It’s Monday, December 9th, 2019…but before we begin, one quick comment on a topic raised in our Friday Quote of the Day from Rich (yes, “Rich”, as that’s all Balls Cotton has on him)…

“Everywhere you look, the Progressive agenda proves to be the largest, most destructive pyramid scheme ever formed.  It supports crime, poverty, social unrest, and general disruption and mayhem, so that a very few at the top can get rich and powerful.“

…which was accompanied by an appropriate meme we prepared:

One of the primary reasons the Progressive elite…along with a certain portion of their Republican counterpart…crave wealth and power is so they can live by a different set of rules from us mere mortals.  To wit, this series of memes forwarded from The Penguin:

It’s why Hillary Clinton, Loretta Lynch, Eric Holder, James Comey, Jim Clapper, John Brennan, Pete Strzok, Lisa Page, Andrew McCabe, Rod Rodenstein, Lois Lerner, John Koskinen and Barack Hussein Obama himself…among many, many others…are not either in prison or under indictment today.

Next to their indisputable infractions, Trump’s purported collusion/quid pro quo/bribery/crime du jour was the Sermon on the Mount. 

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, in a commentary we gave top billing in last Friday’s Lost Edition, as the WSJ‘s Kimberly Strassel observed…

Adam Schiff Is Watching

Obtaining phone logs of political rivals is a stunning abuse of congressional power.

 

“…Mr. Schiff purposely kept that action secret. This guaranteed that the only entity involved with a decision over whether to release the records was AT&T. And that gave Mr. Schiff all the cards, since companies fear political retribution far more than violating their customers’ privacy. (Had we been an AT&T customer, we wouldn’t be today!)

The question is whether Mr. Schiff, in his zeal to bring down Mr. Trump, has made himself legally vulnerable. In Kilbourn v. Thompson (1881), the U.S. Supreme Court held that “a congressional investigation into individual affairs is invalid if unrelated to any legislative purpose.” Mr. Schiff might argue he has wider powers in an impeachment inquiry. But the House didn’t approve the inquiry until Oct. 31, a month after he issued his main AT&T subpoena.

“The subpoenas aren’t related to legitimate congressional oversight,” says constitutional lawyer David Rivkin. Because there’s “no conceivable legislative purpose to obtaining these call logs and publicly disclosing this information, Mr. Schiff would not be able to benefit from the Speech and Debate Clause immunity that otherwise protects members of Congress from civil and criminal liability.” Mr. Rivkin adds that any of the targets could sue Mr. Schiff under state law for invasion of privacy or intentional infliction of emotional distress, and potentially even compel Mr. Schiff to turn over documents in discovery.

Mr. Nunes has already said he’s weighing his legal options. Since House Democrats (Or their shills in the MSM.) obviously won’t hold Mr. Schiff accountable for his abuses, let’s hope at least one of the targets demands a court review his tactics. No one should want to live in a world where Adam Schiff has unfettered power to spy on Americans.“

Nor in which any politician or political appointee…Dimocrat or Republican…is above the law.

In a related item, NRO‘s Andy McCarthy records…

The Impeachment Eye Test

We know an impeachable offense when we see one — or do we?

 

“To put it mildly, the 1960s were not notorious for juridical modesty. They might compare favorably, though, to Wednesday’s episode of “The Lawyer Left Does Impeachment” at the House Judiciary Committee. Oh, I have no doubt that the three progressive constitutional scholars spotlighted by Democrats yearn in their hearts (and their classrooms) for the Warren Court, that apex of make-it-up-as-you-go-along lawyering. But even those jurists had the occasional convulsion of modesty.

The most instructive one for present purposes belonged to Justice Potter Stewart. The question before the High Court in the 1964 case of Jacobellis v. Ohio was how to define hard-core pornography for purposes of setting the elusive boundary where protected free expression transmogrifies into criminal obscenity. Assessing the terrain, Justice Stewart confessed that he could not “intelligibly” provide a workable definition … “but I know it when I see it.”

Impeachment has an eye-test, too.

You would never know that from listening to the law profs.

