Due Process Parody
We’re told the House Intelligence Committee impeachment hearing isn’t a legal proceeding. But it’s a political one and the rules of due process don’t seem to apply.
Due Process
With that in mind, here are a few of Chairman Schiff’s rules for the hearing:
No Trump lawyers or White House counsel are permitted.
Trump may not confront his accuser (the whistleblower). And the whistle blower won’t testify. That’s because Schiff says his testimony would be redundant and unnecessary .
Unlike Trump, apparently Hunter Biden is above the law and any investigation of him would be considered a sham. So Hunter won’t be testifying either.
And, finally, outing the whistleblower is strictly forbidden and will be be considered an ethics violation.
Why Not Let The Voters Decide?
The voters will decide in less than a year if Trump deserves to stick around the White House. So why the Democratic rush to impeach him now?
Well, they’ve been working on it since Trump was inaugurated. To quote the Whistleblower’s lawyer, Mark Zaid, from 2017, “The coup has begun” and “impeachment will follow ultimately.” Really.
Holman Jenkins in the WSJ (paywall protected) calls Trump a “gadfly president.” “But his actions have been extraordinarily consistent with his promises.”
Jenkins speculates Trump might have had enough by now and could be ready to wrap it up. But his opponents are so intent on “destroying him that he needs to hang on to the immunities and powers of the presidency simply to defend himself and the legitimacy of his 2016 victory.”
Hugs Not Stopping Bullets
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador won election on a campaign of retreat from the war on drug cartels. HIs campaign pitch was “hugs, not bullets:”
Stable Genius Meets Austere Religious Scholar
The Washington Post described Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as an “Austere Religious Scholar” in one much mocked headline. So they changed it. Several times.
Anyway it looks like the Very Stable Genius got the best of the Austere Religious Scholar.
Operation Kayla Mueller
Kayla Mueller grew up in Prescott, Arizona as a Christian committed to helping others. So she traveled the world doing just that. She landed in southern Turkey working with the Danish Refugee Council helping Syrian refugees. But in 2013 she made an unexpected visit to a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Aleppo, Syria.
Aleppo
Aleppo was ground zero in a war involving the Syrian government, Syrian rebels, Kurds, Russians, ISIS and Iraq. And it was no place for an idealistic 26 year old American woman. So the doctors sent Kayla back over the border. But, on the way, ISIS kidnapped her.
Eventually the self-proclaimed caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi “married” Kayla. Then the religious scholar proceeded to rape and torture her.
Her parents learned of Kayla’s death in 2015.
U.S. Special Forces hunted down Baghdadi and he paid for his brutality with his life. The U.S. Joint Chief of Staff named the operation in honor of Kayla.
