[Discussion] Presidential impeachment: the good, the bad, the orange

Formal impeachment proceedings were started today. Discuss.

It's a start. As is granting full statehood to DC and PR, which would likely change the overall makeup of the Senate, which would in theory allow for a change in the Judicial.

Removing lobbying money, reversing Citizens United, etc, all then become possible and perhaps long-term fixes.

The list is huge, of course.

Yes DC and PR way overdue

I would also be happy to watch ND or Wyoming make a go at it as independent nations with a closed US border if thats really what they would consider to be a viable alternative to not having their citizens granted a 400x voting power handicap.

I'm fine with allowing lower population states to have a somewhat outsized influence on national policy like the system the founders set up, but the population differences (as percentages) between small states and large states at the time the Constitution was written was tiny compared to the same measure today. I haven't run the numbers, but I suspect that the power per voter difference between a small state and a large state in the founding era Senate (which was supposed to be where we would allow such a difference) was considerably less than the power per voter difference between a small state and a large state in the modern house (where we aren't supposed to have any significant difference).
I can understand the need to limit the total number of reps to keep the house functional, but perhaps we need to make a body comprised like the current house the "upper" chamber, and have another body where 500-600 representatives are distributed as fairly as possible including the possibility of awarding states zero reps in that body as the "lower" chamber. Small states still get massively outsized representation through their outsized power in the "upper" chamber. It would never happen, but it seems much closer to how our current system was intended to function.

On the electoral college front, I say scrap it. It is an artifact of both technical limitations of the possibility of tallying a nationwide ballot at the time, and some very anti-democratic ideas (originally citizens did not get to vote for their electors, never mind the president).

It's pure fantasy that we could achieve such reforms in the foreseeable future, but such changes would bring us much closer to the good parts of how our government originally ran.

firesloth wrote:

If my grandmother ran as a Republican, I would vote against her at this point. (And I respect my grandmother a lot!!)

If my grandmother ran as a republican it would be terrifying, and I definitely would not vote for her, but that is also influenced by the fact that they both died over 30 years ago.

Wasn't he already in protective custody? or did that expire once the hearings were over?

Trump's payback begins...

Vindman, who provided key impeachment testimony, 'escorted' from White House, attorney says

NBC News wrote:

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council who testified during the House impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, was escorted from the White House Friday afternoon, his lawyer said.

"LTC Vindman was asked to leave for telling the truth," his attorney David Pressman said in a statement. "The truth has cost LTC Alexander Vindman his job, his career, and his privacy."

Pressman added that, "the most powerful man in the world - buoyed by the silent, the pliable, and the complicit" had "decided to exact revenge" on Vindman.

Vindman had, as part of his duties, listened in on the July 25 call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy, which was at the heart of the impeachment inquiry.

The Washington Post first reported on efforts by the White House to push out Vindman, citing two people familiar with the move, as part of a broader targeting by Trump of perceived enemies in the wake of his acquittal in the Senate after a two-week trial. The Post reported that Vindman would be reassigned to a job at the Defense Department.

And we probably won't even hear about Trump's next crime: Barr says no investigations into 2020 candidates, campaigns without his approval

thrawn82 wrote:

Wasn't he already in protective custody? or did that expire once the hearings were over?

He's still been in the WH performing his duties up until now.

buoyed by the silent, the pliable, and the complicit

That's f*cking poetic

Alex Vindman's brother Yevgeny has ALSO been escorted out of the White House.

Pretty much everyone who testified during the House hearings is going to get canned sooner or later.

Apparently Ambassador Gordon "Everyone was in the loop" Sondland has also been fired.

Totally the not so subtle baby steps towards fascism.

I look forward to the legal justifications put forward for Trump identifying and retaliating against the whistle-blower.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I look forward to the legal justifications put forward for Trump identifying and retaliating against the whistle-blower.

He doesn't need legal justifications; he's president. Isn't that what has just been established?

PiP wrote:
Mixolyde wrote:

Yeah, the answer to "Where does a principled Republican go?" Is "become an Obama Democrat." And actual progressives should leave the Democrats to form a new party.

So the solution is for the Democratic party to move farther right while the progressives leave to form a new party too small to win any Elections? There's a reason the Tea Party saw success and it's not because they flounced off to their own party when the establishment pushed back.

That's a valid concern. There really aren't enough principled Republicans left to make a dent even if they did abandon the party, anyway. I think all 4 of them used to post here.

Mixolyde wrote:
PiP wrote:
Mixolyde wrote:

Yeah, the answer to "Where does a principled Republican go?" Is "become an Obama Democrat." And actual progressives should leave the Democrats to form a new party.

So the solution is for the Democratic party to move farther right while the progressives leave to form a new party too small to win any Elections? There's a reason the Tea Party saw success and it's not because they flounced off to their own party when the establishment pushed back.

