By Ray McGovern
Just back from Ireland, Ray has a few comments on the remarkable editorial by the NY Times Editorial Board on the Mueller report. See below.
Stay tuned for more dancing around and about by the scoundrels in charge of the Times, as well as by those still unable to make their peace with the reality that Hillary Clinton needed no Russian help to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory in 2016.
Now if Nancy Pelosi and Jerrold Nadler would do their Constitutional duty and begin impeachment proceedings regarding Trump’s real “high crimes and misdemeanors,” and prescind from what was a “red herring” (no pun intended) from the start, it might be possible — as the Founders intended — to get rid, or at least restrain — Trump in an orderly, constitutional way. It is important that this be done before it is too late and the nativists become restless — and reckless.
Andrew Johnson, who became president after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, was impeached and, ipso facto, restrained from committing further crimes. In other words, impeachment worked in that case; it can work again. Most folks focus on the fact that the Senate failed by one vote to convict Andrew Johnson and evict him from office. But that was of demonstrably secondary importance.
If today’s Senate failed to convict Trump — as seems almost certain — so what? The impeachment of Trump might well hinder him from committing still more crimes — like attacking Iran or risking a military confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia, as he is being urged to do by “the crazies” he adopted, Bolton and Pompeo. The oft-heard “Pence would be still worse,” is the wrong way to look at it, in my view. We are not likely to end up with Pence in any case. And, even in the unlikely case we did, he might well be restrained by what happened to his predecessor, even if, like Mike Pompeo, he actually believes in the Rapture.
In 2007, Pelosi prevented then-Judiciary Chair John Conyers from starting impeachment proceedings against President George W. Bush, an unrepentant war criminal, because she did not want the Democrats to seem divisive and thereby risk loosing votes in the 2008 election. I had a ring-side seat watching Conyers obey orders. See:
Pelosi is doing the same thing now — the Constitution that she also swore to support and protect — be damned. And not a bleat from timid politicians in the Democratic “leadership” who know what’s going on. O Tempora, O Mores!
Comments on NY Times editorial:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/opinion/mueller-report-release.html
“The Meaning of the Mueller Report
“So far it’s a vindication of the rule of law. Now the public needs to read it.
“By The Editorial Board
“The editorial board represents the opinions of the board, its editor and the publisher. It is separate from the newsroom and the Op-Ed section.
“March 22, 2019
“Give President Trump this much: In the face of the biggest existential threat to his presidency, the special counsel’s Russia investigation, he checked himself where it mattered most.
“Yes, his near-daily campaign to mock and discredit Robert Mueller’s ‘witch hunt’ has now lasted longer than his campaign for the White House. His shameful, conspiratorial attacks on the ‘deep state,’ *** and on the integrity of those who have devoted their lives to upholding the rule of law, have damaged the institutions of federal law enforcement and may have gotten him in even deeper trouble.
[*** all the more “shameful” since we of the media have become an essential part of the “deep state”]
“… Mr. Trump even joined a remarkably bipartisan House of Representatives, along with a vast majority of the American public, in calling for the release of Mr. Mueller’s report. ‘Let people see it,’ he said on Wednesday. ‘There was no collusion. There was no obstruction. There was no nothing.’
“On the first point, we can all agree. William Barr, the attorney general, needs to release as much of Mr. Mueller’s work as he possibly can, and soon.
“We’ll reserve judgment on the second. It may prove that Mr. Trump has kept repeating his mantra of ‘no collusion’ because it’s true. *** [Emphasis added]
“But even if Mr. Mueller has found in the end that Mr. Trump did not knowingly conspire with Russia — and it is profoundly to be hoped that the report settles that question, one way or the other — that doesn’t mean this inquiry has been a witch hunt.
[*** and, if it’s true, that would mean we, the Establishment media, were trumpeting (no pun intended) evidence-less untruths yet again. Sixteen years ago we reported WMD in Iraq as flat fact, but we were not held accountable for that, which played a key role in rallying support for the war of aggression on Iraq. Simili modo, we portrayed “Russian hacking into the Democratic National Committee” as flat fact, drinking from the same “intelligence sources” who encouraged us to slurp lies about Iraq.
Why do that again? Because we have full deep-state status now. The MIC has morphed into the MICIMATT (Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-MEDIA-Academia-Think-Tank) complex, and there are billions to make from profiteering on war. It is, of course, an old story. Thomas Paine summed put it this way: “That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of Nations is as shocking as it is true…” ]
…
“Whether or not a sitting president can be indicted is a long-running debate among lawyers, but either way, Mr. Trump is sure to be under investigation for the rest of his term in office, and probably in court for the rest of his life.” ***
[*** And we can ensure that, because we are the Establishment media. The vestigial Fourth Estate is now dead We can act as stenographers for what “the intelligence community” tells us to publish, and a large segment of the alternative media will parrot the pap we put out, as well. So who will dare to, who will be able to, hold us to account?
We’ve got Chelsea Manning in solitary confinement again; we hope to nab Julian Assange soon for publishing the unadulterated truth. And, of no less importance, if we can continue to prevent Trump from creating a more decent relationship with Russia, we will make it far easier for those of us who profiteer from war. In sum, we might label it: “Mission Half-Accomplished”.]