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The preliminary tapdancing is done on Capitol Hill. The give-and-take between the impeachment managers is complete. The question-and-answer portion is behind us. The argument for new witnesses is all but off the table. The next bona fide step in the process to impeach President Trump should be for the U.S. Senate to vote – up or down – to convict him or not on two of the thinnest of charges.
Election interference? Nah. Campaign interference, perhaps – but that’s not an impeachable act. It’s an ethical violation at most. Trump didn’t infect the computers of the poll workers with a pro-MAGA virus. He didn’t sabotage any voting machines. He didn’t discard any vote counts favoring his opponent. So, how did he interfere?
OK, he encouraged the newly elected leader of Ukraine to continue pursuing an investigation into the possibility of crimes committed by former Vice President Joe Biden and/or his son, Hunter. The alleged victims were the people of Ukraine as well as U.S. taxpayers. Plenty of “insider” activity existed to raise suspicion – just read the chapter on the Bidens in New York Times investigative reporter Peter Schweizer’s well-documented book “Profiles in Corruption.”
But, bottom line: Trump wasn’t targeting a political opponent; he was zeroing in on a family of suspects who were part of offshore, billion-dollar moneymaking schemes involving billions of U.S. tax dollars. The fact that Joe Biden was a presidential candidate was incidental, at best. Had there been a case for election interference, isn’t it reasonable to conclude that a candidate more politically formidable than sad sack Joe would have been targeted?
Over the past week the impeachment managers also have made a big deal out of Trump’s willingness to listen to any evidence (aka “dirt”) against Joe “Teflon Don” Biden – the kind of action that’s part and partial to election interference, they claimed. Sorry, leftists. Trump was well within his rights. If you believe in the sanctity of free speech protected under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, then you must know that the flip side of that is the freedom to listen – and it matters not whether the talked is either foreign or domestic.
Obstruction of Congress? In the case of the majority Democrats in the U.S. House, we’ve got an indisputable case of the pot calling the kettle black. Is not this entire political impeachment farce simply Congress, specifically the House Democrats, obstructing the duly-elected president in his effort to carry out the business of the citizens of the USA?
Final thought: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., keeps banging her low heels on the desk about the oversight role of the House. No one questions the House’s authority to do so. As she has said repeatedly: No one is above the law. (Perhaps Pelosi should look into the mirror the next time she proclaims that.)
But then, you’ve got to ask: Who has oversight over the U.S. House of Representatives? And the U.S. Senate, for that matter? The answer: We do – the USA’s legal and legitimate voters.
It’s high time for the law-abiding voters in the land of the free to express their constitutional oversight authority and properly overhaul Congress. We need public servants on Capitol Hill who will focus on life-changing issues, their own excessive compensation, and the needs of the electorate, not on personalities. As New York Yankees fans have believed for years: Let’s keep the good players on the field, and throw the bums out!