…Suffice it to say, it was a good day for the president…”

As David Harsanyi notes at NRO:

“…But however smart people such as Michael Gerhardt, distinguished professor of constitutional law at University of North Carolina, might be, (an assessment we find highly questionable!) they aren’t immune from peddling partisan absurdities. Once Gerhardt argued that Trump’s conduct was “worse than the misconduct of any prior president,” we no longer had any intellectual obligation to take him seriously on the topic. (Or, for that matter, any other topic!!!)

Because while I’m certainly not a distinguished professor, I am very confident that history began before 2016. Which means that, even if I concede Gerhardt’s framing of Trump’s actions — bribery, extortion, etc. — I can rattle off at least a dozen instances of presidential misconduct that are both morally and constitutionally “worse” than Trump’s blundering attempt to launch a self-serving Ukrainian investigation into his rival’s shady son…”

Which of course, Harsanyi proceeds to do, with his usual precision and perspicacity.

We’ll leave it to Congressman Matt Gaetz, the Pride of Pensacola, to offer a simple and succinct summation of this crazed Ukraine kangaroo court:

In other words, Dimocrats…

Which is why, as John Nolte observes at Breitbart, rather than offer facts, the Dimocratic House leadership continues to peddle patent prevarications:

Nancy Pelosi’s ‘Article II’ Impeachment Rationale Exposed as Hoax

Nancy Pelosi is going to impeach Donald Trump, the duly-elected president of the United States, based on what we now know is a hoax.

 

“…So… It’s not the poll-tested bribery charge anymore. It’s not quid pro quo anymore — because there can be no quid pro quo when Ukraine didn’t know it was supposed to quid, pro, or quo. It’s not obstruction of justice anymore. It’s not obstruction of Congress anymore — whatever the hell that made-up shit is. It’s not a mean but accurate tweet anymore. It’s not LOOK AT ALL THOSE RIBBONS THAT GUY’S WEARING ON TV anymore.

No, this week it’s — and these are Nancy’s own words — “The president said, Article II says I can do whatever I want.”

And the fact that it has come to this, to this kind of desperate hoax, tells you all you need to know about what a rigged game this is. Because…Trump never said that.

He…never…SAID IT.

Nancy is inventing crimes now. She’s making stuff up. She is all over TV framing the accused, planting evidence, which is what a dirty cop does when they can’t make a case.

Nancy is deliberately and maliciously taking Trump out of context. And not just a little out of context. No, she is taking the president so far out of context I feel a little silly having to explain it.

Here is what Trump ACTUALLY said:

Look, Article II, I would be allowed to fire Robert Mueller. Assuming I did all of the things, I said I want to fire him. Number one, I didn’t. He wasn’t fired. Number one, very importantly but more importantly, Article II allows me to do whatever I want. Article II would allow me to fire him. I wasn’t going to fire him. You know why — because I watched Richard Nixon firing everybody and that didn’t work out too well.

…So Nancy is lying. Nancy “Dirty Cop” Pelosi is standing before America, flat-out lying, framing a sitting president for a crime he did not commit, and the fake news media are playing right along.Impeaching Trump for saying Article IIallows me to do whatever I want, when he was specifically (and accurately) referring to one very specific thing…It’s a total frame job.

This is a hoax…”

The Donald’s 6th-Grade command of the English language notwithstanding.

Which brings to mind this rather insightful meme:

Moving on, as Jim Geraghty records at his Morning Jolt…

The World Is Getting Better. It’s Just That No One Tells You About It.

 

“A special Morning Jolt today, as I try to run through a long but by no means complete list of good news from the past year that was astoundingly under-reported and discussed, particularly when compared to presidential tweets, discussions of which pop culture offerings weren’t woke enough, glowing profiles of the eighth or ninth-most popular Democratic presidential candidate, and so on…

…You hear about this stuff a lot less because articles and television segments about these developments don’t make you more likely to respond in the comments section, more likely to share on social media, more likely to call into a talk radio program, or more likely to vote for a particular candidate. It doesn’t make you believe that the world is full of people who are being unfair to you, that you’re a victim, or that other people are responsible for your problems.“

Facts which, for whatever reason, just don’t make the Evening News.

