Summations Only

"Don't worry, Boss. The fix is in!"McConnell will need to recuse himself, along with any other senator who states that they will violate their oath to fairly listen to and decide on the evidence. Including the senators that Trump has tampered with (eg, the ones he wined and dined at Camp David).

Judge stymies Trump's border wall by invoking GOP law targeting Obama

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President Donald Trump’s border wall is facing a surprising new legal hurdle down in Texas: an obscure legislative provision crafted by House Republicans in 2014 when the GOP was targeting then-President Barack Obama’s budget powers.

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The amendment, carried forward into current law, has resurfaced with a vengeance in El Paso, Texas. U.S District Court Judge David Briones has been quoting back its words in a series of rulings against Trump’s decision to take $3.6 billion from military construction projects to expedite his wall.

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As first adopted, the Republican language specifically prohibited Obama from taking any step to eliminate or reduce funding for any program, project, or activity as proposed in the President’s budget request until it's cleared with Congress.

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The triggering event was a relatively narrow dispute in 2013 over funding for space exploration. But when they were enacted in Jan. 2014, the restrictions applied government-wide. And a year later, under full Republican control, Congress added the word increase alongside eliminate or reduce funding.

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What goes around, in other words, comes around

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Here is a link to the House Judiciary Committee Report on the Impeachment of President Donald J. Trump. It's 658 pages long, start reading now if you want to be done by Christmas.--Percy

Anyone with doubts should read this, then do what Elissa has done, and then base their conclusions on the facts and not on wannabe conspiracy theories.

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Rep. Elissa Slotkin: How I reached my decision on impeachment

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On September 23, I wrote in an op-ed column for the Free Press that I believed President Trump's actions regarding Ukraine, by his own admission, warranted the opening of an impeachment inquiry. I was part of a group of freshman members of Congress, all with backgrounds in military or intelligence, who called on the U.S. House of Representatives to use all available authorities to determine the truth and protect our national security.

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I did not make that call lightly. Over the past year, while an increasing number of my colleagues started calling for impeachment and pro-impeachment protesters started rallying at my events, I remained unconvinced. While the President had said and done some seriously troubling things, I ultimately believed that the American people would render a judgment at the ballot box in 2020.

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That changed with the events surrounding the President’s actions with Ukraine.

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Read the whole article to see how she comes to her conclusions, based on evidence shorn of bias.If the Senate doesn't vote to remove Trump they will be giving Trump and all future presidents1. the right/license to corrupt elections with foreign interference, and2. the right/license to ignore any subpoena and to direct anyone in their administration to ignore any subpoena.Think long and hard on whether you want to live with that.It is time to put mad hate aside and think of the future of this country.Enjoy

You greatly underestimate the hypocrisy of the Right.They can trample all over the rules, but they’ll use those same rules as an excuse to jump on anyone they don’t like. Without worrying is the actual rules have been broken at all.We’ve already seen some incredible misreadings used to attack the impeachment proceedings.

The only out I see at this point is to pursue the subpoenas to the supreme court and then take an accounting.Rudy is ready to start the Clown Show in the Senate.Enjoy

As reported by the Daily Beast: Rudy Giuliani Doubles Down on Fox News, Says ‘I Forced’ Marie Yovanovitch Out of Ukraine. When asked by Fox News host Laura Ingraham if he forced Yovanovich out, especially since he wasn't an official representative of the U.S. government, he said he forced her out and that she was corrupt:

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"Of course I did. I didn’t need her out of the way. I forced her out because she’s corrupt."

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Of course there is no evidence of corruption on the part of Yovanovich.And in a recent interview in The New Yorker, Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal lawyer and not a representative of the United States, declared in no uncertain terms that he forced Yovanovich out of her ambassadorship of the Ukraine because she was "corrupt" and was making "investigations difficult for everybody.":

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"I believed that I needed Yovanovitch out of the way. She was going to make the investigations difficult for everybody."

