Robert Mueller's written public statement is here. He's not a public performer, he's a die-hard institutionalist who'll play by the rules no matter what. That plays well in front of judges, where...
Robert Mueller's written public statement is here.
He's not a public performer, he's a die-hard institutionalist who'll play by the rules no matter what. That plays well in front of judges, where it avoids messy retrials and appeals. It's exactly the opposite of the approach that Kenneth Starr took in the Clinton investigation, where the clear intent was to convict Bill Clinton in the court of public opinion.
Mueller is clinging fiercely to the principle that the President is not immune from prosecution, but the House of Representatives is the appropriate Constitutional forum.
A 400-page report and associated evidence should be enough for Congress to get on with, though it's appropriate to ask Mueller to testify as to whether he or his team were subjected to interference not directly reported, or outside the authority of his supporters.
and it's going to be one with no power to do anything substantive here, since its only recourse is impeachment, which is an entirely partisan process contingent on the goodwill of cooperation in...
Mueller is clinging fiercely to the principle that the President is not immune from prosecution, but the House of Representatives is the appropriate Constitutional forum.
and it's going to be one with no power to do anything substantive here, since its only recourse is impeachment, which is an entirely partisan process contingent on the goodwill of cooperation in the senate which does not exist in any form. i get that people like to be sticklers to the constitution, and i get that robert mueller likes to be a stickler to the constitution, but the constitution was written with a nonpartisan society in mind when it laid this shit out, and that ceased to exist within two decades of its inauguration as the law of the land. its processes do not work in a partisan society unless there is evidence which can decisively win out over partisanship, which has happened literally one time in the history of the nation and might not have without tapes. relying on the constitution at this point to disperse justice with things like this is a fool's errand, and in an optimal world this will put the nail in the coffin of people banking on just that.
That's not quite correct - there's a great list here of every investigation the House is currently pursuing. The Mueller investigation had a relatively limited brief concerning Russian election...
That's not quite correct - there's a great list here of every investigation the House is currently pursuing.
The Mueller investigation had a relatively limited brief concerning Russian election interference as much as Trump himself, but the House committees are looking into a variety of other avenues. There are clear abuses of power in violation of law, like the emergency powers misuse and immigrant family separation policy, likely tax fraud, and other probable "high crimes and misdemeanors".
Public polling is already in favor of impeachment, it's just a matter of convincing the Republican Party that this will be the end of their reign (let alone the Constitutional republic) if they don't cooperate.
yes, except almost all of those are contingent on impeachment to have actual, serious recourse for donald. his personal problems law-wise are almost entirely at the state level now, not the...
That's not quite correct - there's a great list here of every investigation the House is currently pursuing.
yes, except almost all of those are contingent on impeachment to have actual, serious recourse for donald. his personal problems law-wise are almost entirely at the state level now, not the federal level, because impeachment is a dead end.
Public polling is already in favor of impeachment, it's just a matter of convincing the Republican Party that this will be the end of their reign (let alone the Constitutional republic) if they don't cooperate.
public polling means literally nothing, lol. you are never going to get even a small portion of republicans to agree to impeach donald trump when they have practically bent over backwards to accommodate him, much less in the numbers needed to begin serious impeachment proceedings. ten of them broke ranks to vote for ending the war on yemen. ten. on a far less serious issue than impeachment, which has broadly bipartisan support, for a total of 57 votes in the senate. you need 67 people in the senate to impeach. there is no chance of impeachment. none. literally none. it is a sub-zero chance. you can try all you want to convince them. it will never work.
It doesn't take the Senate to bring impeachment proceedings. Even if the Senate fails to vote for impeachment in sufficient numbers, the effort is worthwhile to publicize what the rule of law...
It doesn't take the Senate to bring impeachment proceedings. Even if the Senate fails to vote for impeachment in sufficient numbers, the effort is worthwhile to publicize what the rule of law looks like.
Strategically, as the Republicans are very well aware, investigations and impeachment slow the proceedings on new legislation, tie up the Administration's resources, and help prevent abuses of power from passing beneath notice.
Maintaining the drumbeat news of Trump's criminality and corruption is essential to defeating him in 2020, but the Democratic Party is crap at narrative.
it's really not. what kind of politician is going to give a shit what the rule of law "looks like" if they know partisan politics means that when push comes to shove, any misconduct they have with...
It doesn't take the Senate to bring impeachment proceedings. Even if the Senate fails to vote for impeachment in sufficient numbers, the effort is worthwhile to publicize what the rule of law looks like.
it's really not. what kind of politician is going to give a shit what the rule of law "looks like" if they know partisan politics means that when push comes to shove, any misconduct they have with no smoking gun is likely to end indecisively and leave them in a position of power because nobody can remove them? moreover, why should we uphold a clearly broken rule of law? if donald can't be held to account in the confines of the rules that exist, what the fuck is the point of going through the motions for a doomed effort? why would it not be a better idea to tear down the system and make it so that people have to be held accountable instead of validating the system that allows people to stonewall indefinitely because the current rule of law never bothered to consider the possibility of partisan politics? playing ball in the current status quo is stupid, because the current status quo is broken and in any case impeachment is probably as likely to backfire on the democrats and be a quixotic exercise as it is to "uphold the rule of law".
