Presidential Impeachment

Johnson, Nixon, Clinton, and …

by Sam Huntington

Article Two of the United States Constitution establishes the executive branch of the federal government. It consists of four sections, the last one addresses the subject of impeachment.  There may not be a better example of checks and balances than this article.  In Section 4: Impeachment, the Constitution reads, “The President, Vice President, and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

Any official impeached by the House of Representatives and convicted by the Senate is immediately removed from office.  The Senate may also bar this individual from holding any future federal office.  No other punishments may be inflicted pursuant to impeachment proceedings.

The words “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” come to us from English common law; in US law, they refer to criminal actions, as well as any serious misuse or abuse of office, ranging from tax evasion to obstruction of justice.  

The ultimate authority for determining whether an offense constitutes grounds for impeachment rests with the US Congress.  The House of Representatives serves the same function as a grand jury, rendering an indictment, while the Senate, with the Chief Justice of the United States, serves as judge and jury.  

One note of possible interest, in the drafting of Section 4, the word “maladministration” was specifically rejected by the founding fathers because the word is too vague and susceptible to political abuse —which brings us to an examination of presidents who were, or might have been, or could be, impeached.

Emerging China: the Dragon Awakens

by Sam Huntington

Even a shrew will attack when it feels as if there is no other way out.  China today offers the United States a daunting strategic challenge.  We haven’t actually cornered China, but our artless foreign policy may certainly give China that impression.

There are two aspects of our relationship with China that I’d like to discuss: military posturing, and economic strength.  Before I get to that, we need an appreciation of the history of Sino-US relations.

Older Chinese still recall the “bad old days” of China’s evolution from feudal state to a modern power.  Foreign subjugation began with the Opium Wars in 1848.  Western powers, including the United States, more or less helped themselves to Chinese resources.  At the beginning of the twentieth century, China suffered increasing frequency of internal upheavals; these were mostly the result of the central government’s inability to do anything about the presence of foreign powers that sought to enrich themselves at China’s expense.  On more than one occasion, the United States sent military and naval forces to China to protect its diplomatic legation and to demonstrate American power.

China achieved a republic in the early 1920s, but one that was politically unstable.  A civil war lasted from 1927 to 1937.  The civil conflict was interrupted by a Japanese invasion and World War II.  Civil war resumed in 1945, lasting until 1949.  Thus, from the mid-1800s to 1949, China experienced warlordism, internal upheaval, starvation, and national degradation.  The Chinese call this their century of humiliation. Twenty-four million people suffered and died.

Solving Poverty

By Sam Huntington

Poverty is a real thing in America, but I often wonder, given the amount of tax dollars that has been earmarked or spent trying to eradicate poverty (estimated at $1.5-trillion since 1930), why poverty continues to exist.  Surely by now we should have solved this problem once and for all[i].

There was a time in America (and other countries) when we defined poverty as utter human destitution; people died on our city streets.  They starved or froze to death.  They had no money to purchase food.  This was the state of poverty in the United States between 1870 and 1930.  If this continued to be our definition of poverty, then we should argue that the problem has been almost (although not completely) eradicated.

Citizens continue to die on our streets, but now it is  more often attributed to mental problems, alcoholism, or drug abuse.  Today, the essential task of feeding, sheltering, and clothing the poorest among us does get done.  Ultimately, our answer to the question “What is poverty” depends upon what society thinks one must have in order NOT to be classified as poor[ii].

To help us with that, the US Census Bureau measures American poverty according to a formula devised in 1960 by the Social Security Administration: poverty thresholds from the cost of a minimum food diet, multiplied by three.  In 1980, the poverty threshold for a non-farming family of four was $8.400.  In 2017, the poverty threshold for a family of four was $24,600.  According to the US Census, the terms “poor” and “below the poverty level” are used interchangeably.

