Wednesday Noon ~ TheFrontPageCover

TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
Impeachment Moves Forward to Nowhere
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Day Two – Senate Impeachment Trial 
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by sundance
{ theconservativetreehouse.com } ~ Day one recap:  A series of 11 rules amendments were offered by Democrat Minority Leader Chuck scumbag-Schumer. Each proposal was defeated individually during 13 hours of arguments and debate... The final rules package, which passed 53-47 at 01:45am this morning, is almost identical to the original draft presented by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The only change was spreading the 24hrs over three days instead of two. There will be 24 hours of presentation by House Impeachment Managers over 3 days; 24 hours of presentation by Defense team over 3 days; 16 hours of Senate questioning; 4 hours of closing arguments, equally divided; and then a Senate debate/vote on further motions to include witnesses. If there are going to be witnesses, they will first be deposed prior to testimony. No witness testimony will be permitted without first being deposed. The Senate Trial Begins again today at 1:00pm EST, starting with opening arguments by the House Impeachment Managers.
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President Trump Isn’t the Only One on Trial
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by ADAM J. WHITE
{ thebulwark.com } ~ When the Senate opened its impeachment trial by swearing an oath to “do impartial justice,” the candid citizen might ask whether such a thing is even possible... The candid senator might, too. How can partisan senators do “impartial justice?” First, by understanding what is on trial. And second, by understanding what the Senate was created to be. This is a trial of President Donald Trump, but it is more than that. As their oath emphasized, the senators sit in judgment of “the trial of the impeachment of Donald John Trump.” These words echo the Constitution itself, which entrusts the Senate with “the sole Power to try all Impeachments.” Which means that this is a trial of the House’s impeachment—which is to say, a trial of not just the facts and legal questions surrounding Trump, but also retrospectively of the prudential judgments surrounding the House’s decision. Which requires the Senate to make prudential judgments of its own.The breadth of discretion inherent in impeachment has been evident since the Founding. The Constitution defines impeachment broadly in terms of “treason, bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” The Founders knew that this standard is not susceptible to easy legal definition. As Alexander Hamilton explained in The Federalist, impeachment “can never be tied down by such strict rules, either in the delineation of the offense by” the House that prosecutes it, “or in the construction of it by” the Senators who stand in judgment of it. Rather, he wrote, impeachable offenses “are of a nature” best described as “political”—not political in the low sense of partisanship, but in the highest senses of statesmanship and the “public trust.” And while the president’s lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, contends that “abuse of power” is not grounds for impeachment, Hamilton saw otherwise: impeachment would be the ultimate protection against “abuse of the executive authority.” “What more,” Hamilton added, “could be desired by an enlightened and reasonable people?” The founding generation entrusted these judgments to the Senate because they intended the Senate to embody a mix of both accountability and statesmanship—and to be deeply invested in the administration of government power...
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We’re All Ready For This Impeachment 
scumbag/liar-Schiff Show To Be Over
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By Kylee Zempel
{ thefederalist.com } ~ Just when you thought Rep. scumbag/liar-Adam Schiff had reached maximum sleaze, word breaks he likely mischaracterized evidence related to President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial... achieving new heights of corruption for ol’ “schifty scumbag/liar-Schiff.” Last week, scumbag/liar-Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, sent a letter to Democratic House Judiciary Chairman scumbag liar-Jerry Nadler of New York, summarizing evidence brought forth by Lev Parnas, a former associate of Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani. This evidence was related to Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president on which this impeachment sham is supposedly based. scumbag/liar-Schiff claimed Parnas “continued to try to arrange a meeting with President Zelensky,” based on a text exchange between Giuliani and Parnas — and scumbag/liar-Schiff’s own bias or chicanery. The text was attached to scumbag/liar-Schiff’s letter but was redacted after “trying to get us mr Z.” Politico reports, however, that “an unredacted version of the exchange shows that several days later, Parnas sent Giuliani a word document that appears to show notes from an interview with Mykola Zlochevsky, the founder of Burisma, followed by a text message to Giuliani that states: ‘mr Z answers my brother,’” suggesting Parnas was referring not to President Zelensky, but to the founder of the energy company on whose board an unqualified Hunter Biden sat for $50,000 a month. Not looking great for scumbag/liar-Schiff, the lead impeachment manager. This partisan impeachment charade hackery has dragged on far too long, since about Jan. 20, 2017. Only willfully ignorant zealots can’t see that the alleged sins of Donald Trump fall far short of high crimes and misdemeanors — and frankly far short of scumbag/liar-nObama’s abuse of power in implementing scumbag/liar-nObamacare, scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton’s sending classified emails over a private server while secretary of state, or loose lips liar-Joe Biden’s own Ukraine-related quid pro quo. As if that were not enough, Democrats’ slimy tactics throughout this entire spectacle have “threatened our democracy” far more than any benign phone call Trump has made while occupying the Oval Office. For proof, read the transcript of the call. Not scumbag/liar-Schiff’s made-up nonsense impersonation. The real transcript...
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Navy CMV-22B Osprey Design 
Completes First Flight
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By Ben Werner
