I don't have the kind of sweeping knowledge of the presidency Señor Trumpanzee pretends to have. But I can state that there has never been a president in my lifetime as profane and in the gutter as the intellectually lazy slug currently occupying the White House. Trump was a grotesque pig long before the Kremlin rallied easily-manipulatable fans of The Apprentice to elect him to office. Imagine a carefully curated compilation of, say, The Best of Trump With Howard Stern. But more recently, he got laughs from those Apprentice fans by referring to mu congressman, the new chairman of the House Intelligence Committee as Little Adam Schitt.Who even needs to remember all the way back when people were scratching their heads about his clown-like routine calling Senator Cruz a pussy? This is a filthy-mouthed walking garbage can, pre-pardoned by the religionist-right in return for granting them a few pieces of silver. So then comes the outrage over some earthy remarks by a newly-sworn in congresswoman-- a Muslim no less-- Rashida Tlaib.And it wasn't just Trump-enabling Republicans who saw this as an opportunity to go on the attack. I was hoping Steny Hoyer might be so overwhelmed that he would die on the spot but, alas, he's still among the breathing from what I hear. Some of his acolytes handled the attack on Rashida. Blue Dog chairman Jim Costa-- the most pro-Trump Democrap in Congress, bellowed, "Inappropriate. As elected officials I think we should be expected to set a high bar… It’s not helpful." Speaking of the bar Costa has set, he is best know in his home state of California for availing himself of the services of child prostitutes-- and he thinks Rashida was being inappropriate? Another Hoyerite, former New Dem chair, swiss-cheese brained Ron Kind, is mixing up Mueller's job of investigating criminal behavior and Congress' constitutional requisite to discover high crimes and misdemeanors for an impeachment process to begin. "Mueller hasn’t even produced his report yet," he wined after Rashida would dare bring up the "i" word. "People should cool their jets a little bit, let the prosecutors do their job and finish the investigation." It's Congress' job to investigate impeachment, not Mueller's.Kevin McCarthy, who has never even burped when Trump was dragging the United States through the sewer for the last 2 years had the nerve to run to the media to attack Pelosi over it. "She has a new freshman who uses that type of language, who has a determination what she's gonna do with no facts or no basis. How do you work with anybody if this is what they really have planned?"Well, let's find out from Rashida. She wrote an OpEd for her hometown paper, the Detroit Free Press-- along with John Bonifaz, Free Speech For People president-- Now is the time to begin impeachment proceedings against President Trump. The tone was perfect from the first sentence: "Trump is a direct and serious threat to our country. On an almost daily basis, he attacks our Constitution, our democracy, the rule of law and the people who are in this country. His conduct has created a constitutional crisis that we must confront now." Isn't it funny how establishment cowards like Kind and Costa haven't noticed?
The Framers of the Constitution designed a remedy to address such a constitutional crisis: impeachment. Through the impeachment clause, they sought to ensure that we would have the power, through our elected representatives in Congress, to protect the country by removing a lawless president from the Oval Office.We already have overwhelming evidence that the president has committed impeachable offenses, including, just to name a few: obstructing justice; violating the emoluments clause; abusing the pardon power; directing or seeking to direct law enforcement to prosecute political adversaries for improper purposes; advocating illegal violence and undermining equal protection of the laws; ordering the cruel and unconstitutional imprisonment of children and their families at the southern border; and conspiring to illegally influence the 2016 election through a series of hush money payments.Whether the president was directly involved in a conspiracy with the Russian government to interfere with the 2016 election remains the subject of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. But we do not need to wait on the outcome of that criminal investigation before moving forward now with an inquiry in the U.S. House of Representatives on whether the president has committed impeachable “high crimes and misdemeanors” against the state: abuse of power and abuse of the public trust.Each passing day brings new damage to the countless people hurt by this lawless president’s actions. We cannot undo the trauma that he is causing to our people, and this nation. Those most vulnerable to his administration’s cruelty are counting on us to act-- act to remove the president and put this country on a path to true justice. The Framers distinguished the impeachment power from the power of a criminal prosecution. While Congress has the impeachment power to prevent future harm to our government, prosecutors have the power to seek punishment for those who commit crimes. But it is not Mueller’s role to determine whether the president has committed impeachable offenses. That is the responsibility of the U.S. Congress.Those who say we must wait for Special Counsel Mueller to complete his criminal investigation before Congress can start any impeachment proceedings ignore this crucial distinction. There is no requirement whatsoever that a president be charged with or be convicted of a crime before Congress can impeach him. They also ignore the fact that many of the impeachable offenses committed by this president are beyond the scope of the special counsel’s investigation.We are also now hearing the dangerous claim that initiating impeachment proceedings against this president is politically unwise and that, instead, the focus should now shift to holding the president accountable via the 2020 election. Such a claim places partisan gamesmanship over our country and our most vulnerable at this perilous moment in our nation’s history. Members of Congress have a sworn duty to preserve our Constitution. Leaving a lawless president in office for political points would be abandoning that duty.This is not just about Donald Trump. This is about all of us. What should we be as a nation? Who should we be as a people? In the face of this constitutional crisis, we must rise. We must rise to defend our Constitution, to defend our democracy, and to defend that bedrock principle that no one is above the law, not even the President of the United States. Each passing day brings more pain for the people most directly hurt by this president, and these are days we simply cannot get back.The time for impeachment proceedings is now.
