Free Republic

On New Year’s Day this year, I predicted in a column published here that under pressure of various governmental investigations, Donald Trump will be compelled to resign from the presidency before the end of 2019. The recent disclosures regarding these investigations have strengthened my position. Upon Trump’s resignation from the presidency, Vice President Mike Pence will become the president. Pence, however, will be a very poor reelection prospect in 2020. Mike and Karen Pence, his wife, have a well-deserved reputation for extremism on social issues, particularly on issues affecting gay and lesbian voters. The Pences possess a “kook” factor they...

Alan J. Steinberg—who served as an adviser to former President George W. Bush—wrote in an opinion piece published this week that he didn’t believe President Donald Trump would be removed from office through impeachment. Steinberg, a former Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator, said that he believed Trump would resign in 2019 in exchange for immunity. “Trump will not be removed from office by the constitutional impeachment and removal process,” Steinberg wrote in The Star-Ledger. “Instead, the self-professed supreme dealmaker will use his presidency as a bargaining chip with federal and state authorities in 2019, agreeing to leave office in exchange...

The catastrophe of the mass murder in Parkland, Florida has elevated the issue of assault weapons to the forefront in the forthcoming November, 2018 elections.  There is now an overwhelming national consensus developing for the enactment of a national ban on assault weapons. The National Rifle Association (NRA) will be very much in the forefront of opposition to such a measure.  Because of their controlling influence with both President Donald Trump and the Republican majority leadership in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, the enactment of such a ban will be impossible unless the Democrats win control...

I need not dwell on the catastrophe of the Parkland, Florida mass murder last week. Such killings have become the new normal in America. In five of the six deadliest mass shootings of the past six years in the United States (Newtown, San Bernardino. Las Vegas. Sutherland Springs, and Parkland) the gunman used an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle. This is a weapon that was banned for individual ownership and usage by the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban. This 10-year ban was legislatively enacted by a Democratic President, Bill Clinton and a Democratic Congress.