Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is in charge of the Russia investigation because Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself. Donald Trump would like to fire Rosenstein and he has people willing to collude with him in that effort. Members of the House Freedom Caucus have drafted articles of impeachment against Rosenstein, ostensibly for reasons unrelated to the Russia investigation. As Trump’s chief of staff John Kelly likes to say, this is a transparent load of complete B.S.
The gambit works like this. Key committee chairs in the House ask for unredacted documents from the Department of Justice. These documents are sensitive, involve ongoing investigations and of a type that department policy says should not ordinarily be delivered to Congress, especially in unredacted form. The goal is to get the DOJ to either deny their requests or to fulfill them in anything less than the manner in which they have been demanded. This lack of full cooperation them becomes the basis for impeaching the leader of the Russia investigation and replacing him with someone who will protect the president.
So far, Rosenstein has already capitulated to their demands once, but that wasn’t what they actually wanted him to do so they are back to take a second bite at the apple. Yesterday, Rosenstein drew a line in the sand.
“There have been people that have been making threats, publicly and privately, against me for quite some time, and I think they should understand by now: The Department of Justice is not going to be extorted,” Rosenstein said on Tuesday during an appearance at the Newseum in Washington. “Any kind of threats that anybody makes are not going to affect the way we do our job. We have a responsibility and we take an oath. That’s the whole point.”
The president was ready to pounce.
A Rigged System – They don’t want to turn over Documents to Congress. What are they afraid of? Why so much redacting? Why such unequal “justice?” At some point I will have no choice but to use the powers granted to the Presidency and get involved!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 2, 2018
What you’ll notice is that even though Rosenstein seemed, yesterday, to be referring to the impeachment threats from Republican members of the House of Representatives when he said “people…have been making threats, publicly and privately, against me for quite some time,” it was just as true about the president of the United States. Trump threatened Rosenstein this morning in that tweet.
When Rosenstein said he won’t be extorted by threats from “anyone,” that includes President Trump. He serves in the president’s administration, but he also took an oath to protect the Constitution.
Trump desperately needs a reason to fire Rosenstein, and he’s settled on his refusal to turn over unredacted documents to Trump’s allies in the House. They thought Rosenstein would walk into their trap in early April but he made a calculated retreat.
The Justice Department on Wednesday gave House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes access to a redacted document detailing the origin of the investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the 2016 election — a day after Nunes suggested publicly he might impeach top FBI or Justice Department officials over their failure to produce what he wanted.
But the House kept pushing until Rosenstein felt forced to take a stand.
The Justice Department informed Meadows and other Republican lawmakers earlier this week that it would not turn over [an unredacted copy of the] memo Rosenstein drafted detailing the scope of Mueller’s investigation, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The scope memo is connected to an active investigation, so is not something that would generally be turned over.
The whole effort here is choreographed. The White House and key committee chairs and members of the House Freedom Caucus are acting in concert. And it’s all a naked and transparent effort to obstruct justice. It’s being done brazenly, unapologetically, and in plain sight. Perhaps this is why Ty Cobb, who has consistently counseled cooperation with the investigation, just quit his job as Trump’s lawyer.
The cooperative phase is ending, and the constitutional crisis phase will now commence.
So all they have to do is draft articles of impeachment and suddenly poof Rosenstein is gone? Pretty sure those articles wouldn’t fly with the House as a body, so this looks like lame-ass theater to me.
. . . pass Congress even with majority Repubs batshit insane. The gambit’s probably a long-shot hope of getting them through the House (only a simple majority required), then using that (“he’s compromised” or some such predictable bullshit) as messaging pretext for firing him.
But no, agree, inconceivable 2/3 of Senate convicts.
The articles are just cover that Trump needs to fire him.
Thanks for that. It seemed impossible it could go anywhere. So watch the tweets. He will fire him with a tweet and point to the impeachment. More obstruction of justice.
. . . could not have imagined that, after ~2 centuries of national history with only a single presidential impeachment, I would live to witness 3 (and counting!) presidential impeachment dramas in my lifetime (and, with a bit of luck, still a quarter-century or so left to go).
