This Is No Ordinary Impeachment [Barf]

This is not just an impeachment. It's the endgame for Trump's relentless assault on the institutions, norms, and practices of America's liberal democracy for the past three years. It's also a deeper reckoning. It's about whether the legitimacy of our entire system can last much longer without this man being removed from office.

I'm talking about what political scientists call "regime cleavage" -- a decline in democratic life so severe the country's very institutions could lose legitimacy as a result of it. It is described by one political scientist as follows: "a division within the population marked by conflict about the foundations of the governing system itself -- in the American case, our constitutional democracy. In societies facing a regime cleavage, a growing number of citizens and officials believe that norms, institutions, and laws may be ignored, subverted, or replaced." A full-on regime cleavage is, indeed, an extinction-level event for our liberal democratic system. And it is one precipitated by the man who is supposed to be the guardian of that system, the president.

Let us count the ways in which Trump has attacked and undermined the core legitimacy of our democracy. He is the only candidate in American history who refused to say that he would abide by the results of the vote. Even after winning the 2016 election, he still claimed that "millions" of voters -- undocumented aliens -- perpetrated massive electoral fraud in the last election, and voted for his opponent. He has repeatedly and publicly toyed with the idea that he could violate the 22nd Amendment, and get elected for three terms, or more.

He consistently described a perfectly defensible inquiry into Russia's role in the 2016 election as a “witch hunt” and a "hoax," demonizing Robert Mueller, even as Mueller, in the end, couldn't find...

Dear Andrew. You are emblematic of why Trump gained the Presidency in the first place. What, pray tell, do you know about anything, and by what criteria do you view yourself and your fellow travelers as members of the ‘intelligentsia’?

Your use of the word ‘liberal’ is pathetic, and certainly not congruent with the definition of that term when it actually meant something credible.

Honestly, if we precluded anyone with a law degree (and particularly a law degree from an Ivy) or a political science degree from holding public office, the quality of public office holders would go up almost exponentially - including the Supreme Court.

Your world view, predicated on the quaint and frankly ignorant idea that academic pedigree is a viable measure of ones ability to think clearly, have good deductive reasoning, and have true insight and open-mindedness is truly regressive, limited, and inaccurate.

You need to educate yourself more, in more relevant and useful contexts of education. I pity you.

The deep state is *not* American liberal democracy.

Hear, hear!

Trump is fighting back against liberal fascism, which has put deep tentacles into the American Constitutional Republic for the last 50 years, at least.

The most obvious of those tentacles being political correctness - the conceit that journalists, who wouldn’t libel a “liberal” on any account, can freely libel conservatives.
Justice Scalia was correct, tho, in saying that the problem traces to an incorrect holding by the Warren Court. The unanimous 1964 New York Times Co. v. Sullivan decision claims that the First Amendment modified libel law. But
Scalia argued his view on “textualism” was the ultimate defense of the First Amendment. In March 2012, an Associated Press report said he told an audience at Wesleyan University that the Court’s early justices would be “astonished that the notion of the Constitution changes to mean whatever each successive generation would like it to mean. … In fact, it would be not much use to have a First Amendment, for example, if the freedom of speech included only what some future generation wanted it to include. That would guarantee nothing at all.” That opinion didn’t prevent Scalia from harsh criticism of what is widely viewed as one of the essential court rulings protecting free speech and a free press — the 1964 decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. At the Newseum in the Aspen Institute 2011 Washington Ideas Forum, Scalia said the landmark ruling meant “you can libel public figures without liability so long as you are relying on some statement from a reliable source, whether it’s true or not. “Now the old libel law used to be (that) you’re responsible, you say something false that harms somebody’s reputation, we don’t care if it was told to you by nine bishops, you are liable,” Scalia said. “New York Times v. Sullivan just cast that aside because the Court thought in modern society, it’d be a good idea if the press could say a lot of stuff about public figures without having to worry. And that may be correct, that may be right, but if it was right it should have been adopted by the people. It should have been debated in the New York Legislature and the New York Legislature could have said, ‘Yes, we’re going to change our libel law.’” But in Times v. Sullivan, Scalia said the Supreme Court, under Justice Earl Warren, “… simply decided, ‘Yes, it used to be that … George Washington could sue somebody that libeled him, but we don’t think that’s a good idea anymore.’”
JUSTICE SCALIA: THE 45 WORDS — AND ORIGINAL MEANING — OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT
Scalia’s basic point was that the ratification of the Constitution was premised on the promise of a Bill of Rights being promptly added in amendments. It would have been very easy for a state to have revoked its ratification if the Bill of Rights had not been promptly ratified. Therefore the Bill of Rights was a profoundly conservative undertaking. The Federalists who put it through were in no position to be wanting to institute any controversial modification to rights as they were already understood. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments stipulate that the Constitution does not change any rights by accident - either a right is explicitly touched by the Constitution, or it is not touched by the Constitution.
Scalia pointed out that the only enumerated rights in the bill of rights are those which history suggested would be targeted by a tyrant. The Bill of Rights leaves the rest to common law. The bottom line is that the First Amendment does not touch the right to recompense for being libeled - and on that account the Sullivan decision is poppycock.

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