{ news.usni.org } ~ The first CMV-22B Osprey – the tiltrotor aircraft selected to replace the Navy’s aging fleet of C-2A Greyhounds as the carrier onboard delivery aircraft – completed its first flight operations, according to its manufacturer... Compared to the MV-22B flown by the Marine Corps, the Navy CMV-22B variant has extended operational range, with the ability to transport up to 6,000 pounds of cargo or personnel to a 1,150 nautical mile range, according to a Naval Air Systems Command fact sheet. A consortium of Boeing and the Bell Textron subsidiary of Textron Inc. builds the CMV-22B Osprey. The flight test occurred at Bell’s Amarillo Assembly Center in Texas. “With the ability to travel up to 1,150 nautical miles, the CMV-22B will be a lifeline for our servicemen and women out at sea,” Kristin Houston, the vice president of Boeing Tiltrotor Programs and director of the Bell-Boeing V-22 Program, said in a statement. “The quality and safety built into this aircraft will revolutionize the way the U.S. Navy fulfills its critical carrier onboard delivery mission.” The Navy’s Osprey variant also has a beyond-line-of-sight HF radio, a public address system for passengers, improved fuel-dump capability and an improved lighting system for cargo loading and unloading, when compared to other variants, according to NAVAIR. The Navy started using Greyhounds as its COD in the 1960s. The Navy announced in 2015 its plan to replace Greyhounds with Ospreys. The Navy is getting 39 Ospreys as part of a $4.2-billion contract modification with Bell-Boeing the Pentagon announced in July 2018. Bell-Boeing plans to deliver the first CMV-22B to the Navy early this year for developmental testing. The overall program of record calls for 48 aircraft, though current Navy plans only show funding for 44, including the 39 under contract. In December 2018, the Navy established its first Osprey squadron, Fleet Logistics Multi-Mission Squadron 30, at Naval Air Station North Island. The “Titans” of VRM-30 are scheduled for their first operational detachment deployment in 2021 on the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70), according to the Navy. The first Osprey deployment on Vinson is expected to coincide with the first operational deployment of the Navy’s F-35C Lighting II Joint Strike Fighter. The Navy selected the V-22 as its new COD because the aircraft can carry an F-35 engine to an aircraft carrier.
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Are Americans In Danger from 
a Possible Iranian Cyber-Offensive?
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By Julio Rivera
{ americanthinker.com } ~ The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a cryptic warning to Americans on January 6th regarding the “Potential for Iranian Cyber Response” to the recent U.S. military strike in Baghdad last week... that claimed the life of Qassim Soleimani, major general of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. In just the past few days, Iran has claimed responsibility for missile attacks aimed at multiple U.S. military targets in Iraq. As a result of these recent events, one horrific byproduct of Iranian aggression and confusion that materialized was the downing of Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752, which was scheduled to travel from Tehran to Kiev. Despite the fact that Iran doesn’t possess intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the U.S. mainland and it isn’t thought to have a nuclear weapon, there are still many other avenues available to the Iranian regime to wreak havoc and exact revenge against the United States and other western countries. The most likely method is thought to be via a large-scale cyber offensive. Iran has already shown a propensity for this type of disruptive activity, as over the past decade they have shown the ability to penetrate the systems associated with our critical infrastructure. This included the August/September 2013 attack executed by an Iranian who was employed by a company performing work on behalf of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) who was able to access the supervisory control and data acquisition  (SCADA) systems of the Bowman Dam in Rye, New York. This hacking incident allowed the actor to access information regarding the status and operation of the dam and possibly manipulate its day-to-day functions. Additionally, almost five years ago, Iran was the culprit when over half of Turkey, an estimated 44 of 81 provinces which are home to over 40 million people, suffered a massive power outage that lasted for most of March 31st, 2015. The total blackout encompassed everything connected to the Turkish electrical grid, including computers, airports, traffic lights, hospitals, water and sewage systems and more...  https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/01/are_americans_in_danger_from_a_possible_iranian_cyberoffensive_.html   
France: Smoke Grass, Kill a Jew, 
Skip the Trial, Go Free
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by Guy Millière
{ gatestoneinstitute.org } ~ Paris, April 4, 2017. Sarah Halimi, a 66-year-old Jewish woman, is thrown from her third-floor balcony or window. Her body lands in the building's courtyard... Her murderer first had tortured her. Neighbors had heard screams and called the police. Nine officers came, but when they heard through the door a man shouting "Allahu Akbar", they ran downstairs to wait for reinforcements. When Kobili Traoré finally surrendered, he said, "I killed the sheitan" Arabic for "Satan". While torturing his victim, he said, he had recited verses from the Qur'an, and the Qur'an had "ordered him to kill a Jew". He said he had spent the previous day in a nearby mosque. He was placed in a mental institution, where he told the psychiatrist who examined him that he smoked marijuana. The murder was not mentioned in the newspapers. A French Jewish organizations spoke of a "distressing anti-Semitic crime" and organized a silent demonstration in front of Halimi's building. It was only then that a few articles were written. The French presidential election was about to take place, and journalists from the mainstream media apparently did not want to speak about an anti-Semitic murder committed by a Muslim. The judge assigned to the case, Anne Ihuellou, at first refused to acknowledge that the murder had been a hate crime. It took the Halimi family's lawyers more than six months to get her finally to concede, on February 27, 2018, that the motive for the murder had in fact been anti-Semitic. The judge also refused to organize a review of the events of the case, and agreed to question Traoré only briefly. She called in a psychiatric expert, Daniel Zagury, who said that at the time of the act, the murderer had been in a state of "acute delirium" due to the consumption of cannabis, but fully "accessible to a penal sanction." Seemingly dissatisfied with Dr. Zagury's conclusions, Judge Ihuellou asked for two more opinions by experts -- both of whom, contradicting Dr. Zagury's conclusions, said that the Traoré was unfit to stand trial. On July 12, 2019, the judge dismissed Dr. Zagury's report,  declared that there are "plausible reasons for concluding that the murderer is not criminally responsible" and stated that the attack had not been anti-Semitic...  https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15448/france-jews-murder   
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Impeachment Moves Forward to Nowhere
C5v1F2Um4mY6t2basnLtNF_FEv7_MYPOrKim7uUkRLQx890FWL3KMAASsOkoFimWapEc79toSz1dCSXoL7P0SJqRGt_YKU3kKuf3ta02yx5BpJ8t0rLszSuEG6cSW2kvRg_K82q1EJKvyx8Ge3dBkRgjmvwcVGw=s0-d-e1-ft#%3Ca%20rel%3Dnofollow%20href=  Peggy Noonan
 