As has been roundly discussed for some time, this is entirely a political exercise. None of this will fall within the legal realm. Which still causes me to believe that there is a damn good chance that Trump will get away with all of this, simply because the Republican Party will not do a fucking thing to push back. They are going to gladly toss the Consitution into the threshing blades for this man, simply out of allegiance to the cultish hold he has on the voters they need to stay in power.
I honestly believe I can count with the fingers of one hand the number of Republicans in Congress who will stand up for the rule of law when this whole fucking thing comes crashing down. I don’t believe they care. I hope I am wrong. But I don’t think I am. And when they fail to act, we might as well blow up every monument to the Founding Fathers that exists all around D.C., and the rest of the country, and erect a huge gold statue of Donald Trump where the Washington Monument now stands. Because our democracy will be officially dead. And we will have crossed over into a totalitarian dictatorship, with Donald Trump the Dear Leader. The framework of our government will be no more credible than that of China, Russia, or any other totalitarian dictatorship in the world. It will have been a good run. But for all intents and purposes, it will be over.
You may be correct, Mike, but remember how long it took many of these legislators to get on the Trump Train. They will stay aboard for as long as they think it is politically expedient, and not a moment longer.
It is a sad thing to hang our hopes for the Republic on the political calculations of a few ambitious rubes. Perhaps our civil society is healthier than you or I sense it to be, but I share your pessimism.
However, as a history and government teacher, I’m going to quibble with your prediction that we will become “totalitarian.” That is certainly possible, in the fullness of time, but not in the short term.
The continuing decay in institutions, which began before Mr. Trump and will continue after he leaves the stage, will turn us into a failing state. A dysfunctional central government will lead to new forms or permutations of federalism.
Some regions will probably become more totalitarian – if you haven’t read about it, check into how the Chinese are rolling out big data and surveillance. Other regions may become more lawless – think Mexico or Pakistan.
Will both of these worlds coexist? Will the Federal government retain its power? All of this is hypothetical, but I’m intensely interested to see the result. My kids will grow up in this future world. I think science will cure most disease and heal the planet in the next 200 years, but I worry that our country might not survive the next century.
You write:
Yes.
And that means that they will “stay aboard” until the results of November’s elections are sure….maybe a little before the election if the polls push them one way or another, but most certainly following the election if it turns out to be a RatPublican bloodbath.
So…Trump has at least 6 months to do his own (risky) pushing and pulling. If he’s relatively sure that Mueller is going to have the “Guilty as charged!!!” goods on him on at least one of several levels, he is going to need to act swiftly and strongly before that time.
When?
I dunno. July 4th would be a good time for some fireworks, eh?
Stay tuned.
AG
. . . share this sanguine view:
but I can’t.
Not that “science” couldn’t accomplish that, but that the political will necessary to allow it to do so has so far never materialized, with no indication in sight that it ever will.
It seems to be a flaw hardwired in our culture (and perhaps in our species? — hard to tease those apart since our culture now dominates ~99.9%+ of our species) that we seem incapable of acting preventively in anticipation of predictable calamity, but instead condemn ourselves to wait until we’re in the throes of full-blown catastrophe to take meaningful action against its causes. By which time, with respect to the existential threat of ecological collapse that we are currently under, it will be too late. Likely too late to prevent widespread civilizational collapse. Almost certainly too late to prevent massive disruption, dislocation, chaos, and death (with events like the European refugee crisis and increasing terrorism just the early, faint harbingers of what’s on the way).
(Instead, we tinker mostly ineffectually around the margins, with even those minimal efforts opposed tooth-and-claw — or even rolled back if/when they gain the power to do so, e.g., now — by the Regressives.)
In a sane society, a robust program to address ecological degradation (including, obviously, the 800-lb gorilla climate change, though that’s far from the only issue) of greater-than-New-Deal/Marshall-Plan/Great-Society/Apollo-Program proportions would have been underway for decades.
We are not a sane society. We’re a suicidal one.
Ouguabonita, I can see how things would look terribly bleak from your point of view. And your view is rational, informed by facts.
As a father and a teacher, I have to find a balance between delivering too much pessimism, or too much optimism. I want my students, and my own kids, to recognize that they’re going to live in a very challenging, chaotic world. However, I don’t want them to be defeatist (nor suicidal.)
If we survive the next hundred years (admittedly, a big if) I think you may be underestimating what the fusion of nanotechnology, robotics, and genetic engineering might accomplish. Of course, tremendous damage and suffering will happen in the meantime.
