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"The US House of Representatives has passed a resolution to formally proceed with the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump.
The measure details how the inquiry will move into a more public phase. It was not a vote on whether the president should be removed from office.
This was the first test of support in the Democratic-controlled House for the impeachment process.
The White House condemned the vote, which passed along party lines.
Only two Democrats - representing districts that Mr Trump won handily in 2016 - voted against the resolution, along with all Republicans, for a total count of 232 in favour and 196 against."
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Trump Impeachment: House Votes to Formalise Inquiry
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Is that really YOU that is reading this?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 01 2019, @02:54PM (19 children)
The house can impeach for whatever it wants as long as they can achieve a simple majority going for it. It's not like there's some magical standard or law necessary. They ask each [democrat] to raise their hands. They do so. Boom, impeached. It's not like either side really cares about the evidence. And similarly the exact same thing will happen in the senate. Except there democrats do not have a majority, let alone the supermajority required. So he will then be "acquitted". This is like 24/7 news in the left leaning media, yet literally 0 nothing will happen.
As we become an ever more divided nation I expect impeachment to just become another overused tool that was, at one time, something used only in extreme cases. Seriously in about 200 years of our nation, we managed to have one impeached president. Now we're looking at 3 of the last 9 presidents ending up impeached. It's going to become exactly like the filibuster which is now so normalized that a supermajority (to override the filibuster) is an unspoken rule for even bothering to debate a bill. Kind of peculiarly this will effectively create a parliamentary system such that it will become impossible to have a president of a different party than the house+senate, at least so long as the other party has a supermajority in the senate (so that impeachment can actually do something).
For some source on these statements. Bill Clinton was impeached for lying under oath. He 100% undeniably and unambiguously did this. And perjury is a criminal felony. Exactly 0 democrats in the senate chose to convict him of perjury. The whole impeachment thing is just a partisan circus.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by LVDOVICVS on Friday November 01 2019, @05:11PM (12 children)
Bill Clinton did lie under oath for something he never should have been asked about. Being held to account for this was appropriate. In my opinion the outcome was commensurate with the crime.
Trump appears to be running an extortion racket that endangers national security. Being held to account for this would hardly seem to be a "partisan circus" considering the far more serious implications. He should be jailed in my opinion.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 01 2019, @06:05PM (6 children)
Do you mean Ukraine?
Seriously, you call it "extortion" to tell the Ukraine that the extortion performed by Biden is no longer demanded by the USA?
To recap: Joe Biden's son got paid to be on the board of a Ukraine gas company, despite having no industry experience and no ability to speak the language. Mysterious, eh? When a prosecutor in Ukraine started investigating corruption related to this, Joe Biden threatened to have the USA cut a $billion of foreign aid unless the prosecutor was fired within 6 hours. The prosecutor was indeed fired (asked to resign of course) and strangely Joe Biden even had the nerve to brag about it on video. Years later, Trump tells the Ukraine that that shit is over, and of course the USA would appreciate investigation of corruption.
WTF. Trump is doing his job. He is supposed to fight corruption like what Joe Biden and Hunter Biden did. The federal prosecutors work for Trump, and may need to be reminded to do their damn jobs. The ultimate person for diplomacy, including asking foreign nations for law enforcement assistance, is Trump. It is a duty for Trump to insist on the investigation into the Biden family, even if the political appearance is bad.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 01 2019, @06:29PM
Replace Biden's son with Jr., Eric and Ivanka?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 01 2019, @07:06PM (1 child)
You know that facts are available? You don't have to make up lies like Trump does.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/29/business/media/fact-check-biden-ukraine-burisma-china-hunter.html [nytimes.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 02 2019, @06:52AM
How about citing a reliable non-biased source, you know, like one that didn't push lies to start a war in Iraq, one that isn't a mouthpiece for shitstains like HRC and other murderous cunts and dicks.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 01 2019, @08:46PM (2 children)
And just in case you might not like the NY Times (since you are defending Trump):
Associated Press [apnews.com], which noted the controversy but also states the current prosecutor finds no reason to take action.
Bloomberg [bloomberg.com].
Reuters. [reuters.com]
Forbes. [forbes.com] Business Insider [businessinsider.com], if you don't like Forbes.
BBC. [bbc.com]
Deutsche Welle. [dw.com] and again [dw.com], although you might well feel Germany a little biased.
Now, to the meat of what you said that's flatly wrong:
Extortion on Biden's part is questionable. Biden was carrying out U.S. policy backed not just by the executive but also by State and all other relevant government agencies. It was all done quite publicly in the public view - you can find many contemporaneous news articles stating that the U.S. was going to call for exactly that and that the move was supported internationally. It's not like it was a phone call that was suddenly classified and placed into systems intended for national security matters. Also policy which was widely agreed upon by the International Monetary Fund, and European community (EBRD and EU) as well. Nobody unbiased has questioned that the Ukraine was (and still may be) suffering from corruption.