Impeachment is moving forward and going nowhere. There is new information but it doesn’t really tell those who’ve paid attention anything they didn’t know. Putative administration operative Lev Parnas said on “The Rachel Maddow Show” Wednesday that the president knew everything about efforts to lean on Ukraine. But this was clear in testimony throughout the impeachment hearings. His own ambassador to the European Union said it! The ambassador to Ukraine knew she was being schemed against, lost her job because of it, and spelled it out under oath.

It’s icing on a cake that’s already sagging. The president will be acquitted for a host of reasons, from partisanship to a prudential judgment that his actions don’t warrant removal with a presidential election 10 months away.

What did Speaker liar-Nancy Pelosi gain by playing her monthlong game of peekaboo, waiting to send the charges to the Senate? She withheld from Majority Leader Mitch McConnell papers he didn’t wish to receive and she saw that as leverage? It appears she was playing for time as investigators tried to develop more evidence. But again, for what? The president couldn’t look more guilty.

Meantime impeachment as a dramatic and distinct event lost all momentum. In the month after the House vote the story lost lift, then got lost in the Iran drama. This second stage feels not like the continuation of the first but a brand new second impeachment, which a lot of people will experience as overkill.

On the creepiness of the signing ceremony for the impeachment articles: Modern presidents have always held such ceremonies and signed big, happy legislation with many pens. Lyndon B. Johnson liked clutching bunches of them in his thick, meaty fist and handing them out personally. But the impeachment of a president is a grave and unhappy event. It’s not celebratory. Enacting triumphalism was shallow and looked like a tell. Why pens, why not a scalp?

Serious people understand the implications of things. Impeachment has now been normalized. It won’t be a once-in-a-generation act but an every-administration act. Democrats will regret it when Republicans are handing out the pens.

