January 21, 2020 — Scott Johnson
The trial of President Trump in the Senate on the impeachment articles preferred by the House is scheduled to begin this afternoon. Piercing the rhetorical fog, we observe that this is the Seinfeld impeachment. If the farce isn’t quite about nothing, it is the farce in which nothing happened. Adam Schiff and Jerold Nadler lead the House impeachment managers. Each in his own way gives us the impeachment case in
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January 20, 2020 — Scott Johnson
President Trump filed his 110-page impeachment trial brief with the Senate today. The Wall Street Journal has linked to the brief in its article on it and also posted it online here. I have uploaded the document to Scribd and embedded it below. The trial brief was anticipated in Trump’s Answer to the impeachment articles filed in the Senate late last week. I posted the Answer in “Trump responds, harsh
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January 20, 2020 — Scott Johnson
David Kris is the amicus curiae appointed by the FISA court to assess the Department of Justice/FBI response to the court’s post-Horowitz order on FISA abuse. The FISA court itself stands revealed as an accomplice of the FBI in the wrongdoing committed against Carter Page. What we have here is an infuriating case of Kabuki theater. What is to be done with the FISA court? It is difficult to imagine
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January 20, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Over the weekend the Wall Street Journal carried Mene Ukueberuwa’s excellent column “Boomer Socialism Led to Bernie Sanders.” Subhead: “Government policies limit millennials’ prosperity, Harvard economist Edward Glaeser argues. Will they realize more of the same isn’t the answer?” The column gives a glimpse into the argument advanced by Professor Glaeser in his 2019 Manhattan Institute James Q. Wilson Lecture this past September: “The Entrenched vs. The Newcomers.” The Manhattan
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January 20, 2020 — Scott Johnson
When Martin Luther King, Jr., brought his nonviolent campaign against segregation to Bull Connor’s Birmingham, he laid siege to the bastion of Jim Crow. In Birmingham between 1957 and 1962, black homes and churches had been subjected to a series of horrific bombings intended to terrorize the community. In April 1963 King answered the call to bring his campaign to Birmingham. When King landed in jail on Good Friday for
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January 19, 2020 — Scott Johnson
President Trump has filed a short but sweet six-page Answer to the two articles of impeachment forwarded by the House to the Senate last week. I have embedded a PDF of the Answer below. Trump’s brief is to follow tomorrow. The House impeachment managers filed their 111-page brief last week. It is accessible online here. As Politico put it, the House brief “featured a slate of evidence that has emerged
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January 19, 2020 — Scott Johnson
The Dems have no shame in pursuing a fraudulent case for impeachment fraudulently. No shame at all. I thought they had reached the limit in justifying their haste in the House proceedings by the alleged emergency presented by President Trump, and then sitting on the articles of impeachment for a month for some ulterior purpose. That was not the limit. After Speaker Nancy Pelosi proclaimed the solemn and prayerful nature
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January 18, 2020 — Scott Johnson
According to Politico, the “bombshells” keep falling in the impeachment farce, this time courtesy of the indicted Lev Parnas. Bombshells “keep falling on my head/And just like the guy whose feet are too big for his bed/Nothing seems to fit.” How come all the things that Parnas asserts “had to happen” didn’t have to happen before the aid flowed? Oh, well. What we seem to have here, beginning with the
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January 17, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Today comes the news that President Trump is adding Judge Kenneth Starr and Professor Alan Dershowitz to his defense team in the Senate impeachment trial. Both men are greatly to be admired. Judge Starr is the distinguished former appellate judge, special prosecutor, and recent author of the excellent impeachment memoir Contempt. Professor Dershowitz is a man of high principle who has shed many old friends in his defense of free
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January 17, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Former federal prosecutor George Parry takes up the question presented by the FISA court in the American Spectator column “The Potemkin court.” The column covers the same ground and arrives at the same destination as my previous posts on the FISA court’s appointment of one David Kris to serve as amicus curiae in the wake of the Department of Justice Inspector General report on the FBI’s FISA abuse and the
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January 17, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Minnesota state representative Steve Drazkowski is the gentleman who filed the complaint against Ilhan Omar with the state campaign finance board. The board found Omar responsible for numerous infractions and released its investigative file early this past June. Thanks to the board investigation, we learned that Omar filed joint tax returns with Ahmed Hirsi (to whom she was not married) while she was “legally” married to her brother, Ahmed Nur
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January 17, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Ammo Grrrll calls out DEAD-NAMING! THE WORST THING THERE EVER WAS! She writes: If you live long enough, you will have the chance to hear astonishing things. Often, twice. Ideas cycle around like fashions. What was passe becomes “retro” and comes around again a couple of decades later. Hemlines go up and down. I remember when the fashion industry went to mid-calf and maxi dresses to FORCE fashionistas to purchase
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January 16, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Yesterday CNN released audio of the exchange between Senators Warren and Sanders following the Democratic presidential candidates’ pre-impeachment debate on Tuesday night (video below). CNN reports the exchange as follows: “I think you called me a liar on national TV,” Warren can be heard saying. “What?” Sanders responded. “I think you called me a liar on national TV,” she repeated. “You know, let’s not do it right now. If you
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January 16, 2020 — Scott Johnson
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats celebrated the passage of impeachment articles against President Trump yesterday. Pelosi and the Democrats could barely contain themselves. Among the celebratory events was a ceremonial “engrossment” of the articles (video below). The engrossment — it was gross. Pelosi signed the articles at the engrossment as though the signing represented an epochal achievement along the lines of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, with
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January 16, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Pelosi treated impeachment as a major accomplishment, yet it is a disgrace representing the cheapening and degradation of an awesome constitutional power. Pelosi’s remarks naming the House impeachment managers were weird beyond belief (video below). “Listen, my children, and you shall hear,” Pelosi’s deep thoughts on…time: This is a very important day for us. As you know I referenced temporal markers that our founders and our poets and others have
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January 15, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Rep. Brian Mast is a double amputee courtesy of the munitions disseminated by Qassem Soleimani in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. (Rep. Mast himself sustained his injuries in Afghanistan.) We posted Rep. Mast’s remarks condemning his Democratic colleagues on the floor of the House last week in “Brian Mast speaks.” Rep. Mast followed up his remarks on the House floor in the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing yesterday (video below, C-SPAN
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January 15, 2020 — Scott Johnson
With sentencing scheduled on January 28 and the government asking for imposition of a sentence from 0 to six months, Michael Flynn has filed a motion to withdraw his guilty plea (motion embedded below). Politico’s Josh Gerstein has an excellent story on the motion and pulls this quote from it: “The government’s stunning and vindictive reversal of its earlier representations to this Court are incredible, vindictive, in bad faith, and
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