The Skeptic Tradition

By Sam Huntington

Here we are in the 21st Century —an age so advanced in science and technology that most of us can’t get our heads around it. Add to this, again for most of us, the real problem of information overload. These days, there’s simply too much to know; the mass of information that we do have doesn’t allow much room for adding in more. As a result, we’ve become quite selective about what we want to know. The United States of America may host one of the world’s most specialized societies. I can’t say that this is either a good or bad thing ... but I can say that specialization has a fragmenting effect on society overall. Bio-specialists are not known to hang-out with welders. It is no longer adequate to consult with a lawyer; you have to consult with a lawyer that specializes in your particular problem. In the medical profession, all I can say is thank goodness for general practitioners who serve us as our conduit to specialized medicine.

I was reading a magazine the other day, an article written by one of the so-called earth scientists, who was complaining about the American skeptic. Why, he moaned, do Americans continue to question the wisdom, authority, or expertise of scientists? He wrote, “We live in an age when all manner of scientific knowledge —from the safety of fluoride and vaccines to the reality of climate change— faces organized and often furious opposition. Empowered by their own sources of information and their own interpretations of research, doubters have declared war on the consensus of experts. There are so many of these controversies these days, you’d think a diabolical agency had put something in the water to make people argumentative. And there’s so much talk about the trend these days —in books, articles, and academic conferences— that science doubt itself has become a pop-culture meme.”

It didn’t take long for the writer to arrive at the conclusion that the problem is really that Americans are foolishly skeptical. Yes, our lives are permeated by science and technology; American society is more complicated and unsettling. And, he continued, “We face risks that we can’t easily analyze.” Well, I think this is true. What does a welder know, or understand, or even care about bio-research (until it affects him or her personally)? It leads me to conclude that American society is far more complicated than we realize and our penchant for classifying people as either wealthy, middle class, or poor is merely a matter of convenience to journalists who actually know less than the welder does about bio-science (unless they’re specialized journalists, of course).

But why are Americans so skeptical? I think that generally, we distrust science and technology because of the way it has been used in the past to confuse us, and then to use that confusion —that lack of knowledge or understanding— to take advantage of society as a whole. I last wrote about climate science; I can use that as my leading example of society’s distrust of the scientific community. There are many other examples. Who were the nimrods in science that gave us the notion of nuclear energy without considering what ought to be done with spent fuel rods? Oh, we found a solution to this, of course, after the mother of necessity resulted in the expenditure of billions of dollars in land requisition and the creation of underground storage facilities. That story, by the way, is far from over. Here are a few more scientific blunders that cause us to question science:

Desert Tribalism

By Sam Huntington

I was reading earlier about Arabian history. The periodical suggests that while human beings lived in this region of the world up to 125,000 years ago, its primary migration originated from Africa around 75,000 years ago. As the human population evolved, the area of present-day Saudi Arabia became the epicenter of animal domestication, particularly horses, sheep, goats, dogs, ostriches, and falcons. It was a tribal culture, which is not the same thing as being a civilization. I do admit that the area has an interesting history but wonder where all the humans went.

The Saudis don’t act very humane, nor do they appear civilized as most people understand that term. Saudi Arabia today continues to engage in slavery (although it’s cleverly concealed and therefore hard to detect), public killings are common, and there continues to exist a society that is comfortable with torture and summary execution. Saudi Arabia is not alone in this depravity, since a casual look at almost every Arab population in the Middle East reveals near-identical barbaric behaviors.

The world may be justified looking upon the disappearance (and suspected murder) of Jamal Khashoggi with abhorrence and disgust, but no one with an ounce of brains should be shocked. The Saudis may be rich beyond our imaginations, but they certainly are not a civilized people. But before we all break out our crying towels, a closer look at Jamal Khashoggi is appropriate.

John R. Bradly, writing for Spectator, tells us that the dissident’s fate tells us a lot about Saudi Arabia and the rise of the mobster state. His article is titled, “What the media aren’t telling you about Jamal Khashoggi.” It is a worthy read.

I certainly do not think we should be cutting people into pieces, but neither do I think that we should be attempting to portray this man as an innocent victim of Saudi mobsterism. He was far from innocent and I am bothered that he was so easily accepted as an ordinary journalist by any American, much less his employer, The Washington Post. More than this, and completely unrelated to the barbarism associated with the alleged criminal activity, why on earth are we selling advanced military technology to the Saudis?

