{"id":177296,"date":"2019-10-29T18:51:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-29T23:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/10\/29\/mixed-emotions-3\/"},"modified":"2019-10-29T18:51:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-29T23:51:00","slug":"mixed-emotions-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/10\/29\/mixed-emotions-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Mixed Emotions"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>The Democrats are now going to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/powerpost\/democrats-unveil-procedures-for-trumps-impeachment-inquiry-rebutting-gop-attacks\/2019\/10\/29\/a08130b4-fa72-11e9-8190-6be4deb56e01_story.html\">have a formal vote in the House on initiating an impeachment investigation<\/a>.<\/div>\n<p>While making it official will remove a (clearly unconstitutional and corrupt) justification for Federalist Society hacks to rule against Congressional subpoenas, it also appears that this is an artifact of the permanent Democratic permanent protective crouch, because they have responded to Republicans saying mean things about them.<\/p>\n<p>F%$# the Republicans with Cheney&#8217;s dick:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">House Democrats unveiled new procedures for the impeachment inquiry of President Trump on Tuesday, responding to Republican demands for due process by setting out rules for future public hearings delving into whether Trump should be removed from office.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The resolution backed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) hands the lead role to the House Intelligence Committee and its chairman, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), who would have broad latitude to organize extended questioning of potential public witnesses. Two other committees that have so far participated in the closed-door investigation into Trump\u2019s dealings with Ukraine \u2014 Foreign Affairs and Oversight and Reform \u2014 would not be permitted to directly participate in the open proceedings under the legislation.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">It also sets out for the first time the ability of House Republicans to make their own requests for testimony and documents, though those requests will be subject to a vote of the Democratic-majority committee \u2014 a practice that matches the minority powers in the 1998 impeachment of President Bill Clinton.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I expect Republicans will continue to make Democrats jump through hoops, because, after all, this is what they do.<\/p>\n<p>In less ambiguous news, a new witness has emerged, whose <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/10\/29\/us\/politics\/alexander-vindman-trump-ukraine.html\">testimony strongly implies that the so-called transcript of Trump&#8217;s call to the Ukraine was altered to cover up evidence of attempted extortion<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman, the top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council, told House impeachment investigators on Tuesday that the White House transcript of a July call between President Trump and Ukraine\u2019s president omitted crucial words and phrases, and that his attempts to include them failed, according to three people familiar with the testimony. <\/p>\n<p>The omissions, Colonel Vindman said, included Mr. Trump\u2019s assertion that there were recordings of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. discussing Ukraine corruption, and an explicit mention by Ukraine\u2019s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, of Burisma Holdings, the energy company whose board employed Mr. Biden\u2019s son Hunter. <\/p>\n<p>Colonel Vindman, who appeared on Capitol Hill wearing his dark blue Army dress uniform and military medals, told House impeachment investigators that he tried to change the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2019\/09\/25\/us\/politics\/trump-ukraine-transcript.html?module=inline\">reconstructed transcript<\/a> made by the White House staff to reflect the omissions. But while some of his edits appeared to have been successful, he said, those two corrections were not made.<\/p>\n<p>Colonel Vindman did not testify to a motive behind the White House editing process. But his testimony is likely to drive investigators to ask further questions about how officials handled the call, including changes to the transcript and the decision to put it into the White House\u2019s most classified computer system \u2014 and whether those moves were meant to conceal the conversation\u2019s most controversial aspects.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Drip&nbsp; \u2026\u2026\u2026 drip&nbsp; \u2026\u2026\u2026 drip&nbsp; \u2026\u2026\u2026 drip&nbsp; \u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Democrats are now going to have a formal vote in the House on initiating an impeachment investigation. While making it official will remove a (clearly unconstitutional and corrupt) justification for Federalist Society hacks to rule against Congressional subpoenas, it also appears that this is an artifact of the permanent Democratic permanent protective crouch, because &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[368,573,394,441,560,374],"class_list":["post-177296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-corruption","tag-donald-trump","tag-foreign-relations","tag-former-soviet-union","tag-impeach","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177296"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177296\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}