yallerdawg
yallerdawg's JournalThe Founding Fathers designed impeachment for someone exactly like Donald Trump
Source: Washington Post, by Barbara Radnofsky
Their writings and debates surrounding the creation of the Constitution make clear that the framers feared a certain kind of character coming to power and usurping the republican ideal of their new nation. Having just defeated a tyrant — “Mad” King George III of England — they carefully crafted rules to remove such a character: impeachment. In the process, they revealed precisely the kind of corrupt, venal, inattentive and impulsive character they were worried about.
The very embodiment of what the Founding Fathers feared is now residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Again and again, they anticipated attributes and behaviors that President Trump exhibits on an all-too-regular basis. By describing “High Crimes and Misdemeanors,” the grounds for impeachment, as any act that poses a significant threat to society — either through incompetence or other misdeeds — the framers made it clear that an official does not have to commit a crime to be subject to impeachment. Instead, they made impeachment a political process, understanding that the true threat to the republic was not criminality but unfitness, that a president who violated the country’s norms and values was as much a threat as one who broke its laws.
Gouverneur Morris, who wrote the Constitution’s preamble, and future president James Madison were worried about a leader who would “pervert his administration into a scheme of peculation” — theft of public funds — “or oppression. He might betray his trust to foreign powers,” as Madison put it. Morris, who like many in the colonies believed King Charles had taken bribes from Louis XIV to support France’s war against the Dutch, declared that without impeachment we “expose ourselves to the danger of seeing the first Magistrate [the President] in foreign pay without being able to guard against it by displacing him.”
Trump’s many ties to Russia spring immediately to mind, of course. What’s provable so far — denying electoral harm perpetrated by Russian actors, hiding his efforts to conduct business in Moscow during his 2016 campaign, leaking state secrets to the Russian ambassador at a White House meeting, numerous contacts between his top staff and family and Russian agents — resonates deeply with this core concern expressed by the Founding Fathers.
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Read the rest at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2017/10/15/the-founding-fathers-designed-impeachment-for-someone-exactly-like-donald-trump/
President Trump admits he's trying to kill Obamacare. That's illegal.
Source: CNBC, by Abbe Gluck
Modern American history has never seen as full-scale an effort to sabotage a valid law as we have with President Trump and the Affordable Care Act — a law whose legality has been upheld twice by the US Supreme Court.
The president has a legal obligation, under Article II of the US Constitution, to "take Care that the laws be faithfully executed." That means he must make sure that our laws are implemented in good faith and that he uses his executive discretion reasonably toward that end.
His agencies likewise have a legal obligation, under the Administrative Procedure Act — the statute that sets the rules for our entire federal regulatory apparatus — not to use their power to engage in arbitrary action.
The intentional, multi-pronged sabotage of the ACA that we have seen over the past nine months — reaching new heights since attempts by Congress to repeal the law failed — violates both Trump's constitutional obligations and quite possibly the obligations of his Department of Health and Human Services.
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Read the rest at: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/17/president-trump-trying-to-kill-obamacare-illegal-commentary.html
Why big business is not backing Roy Moore
Source: al.com, by John Sharp
In an email to AL.com Tuesday, Scott Reed, the senior political strategist with the national chamber, said the group plans to "spend the next 60 days working on job growth initiatives and tax reform."
"We have a process for non-incumbent races and plan to follow it in Alabama," Reed said in an email. "A candidates' stated priorities and positions on economic issues have great weight with the U.S.C.C. and the Alabama business community."
"The Alabama trial lawyers and the 85 percent of eligible Alabama voters that did not vote gave us Roy Moore," Reed said.
But - and it's a BIG but -
"If they think he is really threatened, they will retrieve their checkbooks on his behalf to salvage a Republican vote in D.C.," Brown said.
Read it all at: http://www.al.com/news/mobile/index.ssf/2017/10/why_big_business_is_not_backin.html#incart_river_home
Does "stealing" an election involve some degree of secrecy?
Could we reverse a hacked presidential election?
The Constitution provides no clear answer — and we need a solution.Source: Vox, by Vinay Nayak and Samuel Breidbart
What would happen if we discovered that Russians hacked into the results of the 2016 presidential election and tipped the outcome in favor of Donald Trump — literally changed the vote totals?
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One tool to resolve a hacked election is that old, most vilified institution: the Electoral College. While many see the Electoral College as archaic and inherently undemocratic, the very mechanism that allows electors to deviate from the popular vote may be the simplest way to reverse an undemocratic election result. If notified of the outcome-altering interference in time, the electors could mitigate the damage by selecting a different candidate.
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Does a president who unknowingly benefits from illegal hacking commit a high crime or misdemeanor? That’s far from clear. Is a president who is healthy and competent, but illegitimately elected, unfit to discharge the powers and duties of his office? To some degree that’s for Congress for decide, and the Supreme Court might defer to legislators who conclude that a president is unfit to serve. But the answer to that question, too, is ambiguous.