The Climate Scare

By Sam Huntington

There appear to be only two camps in this debate: those who swear that climate change will destroy all human life on earth, and the skeptics who simply want to see the data that supports such claims. It doesn’t help when both sides of this issue denigrate the discussion into name calling or character assassination. Of course, two scientists in the same field who agree on anything are as rare as the pale colored unicorn. In this regard, scientists appear not too far removed from cannibals: they are happy to serve one another up for dinner. 

It is also not helpful when a PhD in animal husbandry goes on record supporting the climate change argument when he (or she) is no more qualified to do so than is a PhD in education or someone who drives a city bus. As citizens, we should be looking for a consensus among persons who actually are qualified to render an opinion about climate change.

Here's something else that doesn’t help: junk science. We define junk science as scientific data, research, or analysis that is spurious or fraudulent. In other words, arriving at scientific theories outside of the generally accepted scientific method of investigation. I have two examples of this:

The Truth About Common Core

by Sam Huntington

Common Core is a global (voluntary) initiative designed to standardize educational standards in mathematics and the English Language Arts.  It sounds tame enough, so why then are (some) parents alarmed about a Common Core-Islam connection?  It is because school districts have incorporated school-sponsored programs of Islamic indoctrination, which include but are not limited to:

• Visits to mosques at taxpayer expense
• Requiring girls to wear head scarfs in the Islamic tradition
• Diminishing the Holocaust as a political scheme
• Offering allegiance to the United States in Arabic
• Adopting observances of Islamic holy days
• Introducing Islamic vocabulary to students who are barely able to speak proper English, introducing Islamic cultural studies
• Proselytizing Islam by creating pamphlets about Islam
• Reciting the Shahada, which proclaims Allah as the one true god and renounces the God of Abraham

Who is Abu Khattala?

by Sam Huntington

Khattala is a scab. He’s one of the bandits that killed US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans on the night of 11 September 2012. This was the night that Hillary Clinton’s red phone rang at 3 a.m. and she didn’t have one single notion about what to do —so she concocted a story about a video offensive to Moslems living under a rock since 632 A.D. Apparently, Madam Secretary was unaware that Moslems regard all videos as objectionable —including Disney’s animated film entitled Bambi.

Who is John Koskinen?

He’s the fascist Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, appointed by Barack Obama in 2013 to find a way to hide the fact that Obama personally ordered the campaign against conservative 503(c) organizations. Of course, we don’t know this for certain (yet) because suddenly and enigmatically, Lois Lerner’s emails all disappeared—as in, “Poof.”

How Koskinen arrived at such a lofty and powerful position is not entirely puzzling. Here is a synopsis of his erstwhile career:

• Law Clerk (1965-1966)

• Law Practice (1966-1967)

• Assistant to the Deputy Commissioner on Lyndon Johnson’s National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Kerner Commission) (1967-1968)

• Legislative Assistant to NYC Mayor John Lindsay (Republican-then-Democrat) (1968-1969)

• Assistant to Senator Abraham Ribicoff (D-Connecticut) (1969-1973)

• Palmieri Company executive (21 years). One may recall that Victor Palmieri once found himself on the Nixon enemies list (presumably because as a dedicated progressive, Palmieri supported Johnson’s Vietnam War, while Nixon attempted to disengage us from it. From this we might conclude that Koskinen was running true to type. Note: Palmieri Company made their money in the same way that Mitt Romney made his: turning around failed companies. The difference is that Palmieri and his lackeys were all residents of Leftistan.

• Deputy Mayor of Washington DC

• Deputy Director for Management of the Office of Management and Budget

• Chair, President Clinton’s Counsel on Y2K Conversion

• Board Member, AES and American Capital, Limited

• Interim CEO and non-Executive Chairman of The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC) (Freddie Mac) (2008-2011)

There is no real purpose to this post, except to help you understand John Koskinen’s insufferable arrogance and pretended outrage when members of congress label him for what he is: a liar.

