Sen. Mazie Hirono said Tuesday that her personal experience at the Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection will inform her decision-making as she takes in the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump.
“Well, frankly, all of us were witnesses to the horrific events of Jan. 6, so I don’t have very many questions,” Hirono (D-Hawaii) said in a CNN interview Tuesday morning. “I think the house managers will bring all of the information and evidence and remind us of the kind of chaos and harm that happened on Jan. 6.”
Trump will face a historic second impeachment trial beginning on Tuesday on a single article of inciting the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. Trump, who delivered an incendiary speech to his supporters hours before the riot, has denied any culpability and his legal team has argued that the impeachment trial is unconstitutional because he is no longer in office.
Before Trump’s first impeachment trial, Hirono said relevant witnesses and documents were needed for a fair trial. She said Tuesday that would not be needed for this week’s trial.
“The evidence in this trial is very different than the first impeachment trial,” she said.
Still, Hirono said if house managers want witnesses in this trial, she will vote for witnesses to be called. She said there are some relevant witnesses who could contribute to the trial, like Capitol police, but she does not believe it would be necessary.
Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, along with Ben Sasse of Nebraska, perhaps the sharpest members of the Senate, doubts the Senate will convict the immediately former president of “incitement of insurrection”, regardless of any evidence pro or con.
Toomey Speaks Out
FNC:
“Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., who has been a top critic of former President Trump and called for him to resign after last month’s riot at the Capitol, said in an interview Sunday that it is unlikely that the Senate will vote for a conviction on the one count of ‘incitement of insurrection.’
The 50-50 Senate is preparing for another trial that many Republicans say will serve no purpose other than to fuel the divide the country. They say Democrats want nothing more than to score political points with the trial and get one last parting shot in against Trump.”
“You did have 45 Republican senators vote to suggest that they didn’t think it was appropriate to conduct a trial, so you can infer how likely it is that those folks will vote to convict,” Toomey told press.
Toomey is correct. The trial is a sham, a waste of time, meaningless Democrat show and tell with a preordained win for the immediately former president.
As such, in related news, Michigan State Professor Brian Kalt wonders why the Trump defense team took one of his articles out of context. With a slam dunk win coming up, why the stretch?
“The article favored late impeachability, but it set out all the evidence I found on both sides–lots for them to use,” Kalt said. “But in several places, they misrepresent what I wrote quite badly.”
A “more problematic thing” he noticed, was that “they suggest that I was endorsing an argument when what I actually did was note that argument — and reject it.”
“When a President is no longer in office, the objective of an impeachment ceases,” a Trump memo said, citing page 66 of Kalt’s article.
But Kalt posted a screenshot of pages 66 and 67.
He says that this argument “has textual appeal” and “an admitted degree coherence,” citing Article II Section 4 of the Constitution, which refers to the removal of the “President, Vice President and all civil Officers[.]” He said that by mentioning “Officers,” this would seem not to apply to former officers.
“Late impeachment, so the argument goes, which is also not self-evident,” the footnote continues, “would have also required specification if the Framers wished to include it as a possibility.” Kalt then cites page 37 of the article, showing some states discuss late impeachment in their constitutions.
“Citing me that way, they make it sound like I was making that argument. But I wasn’t,” Kalt continued. “On page 37, I raise that argument as something a critic might say, and then I refute it…”
“A critic of late impeachment could argue that things like two-thirds majority requirements are not self-evident, and therefore require specification; and that late impeachment is similarly counterintuitive…” Kalt added. “Therefore, allowing late impeachment is the self-evident proposition, not the counterintuitive one, and failure to explicitly bar it while specifying other limitations on the impeachment power is a telling omission.”
This piece was written by David Kamioner on February 8, 2021. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.
‣ Education Secretary's #1 Priority: Protect Kids from Grizzlies
‣ Brits Unanimous: Brexit Rocks!
