President Donald Trump will be impeached and then tried and acquitted. That’s the platform on which the Democrats are running a presidential campaign.
As to the substance of the articles of impeachment against President Trump:
First up is “Trump’s actions regarding Ukraine.”
At the behest of Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, Devin Nunes, the highest-ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, and with the active participation of Vice-President Mike Pence, and Mick Mulvaney, the chief of staff—the Office of Management and Budget implemented a hold on Ukraine’s assistance funds.
What’s not to like about a hold on foreign aid? It was a short-lived hold, but it was good while it lasted.
What we libertarians don’t like is that the funds were eventually released to Ukraine. No matter what, libertarians want to see foreign aid imperiled in any way possible, for as long as possible, preferably for good.
By contrast, the Beltway libertarians, the ones Tucker Carlson entertains, will map the ins-and-outs of the impeachment with the fastidiousness of a government bureaucrat. And they’ll go into the weeds of the Ukraine affair, what the Democrats and their supporters are calling “a sprawling, months-long campaign spearheaded by Rudy Giuliani, Mr Trump’s personal lawyer.”
From where I’m perched, it’s a big yawn. “Impeachment [Is] Uninteresting To A Certain Kind Of Libertarian“:
Democrat or Republican initiated, impeachment as we’ve come to know it intimately, showcases the might of the American Administrative State in all its muscular display of extra-constitutional powers. There is nothing constitutional, and very little that is naturally licit, in this process, despite all the “solemn” references to the poor, unused document.
The second part of the Democrats’ report, leading up to the drawing up of articles of impeachment, entailed Trump and his “officials declining to take part in the impeachment inquiry …”
The report argues that Mr Trump’s blanket refusal is unprecedented—Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton all complied with House requests for information—and that such defiance represents “an existential threat to the nation’s constitutional system of checks and balances…and rule of law”.
Did you hear that? This is midriff-splitting funny.
Trump defying a corrupt and ossified body (that gave America one unjust, criminal war after the other) is said to constitute “an existential threat to the nation’s constitutional system of checks and balances…and rule of law.”
To libertarians, the good kind, that idea that congress represents some sort of bulwark against a mortal, existential danger is just uproariously funny.
- Image is Adam Schiff courtesy “Cowdog“