"Tear down the system" is not, and has never been, a satisfactory patch for a broken set of rules. Do you think there's no value in using the parts which do work to gain leverage and build...
"Tear down the system" is not, and has never been, a satisfactory patch for a broken set of rules.
Do you think there's no value in using the parts which do work to gain leverage and build momentum for change?
there is literally no value in doing that here, no. you're literally just upholding the system which causes the very problem which makes donald unaccountable at the federal level, and for...
Do you think there's no value in using the parts which do work to gain leverage and build momentum for change?
there is literally no value in doing that here, no. you're literally just upholding the system which causes the very problem which makes donald unaccountable at the federal level, and for absolutely no payoff because impeachment will never happen. again, playing ball in the current status quo is stupid, because the current status quo is broken in a system of partisan politics. the only way the "rule of law" will ever be upheld in a way that keeps people accountable is if people stop acting like the current system does that and work to create alternatives to it that actually can and aren't contingent on a series of extremely unlikely events.
Given that this is a presser at the DoJ and that the White House was given a heads up last night, I don't expect this to be much of game changer. In all likelihood he will not contradict Barr...
Exemplary
Given that this is a presser at the DoJ and that the White House was given a heads up last night, I don't expect this to be much of game changer. In all likelihood he will not contradict Barr while standing on his turf. I expect a statement reiterating the key findings of the report, and perhaps emphasizing his reasoning for not recommending charges re: obstruction.
Trump isn't going to be impeached. Democrats will never get the votes in the senate for it. I'm sure we would learn a great deal if impeachment proceedings were to begin, and I think it's likely...
Trump isn't going to be impeached. Democrats will never get the votes in the senate for it. I'm sure we would learn a great deal if impeachment proceedings were to begin, and I think it's likely that there would be enough to impeach Trump even for Republicans with a healthy dose of skepticism... but they won't do it. If they impeach their own president, then they ruin their party for years to come. It's become so easy to just wave away any facts or news you don't like at this point, so they'll probably keep the majority of their base even if impeachment proceedings show a great deal of wrongdoing (which I firmly believe there is).
I think the Democrats know that even if they have a bulletproof case for impeachment, there's still a significant chance that it blows up in their faces. They're stuck between a rock and a hard place, and I don't really know what their best course of action is besides keeping this alive just enough to save face for not being able to impeach the person many of their constituents want gone. Gathering political ammunition is probably the best course of action. Honestly, I think they should settle down on a lot of this and start to bring it up more once elections start to come around. So much seems to happen that it's difficult to have a memory that lasts more than a couple of months, and exhausting the rhetoric now is going to leave them a step behind come election season. I don't care for Biden, but I'm hoping the DNC chooses a reasonably moderate candidate because Trump may win again if they put up someone too progressive.
Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding: The main draw at this point for getting Mueller to testify publicly is so that citizens who aren't going to read the report can instead hear it straight...
Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding: The main draw at this point for getting Mueller to testify publicly is so that citizens who aren't going to read the report can instead hear it straight from the horse's mouth. If Mueller does testify, he has confirmed he will only say what is already written in his report, meaning the redacted portions likely will not be made public because as a private citizen he has no authority to unredact this info, and as the head of the special counsel office he would have a vested interest in keeping those sections redacted for legal reasons.
Given that the average citizen probably won't watch a congressional testimony any more than they'd read the report itself, who specifically does his congressional testimony benefit?
Robert Mueller's written public statement is here.
He's not a public performer, he's a die-hard institutionalist who'll play by the rules no matter what. That plays well in front of judges, where it avoids messy retrials and appeals. It's exactly the opposite of the approach that Kenneth Starr took in the Clinton investigation, where the clear intent was to convict Bill Clinton in the court of public opinion.
Mueller is clinging fiercely to the principle that the President is not immune from prosecution, but the House of Representatives is the appropriate Constitutional forum.
A 400-page report and associated evidence should be enough for Congress to get on with, though it's appropriate to ask Mueller to testify as to whether he or his team were subjected to interference not directly reported, or outside the authority of his supporters.
and it's going to be one with no power to do anything substantive here, since its only recourse is impeachment, which is an entirely partisan process contingent on the goodwill of cooperation in the senate which does not exist in any form. i get that people like to be sticklers to the constitution, and i get that robert mueller likes to be a stickler to the constitution, but the constitution was written with a nonpartisan society in mind when it laid this shit out, and that ceased to exist within two decades of its inauguration as the law of the land. its processes do not work in a partisan society unless there is evidence which can decisively win out over partisanship, which has happened literally one time in the history of the nation and might not have without tapes. relying on the constitution at this point to disperse justice with things like this is a fool's errand, and in an optimal world this will put the nail in the coffin of people banking on just that.
That's not quite correct - there's a great list here of every investigation the House is currently pursuing.
