Friday, November 1, 2019
Thursday, October 31, 2019
Democrats Reject Republican Amendment Requiring Turnover of Exculpatory Evidence in Impeachment
Unlike previous impeachments, there are several committees — not just the House Judiciary Committee — being used to investigate the president, especially the House Intelligence Committee.
As currently written (entirely by Democrats), the resolution says that the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, who is Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), is authorized, but not required, to make depositions public. He is required to prepare a report for the House Judiciary Committee, which will consider articles of impeachment, and is given wide discretion over the contents of that report. He is also required to transmit dissenting views.
Other committees are merely “authorized,” but not required, to hand over “records” or “materials” to the House Judiciary Committee. The (Democratic) chairs of those committees must consult with the ranking member of the (Republican) minority, but seem to have wide discretion over what they transmit.
Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-AZ) proposed that the resolution indicate that the chairs of those committees “shall” be required to transmit exculpatory evidence to the House Judiciary Committee.
“There is no reason why anyone in this body should disagree that all materials must be transferred to the members of Congress on the Judiciary Committee,” she said, adding that it was absurd for members to have to rely on a partial account provided by Schiff. In previous impeachment hearings, she pointed out, the members of the Judiciary Committee would have heard the entire testimony, including exculpatory evidence, themselves.
Rules Committee chair Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) suggested that there might be national security risks involved in transferring all of the evidence.
Lesko countered that members had been told there was no classified information yet in the inquiry, and that members of both parties could not be expected to vote on impeachment with incomplete information.
Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) added that Schiff had previously proved untrustworthy, having claimed falsely to have had no contact with the so-called...
California’s Disastrous State Illustrates Limits of Progressivism
By Victor Davis Hanson
More than 2 million Californians recently were left without power after the state’s largest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric—which filed for bankruptcy earlier this year—preemptively shut down transmission lines in fear that they might spark fires during periods of high autumn winds.
Consumers blame the state for not cleaning up dead trees and brush, along with the utility companies for not updating their ossified equipment. The power companies in turn fault the state for so overregulating utilities that they had no resources to modernize their grids.
Californians know that having tens of thousands of homeless in their major cities is untenable. In some places, municipal sidewalks have become open sewers of garbage, used needles, rodents, and infectious diseases.
Yet no one dares question progressive orthodoxy by enforcing drug and vagrancy laws, moving the homeless out of cities to suburban or rural facilities, or increasing the number of mental hospitals.
Taxpayers in California, whose basket of sales, gasoline, and income taxes is the highest in the nation, quietly seethe while immobile on antiquated freeways that are crowded, dangerous, and under nonstop makeshift repair.
Gas prices of $4 to $5 a gallon—the result of high taxes, hyper-regulation, and green mandates—add insult to the injury of stalled commuters. Gas tax increases ostensibly intended to fund freeway expansion and repair continue to be diverted to the state’s failing high-speed rail project.
Residents shrug that the state’s public schools are among the weakest in the nation, often ranking in the bottom quadrant in standardized test scores. Elites publicly oppose charter schools, but often put their own kids in private academies.
Californians know that to venture into a typical municipal emergency room is to descend into a modern Dante’s Inferno. Medical facilities are overcrowded. They can be as unpleasant as they are bankrupting to the vanishing middle class that must face exorbitant charges to bring in an injured or sick child.
No one would dare to connect the crumbling infrastructure, poor schools, and failing public health care with the non-enforcement of immigration laws, which has led to a massive influx of undocumented immigrants from the poorest regions of the world, who often arrive without fluency in English or...
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