These brief comments on the news are must reading for those too busy to follow the news of the day.
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen (act.wearultraviolet.org)
THE DUMP TRUMP EFFORT – Donald Trump hasn’t even been inaugurated yet, but there’s a group sore losers looking for ways to delegitimize the president elect. One effort is to impeach him. But even the left-leaning columnist Richard Cohen of the Washington Post, acknowledges that expecting the House and Senate to prove high crimes and misdemeanors is a high bar. Instead, Cohen is advocating a constitutional coup. Under the 25th Amendment, he says, the vice president, together with a majority of principals of the executive department, could remove the president for being unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. In other words, incapacitation. “Trump has done nothing to allay the concern that he is unfit for the presidency,” writes Cohen, who hopes that the good men and women in Trump’s cabinet will constrain him.
HOW REFRESHING – After years of hearing Secretary of State John Kerry preach that global warming was our greatest threat – even more so than ISIS – it was refreshing to hear his likely successor, Rex Tillerson, downplay that human activity was responsible for the ever-so-slight increase in the earth’s temperature. Tillerson indicated that after his 20 years as a scientist and engineer, he had concluded that climate change does exist, but when asked if he believed that human activity was contributing, he said “The increase in greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is having an effect, but our ability to predict that effect is limited.” It appears to me, after following the Tillerson hearing, sanity will return to the State Department.
WATCHING SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL) during the nomination hearing on Gen. James Mattis (Ret.) I was struck by the weakness in his voice and the lack of authority in his questioning. Try as he might, he could not tweak the general. He did not display the stature and qualifications of a future GOP presidential candidate. It was almost like the 2016 presidential campaign took the fight out of him. Time will tell.
YOU WOULD THINK that if you had an opportunity to question Mike Pompeo, the nominee to become the next director of the CIA, you would have a serious inquiry into his views on surveillance, cyber warfare or interrogation, but not Sen. Kamala Harris, who recently replaced Sen. Barbara “Don’t call me Ma’am” Boxer in California. She asked Pompeo if he saw climate change as one of the deeper causes of rising instability in the world. When he responded that “I can’t give you any judgment about that today,” she called into question his ability to accept evidence of climate change and the consensus of the intelligence community. OMG!
THEN THERE’S SEN. DICK DURBIN of Illinois, who urged U.S. attorney general nominee Sen. Jeff Sessions to commit to further investigate Russian hacking, saying that “It is becoming clear that we need credible assurance that he would continue the investigation on this matter.” Durbin wants Congress to dig into the matter, too, and suggested the formation of a select committee or commission of public officials and private citizens with subpoena power to look into the Russian activity, led by people of integrity like Colin Powell and Sandra Day O’Connor. Just what we need. I’m reminded of the accountability review board appointed by Hillary Clinton to look into the Benghazi attack. She appointed former Ambassador Thomas Pickering and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mike Mullin, who never interviewed Clinton and never visited Benghazi in the process. Their report was a sham.
(Courtesy dribble.com)
SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND, Democrat from New York, questioned defense secretary Gen. James Mattis (Ret.) on whether homosexuals and women serving in the military undermined the military’s lethality.He told her “He didn’t care about two consenting adults and who they go to bed with.” With that, thankfully, Gillibrand’s time ran out
THERE’S MORE FROM THE LOONY LEFT – Socialist Bernie Sanders, from the floor of the U.S. Senate, said, “30 million people will lose their health care and thousands will die as a result” if ObamaCare is repealed and replaced. Typical scare tactics we have come to expect from the left.
JAMES COMEY’S FUTURE IS LOOKING DIM with the new IG investigation. If he does resign or is relieved of his position as FBI director, I recommend President Elect Trump name Rudy Giuliani to replace him.
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