Election 2020: Shampeachment 2.0 Week Begins

Having absolutely nothing more important do than impeaching a President after he left office, the Senate is taking up the House's article of impeachment against him this week.WaPoo wails As impeachment trial nears, court documents cite Trump’s rage-fueling rhetoric. Eugene Kontorovich, at  NYPo, Trump’s impeachment trial sets a troubling precedent. David Marcus at Da Fed, This Impeachment Is A Disgraceful Sham "Your betters want to decide who you can and cannot vote for. You should be angry." Insty, If they weren’t afraid that Trump might win again, they wouldn’t be doing this. So the goal is to ensure a majority of American voters can’t get what they want. For a more reasoned approach try Josh Blackman's  New Evidence and Arguments About the Scope of the Impeachment Disqualification Clause: A Response to the House of Representatives' Managers' Trial Memorandum and What Do "Many" of the 140+ Law Professors Think About the First Amendment and Impeachment?  at the Volokh Conspiracy. My own view is that constitutional or legal arguments have very little to do with this. Right now, the Senate has the power try Trump, and will so, so why argue over the nits. Emily Zanotti at Da Wire, Rand Paul: There Is ‘Zero’ Chance Trump Will Be Convicted, Impeachment A ‘Partisan’ Hearing

Just make it reflect poorly on Democrats. To that end, at DISRN Jeffrey Swindoll claims Trump's impeachment defense team will show video clips of Dems urging violence in 2020 Matt Margolis at PJ Media says Trump Impeachment Lawyer Reveals Part of Defense Plan, and It Is Brilliant If true, YouTube will ban it, assuming Judge and Juror Patrick Lahey allows it.  

“There’s a lot of tape of cities burning and courthouses being attacked and federal agents being assaulted by rioters in the streets, cheered on by Democrats throughout the country, and many of them in Washington using really the most inflammatory rhetoric that’s possible to use,” Castor pointed out before noting that Democrats were not accused on inciting that violence, yet Trump is on video stating clearly that he wanted people to march peacefully to the Capitol.

“You better be careful what you wish for,” Castor said of the Democrats.

An amusing sidelight at the NYT (from Hot Air), Trump Lawyer Asks To Pause Impeachment Trial If It Runs Into Sabbath, and from the Slantic, David Frum claims Impeachment Is Working — Just Not As The Framers Expected. If so, it's being used improperly. Remember the precedent. Nick Arama at Red State, Pelosi Snaps at a Reporter Over Impeachment Question, Then Makes It Worse "Pelosi, asked about Lindsey Graham's threat to bring in the FBI to testify in Trump's impeachment trial, replies: "your question is a waste of time" and takes a different one." Althouse catches NYT editors wishing it away, "What if They Held an Impeachment Trial and Nobody Came?/Maybe it’s a good thing that we’re more focused on Biden. Or maybe we’ve just given up.... Let’s not start with impeachment trial No. 2...."

At Anxious, Scoop: McCarthy told Cheney to apologize after impeachment vote. If true; I doubt it. A waste of time. She did it, and she meant it, and has to live with the consequences, which are entirely political. Mediaite, Liz Cheney Says GOP Shouldn’t Be ‘Embracing’ Trump: ‘Does Not Have a Role as the Leader of Our Party Going Forward’  WaEx, Liz Cheney becomes latest GOP lawmaker who voted to impeach Trump to get censured in home state. She pissed off the only people who count, her constituents. Speaking of Liz Cheney (to name one) Matt Vespa at Town Hall asks So, What Do Never Trump Republicans Do Now That We Told Them to Screw Off? Get jobs in the Biden administration? 

If these Never Trump clowns think we’re just going back to the Kasich-Ryan-Romney days, they’re delusional. We’re through with those losers. Done. Even members of the most vocal anti-Trump group said that there really isn’t a market for them anymore. Politico had a piece about this last December:

Horse, barn door, SAG-AFTRA Voted To Ban Trump Forever After He Resigned From Union Membership. Don Surber wonders about Trump fatigue?

But Donald Trump's best bet for now is to relax, enjoy his grandchildren, and golf with friends. That seems to be his plan. The president told Congress he will skip the impeachment trial. Surely even the angriest of loons in the Senate now realizes that a conviction and a ban on future candidacies will make him a martyr.

