Tag Archives: Congress

Twice Impeached

Posted on by 2 comments

Another record for the man who is everything. Donald Trump is now the only person to have been impeached twice by the House of Representatives. Whether or not he is found guilty when tried by the Senate, he also has the distinction of being a president of the United States accused by a bipartisan coalition. Ten Republican House members voted to impeach the titular head of their party. Four others abstained from the vote.

It is not difficult to see why. The impeachment came one week after a violent mob, encouraged by Trump, came to Washington and attacked Congress in an attempt to keep it from counting the certified election results sent in by all fifty states and the District of Columbia. Trump, leader of the executive branch of government, was demanding the mob stop the legislative branch from performing its constitutional and statutory function and instead disenfranchise millions of voters and install Trump as a literal dictator.

Read more

Parliament: At Least Debate

Posted on by Leave a comment

One of the more esoteric debates in academia for those studying politics is the contrast between the American form of government, with a strong executive and an elected legislature wielding equal power, with the democratic parliamentary system in which the elected legislature is the ultimate power, the head of state subservient to it and the executive chosen by it. In other words, America v. England.

I frequently got into this debate with my father, a true Anglophile, and we never resolved the issue. The compare and contrast form of discussion was, in many way, ironic because of the historical circumstances. England had a strong executive at the time of the American revolution. King George III reigned at that time, had considerable real power compared with today’s Queen Elizabeth II, and was for Americans the perfect example of a leader to be avoided.

Read more

Muller to Barr RE: “Public Confusion”

Posted on by 3 comments

I didn’t. I really did not want to write about this again. I’ve got several much more interesting things half written that I’d like to finish. But I keep coming back to what is alleged by many to be the most popular quotation in the English language, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Edmund Burke, John Stuart Mill? For a discussion on the source see quoteinvestigator.

The night before Attorney General William Barr was to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Washington Post first reported that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had, on March 27th, 2019, sent a letter to Barr characterizing Barr’s four page memo to Congress, dated March 24,

The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this Office’s work and conclusions. We communicated that concern to the Department on the morning of March 25. There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations

Read more
Recent Entries »