Where to begin... Mysterious, no. Burisma was clearly looking for a tie-in which might help them. That is not illegal. It's not nepotism like, say, employing your children as chief advisers in your administration. It's pretty much a given that children of Presidents (and similar officials) can do very well for themselves wherever they are. What is your evidence that the position was actually used corruptly?
Wrong. It was $1 billion in loan guarantees. That may seem like foreign aid to you, but it is quite different from funds that were appropriated and approved by Congress to be directly given to the country in question. Funds that the Executive Branch did not have discretion or choice as to whether they would be disbursed (what Trump ended up doing, and doing in a highly irregular method when the officials charged with that authority questioned the ability for the Executive to hold up the disbursement of those funds).
Wrong again. Prosecutor Shokin actually inherited the investigation into Burisma's founder Zlochevsky, did nothing with it, and if you read Shokin's Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org], you'll see that the May allegations that he was investigating Burisma actively were debunked back in May - that investigation did not have activity during Shokin's time.
Wrong again again. The claims about Burisma were settled in 2017, by a different prosecution.
Wrong again again again again. Trump did not request, "investigation of corruption." He specifically requested investigation into what are known to be dead and debunked issues: Cloudflare, and specifically named his chief political rival for the next election. He asked this in the the context of a "favor" (a quid, if you will) in the context of having Congressionally approved military aid (a quo, if you will) and immediately after the Ukraine President stated he wanted to purchase U.S. Military armaments (another quo). That's quite different from what occurred previously, that discretionary aid was used as a bargaining chip in order to remove a prosecutor who was not doing his job effectively.
Now, shall we consider that Trump's method in doing so was to employ a personal lawyer who had no Congressionally-approved portfolio nor as an employee of the State Department, and seems to have established a shadow foreign policy apparatus for which the President then made the actual approved department (both AG and State) cooperate with? An unapproved invididual who now has two known associates under arrest for campaign finance law violations? No, I don't think we'll go there because that certainly does not help Trump.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 02 2019, @06:55AM (1 child)
Cokehead son of VP with no experience or qualifications gets a job for somewhere between 50k and 180k per month, depending on reports. Take the low number for argument's sake. There is no amount of words that makes that not on its face, corrupt.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05 2019, @07:12PM
If you'd like to take that angle then you'd better be prepared to pay every public figure enough to support their children for life, because any job ever given to any politicians child might then be "corruption."
And even if "corrupt", not illegal. There was no crime present. And even if there was one the Republicans and the Ukraine government still have been unable to prove anything. Unsurprising because this is a dead and debunked issue.
Trump wasn't trying to get the dead horse beat so that justice would be served. Trump was trying to get a pot stirred up against his chief political rival and using the tools of statecraft entrusted to him for the sake of the nation's security to play his partisan political games. Or, if you like, he was seeking information to help him change the course of the 2020 election and not because he decided to wear his Superman Underoos that day. That's not just corrupt. That's illegal.
See the difference?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 01 2019, @07:08PM (1 child)
Then Bill Clinton should have exercised his fifth amendment right: "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself"
Note that while national attention was on sexual matters, Bill Clinton signed the repeal of Glass-Steagall - a very big "crime" in itself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 02 2019, @07:10AM
Wouldn't have worked. The Fifth Amendment does not apply to impeachment because it's not a criminal process. It's a political process that removes him from office, and there is no double jeopardy if they then charge him with crimes.
"Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States; but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law. "
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 01 2019, @10:02PM (2 children)
Key word "appears" because that's how it has been spread out by the media (or some portion of the media) support a narrative.
Whether it's true or not, less than a handful of people will really ever know. Where you in a meeting with Trump when questionable things went down? No. Neither was I.
Presuming we the peons have all the facts in front of our eyes is ludicrous.
It will play out in spite of the facts. You should be suspicious of the the outcome no matter which way it goes.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 01 2019, @10:40PM
And you should be ashamed for being such a credulous idiot.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday November 04 2019, @08:35PM
1) Donald J. Trump released a Call Memo. Said call memo, combined with the military aid holdup, all by itself proves what Whistleblower has alleged. Trump gave us the rope.
2) The people who were listening in on that call are now testifying about what exactly was said, going beyond the call memo into things not there. If there are witnesses who will say things like "Burisma wasn't actually named", the President will indeed have the opportunity to bring such witnesses forward.
3) The people who surround the time of this call are testifying. The President said, "this ain't a quid pro quo," when all the true experts very much acknowledge this was indeed a quid pro quo and it can't be spun differently.
4) Nobody is stupid enough to not know the Bidens are Trump's chief political opponent. This was political persecution of Republican versus Democrat using foreign relations to attempt to gain political (and NOT National Security) intelligence.
