Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) is already drafting articles of
impeachment related to Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey, believing
there’s enough evidence of Trump’s obstruction of justice to begin an
impeachment inquiry (not to mention Trump’s blatant violation of the
Constitutions emoluments clause by profiting off his presidency, and much else).
But Democratic leaders are pushing back,
warning there aren’t enough facts to justify an impeachment inquiry at this point, and, in any event, such
an inquiry would politicize ongoing
congressional investigations.
Baloney.
Historically,
the three previous impeachment inquiries in the House (involving presidents
Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton) rested on less evidence of
obstruction of justice than is already publicly known about Trump.
Comey’s testimony to
Congress is itself more than enough – confirming that Trump demanded Comey’s loyalty, asked Comey to stop investigating Michael Flynn, repeatedly told Comey the FBI investigation was a “cloud” on his presidency, and asked
Comey to declare publicly that Trump wasn’t an object of the investigation
In addition, we have Trump’s interview
with Lester Holt on NBC and Trump’s subsequent meeting with Russian officials
in the Oval Office. In both instances, Trump connected his firing
of Comey with the Russian investigation.
Also bear in mind the
obstructions of justice that caused the House to impeach previous presidents concerned
issues far less serious than Trump’s possible collusion with a foreign power to
win election.
Democratic leaders say they don’t want to talk about impeachment now because they’re worried about politicizing the current
congressional investigations, which aren’t impeachment inquiries. Hello? Republicans have already politicized them.
The real reason Democratic leaders don’t want to seek an impeachment now is they know there’s zero
chance that Republicans, who now control both houses of Congress, would support such a move. So why engage in a symbolic gesture?
Besides, Democratic leaders figure that between now and the
midterm elections there will be even more revelations from non-partisan sources – future testimony by Trump operatives like Michael Flynn and
Roger Stone, early reports from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation,
and leaks to the press – that will build more public outrage.
That outrage will give Democrats a strong chance of taking back the House and maybe even the Senate. Then they’ll really impeach Trump.
I can’t argue with the
political logic of Democratic leaders. And if their strategy will lead to
Trump’s ouster sooner than any other way, I’m all for it.
But here’s the problem. It’s not clear America can wait for the midterm elections, followed by what’s likely to be a long and drawn-out impeachment investigation, followed by a trial in the Senate. (None of the presidents listed above was ever convicted by the Senate and thrown out of office.)
With each passing day, Donald Trump becomes a greater danger to America and the world.
The advantage of introducing a bill of impeachment now – even attempting to do so – is that such an action might itself galvanize the vast majority of Americans who want Trump out of office.
Never underestimate the power of a public aroused to action. It is worth recalling that Nixon resigned of his own accord before the House had even voted out an impeachment resolution. The American public demanded it.
The Oxford English Dictionary dates the first use of the word slumming to 1884. In London, people visited slum neighborhoods such as Whitechapel or Shoreditch in order to observe life in this situation. By 1884 wealthier people in New York City began to visit the Bowery and the Five Points area of the Lower East Side, neighborhoods of poor immigrants, to see “how the other half lives”.[4]
Well, there’s a second-decade-of-the-21st-century headline for you!
Researchers at the University of Washington wanted to pierce the veil of secrecy around IMSI catchers (also called “Stingrays” and “DRTboxes”), which are devices that pretend to be cellular towers in order to trick the phone in your pocket into revealing your identity and spilling your secrets.
The Washington researchers built a Stingray detector box, and paid rideshare drivers to keep them in their trunks as they tootled around Seattle and Milwaukee (they didn’t get much data from Milwaukee). A year later – long enough for any criminal investigations to have concluded – they’ve gone public with their results, which disclose two likely Seattle Stingrays, one at the local US Customs and Immigration Service offices, the other at SEA-TAC airport.
As melting Greenland glaciers continue to pour ice into the Arctic Ocean, we have more than the rising seas to worry about, scientists say. A new study suggests that if it gets large enough, the influx of freshwater from the melting ice sheet could disrupt the flow of a major ocean current system, which in turn could dry out Africa’s Sahel, a narrow region of land stretching from Mauritania in the west to Sudan in the east.
The consequence could bedevastating agricultural losses as the area’s climate shifts. And in the most severe scenarios, tens of millions of people could be forced to migrate from the area.
“The implications, when expressed in terms of vulnerability of the population in the region are really dramatic and bring home just how sensitive livelihoods are in this region to climatic change,” said Christopher Taylor, a meteorologist at the Center for Ecology and Hydrology in the United Kingdom and an expert on the West African climate, who was not involved with the new research.
The idea is that large volumes of meltwater from Greenland have the potential to slow down a major system of ocean currents known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC. Experts have described it as a kind of giant conveyor belt, which carries warm water from the equator to the Arctic and cooler water back down south. This transport of heat influences atmospheric processes and helps regulate climate and weather throughout the Atlantic region.
As glaciers in Greenland melt, scientists think that the influx of cold, fresh water could disturb this conveyor belt, causing it to slow down. The resulting disruption in the transfer of heat could cause changes in atmospheric patterns throughout the Atlantic and alter weather patterns around the world. In fact, previous modeling studies indicate that ancient periods of ice melt may have caused the West African climate to become drier.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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