To the Democratic debate Tuesday night in Des Moines.

It contained my favorite panel-candidate moment of this cycle.

Bright young woman journalist: “Sen. Sanders, I do want to be clear here, you’re saying that you never told Sen. dinky/liar-Warren that a woman could not win the election?”

Sanders: “That is correct.”

BYWJ: “Sen. dinky/liar-Warren, what did you think when Sen. Sanders told you a woman could not win the election?”

dinky/liar-Warren: “I disagreed.”

It was like Judge Judy on drugs:

“commie-Ernie, did you hit Peggy on the head?”

“No, of course not.”

“Peggy, how did you feel when commie-Ernie hit you on the head?”

The moment went uncorrected. This is why people hate the press.

I found myself watching Elizabeth dinky/liar-Warren. She has proved she can take a punch and throw one (“Look at the men on this stage. Collectively, they have lost 10 elections.”) Of the candidates in their 70s she’s the highest-energy and most indefatigable. Actually she’d have high energy for a 50-year-old. All candidates now have to be actors but she’s a good one, telling her stories over and over, her voice growing husky at the moving parts.

Her challenge is not that she’s a woman, it is her policies, and maybe something else. I watched the debate with a man who’s sophisticated observer with no dog in the fight. Ms. Warren was doing her magical thinking about how universal Medicare won’t cost people a thing, it’s all savings with a few small tax increases on people we don’t like. I asked aloud, “Does she believe what she says or does she know it’s make-believe?”

He considered: “She did.” he said. That sounds right, that she started with belief but at this point sees the holes in what she’s saying. She’s caught, because she’s said it too often and now can only repeat it.

commie-Bernie Sanders has the same magical thinking about the cost of things, who’ll pay, and what effect that will have on the nation’s life. But he gets away with it because he’s a declared socialist. His supporters don’t want realism and his foes don’t expect it. Ms. dinky/liar-Warren says she’s a capitalist with a critique, so she faces a different burden.

There was also in the debate a kind of detachment from real life. A voter asked: “How will you prioritize accessing quality affordable child care?” The candidates were indignant that women can be held from the workforce by the high cost of child care. Pete Buttigieg vowed to get “federal dollars” involved, and spoke of stunted careers. Ms. Warren said, “My plan is universal child care for everyone.” She told of how she was almost forced “off track” by child care problems. Mr. commie-Sanders said, “Every psychologist in the world knows 0 through 4 are the most important years of human life, intellectually and emotionally.”

No one spoke with compassion for parents, for mothers who forgo the earnings and status (“I have a job”) and relationships (“I’m not lonely all day”) of having a job to stay home with kids under 4. No one said that actually a lot of parents think the most important thing is to stay home and raise the kids, that many struggle to do it, and we might want to help them. No one noted we don’t give any particular honor to those who stay home, even though our culture depends on them.

What seemed to guide all the answers was a technocratic assumption that it’s best for little children to be raised by well-compensated strangers as mom is absorbed into the workforce, where she’ll finally achieve full self-actualization.

It was all so … cold. And detached from real life as many live it.

Meanwhile in full-employment America, Donald Trump is taking out terrorists with drones and announcing trade deals with China and seemingly weathering every storm. In the China ceremony Tuesday, in the East Room, after a booming “Hail to the Chief,” with a palpable sense of triumph filling the room, with the golden frames of the great portraits shining, Mr. Trump rolled off the names of the CEOs in the audience. There were a lot! It was in a way a fabulous celebration of the riches produced by capitalism. But it also seemed an almost sinister declaration of the intimate ties between great U.S. corporations and the federal government. The CEO of Boeing is here, the chief of eBay. “How’s General Electric doing, Nels?” “Ryan Lance, ConocoPhillips, you’re doing fantastically well!” “I made a lot of bankers look very good, but you’re doing a great job.” “Ken Griffin, Citadel, what a guy he is.”

It was reminiscent of the scene in “The Godfather: Part II” where Fulgencio Batista hands around the solid gold telephone. “I’d like to thank this distinguished group of American industrialists for continuing to work with Cuba for the greatest period of prosperity in her entire history. Mr. William Shaw, representing the General Fruit Company … Messrs. Corngold and Dant of the United Telephone and Telegraph Company … and of course our friend Mr. Robert Allen of South American Sugar.”

We all think our breathless recitations of the latest revelations matter but I don’t know, it keeps feeling like 2016. Only this time with full employment.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/67983?mailing_id=4811&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4811&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body 

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