I’m sorry I won’t be here to see it – the good and the bad.
. . . the approach you describe.
I see little basis for hope at this point that we won’t cause massive destruction, degradation, dislocation and death, possibly up to and including self-extinction.
But what little hope exists, exists in such an approach.
By all means, carry on.
Teach your children well.
“We are not a sane society. We’re a suicidal one.”
To add to what AT said, history is littered with folks who felt this way, going back to ancient times. Whole religions were built on this. After all, what is the biblical version of the end of the world but a statement that we are a suicidal society? Rewards in the afterlife and all that…
Yet, here we are, dirty and dusty as civilization is, warts and all. There IS reason to be optimistic, and that is due to our knowledge of history.
. . . based notion (*i.e., we’ve always somehow managed to muddle through without self-annihilation, so that’s evidence we’ll continue to do so indefinitely) is, imo, a big part of the problem. It’s what those trying to kneecap all initiatives for meaningful action to address existential threats always appeal to.
There are (at least) two huge problems with it:
(Couple important side notes: Ecological resilience — the capacity of ecosystems to absorb and recover from degrading impacts — is, critically, one of the resources being consumed. And any moderation of exponential population growth is at least partially offset by increasing individual resource consumption.)
Quoting me:
Ecologists recognize “pulse” (relatively short-lived, usually somewhat localized: think forest fire) and “press” (more-or-less continuous/repetitive long-term, may be localized or widespread: think sedimentation of streams from road runoff) disturbances. Inexorable human population growth compounded by increasing individual resource consumption aggregate to a globalized press disturbance.
In one of his 3 Ishmael novels (The Story of B iirc), Daniel Quinn/Ishmael/B offered this analogy for the “so far, so good” outlook you appealed to: the early days of heavier-than-air flying machine experimentation. Paraphrasing:
One of those early aeronaut/inventors takes his pedal-driven-flapping-wings contraption to the top of the highest cliff in the world, overlooking flatlands barely visible through the clouds below. (I picture The Edge of the World where Xi gets rid of The Thing [Coke bottle] that’s disrupted his people’s existence in The Gods Must Be Crazy.)
And shoves off.
Because it’s a very high cliff, for quite a long while things seem to go swimmingly. The aeronaut/inventor is merrily pedaling away, enjoying the exhilaration of “flying”. Perhaps his efforts even slightly reduce the rate of acceleration due to gravity. At the beginning, the perception of the flatlands below rushing up towards him isn’t noticeable.
“So far, so good,” he’s thinking to himself.
But after a bit, he does begin to notice that those flatlands below look closer than at first. Oh well, he thinks, made it this far successfully without crashing, no reason to think I can’t keep that up.
. . . and so on. Surely by now you get the gist?
The aeronaut is an analogy for our culture. Some of us (a relatively tiny few, I fear) perceive the imminence of likely fatal — certainly immensely injurious — impact. We perceive the surface rushing up towards us at a terrifying rate. Many — far too many imo — remain stuck in “so far, so good” mode.
Been interesting to me to observe the form that much climate-change-denialist propaganda has taken: specifically, dismissively labeling any/all sane Realists who recognize the problem and its severity and the need to do something meaningful to address it as “alarmist” (with the obviously intended connotation of “alarmed disproportionately to any valid cause for alarm”). They, too, latch on to “so far, so good” for support. But you see, that’s just it. Being alarmed in proportion to the climate-change (and larger ecological crisis) cause for alarm is just sane. If you’re not alarmed, you’re not paying attention.
A few previous comments expanding on some of these ideas.
AT, do you have a response? Because I don’t know quite where to begin here.
But this:
“Tipping points/points-of-no-return (in this case, to any ecological status quo ante) are real things.”
No, they are NOT real things. Just like the concept of “balance” in nature, it’s a myth. A better term might be “equilibrium”, but nothing in nature is inherently balanced. These are artificial constructs that HUMANS create to predict what they think is going to happen that effect HUMAN existence or perspective. Any possible points of no return will be replaced by alternate forms of existence, and humans have so far demonstrated the ability to “muddle through” a great number of events that force alternate forms of existence: Walking upright. Taming fire. Developing speech. Ice ages. Black death. Genetic flooding. Slavery. And much more.
