So who among us is going to be the one to get on their little squawk
box and call for a flash mob to show up at Steve’s home ? ? …
Come on … ain’t no one got any balls ? ? —
Or does everybody just want to watch people hang from the safety
of their armchairs while penning sternly worded posts on TPM ? ? …
JFC … What’s wrong with US ? ? …
I want to swing my club until It breaks on his wife’s skull …
I want to drag them all through the streets …
I want to eat dead rotting flesh …
I want to burn it all down afterward …
Doesn’t anyone have any guts ? ?
Ahhh … that’s better …
I just wanted to join in … was feeling lonely and separate … though …
now I’m embarrassed in knowing how stupid and reactionary
I look to reasonable people —
If you want Mnunchin fined or thrown in jail, take him to court. File for a writ of mandamus, forcing Mnuchin to comply with the statute requiring him to provide the returns.
If the court wants to hold hearings, Congress can say “fine, but lets do it immediately, because we’re ready, and they claim to have a legal basis for not complying with the law, which means that they must be ready as well.” And ask that the tax returns be given to the court, pending the courts decision, in order to ensure compliance with the court order.
“Inherent contempt” at this point is sheer folly. Congress has a few people who work for the seargent at arms who can enforce an inherent contempt penalty. Trump has the DoJ – including the FBI, and the military if necessary – to prevent the seargent at arms from carrying out his orders. Guess who is gonna win that one?
Use every tool you have at your disposal. If you’re an impeachment skeptic (which I am not), it seems to me that the way to show people that you don’t necessarily need to impeach is to investigate aggressively. Aggressively and quickly mobilizing every tool at your disposal to force the GOP/WH to cooperate and testify can give Dems the opportunity to make multiple criminal referrals and tell the people, ‘put us in power and we will prosecute these guys’. What I think Speaker Pelosi is worried about is that the deeper and more aggressively you go, the more it becomes obvious that impeachment can’t be avoided. That’s why she was caught flatfooted by the abrupt end of the Mueller probe and Barr’s stonewalling. Had she gotten her team ready with the subpoenas and interview dates and draft contempt resolutions by the date the report was released, she’d be more in the driver’s seat. Right now, she is being led around by Warren and Harris who are advocating for impeachment and are getting positive responses on the trail and from the media. From Pelosi’s perspective, I think it would be better to get the info out now and impeach sooner rather than later (i.e., in 2019) so that the candidates can be protected and 2020 can be framed on Democratic terms.
Yup. I’ve been thinking of parenting analogies a lot lately- possibly because the republican argument seems to consist of “you can’t make me” and “you’re not the boss of me”.
The Dems have counted one…two…two and a half…
They’re now on two and three quarters. Every parent knows counting to three only works if you actually get to three and impose consequences. It doesn’t have to happen often, but it does need to happen at least once.
If my memory of Watergate serves, this is about the point where you start to figure out who the major league players (and minor leaguers) are in the Congress. The major leaguers are the ones who make things happen, the minor leaguers just follow and talk — there’s a place for both, but it helps to note the difference…
In a rare show of determination and resolve, Democrats have ratcheted up the rhetoric by saying they might get to the point of meeting to possibly decide to look into first writing a sternly worded letter to Mnuchin, then possibly suggesting the idea of asking him several times if he’ll please cooperate. Democratic leadership stiffened its spine over the weekend by also telling the White House that subpoenas should be respected unless the president has a really good reason for ignoring them.
sorry khyber, but Congress is essentially powerless to agressively investigate anything under oversight in the face of executvie branch intransigence.
Oversight is a legislative function – and its tools are designed to advance legislative purposes. Its like using an electric drill to nail together two pieces of wood. Yeah, you might be able to get that nail through the wood eventually, but it will have taken far too long, and you will have done enormous damage to the drill – and the nail is far likelier to loosen because of the imprecise way you banged it in.
Subpoenas and contempt citations are mere pieces of paper without the means to enforce them, and the House has no way to enforce them without the courts. Inherent contempt sounds good, but the House has no way to collect fines…and good luck taking a public official who has Secret Service (and FBI) protection against his/her will. Secret Service and FBI agents will be told to turn back any effort by a seargent at arms to enforce an inherent contempt citation, and absent a court decision in Congress’ favor, the Secret Service and FBI will follow their orders.
If Mnuchin is subpoenaed by two separate House Committees and still refuses to testify, does that mean he could be double dipped on the $25K/day fine for his resufals?
WI–for the sake of argument–Nancy is actually coordinating the messaging with Harris and Warren? WI–for the sake of argument–she is turning GOP’s “say the outrageous, and then ‘compromise’ by reeling back to the ‘formerly inconceivable’”? WI this is how she literally normalizes the idea of impeachment?
That’s not what Pelosi is doing. Warren and Harris didn’t align with Pelosi’s messaging post report release. They took the lead on calling for impeachment hearings. They pushed the debate b/c they found Pelosi’s position at that time to be untenable. She has now started to coordinate better with her committee chairs, but until her team gets Mueller to testify she will be behind the curve.
Just learned last night that it will be Chief Justice Roberts presiding over the Impeachment trial when it reaches the Senate and not the odious Yertle. McConnell may do his damndest to keep the trial from even happening but that is the limit of his “leadership” once the trial convenes.
