11-16-2019, 09:29 PM
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#4274 (permalink)
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Toasted Poster
Join Date: Oct 2014
Location: SoCal by way of Boston
Posts: 11,332
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From an editorial by Fareed Zakaria on why he now supports impeachment.
Quote:
What has been far more troubling is Trump’s refusal to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry. Other presidents have contested a specific subpoena or request for documents. Trump is effectively rejecting Congress’s ability to hold him accountable.
The rule of law has been built over centuries in the Western world, but it remains fragile because it is based on a bluff. The bluff is that, at the highest level, everyone will respect the rules, even though it might not always be possible to enforce compliance.
The rule at the heart of the U.S. system is the separation of powers. The Founders’ greatest fear was that too much power in the hands of government would mean the end of liberty. So they ensured that power was shared and that each branch would act as a check on the other. The crucial feature for James Madison , the chief architect of the Constitution, was “giving to those who administer each department, the necessary constitutional means, and personal motives, to resist encroachments of the others.”
Even his staunch defender, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, conceded that Trump’s central argument, that the congressional inquiry is unconstitutional, is nonsense. “The House can organize impeachment more or less as it wants. .?.?. Like the president’s pardon power, the House’s impeachment power is among the least fettered in America’s founding charter.”
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“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”
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