend particular steps that public health officials should take.... But they did track the spread of the virus in China, and later in other countries, and warned that Chinese officials appeared to be minimizing the severity of the outbreak....

But despite that constant flow of reporting, Trump continued publicly and privately to play down the threat the virus posed to Americans. Lawmakers, too, did not grapple with the virus in earnest until this month....

To be fair, "lawmakers" were very preoccupied with the impeachment of the President.

Inside the White House, Trump’s advisers struggled to get him to take the virus seriously, according to multiple officials with knowledge of meetings among those advisers and with the president. [Health and Human Services Secretary Alex] Azar couldn’t get through to Trump to speak with him about the virus until Jan. 18, according to two senior administration officials....

On Jan. 27, White House aides huddled with then-acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney in his office, trying to get senior officials to pay more attention to the virus, according to people briefed on the meeting Mulvaney then began convening more regular meetings....

Just so you know the timeline: Trump was caught up in an impeachment trial and was not acquitted until February 5th. He had the obligation to perform all his duties as President while dealing with the impeachment, but it sounds as though the White House was working on the virus throughout January, whether Trump did personal meetings with Azar or not.

WaPo quotes some of Trump's early public statements about the virus, and, indeed, he did express optimism. He's still doing optimism. How that correlates to serious protective action for us is another matter.

And here's a WaPo article from January 21st, 11 days before the aquittal: "Trump administration announces mandatory quarantines in response to coronavirus."

The White House declared a “public health emergency” and — beginning on Sunday at 5 p.m. — will bar non-U.S. citizens who recently visited China from entering the United States, subject to a few exemptions.... Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar also said the Trump administration would quarantine any Americans who had visited China’s Hubei province, where the disease originated, within the past 14 days....

President Trump so far has remained uncharacteristically muted on the coronavirus and praised China’s extraordinary response to the growing outbreak. On Wednesday, he tweeted photos of his Situation Room briefing and said his administration was working closely with China to contain the outbreak....

That happened at a time when the World Health Organization was recommending that there be no travel restrictions.

"More Americans approve of the job congressional Republicans are doing than of congressional Democrats' performance — 40% vs. 35%."

"The rating for Republicans in Congress has risen six percentage points since late October, before the impeachment of President Donald Trump in the U.S. House of Representatives. Over the same period, congressional Democrats' approval rating has edged down three points and disapproval has climbed five points, from 57% to 62%."

Gallup reports.