So, I woke up this morning to this news…
The W.H. and Justice working hand and glove to prevent a matter of grave importance to National Security from reaching the responsible oversight committee in Congress.
Is that an Impeachable crime?
Turns out, yes, it is.
Just about anything can be:
“Impeachment, “the presentment of the most solemn grand inquest of the whole kingdom” had been in use from the earliest days of the English Constitution and government.
The terms “high crimes and misdemeanors,” in their natural sense, embrace a very large field of actions. They are broad enough to cover all criminal misconduct of the President, — all acts of commission or omission forbidden by the Constitution and the laws. To the word “misdemeanor,” indeed, is naturally attached a yet broader signification, which would embrace personal character and behavior as well as the proprieties of official conduct. Nor was, nor is, there any just reason why it should be restricted in this direction; for, in establishing a permanent national government, to insure purity and dignity, to secure the confidence of its own people and command the respect of foreign powers, it is not unfit that civil officers, and most especially the highest of all, the head of the people, should be answerable for personal demeanor.
The term “misdemeanor” was likewise used to designate all legal offences lower than felonies, — all the minor transgressions, all public wrongs, not felonious in character. The common law punished whatever acts were productive of disturbance to the public peace, or tended to incite to the commission of crime, or to injure the health or morals of the people, — such as profanity, drunkenness, challenging to fight, soliciting to the commission of crime, carrying infection through the streets, — an endless variety of offences.
These terms, when used to describe political offences, have a signification coextensive with, or rather analogous to, but yet more extensive than their legal acceptation; for, asJohn Quincy Adams said, “the Legislature was vested with power of impeaching and removing for trivial transgressions beneath the cognizance of the law.”
Intentionally mis-characterizing and withholding vital parts of the Mueller Report is not a trivial matter.
Giving Treasury cover to illegally refuse to release Trump’s taxes is not a trivial matter.
Refusing to respond to Congressional subpoenas is not a trivial matter.
Conspiring with the *Resident to cover up evidence of his treachery is not a trivial matter.
A long circuitous slog through the courts to the Supreme Court, which has been built to enable Republican malfeasance, is not the way to go.
Impeach Bill Barr with all due possible haste.
The Senate may not remove him, but that scarlet “I” will follow his name forever in our history books.
Impeachment is the only stricture that Democrats can employ on their own.
Use It!