‣ Judge Approves Woman's Request to Vacation in Bahamas After Storming U.S. Capitol
That last headline, of course, is totally bogus. The judge approved her request to vacationin Mexico after she stormed the Capitol. Like a judge would ever let an insurrectionist traitor vacation in the Bahamas. Jeez.
And now, our feature presentation...
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Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, February 9, 2021
Note: Don’t forget to catch Lou Dobbs on the Fox Business Channel tonight at never o’clock. Sponsored by: absolutely no one.
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By the Numbers:
3 days!!!
Days 'til the start of the Chinese New Year (of the ox): 3
President Biden's approval rating in his first post-inauguration Gallup poll: 57%
Joe's approval among women and men in the Gallup poll, respectively: 63%, 52%
Percent of Americans polled by Quinnipiac University whothink social media sites should be held accountable for the spread of disinformation (deliberately-deceptive information): 74%
Number of jobs added in January: 49,000
Year economic growth is expected to return to pre-pandemic levels, according to the Congressional Budget Office, which did not include the $1.9 trillion stimulus in its estimate: 2022
Expected GDP growth this year, according to CBO: 3.7%
CHEERS to gavels at dawn. Oh, Stanley! The impeachment trial starts today and I haven't a thing to wear! You simply must drive me to Saks so I can pick out a splendid ensemble that says "This is all so exciting" with an unmistakable subtext that screams, "Not with my democracy, you don't, Misssster Trump! [Slap! Slap!]" Now, I wish to have a Guardian explainer. Jeeves, where is my Guardian explainer?
Donald Trump’s unprecedented second impeachment trial begins on Tuesday 9 February in the Senate. He is the first US president to be impeached twice, and it is the first time an impeachment trial has been held against a former president. The trial will hear allegations that he committed “high crimes and misdemeanors” before leaving office.
Jan. 6: The inciter incites.
What is Trump charged with?
On 13 January, the US House of Representatives voted by 232 to 197 to impeach Trump over “incitement of insurrection” after his supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn November’s election result. 10 Republican representatives voted to impeach him, making it the most bipartisan presidential impeachment in US history.
Now the only question is, what goes best with chiffon: my pearl "F*ck Trump" necklace, or my diamond "Writhe In Agony, Traitor" brooch. Silly me. Of course—both.
JEERS to superspreading for sport. In exactly—[Checks watch]—12 days we'll start to see the appearance of the "Super Bowl Party Bump," as thousands of football fans and their kin start testing positive for Covid-19. But at least we have competence at the top now, so it'll be handled better than, say, the Thanksgiving Bump or the Christmas Bump or the New Year's Bump. Worldwide there are now over 107 millioncases—over a quarter of them in the U.S. Here are this week's domestic numbers for the C&J historical record, courtesy of the most depressing tote board in the world, as our death toll now exceeds the population of America’s 41st-largest city Raleigh, North Carolina:
6 months ago: 5.2 million confirmed cases. 165,000 deaths.
3 months ago: 10.3 million confirmed cases. 245,000 deaths
President Biden has vowed to stop orange construction cones from cutting in line for the vaccine.
1 month ago: 23 million confirmed cases. 382,000 deaths
This morning: 28 million confirmed cases. 475,000 deaths
Also for the historical record: the Buccaneers beat the Chiefs 31 to 9 at the Super Bowl. Hope it was worth it, all you fans now headed to the ICU for the Please God Let Me Live Bowl.
CHEERS to Tippeca...ca...cachoo! Happy 248th birthday to "#9" William Henry "Tippecanoe" Harrison. During his nearly two-hour inaugural address (sans overcoat), he pledged not to run for a second term and, in one of the fastest fulfillments of a campaign promise ever, caught pneumonia and died 32 days later, but not before being plied with enough ipecac, opium, castor oil, calomel, camphor and brandy to kill a small army. But he did have a lasting effect on our electoral process. From Secret Lives of theU.S.Presidents by Cormac O'Brien:
[I]f Harrison was no dream candidate, his campaign for president was one of the most important in American history.