That's a valid concern. There really aren't enough principled Republicans left to make a dent even if they did abandon the party, anyway. I think all 4 of them used to post here.

David Frum, Max Boot, Bill Kristol and Joe Walsh used to post here? What games did they play?

Mr Rogers was a republican but he is dead now just like our hopes and dreams.

DSGamer wrote:

David Frum, Max Boot, Bill Kristol and Joe Walsh used to post here? What games did they play?

Bioshock Infinite.

Evil Genius
Diablo
The Evil Within
Red Dead Redemption
Dishonored
Ass. Creed
Crackdown
Her Story

Does Joe Walsh even deserve to be on that small list? He seemed to be a happy Trumpie until he decided to run for office.

absurddoctor wrote:

Does Joe Walsh even deserve to be on that small list? He seemed to be a happy Trumpie until he decided to run for office.

Joe Walsh (IIRC) soured on Trump because of Trump's constant attacks on the FBI and law enforcement. He decided to run for office because he was no longer a happy Trumpie.

But you're right....

DSGamer wrote:

David Frum, Max Boot, Bill Kristol and Joe Walsh used to post here? What games did they play?

...Joe Walsh doesn't deserve to be included because he was all-in on Trump during the campaign. Replace him with Rick Wilson or Tom Nichols who were both always Never-Trumpers.

The folks posting here were not never trumpers. They were more Susan Collins -like. Only concerned, but not enough to actually do anything. Oh, but they were here tone policing liberals and “reminding us” that Obama was “just as bad.”

They got their judges. We got a fascist regime.

Joe Walsh deserved to be on the list more than the Frum, Kristol, and Rick Wilson.

The list was supposed to be of ‘principled republicans’; being GWJ members seemed like something of a side joke. While Walsh did apparently have a line after all, it was a lot easier to get him to abandon his principles than the other three.

absurddoctor wrote:

The list was supposed to be of ‘principled republicans’; being GWJ members seemed like something of a side joke. While Walsh did apparently have a line after all, it was a lot easier to get him to abandon his principles than the other three.

It was definitely a joke. Lol.

I was enjoying the idea that all this time we had David Frum and Bill Kristol doing Gears with Beers or fighting in P&C.

DSGamer wrote:
absurddoctor wrote:

The list was supposed to be of ‘principled republicans’; being GWJ members seemed like something of a side joke. While Walsh did apparently have a line after all, it was a lot easier to get him to abandon his principles than the other three.

It was definitely a joke. Lol.

I was enjoying the idea that all this time we had David Frum and Bill Kristol doing Gears with Beers or fighting in P&C.

Well, I am in the same trivia league as Mick Mulvaney..

Tanglebones wrote:
DSGamer wrote:
absurddoctor wrote:

The list was supposed to be of ‘principled republicans’; being GWJ members seemed like something of a side joke. While Walsh did apparently have a line after all, it was a lot easier to get him to abandon his principles than the other three.

It was definitely a joke. Lol.

I was enjoying the idea that all this time we had David Frum and Bill Kristol doing Gears with Beers or fighting in P&C.

Well, I am in the same trivia league as Mick Mulvaney..

I haven’t looked myself, but I’ve heard that he does poorly enough that it looks like he sticks with the honor-system no cheating rules, I guess that is something in his favor. (And maybe explains that one press conference that will likely be the basis of his upcoming firing)

farley3k wrote:

Now I am not sure that the system we have is the best, but if we want to toss out some parts then we should think about it carefully.

Honest question: how carefully did we think about capping the size of the House of Representatives? According to what I learned in school it was supposed to be the house where every individual* was represented equally. These days it too is skewed in the small states' favor. Tying the Presidential election more closely to the popular vote is less a radical shift than a viable way to return the system to the intended balance between State and Individual.

*For certain period sexist/racist definitions of individual.

Vargen wrote:

Honest question: how carefully did we think about capping the size of the House of Representatives?

Not very. It was mostly politics and the very parochial problem that there just wasn't enough seating in House Chamber for more Representatives.

The politics were that rural areas were shrinking as Americans moved to the city, but they didn't want to give up their House seats. Their solution was to simply refuse to reapportion after the 1920 Census.

The Reapportionment Act of 1929 solved that problem by making reapportioning automatic, but it didn't cover adding more seats as happened in previous reapportionment bills. Because there were no more reapportionment acts after 1929, the number of Representatives stayed at 435.

Back in November, CGP Grey did this awesome video which was a footnote to his video about the (currently existing) compact among states to subvert the electoral college. The video is an in depth exploration of how states have a varying amount of representation not only in the EC, but also in the house, since they're related.

It's long but I found out fascinating. Most of the video is iterating the spreadsheet he made, so skippable.