Founders: Removal from office is not the only purpose of impeachment

Founders: Removal from office is not the only purpose of impeachment

Benjamin Franklin was a leading voice in the debates framing the Constitution. Howard Chandler Christy/Architect of the Capitol By Clark D. Cunningham, Georgia State University As Congress moves toward a possible formal impeachment of President Donald Trump, they should consider words spoken at the Constitutional Convention, when the Founders explained that impeachment was intended to have many important purposes, not just removing a president from office. A critical debate took place on July 20, 1787, which resulted in adding the…

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Why the Republican Party debased itself through servile loyalty to Donald Trump

Why the Republican Party debased itself through servile loyalty to Donald Trump

Peter Wehner writes: As a conservative-leaning clinical psychologist I know explained to me, when new experiences don’t fit into an existing schema — Mr. Trump becoming the leader of the party that insisted on the necessity of good character in the Oval Office when Bill Clinton was president, for example — cognitive accommodation occurs. When the accommodation involves compromising one’s sense of integrity, the tensions are reduced when others join in the effort. This creates a powerful sense of cohesion,…

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Partisan divide creates different Americas, separate lives

Partisan divide creates different Americas, separate lives

Even in the physical world, it’s hard to cross partisan lines. igorstevanovic/Shutterstock.com By Robert B. Talisse, Vanderbilt University When people try to explain why the United States is so politically polarized now, they frequently refer to the concept of “echo chambers.” That’s the idea that people on social media interact only with like-minded people, reinforcing each other’s beliefs. When people don’t encounter competing ideas, the argument goes, they become less willing to cooperate with political opponents. The problem goes beyond…

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Intelligence whistleblowers often pay a severe price

Intelligence whistleblowers often pay a severe price

Blowing the whistle carries major risks. BlueSkyImage/Shutterstock.com By Jennifer M. Pacella, Indiana University When President Donald Trump likened a whistleblower’s White House sources to spies and made a lightly veiled reference to execution, he highlighted a longstanding peril facing those who come forward to alert the public to governmental wrongdoing. In many instances, whistleblowers find the abusive power they have revealed turned against them, both ending their careers and harming their personal lives. In the private sector, whistleblowers are often…

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Trump had three attorneys working ‘off the books’ to dig up dirt on Biden

Trump had three attorneys working ‘off the books’ to dig up dirt on Biden

Fox News reports: Rudy Giuliani was not the only attorney trying to get damaging information on Joe Biden from Ukrainian officials, and President Trump’s decision to withhold aid from Ukraine this summer was made in spite of several federal agencies supporting the aid, Fox News’ Chris Wallace revealed on “Fox News Sunday.” In addition to Giuliani, Washington, D.C., lawyers Joe DiGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing worked alongside the former New York City mayor. According to a top U.S. official,…

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Hunter Biden’s dubious business foray into Ukraine

Hunter Biden’s dubious business foray into Ukraine

The Washington Post reports: When then-Vice President Joe Biden’s son joined the board of an obscure Ukrainian gas company half a decade ago, it was a stunning coup for its owner, a former Ukrainian minister working to remake the company’s image as he faced a money-laundering investigation. For Hunter Biden, the job came with risks: Ukraine was in the throes of political upheaval, and there was building scrutiny of former government officials profiting in the lucrative gas industry. His father…

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A realist’s guide to impeachment

A realist’s guide to impeachment

David Frum writes: Here are some guidelines to impeachment for realists: 1. Keep the story simple. Some have proposed a massive array of inquiries, delving into every facet of Trump’s corruption and abuse of power. This approach ensures a process that goes slow, yields confusing masses of facts, and opens endless opportunities for bad faith excuse-making by Trump and his enablers. Congress is not very good at investigating, and the more investigations Congress pursues, the more it is likely to…

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400 million indigenous people protect 80% of the world’s biodiversity

400 million indigenous people protect 80% of the world’s biodiversity

The Guardian reports: As presidents, prime ministers and corporate executives gathered at the UN climate action summit on Monday, for the first time, an indigenous representative joined the event in a formal capacity. Tuntiak Katan of the Ecuadorian Shuar people spoke on behalf of the International Indigenous People’s Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC), a caucus of indigenous rights advocates who, for years, has been working towards more robust participation and inclusion at the UN level in response to the climate…

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Melting permafrost, caused by global warming, poses a huge threat to Russia’s oil and gas industry

Melting permafrost, caused by global warming, poses a huge threat to Russia’s oil and gas industry

Julian Lee writes: President Vladimir Putin needs to go green quickly to stop the permafrost from melting, so that Russian oil and gas companies can keep pumping the hydrocarbons that are warming the planet and making the permafrost melt. Even I’m struggling with the warped logic of that one, but it’s the conclusion I’ve reached from Russia’s sudden ratification of the Paris climate accord and from reading the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Until now, climate…

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The failed personal, social, and economic promise of Silicon Valley

The failed personal, social, and economic promise of Silicon Valley

Kim Phillips-Fein writes: For many years, Silicon Valley and the machines that came out of it were presented as personally, economically, and socially transformative, agents of revolution at both the level of the individual and the whole social order. They were democratizing, uncontrolled, anarchic, and new. Most of all, they were supposed to be fun—to open up a space of play and freedom. How is it, then, that just a few decades in, we find ourselves trapped in a dreary…

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Trump told Russian officials in 2017 he wasn’t concerned about Moscow’s interference in U.S. election

Trump told Russian officials in 2017 he wasn’t concerned about Moscow’s interference in U.S. election

The Washington Post reports: President Trump told two senior Russian officials in a 2017 Oval Office meeting that he was unconcerned about Moscow’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election because the United States did the same in other countries, an assertion that prompted alarmed White House officials to limit access to the remarks to an unusually small number of people, according to three former officials with knowledge of the matter. The comments, which have not been previously reported, were…

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History isn’t a good guide for understanding Trump’s impeachment case

History isn’t a good guide for understanding Trump’s impeachment case

David Greenberg writes: The internet is awash in historical explainers and hot takes trying to make sense of our sudden constitutional crisis. Marshalled on behalf of a range of competing viewpoints, the arguments are sprinkled with references to Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton—the three presidents who faced impeachment proceedings before Donald Trump. Which one applies to the current president and his apparent effort to enlist Ukraine in going after Joe Biden, his potential opponent in the 2020 election?…

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Trump regards attorney general like his personal lawyer

Trump regards attorney general like his personal lawyer

The Associated Press reports: As Washington plunges into impeachment, Attorney General William Barr finds himself engulfed in the political firestorm, facing questions about his role in President Donald Trump’s outreach to Ukraine and the administration’s attempts to keep a whistleblower complaint from Congress. Trump repeatedly told Ukraine’s president in a telephone call that Barr and Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani could help investigate Trump’s Democratic rival Joe Biden, according to a rough transcript of that summertime conversation. Justice Department officials…

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Under Trump, the United States has turned into a rule-of-law catastrophe

Under Trump, the United States has turned into a rule-of-law catastrophe

Anne Applebaum writes: In the nearly 30 years that have elapsed since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, I doubt whether a single day has gone by without some Western diplomat, somewhere in the post-Soviet space, talking about the need for the rule of law. The U.S.S.R. was a totalitarian state in which judges and prosecutors were controlled by the ruling party. The result was injustice, oppression and corruption. Since the former Soviet republics gained independence, Europeans and…

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