Compassion: Part II

by Sam Huntington (Continued from last week)

Of course, we have no evidence of a serious effort by any federal or state legislative body to decrease the number of impoverished citizens.  In fact, the opposite is true. If federal and state welfare program enrollment criteria are relaxed to the point where there are no serious restrictions, then there can be no fraud.  It’s all good.  No problem, Amigo.  Just pay out money to everyone —it doesn’t really matter.

Au contraire.  It does matter.  The long-term effects on the children of welfare recipients, particularly in single-parent homes, guarantees that a hefty percentage of these “impoverished” children will never themselves become productive members of society.  Their only model is a career welfare single parent with multiple love interests who never seem able to pull them selves out of the welfare abyss.  From a practical standpoint, this situation is both dismal and dire —and one that makes leftist politicians outright giddy.

In all of this, we seem to be missing one important aspect of welfare assistance programs: compassion.  Let me take a moment to address this.  The literal meaning of compassion is “to suffer together.”  Compassion is the feeling we get when confronted with the suffering of others, particularly people we know, when we become motivated to help relieve that suffering.  How many of us are motivated to reach out to people we don’t know?

Even though compassion is related to empathy, it is not benevolent.  Empathy suggests the ability to assume the perspective of and feel the emotions of others; compassion comes from a desire to do something to relieve suffering.  It is an overt act ... and if you happen to be religious, it should be an explicit act.  These are the things that religious people believe will help them to find a pathway to Heaven.  Sadly, our welfare system in the US is not compassionate, nor does it elicit empathy for the plight of the impoverished.  In fact, the government has relieved us of any overt act of Christian charity.  They take from us a certain percentage of our income, and give it away to others … and there is scant impetus to change the status quo.

Should we, therefore, endeavor to be more compassionate toward others?  Perhaps ... but unless we are personally affected by another person’s misery, it is almost impossible for us to “feel” their pain.  Who in St. Louis actually feels the pain of someone living in Boston?  So we must wonder, where will we find the greatest opportunity for true compassion —from the federal or interstate bureaucracies, that treat citizens as numbers, or from within local communities, church organizations, and other civic associations?

As part of his doctoral work, a friend of mine proposed community-based corrections as a way to significantly reduce the recidivism rate.  He argued that we must stop sending people away to far distant state and federal prisons.  Instead, offenders should be incarcerated locally, rehabilitated locally, and when their time is served, release them back into the embrace of the community they offended. 

Community-based corrections is similar to the strategy of placing a beat cop within a neighborhood, someone who knows the people.  A beat cop does far more to prevent crime than any other strategy, and yet city planners argue that the costs far outweigh the good.  Considering the costs of incarcerating a million citizens, I find this argument no less than remarkable.  Now extrapolate this schema to welfare assistance programs. 

If community-based policing and corrections appears to make sense, then so too does the notion of compassionate assistance from within the immediate community —but, of course, this is only true if you wanted to remove people from welfare rolls, rather than keeping them enslaved to it.

Compassion: Part I

by Sam Huntington

Having created a welfare system in this country, the left seems to have produced a deep hole into which we pour literally hundreds of billions of dollars each year.  In spite of all these expenditures, we seem to end up with more impoverished people.  One wonders how this is even possible.  One wonders how long we must continue shoveling money into the abyss of welfare programs before we able to conclude that it is time to consider other avenues.  It would be preferred if we could put physically-able people back to work —but with this president, this is asking too much.  It doesn’t appear to fit his narrative.

One popular refrain from the right is that leftists want to increase welfare programs; it is a means of growing government, which benefits statists, and there is something to be gained, and maintained whenever the impoverished become dependents of the state: political power.  The conclusion, therefore, is that the left actually cares very little about the penurious —they are only a means to an end.

