Here are my observations and opinions from my selected news of the day.

WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY “FRIENDS” – Regular readers know of my disappointment in Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, who has turned her column into a weekly bashing of President Trump.

With apologies to fellow blogger Don Surber and Bruce Thornton, who writes for Frontpage mag, a publication of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, they really aren’t my “friends,” but writers who have also seen through the elite façade of Noonan.

Both Surber and Thornton are critical of Noonan’s view of the impeachment inquiry hearings.

Referring to Noonan as the “grande dame” of the disgruntled never Trump Republicans, Thornton views her columns like a “mash-up of the prescriptions of Emily Post and a snobbery redolent of Lady Violet Crawley of Downton Abbey.”

“As typical of a Noonan column,” wrote Thornton, “ she starts with some sly preening of her insider-status as a wise political guru,” referring to the “dignity and professionalism of the career diplomats,” and the Democrats “disciplined in their questioning and not bullying  and theatrical,” while scolding Republicans for their “interruptions and chaos-strewing.”

Was she watching the same hearings that I suffered through?

“Noonan’s focus on her subjective disapproval of the Republican’s unmannerly response to what is in effect an illiberal political show trial, replete with secret hearings, leaks to the press, and pre-coaching of witnesses, ignores the substantive consistency of the Democrats’ despicable and desperate attempts to invalidate the results of an election of 63 million American voters,” Thornton states.

Of course, those voters in flyover country – Hillary’s “deplorables” – know what Noonan thinks of them.

“What infuriates (Noonan) about Trump, aside from his affrontery of getting elected over the highly-credentialed Hillary Clinton, is that though lacking such credentials, and contemptuous of the political decorum of the ruling caste and their advice, he has been remarkably successful both at home and abroad,” Thornton notes.

Thornton saw the hearing being made up of “witnesses who are recycling office gossip with varying degrees of separation from the originals, the contents of which are mainly subjective opinions or feelings that that have no relevance for establishing facts.”

Noonan believes that “the president muscled an ally, holding money over its head to get a personal political favor,” as if that’s an impeachable criminal offense.

Both Thornton and Surber reminded their readers of the “muscle” applied by Joe Biden – captured on video – when he boasted of telling Ukraine’s president and prime minister to take action against the state prosecutor – “I’m leaving in, I think, about six hours.  If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. ‘Well son of a bitch.  He got fired.”

“This is an open and shut case of corruption,’ remarked Surber.

“Look,” wrote Noonan, “the case has been made.  Almost everything in the impeachment hearings this week fleshed out and backed up the charge that President Trump muscled Ukraine for political gain.”

“But Noonan ignored the facts.   Back when newspapers were the only source of news for people, she could get away with that,” commented Surber.

Kramerontheright prefers to take the word of someone who knows the law, not someone like Noonan, who pretends to be one in her columns.

“Did they prove something was contemptible or impeachable?” asked constitutional law scholar Jonathan Turley, a Democrat, during an appearance on CBS This Morning on Friday. “Contemptible is not synonymous with impeachable.  The president does set policy.”

During a discussion about the next step in the Senate, Turley said, “I don’t think you could prove a removable offense of a president on this record even if the Democrats were in control.  This thing is too narrow, it is – it doesn’t have a broad foundation, and it’s an undeveloped record.”

ANOTHER LAWYER, Cleta Mitchell, best known for her representation of a number of citizen groups that were targeted by the IRS between 2009-2013, draws in The Federalist, a comparison of how they suffered at the hands of career civil service IRS employees and how others are now challenging the president in the impeachment inquiry.

“We have now witnessed House Democrats trotting out career federal employees who have apparently engaged in gripe sessions about President Trump’s conduct of foreign policy because they disagree with it.  Somehow, the president’s views, described very clearly during the 2016 campaign, run afoul of the views of the smart people in the career ranks of the foreign service,” Mitchell writes.

In Thornton’s conclusion, he reminds us, “So it has been since the day Trump became a candidate – while focusing so much on Trump’s manner, lack of dubious credentials, and dearth of time served holding office, they diverted attention from Clinton’s lack of character, her off-putting personality, her venomous ambition, and her manifest violations of her oath to uphold the Constitution.  Fortunately, they unwittingly validated Trump’s message and helped put him in office.

“So keep it up, Never Trumpers.  All you accomplish is reminding voters why they voted for Donald Trump in the first place.  Incidentally, Thornton’s piece was entitled, “Peggy Noonan Reminds Us Why Trump Won.”

I hope she has seen it.

NOONAN ISN’T ALONE – Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, who claims to a conservative, has been a never Trumper from the beginning, didn’t shock anyone when she tweeted @JRubinBlogger: “Will never vote for any R who does not support impeachment and removal.  That means practically none of the current generation. So be it.”

 SOME OF THE MEDIA GET IT – Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., writing in the Wall Street Journal, astutely stated, “The House can impeach for any reason it wants.  In the hierarchy of reasons not to impeach Donald Trump, first and foremost, is that it would be terrible for the country.  It would seen by many as an extension of a persistent campaign to invalidate an election and delegitimize a president, who whatever his opponents think of hm, has acted with uncustomary fidelity to the promises he made to voters.”

THE PUBLISHED TRANSCRIPT of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman’s testimony behind closed doors, shows his violation of principles governing military-civil relations in a democracy, according to John Lucas, West Point graduate and former Army Special Forces member, who now practices law in Tennessee.  “He simply disagreed with the way the president was administering his chosen foreign policy,” wrote Lucas.

Vindman thought it was “inappropriate” for President Trump’s emissary, Rudy Giuliani, to ask Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden’s dealings with Burisma.  His personal opinion was that such an investigation was “Inappropriate and that we were not going to get involved in investigations.”

After questioning by Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX), Vindman finally admitted that he did not know of “a crime or anything of that nature,” and that he “made a moral and ethical judgment” that he thought it was “wrong” and that he “had deep policy concerns.”

Vindman should have resigned if he could not follow the president’s foreign policy.

May God continue to bless the United States of America.