These are all Facts, at this point. No Republican, from Trump through the Senate through the House are disputing the facts because they are indisputable. Instead they rely on distractions to try and keep their faithful in line.
We will indeed know the truth in this matter. There are too many people to testify, and such testimony is now becoming open. While the Trump administration tries it's best to do damage control on a plainly visible plane crash.
You do not have to be suspicious when both the prosecution has alleged and the defense has confirmed all the truly meaingful facts. You can only try to distract and mislead.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 01 2019, @05:16PM
The truth comes out, they impeached Clinton because their plan was to commit crimes in the future and use the Clinton impeachment as some sort of "gotcha" like if he wasn't jailed for it than their guy shouldn't face consequences either.
What morally corrupt assholes the GOP has become.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 01 2019, @06:05PM (1 child)
Ever action has impacts. Even if Trump is not removed from office, impeaching and not-impeaching sends and is itself impactful.
Imagine you have a child, and she shoplifts a pack of gum. You see it. Obviously you aren't going to call the police on your own child. However, if you do nothing, do you think the kid is going to stop on her own, or do you think she's going to steal another stick of gum? Maybe a bag of chips next time, or that new pokemon game which you aren't willing to buy her.
People always test limits and push harder. Even if the Republicans aren't willing to remove from office (which, assuming the allegations are true, would be shameful), the symbolic effect of impeaching is better than the symbolic effect of not-impeaching.
That is, unless you prefer a "the president is elected dictator for 4 years; he can only be removed during an election year or assassination" style system. I feel horrible for having to say it, but I do not prefer that system... and I'd hope everybody else here could agree with that.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 01 2019, @06:57PM
The president is not a dictator. His power is heavily constrained by our system of checks and balances, as has been regularly shown. Nonetheless I do agree that executive power has become too centralized, but the problem there is people are all to gleeful to support expanded governmental power when "their" party is in power - as if that will always be the case. We all need to push for a weaker government at all levels, regardless of our feelings for whom happens to be in power. Power granted is rarely ungranted and, sooner or later, it will be abused.
Similarly, impeachment is not a symbolic slap on the wrist for corrective behavior. It's in the constitution for a reason. In times past when leaders fell out of the support with their nation, the frequent conclusion was assassination or forced abdication such as through kidnapping. Impeachment is basically the nuclear weapon that ought be used in cases where you otherwise would have widespread support and thus justification for extreme action. None of this stuff comes anywhere near that standard. By contrast compare Nixon's impeachment. He hired people to literally break into opposition hotel rooms, bug them, and then tried to engage in a mass cover-up all of this being funded using a slush fund connected to his election coffers.
That's no longer a partisan issue. And indeed even though the democrats did not have anywhere near enough people to convict in the senate, Nixon resigned knowing full well he would be convicted. Because again, it wasn't a partisan issue. Here? A president asking another leader to investigate high level corruption... is corruption? It's literally something out of a Saul Alinsky playbook: "Accuse your opponent of what only you are doing, as you are doing it, to create confusion, cloud the issue, and inoculate voters against any evidence of your guilt." Biden did engage, quite overtly and openly, in a quid quo pro in Ukraine. And so the DNC immediately took this and claimed that's exactly what Trump was doing. And indeed it does create confusion and cloud the issue, but I'm not sure it's really a wise longterm political strategy. You obviously have no reason to believe me and I probably wouldn't believe myself, but I was a lifelong 'democrat' (never identified as such but did vote for e.g. Obama). But these sort of actions, alongside the party's general 'ideological migration' has pushed me in quite the opposite direction. It's not like another party won me over, but rather that these tactics pushed me away - and they will probably account for another orange man vote in 2020. Dirty tactics get you short-term victories and long-term defeats.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 01 2019, @06:18PM
Wonder what the result would be if the vote in the Senate were a secret ballot?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 02 2019, @02:57AM (1 child)
perjury is a crime in a criminal case. certainly lying to Congress by not-the-President can incur jail time (just ask Oliver North), the President is a bit of a special case, but for that Congress makes the charges and the Dept of Justice prosecutes the case in Federal Court.
let's stop trying to conflate the impeachment process with anything else.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 04 2019, @08:40PM
No. Mueller has said exactly the opposite: The President's special case is that he cannot be indicted while sitting in office for obstruction. Same applies in Perjury (EXCEPT that herein there has been no judiciary claim on Donald Trump personally for Trump to perjure for). This isn't perjury, it's an FEC violation coupled with Conduct Unbecoming, maybe. This is what impeachment is for: It is the indictment that the Executive cannot seek and the Judiciary cannot try (except as the Chief Justice sites as the Presiding Official of a Senate trial.) And it is important to pursue it now because the President is doing damage to the Nation with his conduct. We cannot wait until he is no longer in office.
That's the gist, anyway, AC.