Welfare programs are a partisan issue; there is no escaping that.  Part of the problem is that we do not really know any of the data that helps us to understand the truth about welfare in the United States.  Some even believe that those who benefit most from a welfare state have intentionally muddled the issue quite so that it is confusing.  I am writing now about politicians who hinge their careers on loudly supporting perpetual welfare.  We must also not forget the career bureaucrats who will do whatever it takes to retain their high-paying jobs —even sinking to low as to fabricate welfare data.  Keeping the issue confused is a clever ploy, for if no one understands the true cost of welfare programs, if there is no clear picture of attendant fraud and waste, then there will be no consequential changes to what many consider illegal spending at the federal level.  The leftist imperative is to maintain this chasm no matter what it costs. 

Conservatives insist that welfare fraud is rampant; leftists argue that welfare fraud has never exceeded 4%.  What is missing is an honest broker.  Since the word trust is no longer part of our lexicon describing the federal government, we have an issue with the credibility of information provided by welfare management agencies.  Wee simply cannot know whether what we are being told is true.

The 2010 Census told us that there are 115-million families in the United States.  A full third (34%) of these are receiving welfare assistance.  This tells us that 39-million homes are being supported by the American taxpayer, at an average cost per working household of $11,500.  Now, if it is true that welfare fraud doesn’t exceed 4%, then 4.6 million families fraudulently receive welfare benefits —at your expense.  Even if the percentage of fraud is low, the cost to the American taxpayer is high.  The suggestion here is that were it not for fraud, we could be doing a better job on behalf of the legitimately impoverished.

Of course, we have no evidence of a serious effort by any federal or state legislative body to decrease the number of impoverished citizens.  In fact, the opposite is true. If federal and state welfare program enrollment criteria are relaxed to the point where there are no serious restrictions, then there can be no fraud.  It’s all good.  No problem, Amigo.  Just pay out money to everyone —it doesn’t really matter.

(Continued next week)

Doubling Down

This is a follow up to AOW’s post yesterday.

Political Correctness ... it’s killing us. Maybe as a first step, we could all refuse to comply with this demand for PC and opt, instead, for plain, simple truth. If you don’t like what I have to say, if you disagree with my opinions ... that’s fine. I can live with that. What I cannot live with is people telling me to shut up because my opinions are “hurtful” to others. Here’s a clue: if my opinion hurts your feelings ... grow a set of balls and deal with it.

Meanwhile, Pat Condell is doing his part to speak out against soft jihad. Are you doing your part, as well?

The cost of elections

by Sam Huntington

If we could in some way condense the President’s speech at the USMA (28 May), it would go something like this: Today, I would like to make the following important points about our foreign policy, the state of our economy, and my current world view. Uh (pause) thank you very much.”

Beyond the usual banalities, beyond comparing himself to political leaders of the past, beyond continuing his campaign to apologize to the world for US policies of the past (which fed all of Europe for five years following World War II), his commencement speech at the USMA was, in the view of Charles Krauthammer, “literally pointless.”

The Brains of Squirrels

by Sam Huntington

What kind of a person remains with a physically or mentally abusive spouse?  Abusive persons are often sociopaths, defined as individual who consistently violate social customs, break the law with impunity, and exploit the people around them for their own purposes.  And of course, these convincing liars remain charming and consistently deny any wrongdoing, or they transpose the situation so that it becomes the fault of the person who is being abused or taken advantage of...

The answer to the question posed above is, any person with the brains of a squirrel.  This would appear to define every single person who either voted for Barack Obama in 2008, or reelected him in 2012 because Barack Obama fits the clinical definition of a sociopath, and disturbingly, so do the people with whom he has chosen to advise him.  Now, I have heard people argue that Barack Obama wasn’t nearly as popular in 2012 —and yet, Obama was overwhelmingly reelected.  One must admit, this is an amazing phenomenon.  

More Tragedy from the Left

by Sam Huntington

I see that the scion of a leftist family has managed to destroy the innocent —again.  Elliot Rodger was the 22-year-old son of Peter, the assistant director of a film in production titled The Hunger Games.  It is a story based on a series of books by Suzanne Collins in which the residents of North America are subjected to the tyranny of a leftist government and are required to participate in death matches.  Don’t get me wrong —fiction is entertaining, but only to the point at which ceases being fantasy and starts being reality.

