Republicans dismiss Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s refusal to transmit the impeachment articles to the Senate as a weak stunt. They do so at the peril of both the Constitution and President Trump. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell may be a master tactician, but Mrs. Pelosi is no slouch.

It’s now been more than a week since the House impeached Mr. Trump, and Mrs. Pelosi has yet to name impeachment managers or formally send over the paperwork. Democrats claim they are delaying in the name of “fairness,” withholding the articles until Mr. McConnell agrees to new witnesses and evidence in a Senate trial.

Republicans are ridiculing the tactic, pointing out that Mrs. Pelosi has no authority to dictate the form of a Senate trial and no leverage over Mr. McConnell.

Both points are true but irrelevant. Republicans err in thinking Mrs. Pelosi’s goal is to craft a Senate trial to her liking—and even in presuming Mrs. Pelosi wants a trial at all.

[Note by JW:  This is absolutely one of VDH’s best.  Here is the money quote.  Consider sending the quote to everyone you know.

 “If and when fascism comes to America, it will not arrive with jackboots, stiff arms, and military uniforms. The attempt to suppress political opposition in anti-constitutional fashion, to regiment the economy by denying constitutionally protected freedoms, and the efforts to change the Constitution to reflect political utility, will come under the auspices of ‘equality,’ ‘fairness, ‘saving the planet, and ‘social justice—as a way to combat ‘climate change,’ ‘racism,’ ‘homophobia,’ and ‘sexism’.”  ---Victor Davis Hanson

Be sure and read and absorb this masterful VDH essay entire. – JW]

We hear a great deal these days about the “deep state,” especially as it applies to the Trump Administration. The president’s supporters use the term to describe the entrenched federal bureaucracy and what they believe to be its efforts to derail the president’s policies.

Until recently, the president’s critics have dismissed the idea of a deep state as a crazy right-wing conspiracy.  But, in fact, the deep state is a particularly virulent form of the “administrative state,” which has been described by such scholars as John Marini, Ronald Prestritto, and Paul Moreno as a perversion of constitutional self-government.

It is a “fourth branch of government” that fits nowhere within the scheme of the Constitution as understood by its authors. It is enabled by Congress’s unconstitutional delegation of its legislative powers to the executive, leading to the creation of the pestilent “alphabet agencies” that plague American life.

Last Thursday (12/19), the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, Mark Galli, wrote an editorial calling for the impeachment of President Donald Trump.

In my view, this editorial only serves to confirm one of the sadder realizations of my life: that religious conviction guarantees neither moral clarity nor common sense.

The gist of the editorial -- and of most religious and conservative opposition to President Trump -- is that any good the president has done is dwarfed by his character defects.

This is an amoral view that says more about Galli than it does about the president. He and the people who share his opinion are making the following statement: No matter how much good this president does, it is less important than his character flaws.

Why is this wrong?

[This is the full text of the President’s to Pelosi issued yesterday, 12/17.  The italics are ours for emphasis. –JW]

THE WHITE HOUSE Washington December 17, 2019

The Honorable Nancy Pelosi Speaker of the House of Representatives Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Madam Speaker:

I write to express my strongest and most powerful protest against the partisan impeachment crusade being pursued by the Democrats in the House of Representatives. This impeachment represents an unprecedented and unconstitutional abuse of power by Democrat Lawmakers, unequaled in nearly two and a half centuries of American legislative history.

The Articles of Impeachment introduced by the House Judiciary Committee are not recognizable under any standard of Constitutional theory, interpretation, or jurisprudence. They include no crimes, no misdemeanors, and no offenses whatsoever. You have cheapened the importance of the very ugly word, impeachment!

 By proceeding with your invalid impeachment, you are violating your oaths of office, you are breaking your allegiance to the Constitution, and you are declaring open war on American Democracy.

It is said there are two things you should never watch being made: sausage and government budgets.

Now we can add impeachment to the list of stomach-turning sights to avoid.

The arcane rules, phony cordiality and debates over the second sentence in paragraph G of Point Six were bad enough, but the nausea meter hit the roof when Nancy Pelosi took the microphone. Wearing a funereal black dress, she stood next to a cardboard American flag and recited the Pledge of Allegiance.

I would have counted her more honest if she had pledged her allegiance to a Democrat donkey.

The decision by the Supreme Court last Friday (12/13) to review the lower court rulings involving congressional and prosecution subpoenas directed toward President Trump undercuts the second article of impeachment that passed the House Judiciary Committee along party lines last week.

That second article of impeachment charges President Trump with “obstruction of Congress” for refusing to comply with the congressional subpoenas in the absence of a final court order.

In so charging him, the House Judiciary Committee has arrogated to itself the power to decide the validity of subpoenas, and the power to determine whether claims of executive privilege must be recognized, both authorities that properly belong with the judicial branch of our government, not the legislative branch.

Therefore, the Supreme Court decision to review these three cases, in which lower courts ruled against President Trump, provides support for his constitutional arguments in the investigation.

Donald Trump certainly is mercurial at times. He can be uncouth.

But then again, no president in modern memory has been on the receiving end of such overwhelmingly negative media coverage and a three-year effort to abort his presidency, beginning the day after his election.

Do we remember the effort to subvert the Electoral College to prevent Trump from assuming office?

The first impeachment try during his initial week in office?

Attempts to remove Trump using the ossified Logan Act or the emoluments clause of the Constitution?

The idea of declaring Trump unhinged, subject to removal by invoking the 25th Amendment?

In a series of tweets this morning (12/19), legal eagle and talk show host Mark Levin gave some pointers to Senator McConnell on how to handle Speaker Pelosi’s refusal to send the articles of impeachment over to the Senate.

Levin said:

“Nancy Pelosi was apparently advised by leftwing Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe to delay sending the impeachment to the Senate.  So she’s unilaterally sitting on the impeachment. This is another brazen unconstitutional act.

Here’s what Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans must do in response: 

With her announcement that Democrats will move forward and vote on articles of impeachment, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) may have signed a political death warrant for dozens of moderate Democrats elected in Trump districts.

Pelosi is speaker today because in 2018 Democrats were able to convince voters in 31 House districts Donald Trump carried two years before to defect and vote for them. Democrats need these voters to stay in their column in 2020 if they are to hold onto the House and win back the White House.

But in key swing states, large majorities of these 2018 defectors now say they plan to back Trump again in 2020, as the New York Times reported.  Now, Pelosi is adding to their woes by forcing them to vote to recommend the removal of a president that voters in their districts say they plan to reelect.

Are voters really going cast ballots to give Trump four more years and also to reelect the Democrat House members who tried to take that decision out of their hands by impeaching him?