The worst possible case scenarios for climate change are pain, pestilence and suffering, with an added dose of the mother of all real estate bubbles. The world is not going to burst into flames and boil off all the oceans, it’s simply going to be less hospitable to HUMANS. Which might not be such a bad idea for the planet in the long run…
Extreme changes in environmental conditions have happened in the past, for which there are fossil records of (one of those “history” things I was talking about) but the difference is rather than volcanoes doing the dirty work HUMANS are.
That’s hardly a position of “so far so good”, is it?
All I am saying is you need to take the long view.
It’s preposterous (and ignorant — you did read the underlined bit, right?) to claim otherwise. They exist and are reached and passed regularly.
A currently topical example under ongoing climate change: a forest fire causes 100% mortality over some extensive area. (This is happening every year, now.) Under natural conditions in the past, this would simply have re-set succession to the “stand-initiation” stage (in many places, for now at least, it still will; in others it won’t): seedlings would germinate, some would survive and grow, and eventually the area would again be mature forest. (And eventually, it would again burn.) But due to climate change, in some settings this is no longer the case. The changed climate is shifting relevant equilibria such that the area will not be re-forested. The conditions are no longer “right” for forest. They’re too warm, too dry, too something under changed climate conditions. Some such areas are being converted to grassland/prairie/steppe/savannah types. In such examples, an ecological tipping-point has been passed — the equilibrium has been shifted to outside its previous range — such that the “ecological status quo ante” will not be restored.
You also seem to have skimmed over — without grasping it — this:
Expanding slightly on that to clarify: likely too late to prevent very severe consequences ranging from actual species self-extinction (most severe) through societal/cultural/civilizational collapse to “merely”
(“least severe” and pretty much baked-in-the-cake at this point, with the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere or “pipeline” — and indeed, as noted, already underway in early stages).
Possibilities you acknowledge, even while seeming to think you’re arguing against what I wrote:
Where we differ is that those aren’t actually the worst possible cases, just within the range of possible impacts of climate change. If you imagine that, coupled with all the other ecological degradation we cause, climate change doesn’t give us the means to our own self-extinction, I think you’re very foolishly naive.
As for this strawman ridiculousness:
Well, duh! You seem also to have skimmed past the part about me being a scientist, specifically an ecologist.
Again, duh, except not JUST humans, very obviously. So you’re arguing with me by mostly and substantially agreeing with me. Interesting.
“ecological status quo ante”
Is an arbitrary, human construct. There is nothing significant about the “previously existing state of affairs” other than what humans make of it. If you think any ecological state is static and naturally will return to some abstract concept like “the forest”, you are the one that is naive.
I’m sorry we’re just going to have to agree to disagree. I’m not giving you a point by point rebuttal. This is a fucking blog, not a dissertation.
Oy vey,
See how one sentence can get me in trouble?
Both of you are passionate and have strong points of view on the state of the world. There’s a tremendous amount to unpack here about the nature of progress and the human condition. There’s also some interesting demographic data we should masticate as part of the discussion. At some point I’d also like to move beyond the theoretical to the practical. If you had younger kids (which I do) how would you prepare them for the hard times we’re undoubtedly going to face over the next hundred years?
I think this thread is getting old and we should probably move on. I would really like to buy each of you an adult beverage of your choice sometime.
I think I may begin a diary page here, and I hope both of you will stop by to share your $.02. I’m enough of a contrarian that I will probably do a good job of pissing off both of you, and lots of other folks, too. But I greatly value the folks who comment here.
Peace, brothers and sisters.
MAD
.
. . . either of what I wrote, or in whatever it is you’re trying to say. You’re now writing self-contradictory gibberish.
is true in the sense that anything/everything represented in human language by words combined into phrases and sentences “is an arbitrary, human construct”, but in no other sense. In fact, it has a clear, precise, accurate meaning that is appropriate to how I used it:
ecological: relating to or concerned with the relation of living organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings
status quo ante: the previously existing state of affairs
I don’t, the notion’s ridiculous, nothing I wrote implies such, so where the fuck you got that from I have no idea.