I suspect Peter Rodger is one of those seriously detached persons who think that guns kill people.  We call this irrational denialism —and it appears to have been a problem with Peter for quite some time.  But Peter isn’t alone, evidenced by the father of one of Elliot’s victims who shared his grief with us on national television —demanding the confiscation of firearms.  He too must think that guns kill people.  No, it was Elliot who killed these people.  You know, the son of the man who makes violent films and video games for children.

See, the way this works is...

by Sam Huntington

Everyone on the left hates Mitt Romney, and there’s a good reason for this: he’s a filthy hedge fund manager and as such, he personally gave cancer to the wife of an employee at a nuts and bolts company. Bad Romney, bad! Everyone on the left hates the Koch Brothers, too—and for good reason. Those bastards give way too much money to GOP candidates and they are far, far to involved in political activism. Bad Koch brothers, bad!

Just when it appears (to me) that the political left is incapable of demonstrating a greater degree of dishonesty —when I think they’ve reached the pinnacle of hypocrisy, some new revelation comes along those forces me to reevaluate my former position.

Yes —it is true!

by Sam Huntington

The lame-brains are at it again: CNN reports, “Devastating droughts in the Southwest, ruinous floods in New York City, killer wildfires in Colorado, intense heat waves in the Plains: these are some of the disasters that are being exacerbated by global warming, and problems will continue to worsen in the decades to come, according to a massive federal climate report released Tuesday at the White House.”

Indeed.  If this information comes to us from the White House or from any federal agency, it must be true.  You know: Benghazi was the result of a video, and if you like your doctor...

Except that once again, the White House is being dishonest.  Western wild fires are nothing new, evidenced by the Ortega Fire in 1888, the Santiago Canyon Fire in 1898, and the Big Blow up Fire in 1910.  The White House must have forgotten about the Great Heave Wave of 1936 (the hottest summer in the United States on record).  As for ruinous floods, we can start with the New Hampshire Flood of 1740 and work our way through several more devastating torrents, including the Great Pumpkin Flood of 1786, the Great Flood of 1844, Susquehanna River Flood of 1861, and the Johnstown Floods of 1884 and 1889. 

So maybe the sky isn’t really falling, after all —but if it does, I hope it falls on the White House and crushes Leon Podesta into minuscule cockroach pieces and crushes the brain-housing group of the first Kenyan-Indonesian president. 

Government, of the people

Of course some consideration was given to the questions of power and propriety before this matter was acted upon. The whole of the laws, which were required to be faithfully executed, were being resisted and failing of execution in nearly one-third of the States.  Must they be allowed to finally fail of execution, even had it been perfectly clear that by the use of the means necessary to their execution some single law, made in such extreme tenderness of the citizen’s liberty that practically it relieves more of the guilty than of the innocent, should to a very limited extent be violated?  To state the question more directly, are all the laws but one to go unexecuted and the Government itself go to pieces lest that one be violated? 

—Abraham Lincoln, 4 July 1861

Heart-breaking Stories

There are a lot of heart-breaking stories in the world —this is one of them. Not long ago, US Border Patrol agents discovered 80 illegal immigrants living in a makeshift encampment near the South Texas city of McAllen. They were living in an undeveloped patch of scrub not far from an abandoned tennis club. They were living under lean-to shelters and canvas tents, camouflaged with mesquite branches and cacti. They were sleeping on pieces of cardboard. Food and water was scarce, and their crude latrines were unhealthfully close to their living positions.

Ukraine: Grow up!

“Not being George W. Bush is not a foreign policy.” —Peggy Noonan

What most gratifies me about world news is that Americans are not our planet’s only morons. There are others, and while I won’t waste your time making the case for one group of imbeciles over another, I think it is fair to say that Ukrainians are striving to achieve the top five ranking, and were this not true, then why would they expect the United States to “save them” from the re-emerging Soviet machine? Are they daft? Is it a matter of watching one too many Eliot Ness re-runs on Channel One when they ought to have been watching ICTV News reflecting Obama’s withdrawal the United States from its former leadership position?