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We should act before we find ourselves thrust into a constitutional crisis of historic dimensions. But any solution to this issue — most likely in the form of a constitutional amendment — would require bipartisanship in a time of unprecedented polarization. If recent history is any indicator, the Republican-controlled Congress (and Republican-controlled state legislatures) will be unwilling to work with Democrats to remedy this constitutional defect.
In the meantime, our Constitution leaves us powerless to protect against those waiting for the right moment to subvert our electoral system, assuming they have not already done so.
Read it all at: https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/10/12/16463770/hacked-election-constitution-election
"Unknowingly."
Clemson, Washington State, Auburn: "ROLL TIDE!"
Golfer-In-Chief: Trump Has Now Spent 27% Of His Presidency On A Golf Course
While millions of Americans from Puerto Rico to California "burn" the Dotard "fiddles.Source: PoliticusUSA, by Sean Colarossi
According to pool reports, for the second weekend in a row, Donald Trump departed the White House on Saturday morning to take another taxpayer-funded trip to his golf club in Sterling, Virginia.
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The report also added that Trump’s new best friend, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, was also accompanying the president – after the GOP senator lied this week about Trump shooting 73 “in windy and wet conditions.”
As the NBC News tracker calculates, Trump’s latest visit to his club in Virginia marks the 72nd day of his presidency he is spending on a golf course and the 92nd time day he is visiting one of his own properties. In total, Trump has been in office for 267 days.
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According to some quick, back-of-the-napkin math, that means that Trump has spent 27 percent of his presidency golfing and more than a third at one of his ritzy properties.
Meanwhile, millions of Americans are now at risk of seeing their health care obliterated, Puerto Rico continues to recover from a devastating storm, the Iran nuclear agreement has been abandoned by the U.S., California wildfires are still raging – and, by the way, there have been no steps taken by the White House or Congress to prevent another Las Vegas-style mass shooting from happening again.
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Read it all at: http://www.politicususa.com/2017/10/14/golfer-in-chief-trump-spent-27-presidency-golf.html
"Pucker up, America!"
Meet Doug Jones for US Senate. Democrat Doug Jones!
Abortion clearly a 'difficult issue' for Alabama Democrats as Doug Jones pushes pro-choice stance
Can we overcome THIS? If Doug Jones is our next US Senator from Alabama, THIS changes EVERYTHING!Source: al.com, by John Sharp
"The fact that Democrats put so much emphasis on abortion has to be one of the worst branding mistakes in the last 50 years," he said.
Read it all at: http://www.al.com/news/mobile/index.ssf/2017/10/post_114.html#incart_river_home?li_source=base&li_medium=default-widget
"Mr. Robot" 3.0, Wednesday, Oct 11, 10:00-9:00 CT
Where to next?
If reality truly is "in our heads" and we have "unreliable narrators" (see Season 2.0 and 2016 presidential election), where IS the "undo button?" 
Talking about mental health after mass shootings is a cop-out
Source: WaPo, Fareed!
“He was a sick man, a demented man,” said President Trump, trying to explain the latest mass shooting in the United States. We hear this view expressed routinely, after every new incident. But it is a dodge, a distortion of the facts and a cop-out as to the necessary response.
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Actually, the quick assumption of mental illness distorts the discussion. First, it smears people who do have mental disorders. Such people are not inherently highly prone to violence. They are more often victims of violence than perpetrators. And to the extent that some are violent, they are more likely to inflict harm on themselves. Mental-health issues are correlated to suicides far more closely than they are to homicides.
Second, turning immediately to the “sickness” of the shooter and piously calling for better mental-health care is, more often than not, an attempt to divert attention from the main issue: guns. (It’s also breathtakingly cynical because the politicians who use this rhetoric are typically the ones who also aim to cut funding for mental-health treatment.) Every conversation about gun deaths should begin by recognizing one blindingly clear fact about this problem — the United States is on its own planet. The gun-related death rate in the United States is 10 times that of other advanced industrial countries. Places such as Japan and South Korea have close to zero gun-related deaths in a year. The United States has around 30,000.
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Given the Second Amendment, America’s gun culture and the influence of the gun lobby, there isn’t any simple answer. But there are many small fixes that would make a big difference: universal background checks; restrictions on military-style weaponry (of which banning bump stocks would be a tiny first step); a ban on selling to people with a history of domestic violence or substance abuse. But first we have to stop the dodges and the diversions. When you consider America’s stubborn inaction in the face of this continuing and preventable epidemic of gun violence — I sometimes wonder if it is all of us Americans who are crazy.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/talking-about-mental-health-after-mass-shootings-is-a-cop-out/2017/10/05/8c319ca4-aa13-11e7-850e-2bdd1236be5d_story.html
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