Neo Neo on Time on the vast conspiracy to “save” the 2020 election before it even took place

My guess is that this story was going to get out anyway – or already has, in the right’s “paranoid fever dream” that turned out to have been correct – and the group wanted to make sure it is defined and described in the way they would like the public to think of it: as a “for your own good” protective device that fortifies democracy.

And they have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. Cheap. Oh, and Russian collusion elected Trump in 2016.

I want to doubly highlight the last sentence of that quote from Ball’s article: “And they believe the public needs to understand the system’s fragility in order to ensure that democracy in America endures.” In other words, they have to continue to manipulate and massage the way information gets to you, as well as to use the legal system, in order to “protect” you from yourselves and the ugly populist democracy you’d like to vote for. So get ready for more of the same, and even an intensification of the control they will wield now that they are in power.

At Da Caller, A Bipartisan Group Supports Domestic Terror Laws Despite Opposition From 150 Civil Rights Organizations  At the New York Times Post? How to Defeat America’s Homegrown Insurgency meaning Trump supporters. Joh Black at SOFREP warns military personnel You May Have Been Identified as an Extremist within the Ranks and Had No Idea

Hey, remember when electing Biden was going to stop the violence? BLM and Antifa march in DC, threaten to 'burn down' Washington, from, appropriately enough, Da Blaze. "Protest leaders delivered lectures about 'race, Black and Indigenous lives' to diners at restaurants."

At Sundance's (CTH) Sunday Talks, Peter Navarro Talks About Bill Barr DOJ Working to Advance Interests of Joe Biden

Take away the bigger big-picture. The people inside the Department of Justice, most of them installed during the Obama-Holder-Lynch administration, are entrenched ideologues. It did not matter who the Attorney General was. The gears inside the machine were disconnected from the person who held the controls.

WaPoo whines  Trump’s lie that the election was stolen has cost $519 million (and counting) as taxpayers fund enhanced security, legal fees, property repairs and more. Now do the BLM/Antifa riots encouraged by Kamala Harris and other Democrats. NYT whines Pushing QAnon and Stolen Election Lies, Flynn Re-emerges QAnon = Immanuel Goldstein. They don't supply any evidence of QAnon links, they just try to smear him.

Althosue  "We have to be very cautious in our celebration of these lawsuits, because the history of defamation is certainly one in which people in power try to slap down critics."

Said Yochai Benkler, "a professor at Harvard Law School who studies disinformation and radicalization in American politics," quoted in "Lawsuits Take the Lead in Fight Against Disinformation/Defamation cases have made waves across an uneasy right-wing media landscape, from Fox to Newsmax" (NYT).

“The competitive dynamic in the right-wing outrage industry has forced them all over the rails,” Mr. Benkler said. “This is the first set of lawsuits that’s actually going to force them to internalize the cost of the damages they’re inflicting on democracy.”
Mr. Benkler called the Smartmatic suit “a useful corrective” — “it’s a tap on the brakes” — but he also urged restraint....

The article also quotes the First Amendment lawyer Martin Garbus: “Will lawsuits like this also be used in the future to attack groups whose politics I might be more sympathetic with?”

Stacey Lennox at PJ Media, Democrats in the House Had a Group Therapy Session But They Need a Mirror

Ocasio-Cortez organized this time on the floor after she was outed for several inaccuracies in her Instagram storytime regarding her own experience. Pelosi should have given these children some puppies and Play-Doh and told them to go into the Rotunda and reflect on their own behavior this summer. Of course, that would mean the entire Democrat Party, including President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, would have to reflect on their own. Along with the whole corporate media ecosystem.

None of them ever condemned antifa and BLM activists’ violence this summer while cities were burning, and lives were ruined. After CNN commentator Don Lemon said publicly that the riots were hurting Democrats in the polls, Biden gave a tepid statement about political violence, never naming the groups involved in one of the most disgusting displays of bothsidesism ever recorded.

What did Ocasio-Cortez have to say to terrified citizens at the time? Get over it unless you signed up for all of her pet policy preferences . . .