I caught a bit of the impeachment hearings yesterday. I then got a bit of commentary about the hearings from the BBC. The local NPR station runs live BBC shows from 11 o’clock in the evening until four in the morning. I’ve always liked their commentaries about things happening in the US. They stick with facts and don’t lean to one side or another. It’s hard to get straight thinking about the president listening to any news source here in the United States because the president is a polarizing figure; i.e., you either like him or dislike him. That is reflected in the people I talked to about the president. One of the commentators on the BBC was puzzled by the fact that a government watchdog agency, the OMB, had just recently said the withholding of funds from Ukraine was against the law. They had even quoted a specific law. The commentator was puzzled by why there would be anyone against the impeachment. He quoted the “high crimes and misdemeanors” section from the Constitution. He then told me something I didn’t know, but I verified online that that term, “high crimes and misdemeanors,” was a common phrase in law at the time the Constitution was written pretty much-covering anything that was against the law. He said that that the government watchdog statement that it was a crime to withhold funds from Ukraine would not meet the standard of “high crimes,” but it definitely would fit the term “misdemeanors.” Another commentator pointed out that impeachment is a political act. He used the example of President Clinton. The panel of commentators then concluded that although there was a crime committed, President Trump will be acquitted because the party in control of the Senate was his party.
That sure made sense to me – the politicians are at it again! You can see by the cartoon I included that it is nothing new.