The Mueller investigation had a relatively limited brief concerning Russian election interference as much as Trump himself, but the House committees are looking into a variety of other avenues. There are clear abuses of power in violation of law, like the emergency powers misuse and immigrant family separation policy, likely tax fraud, and other probable "high crimes and misdemeanors".
Public polling is already in favor of impeachment, it's just a matter of convincing the Republican Party that this will be the end of their reign (let alone the Constitutional republic) if they don't cooperate.
yes, except almost all of those are contingent on impeachment to have actual, serious recourse for donald. his personal problems law-wise are almost entirely at the state level now, not the federal level, because impeachment is a dead end.
public polling means literally nothing, lol. you are never going to get even a small portion of republicans to agree to impeach donald trump when they have practically bent over backwards to accommodate him, much less in the numbers needed to begin serious impeachment proceedings. ten of them broke ranks to vote for ending the war on yemen. ten. on a far less serious issue than impeachment, which has broadly bipartisan support, for a total of 57 votes in the senate. you need 67 people in the senate to impeach. there is no chance of impeachment. none. literally none. it is a sub-zero chance. you can try all you want to convince them. it will never work.
It doesn't take the Senate to bring impeachment proceedings. Even if the Senate fails to vote for impeachment in sufficient numbers, the effort is worthwhile to publicize what the rule of law looks like.
Strategically, as the Republicans are very well aware, investigations and impeachment slow the proceedings on new legislation, tie up the Administration's resources, and help prevent abuses of power from passing beneath notice.
Maintaining the drumbeat news of Trump's criminality and corruption is essential to defeating him in 2020, but the Democratic Party is crap at narrative.
it's really not. what kind of politician is going to give a shit what the rule of law "looks like" if they know partisan politics means that when push comes to shove, any misconduct they have with no smoking gun is likely to end indecisively and leave them in a position of power because nobody can remove them? moreover, why should we uphold a clearly broken rule of law? if donald can't be held to account in the confines of the rules that exist, what the fuck is the point of going through the motions for a doomed effort? why would it not be a better idea to tear down the system and make it so that people have to be held accountable instead of validating the system that allows people to stonewall indefinitely because the current rule of law never bothered to consider the possibility of partisan politics? playing ball in the current status quo is stupid, because the current status quo is broken and in any case impeachment is probably as likely to backfire on the democrats and be a quixotic exercise as it is to "uphold the rule of law".
"Tear down the system" is not, and has never been, a satisfactory patch for a broken set of rules.
Do you think there's no value in using the parts which do work to gain leverage and build momentum for change?
there is literally no value in doing that here, no. you're literally just upholding the system which causes the very problem which makes donald unaccountable at the federal level, and for absolutely no payoff because impeachment will never happen. again, playing ball in the current status quo is stupid, because the current status quo is broken in a system of partisan politics. the only way the "rule of law" will ever be upheld in a way that keeps people accountable is if people stop acting like the current system does that and work to create alternatives to it that actually can and aren't contingent on a series of extremely unlikely events.
Given that this is a presser at the DoJ and that the White House was given a heads up last night, I don't expect this to be much of game changer. In all likelihood he will not contradict Barr while standing on his turf. I expect a statement reiterating the key findings of the report, and perhaps emphasizing his reasoning for not recommending charges re: obstruction.
Trump isn't going to be impeached. Democrats will never get the votes in the senate for it. I'm sure we would learn a great deal if impeachment proceedings were to begin, and I think it's likely that there would be enough to impeach Trump even for Republicans with a healthy dose of skepticism... but they won't do it. If they impeach their own president, then they ruin their party for years to come. It's become so easy to just wave away any facts or news you don't like at this point, so they'll probably keep the majority of their base even if impeachment proceedings show a great deal of wrongdoing (which I firmly believe there is).
I think the Democrats know that even if they have a bulletproof case for impeachment, there's still a significant chance that it blows up in their faces. They're stuck between a rock and a hard place, and I don't really know what their best course of action is besides keeping this alive just enough to save face for not being able to impeach the person many of their constituents want gone. Gathering political ammunition is probably the best course of action. Honestly, I think they should settle down on a lot of this and start to bring it up more once elections start to come around. So much seems to happen that it's difficult to have a memory that lasts more than a couple of months, and exhausting the rhetoric now is going to leave them a step behind come election season. I don't care for Biden, but I'm hoping the DNC chooses a reasonably moderate candidate because Trump may win again if they put up someone too progressive.
seems like you accidentally made a top level comment instead of replying directly to @The_Fad.
That's... pretty damning, given Mueller's scrupulously careful approach to all of this.
Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding: The main draw at this point for getting Mueller to testify publicly is so that citizens who aren't going to read the report can instead hear it straight from the horse's mouth. If Mueller does testify, he has confirmed he will only say what is already written in his report, meaning the redacted portions likely will not be made public because as a private citizen he has no authority to unredact this info, and as the head of the special counsel office he would have a vested interest in keeping those sections redacted for legal reasons.
Given that the average citizen probably won't watch a congressional testimony any more than they'd read the report itself, who specifically does his congressional testimony benefit?