There is no joy in Mudville tonight.
As I watched things de-evolve in the Trump orbit, I did begin to think that perhaps there are people who are really above the law. Nixon chimed: Well, if the President does it, it’s not il-legal. And yet, it was not so much the crime that brought him down; It was the cover-up.
Howard Baker asked the most important question during the Nixon probe: What did the President know, and when did he know it? But Trump’s own tweets made him self-impeachable. He told us that all he had was a nice conversation with the President of the Ukraine. When he said he would release the transcripts, I figured they would be doctored. In fact, they were not. They were the smocking gun.
The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) decision, whether we agree or dis-agree, is the premise we have all operated under since the Watergate scandal. You can’t indict a sitting President.
So worried were the framers of our Constitution over the abuses of the President, they gave use but one option: impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanours. They left the language deliberately vague. The only prescription they gave us was the nuclear one. The I-Word. Impeachment.
This is a road, very less traveled. Only Johnson, Nixon, and Clinton have faced impeachment proceedings. Now a fourth is added to the list: Donald J. Trump. Three of these, all within my lifetime, and yours. At this time, there are in-sufficient votes in the US Senate, who will try Articles of Impeachment, brought by the House of Representatives. But it behooves us to look at how quickly things disintegrated for Mr. Nixon.
The evidence is not complete. The court of public opinion gets their say as well. I encourage you to write to your representatives nd voice your opinion, whether yea, or nay. I have already done so.
This is a journey that I wish we as a nation, did not have to travel. But we must. The sanctity of our union, and dare I say, that of our Constitution, are at stake here.
No. There is no joy in Mudville. For you, the might Trump, has struck out.
original copy
September 25, 2019
(Ironically, the same day Spiro Agnew asked to be Impeached).
Wayno Guerrini