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He also told the magazine that he had compiled a dossier of information on Joe Biden, Hunter Biden and Yovanovich. New Yorker reporter Adam Entous obtained a copy of the dossier and said it included some outlandish and some impossible claims. People are claimed to be where they could not possibly be (e.g., Hunter Biden breakfasting with Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken when he was at the hospital where his brother lay dying). People are claimed to be involved in things they could not possibly have been involved in (e.g., Kent and Yovanovich helped set up NABU (National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine) in order to protect the Bidens when neither was stationed in Ukraine at the time). He claimed Yovanovich has a relationship with George Soros that does not exist.It turns out Giuliani was being passed information by Yuriy Lutsenkio, the disgraced former Prosecutor General of the Ukraine. Lutsenko is known for letting Manafort co-conspirator Kilimnik, who Mueller wanted for witness testimony, flee to Russia. He further thwarted Mueller's investigations into Manafort by not providing documentation and secret records of double bookkeeping.Giuliani was also "pissed off at her" for blocking the visa application of Viktor Shokin, another disgraced Ukrainian Prosecutor General, to visit New York because he had, as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent put it, "knowingly subverted and wasted U.S. taxpayer money."Giuliani passed the dossier to the FBI where, at least publicly, they did nothing with it. Certainly none of it's highly questionable information turned up at the House hearings. Meanwhile Giuliani's henchmen, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, have been arrested and indicted, and it's not impossible that at some point Giuliani himself could be arrested.Giuliani seems to be expert at what could best be described as, given Trump's monarchical aspirations, palace intrigue. We can only hope that it all catches up with him sooner rather than later.--Percy

The New York Times also interviewed Giuliani. It's worth reading because it cuts down the detail of everything Giuliani did into a more succinct narrative: Giuliani Provides Details of What Trump Knew About Ambassador’s Removal - The New York Times--Percy

George T. Conway, husband of Kellyanne Conway, has an editorial in today's New York Times, along with three co-authors, in which he says:

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"Our many policy differences with national Democrats remain, but our shared fidelity to the Constitution dictates a common effort."

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It is nice to know there are sane conservatives out there: Opinion | We Are Republicans, and We Want Trump Defeated - The New York TimesMitt Romney is supposedly also adhering to core conservative principles in opposition to Trump, but he has been remarkably silent.--Percy

FISA warrants are all but rubber stamps, anyway. If they looked at 20 random FISA warrants they would probably find the same or worse in half of them. I'm not saying this a good thing, but the courts have long given investigators a wide berth when it comes to these warrants.

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Over the entire 33-year period, the FISA court granted 33,942 warrants, with only 12 denials — a rejection rate of 0.03 percent of the total requests.
United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court - Wikipedia

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Trump has been impeached but I still feel that this is a mistake simply because it will likely embolden the fool to commit even more egregious acts. If, as expected, the Senate does not convict Trump he will see it as proof that he really is above the law.

Indeed. Maybe something that will shock even the puddinghead republicans.Meanwhile subpoenas are in process through the courts ...Enjoy

And Mitch McConnell pushes through confirmation of 13 new Judges.

As already reported, Trump has been impeached by the House, here's the Washington Post article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/...53-dce4b94e4249_story.html.There were two articles of impeachment:

• Article I: Abuse of Power (passed 230-197)
• Article II: Obstruction of Justice (passed 229-198)

The Articles of Impeachment can be found here: Read the Articles of Impeachment Against President Trump - The New York Times--Percy

I just started watching Mitch McConnell live speaking on the floor of the Senate. I came in in the middle, and the very first thing I heard him say appears to be a lie. He said that Schiff and someone on his committee said, "If the president asserts his constitutional rights it's that much more evidence he's guilty." This seems a particularly crazy thing to say. If Schiff or someone on his staff said this then they're wrong. But searching the Internet I can find no record of anyone anywhere, let alone Schiff or someone on his committee, saying this.Do Democrats in the Senate get a chance at rebuttal to this McConnell statement?I've disapproved of McConnell's conduct in the Senate, especially after he declared he would be a biased juror colluding with the Trump defense team, but I had no idea he was also a brazen liar.Here's a link to the video at PBS. The words I quoted come at time 17:00: WATCH LIVE: Majority Leader Mitch McConnell speaks on Senate floor after House impeachment vote | PBS NewsHourI haven't listened to the entire video, maybe 40%, but it's mostly a hatchet job.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Add forgotten link.