“Forest” (i.e., a forest ecosystem, not “the forest”), but putting aside your obfuscatory hand-waving about “some abstract concept”, of course forested ecosystems “naturally will return” to being forested ecosystems after natural disturbance such as fire under normal conditions, barring some major shift that prevents this natural succession (e.g., climate change!). They were previously forested because the site conditions are conducive to forest and there are seed sources of forest tree species locally available. This happens continuously all over the planet and has throughout human “history” and likely longer.
How ignorant do you have to be not to know that? I picked that example thinking it would be obvious and accessible — i.e., “common knowledge” — to pretty much everyone. Guess not.
But that’s ok! We’re all ignorant about many things. Far more than we’re knowledgeable about. That’s a given. For all of us.
What’s not ok, but rather embarrassing (or should be) is to take such a contrarian position from a position of such ignorance to argue by contradicting accurate statements from someone who knows what he’s talking about. Personally, I would not recommend continuing in that vein, but you’ll do what you will.
Feels like I’m being harsh here, and I regret that. But it also feels like you left me little choice with your contrarianism on matters well within my professional expertise.
. . . “history” is rife with evidence of societal/cultural/civilizational Collapse.
For obvious reasons, there is no historical record of human species self-extinction (so far, so good!), I’ll grant you that.
But the evidence of our dominant culture extinguishing other species by the thousands, if not millions, is abundant, overwhelming. Why would we be exempt from the impacts of our actions when they were not? Why would the “laws of ecology” that resulted in their extinctions by our actions not apply equally to us? (Hint: they do!)
There’s also the timing issue, which they are misreading. The midterms are already simmering away and most Rep running are shying away from embracing a visit by Trump to their district.
The Freedom caucus’ idea of impeaching Rosenstein is 2nd only to Trump’s idea that firing Comey would end the pressure of a Russia investigation.
Every single Dem would be on fire throughout the summer to fight back and renounce any Rep who supported the impeachment. The Blue Wave would surely build and the result would be historical in November.
Time for Mueller to take off the gloves and subpeona Nunes and his entire staff and all their electronic records for their open collusion with Der Trumper to obstruct the RussiaGate investigation.
Also, as discussed yesterday, drop the subpeona immediately on our political criminal Donald Trump. Cobb is out, there never was any “cooperation” to be had. Ever hear of Clinton v. Jones, Trumper? No way around it.
And finally: Dems, hello, Dems? Anybody home? Anything to say as a political criminal openly brays about transgressing the rule of law at every point? Threatening the DOJ with “impeachment”? Remember the heady days of Jan 2017 when every Repub promised to “get to the bottom of this!”? Not so much, eh?
The Dems are out to lunch. No time to deal with this guy. They have more important things to do I suppose. Planning their BetterDeal. With this kind of leadership it is no wonder the right wing feels entitled to run amuk. Maybe they are planning a party for their dear leader when he gets the Nobel Peace Price for NK, even though their fucking mountain collapsed on them and China took little Kim out behind the barn. Have you heard the Dems say anything about like anything?
The Dems?
They are…waiting.
As usual.
DemoReactivecrats.
AG
When you have no power, there is very little as a practical matter you CAN do. Other than make noise. And Trump makes all the noise for them. They don’t have to say a word.
WaPo reporting that Ty Cobb is exiting and ex Clinton impeachment lawyer Emmett Flood is entering the fray.
So how will this work? Will there be a trial in the senate assuming this passes the House? Or is this simply the excuse Trump needs to fire him?
I think this will light up a fire among the democrats, independents and sane republicans. Or at least I most fervently hope so.
Every day, I repeat, every day Trump does something crazy and gets away with it. Yesterday his henchman burglarized a doctors office and took his files and today he plans an illegal impeachment with zero evidence of wrong doing. Is there nothing anyone can do about this evil fuck?
You write:
“I think this will light up a fire among the democrats, independents and sane republicans. Or at least I most fervently hope so.”
And follow that with:
“Every day, I repeat, every day Trump does something crazy and gets away with it.”
That’s every day for several years…including the primaries and election. I repeat…several years!!!
I believe that you have answered your own question.
They are all waiting for him to implode…to consume himself, so that they will not need to expose their own liabilities in open battle..
And so far???
They’ve been wrong.
That is their liability.
Cowardice in the face of battle.
So it goes.
AG