{"id":1780,"date":"2019-05-22T08:30:11","date_gmt":"2019-05-22T12:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/?p=1780"},"modified":"2019-05-22T08:30:18","modified_gmt":"2019-05-22T12:30:18","slug":"a-matter-of-noses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/index.php\/2019\/05\/22\/a-matter-of-noses\/","title":{"rendered":"A Matter of Noses"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A Matter of Noses<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Democrats in the House of Representatives are faced with a stark choice.  They can follow the politically expedient path:  keep questioning the Trump Presidency, but emphasize the other, more popular aspects of the Democratic Agenda.  This is the direction that Speaker Nancy Pelosi would like to follow.  She rightly sees all of the benefits:  it contrasts a Democratic platform of helping the working class, solving the insurance issue, and stepping back from brinksmanship on the Southern Border and the rest of the world; with the scattered and terrifying Trump approach. The Speaker sees that as the best plan to keep the House, gain the Senate, and win the Presidency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other option is to\u00a0proceed with impeachment proceedings, even though there is little chance that, no matter what is revealed, the Senate would ever even take up the matter, much less vote to remove the President.\u00a0\u00a0The \u201cnose count\u201d is simple:\u00a0\u00a0it requires twenty Republican Senators and all of the Democrats to agree to remove Mr. Trump.\u00a0\u00a0Impeaching the President would inevitably become the singular issue in the House of Representatives, and seems to be exactly what the Trump Administration wants.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe want to be investigated by someone who wants to kill us just to watch us die.  We need someone perceived by the American people to be irresponsible, untrustworthy, partisan, ambitious, and thirsty for the limelight.  Am I crazy, or is this not a job for the House of Representatives?\u201d (CJ Cregg in the television series, \u2013 The West Wing<\/a>\u2013 air date, October 24, 2001)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The President and his strategists must have watched a lot ofWest Wing <\/em>over the years; echoes of the show turn up in many of the White House actions (not that I would ever equate Trump with the fictional Josiah Bartlet.) They have reached the same political decision:  that the best move for them is to let the House of Representatives investigate, and even better, move to impeach the President.  The Trump \u201caura\u201d has always been that of a victim, treated unfairly first by the Republican Party, then by the media, then by the intelligence agencies, and now by the House.  What better  \u201cvictim\u201d image then to be impeached.  Trump will claim that the House is trying to overturn the \u201cwill of the voters,\u201d despite losing the election by over three million votes, and try to ride that victimhood to four more years of the Presidency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And he can make that look even better, by trying to stymie every move of the House to gather information.\u00a0Regardless of the law, the President has tried to prevent witnesses from testifying and House committees from gathering information.\u00a0\u00a0He has even claimed \u201cexecutive privilege\u201d over the redacted portions of the Mueller Report, and is actively preventing Mueller himself from testifying to the House Judiciary Committee.\u00a0 And if the Courts overrule him, then\u00a0Trump can claim to be a \u201cvictim\u201d and then show himself to his base as a winner, fighting the unrelenting \u201cliberals,\u201d the “Obama Courts” and the \u201cmedia.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With all of this, why would the House even consider the \u201cI-word\u201d impeachment?\u00a0\u00a0The answer is simple:\u00a0\u00a0duty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The House of Representatives, according to the Constitution, has the \u201dsole power\u201d of impeachment (US Constitution Art. 1, \u00a72.)  With the Department of Justice\u2019s ruling that the President of the United States cannot be indicted or prosecuted while in office, the House becomes the only check on Presidential power, behavior, or criminality.   The President can be impeached and removed from office for \u201c\u2026committing treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors\u201d (US Constitution Art II, \u00a7 4.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The House is the ultimate check on Presidential powers and actions.  If the members of the House determine that the President has in fact committed \u201chigh crimes and misdemeanors\u201d (high crimes are not necessarily legally defined felonies, but are actions that go against the interest of the Constitution or the US Government); then they have an obligation under the Constitution to proceed. Though impeachment has seldom been exercised, only three times in US History; that rarity emphasizes its importance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

House members have a Constitutional duty to determine if a President has committed an impeachable offense.\u00a0\u00a0That determination process is through investigation; it would be dereliction of that duty if the House failed to examine witnesses and documents to determine if offenses have occurred.\u00a0\u00a0With the evidence already publicly available about President Trump\u2019s actions presenting a \u201cprima facie\u201d case, it is difficult to see how the House cannot proceed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My mother used to have an expression: \u201cdon\u2019t cut your nose off to spite your face.\u201d  It took a long time for me to understand what she meant by that, but what I finally determined was that I shouldn\u2019t do something, even if it seemed like the right thing to do, if it ultimately made the situation worse. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Duty: the House must investigate the President. The best and legally most effective way to do this is to start impeachment proceedings.  Politics:  Democrats want to end the Trump Presidency and the McConnell tyranny in the Senate. The best way to do that, continue to contrast Democratic ideas with Republican actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So Speaker Pelosi, and the Democrats of the House of Representatives are faced with that difficult choice, political expediency, or Constitutional duty — and the nose thing.   <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Matter of Noses Democrats in the House of Representatives are faced with a stark choice.  They can follow the politically expedient path:  keep questioning the Trump Presidency, but emphasize the other, more popular aspects of the Democratic Agenda.  This is the direction that Speaker Nancy Pelosi would like to follow.  She rightly sees all of the benefits:  it contrasts … Continue reading “A Matter of Noses”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nA Matter of Noses : Our America - Essays on Politics and American Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The House of Representatives faces a choice, expediency or duty.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/index.php\/2019\/05\/22\/a-matter-of-noses\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Matter of Noses : Our America - Essays on Politics and American Life\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The House of Representatives faces a choice, expediency or duty.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/index.php\/2019\/05\/22\/a-matter-of-noses\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Our America - Essays on Politics and American Life\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/m.facebook.com\/Dahlmanonline-610417212502642\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/m.facebook.com\/Dahlmanonline-610417212502642\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-05-22T12:30:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2019-05-22T12:30:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/dahlman.online\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/IMG_3564-e1488996194684.jpg?fit=480%2C640&ssl=1\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"480\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"640\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Marty Dahlman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@martydahlman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@martydahlman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Marty Dahlman\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/dahlman.online\\\/index.php\\\/2019\\\/05\\\/22\\\/a-matter-of-noses\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/dahlman.online\\\/index.php\\\/2019\\\/05\\\/22\\\/a-matter-of-noses\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Marty Dahlman\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/dahlman.online\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/5fa8c1b0305cf5f1f3633225843e621c\"},\"headline\":\"A Matter of Noses\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-05-22T12:30:11+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-05-22T12:30:18+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/dahlman.online\\\/index.php\\\/2019\\\/05\\\/22\\\/a-matter-of-noses\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":937,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/dahlman.online\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/5fa8c1b0305cf5f1f3633225843e621c\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/dahlman.online\\\/index.php\\\/2019\\\/05\\\/22\\\/a-matter-of-noses\\\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/dahlman.online\\\/index.php\\\/2019\\\/05\\\/22\\\/a-matter-of-noses\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/dahlman.online\\\/index.php\\\/2019\\\/05\\\/22\\\/a-matter-of-noses\\\/\",\"name\":\"A Matter of Noses : Our America - 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