Which brings us to the latest from NRO‘s Rich Lowry, as he seemingly and inaccurately records…

The Disgraceful Campaign against the Salvation Army

Chick-fil-A and even Pete Buttigieg have run into the woke left-wing buzz saw.

 

“The Salvation Army would seem a bridge too far. Its red kettles are iconic, as much a part of Christmas as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer or “Miracle on 34th Street.” During the heavily commercial Christmas season, the red kettles are a token of charity and fellow feeling. It takes a perverse worldview not to have fond feelings about this tradition, which is spectacularly successful on its own terms, raising almost $150 million a year.

But the commissars of political correctness aren’t amused, and don’t let sentimentality interfere with their dictates.

They’ve already accomplished what would a few years ago have been considered impossible — bullying the explicitly Christian restaurant chain Chick-fil-A out of its donations to the Salvation Army. The army is now so radioactive that the pop singer Ellie Goulding threatened to cancel a halftime performance at the Dallas Cowboys game on Thanksgiving, kicking off the red-kettle campaign, over the group’s alleged anti-gay bigotry.

The first thing to know about the Salvation Army is that it is a church, founded by the Methodist preacher William Booth. He started his Salvation Army, with military ranks for its clergy, to reach the hungry and the needy through service. With more than 1.5 million members and a presence in roughly 130 countries, it is a spectacular example of, as Billy Graham once put it, “Christianity in action.”

As such, it obviously reflects Christian morality. “Soldiers, the core group among members,” one religious writer explained, “take covenant vows that cover doctrine, loyalty, willingness to evangelize and help the needy, and clean living (no alcohol, drugs, gambling, pornography or profanity).” The army’s position that marriage should be between a man and a woman isn’t an exotic invention, but standard Christian teaching.

The idea that the Salvation Army has an anti-gay animus stems largely from its opposition to anti-discrimination laws that it worried would impinge on its conscience rights, and criticism over its policies regarding transgender people (especially the practice of some places of assigning people to male or female facilities depending on their gender at birth). The organization has made clear again and again, though, that its services are available to all.

Commenting on the scandalous Buttigieg bell-ringing images, the press secretary for the left-wing Alliance for Justice opined, “I know the photos are two years old, but still, I can’t help but wonder if Mayor Pete just looks at what LGBTQ activists have been working on for years and then chooses to spite it.” Or perhaps he was rational and broad-minded enough to appreciate the massive good done by one of the most admirable institutions in the country.“

Or perhaps, as Occam’s Razor suggests, Buttgag’s photo-op simply took place long before this paragon of humble service became the charitable equivalent of Chernobyl.

After all, it’s not like the Salvation Army is an offshoot of…

…the Lutheran Church.

Since we’re on the subject of the absurd, in today’s installment of the EnvironMental Moment, as Progressives in general, and…

…a hard-core element of the Greens and Reds in particular, display a total detachment from reality…

Emma Thompson foresees people eating pets for ‘protein’ due to ‘climate crisis‘

 

Someone should remind Emma the subjects of her Socialist brethren in Venezuela have been feeding on their pets for years.

Just sayin‘.

Which brings us, appropriately enough, to The Lighter Side:

Then there’s this oldie-but-goodie from Mark Foster…

…an instant classic from our sister-in-law Amy…

…as well as this keeper from Ed Hickey:

Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with the Science Section, and yet another useless Supposed Sign the Apocalypse is Upon Us:

Apocalyptic asteroid strike that could wipe out humanity is ‘only a matter of time’, top scientist warns

 

“…“We will get a serious asteroid impact sometime,” said Professor Fitzsimmons, of Queen’s University in Belfast. (As he reached for an 11th pint of Guinness.) “It may not be in our lifetime, but mother nature controls when that will happen.”

…Professor Fitzsimmons called on amateur astronomers to help space agencies like Nasa (“NASA”?!?) track potentially deadly asteroids….”

You know, like in Deep Impact, or some other Hollywood hit based on a true story…or not!  Given the last such impact purportedly wiped out the dinosaurs…66 million years ago…we’d suggest amateur astronomers could better use their time identifying potentially deadly hemorrhoids than tracking civilization-ending asteroids.

Besides, given the 66 million year interregnum, we likely have a little more time.

Magoo