The Whigs under Harrison brought the par-tay to American politics.
Before 1840, active campaigning for office was considered about as crass as writing a blurb for your own book. Candidates were supposed to maintain an air of ambivalence while others did their stumping for them. Harrison changed all that by personally jumping into the fray with earnest, smiling enthusiasm, and his Whig party cohorts turned the campaign into a circus.
They dismissed opponent Martin Van Buren as a snob and a dandy, claiming their boy Harrison was the real man of the people. There were parties, bands, garish banners. It worked.
The Whigs only fielded two winning candidates (Zachary Taylor was the other), and neither could finish their first term without a visit from the grim reaper. But, hey—great parties.
CHEERS to the right team at the right place at the right time. As in 1933 and 2009, America finds itself with a Democratic president following a Republican president who let the economy turn into a dumpster fire and then ignored it. But like FDR and BHO, competence and hard work will pull us out of our tailspin and get things back to some semblance of normalcy. Or at least it will if history is any guide. From The New York Times, via their morning email:
The economy has fared far better under Democrats. The gap, as one academic paper puts it, is “startlingly large.” Here are the headline numbers.
Note where Biden’s predecessor falls:
The gap exists not only for G.D.P. and jobs but also for incomes, productivity and stock prices. The gap also exists if you assume that a president’s policies affect the economy with a lag and don’t start his economic clock until months after he takes office. Virtually any reasonable look at the data shows a big Democratic advantage.
As if to illustrate why, Democrats in Congress are forging ahead with a massive $1.9 trillion Covid relief package that will finally be enough to rise to the occasion and make a real difference in both people's lives and the economy. I know this for a fact because Republicans keep telling me it won't be enough to rise to the occasion and make a real difference in both people's lives and the economy.
CHEERS to the meteorologee-whiz kids. As Maine finally enters a snowy spell during the winter of aught twenty/aught twenty-one, we note that today is the 151st birthday of that dastardly socialist entity foisted on the nation by President Grant known as the National Weather Service. It's mission: to provide...
"...weather, hydrologic, and climate forecasts and warnings for the United States, its territories, adjacent waters and ocean areas, for the protection of life and property and the enhancement of the national economy.
Sorry, heartland. God gonna spill some blueberry jam on y’all today.
NWS data and products form a national information database and infrastructure which can be used by other governmental agencies, the private sector, the public, and the global community."
Today President Biden will mark the NWS’s anniversary in a seemingly contradictory way—by not marking on their meticulous weather maps with a Sharpie.
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Ten years ago in C&J: February 9, 2011
CHEERS to Supertrains! I've never ridden on high-speed rail, have you? I mean, I've taken trains and I love 'em at any speed, but the difference between the conventional and high-speed variety must be like the difference between, say, something that goes relatively slowly and something that goes much faster than the slower thing. So I welcome the news delivered by Vice President Joe Biden yesterday that the White House is pushing...
...a comprehensive plan to help the nation reach President Obama’s goal of giving 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail within 25 years. The President is proposing to invest $53 billion over the next six years to continue construction of a national high-speed and intercity passenger rail network, which will create tens of thousands of private-sector jobs while helping to lay a new foundation for our economy.
Not to be outdone, Republicans say they have an idea of their own that will overhaul our transportation system while remaining true to their conservative values: high-speed wagon trains. [2/9/21 Update: Didn’t quite pan out. Maybe President Biden will have better luck.]
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And just one more…
CHEERS to 1/300th notes. On this date in 1992, Thomas Scholl of Germany became the fastest yodeler alive, delivering 22 tones—15 of them falsettos—in 1 second. (To put that in perspective, that’s almost as fast as it takes a consumer to realize that buying a MyPillow was a terrible, terrible purchasing decision.) Here he is in action:
