Senators Grassley, Ernst, & McConnell Attempt to Justify Their "Not Guilty" Votes

"We do not have the authority to try a private citizen like former President Trump. Even if we did, he should have been accorded the protections of due process of law in his trial. And even if we assume he has been, the House Managers still did not prove that he committed incitement to insurrection, the specific crime of which he stands accused. This does not excuse President Trump’s conduct on and around January 6th of this year," Grassley said in a statement. "It satisfies my oath as a U.S. Senator in this court of impeachment. I therefore voted to acquit."--Sen. Charles Grassley

https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2021/02/13/senate-what-does-impeachment-mean-trump-2024-election-how-iowa-voted/4477250001/

Senator Grassley's contentions above (and those of Senator Ernst below) attempt to provide a figleaf to cover their brazen political partisanship in voting to acquit Trump. Although its  a post-morten inquiry (the case is dead), I believe the the inquiry worthwhile not for the understanding it brings to the case, but the revalation it provides about the individuals who passed this judgement, in particular Grassley, Ernst, McConnell, and the remainder of the Republicans senators who voted against conviction. I will go through both Grassley's statement (above) and Ernst's (below). 

1. "We do not have the authority to try a private citizen like former President Trump." (Ernst and McConnell make similar contentions, see below.). This contention is wrong. The Senate has the authority under the Constitution. It has established  precedent. (The Senate has exercised its impeachment power after an office-holder (albeit not a president) has left office.) And the Senate voted to approve this procedure in this case. (N.B. Trump was not tried earlier because McConnell refused to allow it while he remained Senate majority leader, which was until after the Biden-Harris inauguration). The Supreme Court has not ruled on this issue, and in the absence of a Court decision, the Senate has the power and responsibility to interpret the Constitution and its application in the present case. Also, the lop-sided weight of scholarly supports the exercise this power under these circumstances. But why? The ulitimate authority is the text of the Constitution itself, something that "conservatives" who probably fancy themselves "originalists" or "textualists" might try reading. Here's what the relevant text of the Constitution provides: 

Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law. [Emphasis added.]

          Article 1, sec. 3.  

The word is "and"--"removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honr, Trust, or Profit under the United States . . . ." Both are penalities, and that one penalty can no longer apply (removal) does not entail that the second aspect of the penalty cannot or should not apply. This argument, that the Senate had not the power and authority to try Trump is pure hokum. 

2. "Even if we did, he should have been accorded the protections of due process of law in his trial." What failure of "due process" (the requirement of a fair proceeding conducted by established rules) does Grassley refer to? Did anyone prevent Trump from coming to testify? Was the trial not conducted according to Senate rules? Was not an agreement about scheduling not reached by Leaders Schumer and McConnell? What utter horse hockey this allegation is! 

3. "And even if we assume he has been [given due process], the House Managers still did not prove that he committed incitement to insurrection, the specific crime of which he stands accused." First all Senator, really, you've been in Congress since 1975--you're an insider and ought to have read and understood with Constitution better than this. The accusasion of "incitement to riot" is not a "crime"in this instance; it's an impeachable offense. Trump could still be charged and convicted of this crimes (see the Article 1 quote above). And you can claim that the House managers didn't prove their case, but in what particulars? Fifty-seven senators disagreed with you, seven of which were your Republican colleagues, with the result of the most lopsided conviction vote on record for a Presidential impeachment vote. (We've now had four impeachment votes regarding a president, two of them generated by Trump's actions, the first arose from his attempt to shake-down the Ukraine to get them to aid his re-election campaign; and the second for his big lie about the election, attempting to influence the count in Georgia, and inciting the violence at the Capital (again, using the big lie of the "stolen" elelction.) 

4. "This does not excuse President Trump’s conduct on and around January 6th of this year." Yes, it does. To borrow from my wife the teacher: for misdeeds to provide lessons for future behavior, applicable to the perp and others who may come after him, there must be "consequences." Or, in the legal terms, punishment, even beyond the natural consequences of the act (such as a loss of prestige, honor, and so on--which of course has never influenced Trump's behavior). No, the 43 Republicans who voted against conviction (thus the failure to reach the required 2/3 vote) gives Trump and all who come after him a free pass for such rank and obvious misdeeds as we saw in this case.  So much for Grassley (or Ernst) ever saying anything about "law and order" or "legal technicalities" ever again. 

The one thing that I can say for Ernst is that she didn't attempt to put lipstick on her pig. She didn't vote to allow Trump's actions to go without reckoning and then attempt to condemn them, as did Grassley ("This does not excuse President Trump's conduct") nor the statements by McConnell and other Republicans who voted to give Trump a pass and then claim to have given him the equivalent of a dirty look. McConnell, along with Lindsey Graham, have moved political hypocrisy from a venial political sin to one worthy of the lowest rungs of Dante's hell, down with the fraudulant and the treacherous. (See below for McConell's finger-wagging at Trump after he acquited him.) Of course, McConnell is worried because the big Republican donors turned-off the money spiggots after the attack.The big donors realized that a majority of the Republican party would  follow their Pied-Piper and tear down the government of the United States. This drastic action didn't sit well with the moneyed interests that call the shots for the party on the issues that the party unites around: taxes and regulations. McConnell, as he is so wont to do, speaks out of both sides of his mouth. Grassley parrots him; Ernst, who seems to drink the Kool-Aid without a king's-x held behind her back, has no desire to provide even a cursory condemnation of Trump after this exoneration by the Senate. This honey-badger of a senator just don't give a @#$%. 

Ernst released a statement on Twitter saying in part: "The bottom line for this impeachment trial: Donald Trump is no longer in office, he is a private citizen."

Hypocrisy taken to new heights:  

At least five Republican senators suggested that Trump was indeed culpable for the Capitol riots, while voting to acquit him on constitutional grounds:

• Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) excoriated Trump’s conduct in a speech after the vote and even suggested that the former president might be held criminally liable.
• The No. 2-ranking Senate Republican, Sen. John Thune (S.D.), said explicitly: “My vote to acquit should not be viewed as exoneration for his conduct on January 6, 2021, or in the days and weeks leading up to it. What former president Trump did to undermine faith in our election system and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power is inexcusable.”
• Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) emphasized that her vote was “solely” on the constitutional question, while adding: “The actions and reactions of President Trump were disgraceful, and history will judge him harshly.”
• Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) said: “I condemn former president Trump’s poor judgment in calling a rally on that day, and his actions and inactions when it turned into a riot. His blatant disregard for his own Vice President, Mike Pence, who was fulfilling his constitutional duty at the Capitol, infuriates me.”
• Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) added: “I have said that what President Trump did that day was inexcusable because in his speech he encouraged the mob, and that he bears some responsibility for the tragic violence that occurred.”

Not all of these statements directly suggest a vote to convict but for the constitutional question. Republicans have often drawn a line between criticizing Trump for his actions — even quite strongly — and saying he technically incited the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6. 

But relatively few Republicans have actually vouched for or defended Trump’s conduct. Some put out statements that didn’t address the substance of the case at all, focusing instead solely on process issues or constitutionality. (This despite many legal experts saying that, because the Senate had voted affirmatively that it had jurisdiction, they had a duty to decide the case on the merits). Others faulted Trump less harshly than the above.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/02/14/trump-got-off-technicality/

For some additional insight, read this: 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/02/13/mcconnell-would-have-happily-considered-finding-trump-guilty-were-it-not-mitch-mcconnell/

Thoughts for the Day: Sunday 14 February 2021

2007 publication: intro to Turchin for the non-academic

 

War and Peace and War

Peter Turchin

It is important not to overestimate our understanding even of simple agrarian societies. Applying history’s lessons to the present day presents even more difficulties because we live in a different world from the one of the Assyrians, the Romans, and the Mongols. Abundant food and energy, rapidly developing technology and science, mass media, the World Wide Web, and the mobile phone make any direct comparisons between historical agrarian empires and the modern industrial states problematic. On the other hand, modernity did not remake human nature.

The Wedge

Scott Carney

In the battle of man versus nature, nature always wins.

Commanding Hope

Thomas Homer-Dixon

As the late, renowned American psychologist Charles R. Snyder summarized, even on a personal basis, “high-hope persons consistently fare better than their low-hope counterparts in the arenas of academics, athletics, physical health, psychological adjustment, and psychotherapy.”

The Life of the Mind

Hannah Arendt 

What undermined Kant’s greatest discovery, the distinction between knowledge, which uses thinking as a means to an end, and thinking itself as it arises out of “the very nature of our reason” and is done for its own sake, was that he constantly compared the two with each other. Only if truth (in Kant, intuition), and not meaning, is the ultimate criterion of man’s mental activities does it make sense in this context to speak of deception and illusion at all.

Putting Man Before Descartes - The American Scholar

John Lukacs

Of course a danger is a potentiality, not an actuality. Of course some of these developments may not happen. The road to hell may be paved with good intentions, but the road to heaven may be paved with bad intentions that have not matured into acts. That is our saving grace, our hope. But we must recognize that the source of the new and enormous danger is not outside but inside this world, inside the minds of men, including scientists and those who support and cheer them on.

Plato's Revenge

William Ophuls

From the ecological perspective, elevating the individual over the community makes no sense, intellectually or practically. Individuals should have civil rights, but civic duties and responsibilities must have at least equal weight if we wish to preserve the integrity of the system over the long term.

Thoughts for the Day: Saturday 13 February 20212

 

The War of Art

Steven Pressfield

The essence of professionalism is the focus upon the work and its demands, while we are doing it, to the exclusion of all else.

Plato's Revenge

William Ophuls

We must reinvent civilization so that it once again rests on a moral foundation by discovering a new “rule of life” that moderates, rather than magnifies, the five great ills.

Breath

James Nestor

While we can’t simply decide when to slow or speed up our heart or digestion, or to move blood from one organ to another, we can choose how and when to breathe.

The Wedge

Scott Carney,

The tricky thing about understanding the Wedge, and what makes it so incredibly difficult to explain, is that you—or rather, your ego—is not always the thing in charge. Remember, there is no self. All the parts of an individual and environment work together to generate an illusion of a self. Ego is just a perspective on the reality that we’re part of a superorganism.

Conservatism

Edmund Fawcett

To do that [compete in democracy], conservatives would have to accept a politics of contested authority and endless argument. They would have to fight for control within a framework of government that liberals favored. That liberal framework included parliamentary sovereignty, wider franchise, and civic equality. It gave body to the core liberal ideals of limited power and equal respect.

Thoughts for the Day: Friday 12 February 2021

 

Essay on contemporary issues published in 1972 

Crises of the Republic

Hannah Arendt

Something else, however, which became fully manifest only in the decades after [George] Sorel’s and [Alfredo] Pareto’s death, was incomparably more disastrous to this view. The enormous growth of productivity in the modern world was by no means due to an increase in the workers’ productivity, but exclusively the development of technology, and this depended neither on the working class nor on the bourgeoisie, but on the scientists. The “intellectuals,” much despised by Sorel and Pareto, suddenly ceased to be a marginal social group and emerged as a new elite, whose work, having changed the conditions of human life almost beyond recognition in a few decades, has remained essential for the functioning of society.

Lost Knowledge of the Imagination

Gary Lachman

In the aleatory compositions of John Cage, the ‘active confusion’ of the intellectual demagogue, Marshall McLuhan, who abandoned meaningful content with his dictum that the ‘medium was the message’, and the sensory barrage of ‘multi-media’ overload – siphoning off aspects of ‘Scientism’ for artistic purposes – [Erich] Kahler saw at work a deliberate attempt to undermine the whole conception of coherence in a misguided movement to break free of what it considered the restrictions of outworn, outmoded sensibilities. One of the main driving forces behind this demolition work, Kahler believed, was the increasing technological character of modern life.

Time of the Magicians

Wolfram Eilenberger

The core accusation that [Walter] Benjamin levels at the tragedy of the whole of the modern age and its philosophy is “objectification”—of nature and, in particular, of humanity.

Plato's Revenge

William Ophuls

Self-organizing systems are therefore relatively autonomous, stable, and enduring, whereas artificial systems are intrinsically dependant, unstable, and transient.

The Ingenuity Gap

Thomas Homer-Dixon

So three processes produce greater complexity in our world: competition and interdependence among entities creates niches that new entities can fill; this competitive environment also encourages individual entities to breach performance limits by adding new subsystems; and large systems of entities can capture or task simpler systems, adapting and building on the grammar of these simpler systems to boost performance.

Putting Man Before Descartes - The American Scholar

John Lukacs

Of course a danger is a potentiality, not an actuality. Of course some of these developments may not happen. The road to hell may be paved with good intentions, but the road to heaven may be paved with bad intentions that have not matured into acts. That is our saving grace, our hope. But we must recognize that the source of the new and enormous danger is not outside but inside this world, inside the minds of men, including scientists and those who support and cheer them on.

Time Warrior

Steve Chandler

Sadness, depression, frustration, upset, and anxiety can only be produced by seeing a situation and then producing an interpretation of it and then believing that interpretation.

Thoughts for the Day: Thursday 11 February 2021

 

First published in 1961

Between Past and Future

Hannah Arendt

Thinking, as Arendt experiences it, is an inner silent dialogue, which may reach conditional conclusions but whose real result is a proliferation of distinctions made by conversing with a thinking partner. To be conscious of thought as a conversation is rare, due both to its silence and its lightning-like speed, but to Arendt the dialogic character of the activity of thinking is what human consciousness (con-scientia) is.

--Jerome Kohn, "Introduction"

An Essay on Metaphysics

R. G. Collingwood

All modern scientific work rests on the absolute presupposition that nature is one and that science is one: that the different realms of nature are in part governed by one and the same code of absolutely identical laws, the laws of mathematics, and in part by special codes which do not differ radically among themselves but are so linked together by analogies and similarities that they may be regarded as so many local variants of laws which in spite of these variations can still be called ‘laws of nature’; while the various sciences that investigate the various realms of nature are not independent sciences but only modifications of one and the same thing, a single thing which we call by the single name of natural science.

Age of Anger

Pankaj Mishra

Walter Benjamin wrote, the self-alienation of humankind ‘has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order’.

The Price of Peace

Zachary D. Carter

A nonplussed Hayek told an interviewer, “Milton [Friedman's] monetarism and Keynesianism have more in common with each other than I have with either.” For Hayek, who believed that depressions simply had to burn themselves out, even monetary therapy was dangerous.

The Caretakers of the Cosmos

Gary Lachman

I say to some extent, because although (theoretical physicist John Archibald] Wheeler and the scientists who follow his lead use the term ‘participation’ they do not share [Owen] Barfield’s, [Colin] Wilson’s and others’ belief that our own volition – our will – can increase our participation. Theirs is a ‘participatory universe’ but, like earlier scientific models, it is a passive one. That our consciousness participates in the universe is for them as much a ‘law’ as is gravity. For people like Barfield, the idea is to consciously increase our participation, and hence freedom. And by consciously increasing our participation, we do not then gain greater control over the things that make up our world, but of our picture of that world, just as while I cannot control what takes place in a television programme I am watching, I can control the quality of the picture on the screen; i.e., increase or decrease the focus, clarity, and so on.

Thoughts for the Day: Wednesday 10 February 2021

 

Published December 2020

The Case for Keto

Gary Taubes

Given a choice between a hypothesis and an experience, go with the experience.

The Case for Keto

Gary Taubes

“Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers,” as a famously clever screenwriter/director/journalist named Ben Hecht once wrote, “is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.”

Conservatism

Edmund Fawcett

“Whig” was not just a party-political label but also the name of a climate of opinion, as Daniel Walker Howe characterized it in a classic study, The Political Culture of the American Whigs (1979). To Whig reformers the rest of America was not the Wild West but the Wild Everywhere, a bride-short, male-dominated free-for-all scarred by dueling, drinking, whoring, and rioting.

The Price of Peace

Zachary D. Carter

“He was, in fact, saying that the market doesn’t work. He only half recognized it.” For all his grand optimism and ecstatic visions of a fifteen-hour workweek, Keynes remained a Burkean conservative, anxious about actually implementing the changes he believed possible, even those he thought necessary to the preservation of democracy.

The Idea of Nature

R. G. Collingwood

You cannot now solve the problem by saying that God chose to create the world at a certain place chosen by Himself in the uniform matter. This is presumably what Thales said: but it is not sense. Unless God had a reason for His choice, it was no choice; it was something of which we have no conception whatever, and calling it a choice is merely throwing dust in our own eyes by pretending to equate it with a familiar human activity, the activity of choosing, which we do not in fact conceive it to have resembled. Choice is choice between alternatives, and these alternatives must be distinguishable, or they are not alternatives; moreover, one must in some way present itself as more attractive than the other, or it cannot be chosen.

Four Seconds

Peter Bregman

A goal defines an outcome you want to achieve; an area of focus establishes activities you want to spend your time doing. A goal is a result; an area of focus is a path. A goal points to a future you intend to reach; an area of focus settles you into the present.

Thoughts for the Day: Tuesday 9 February 2021

 

1944 publication

The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness

Reinhold Niebuhr

Once it is fully understood that there are no natural harmonies and equilibria of power in history, as there are in nature, and that advancing civilization tends to accentuate, rather than diminish, such disproportions of power as exist in even primitive communities, it must become apparent that property rights become instruments of injustice.

On Revolution

Hannah Arendt

Crucial, then, to any understanding of revolutions in the modern age is that the idea of freedom and the experience of a new beginning should coincide.

Men in Dark Times

Hannah Arendt

Being able to depart for where we will is the prototypal gesture of being free, as limitation of freedom of movement has from time immemorial been the precondition for enslavement. Freedom of movement is also the indispensable condition for action, and it is in action that men primarily experience freedom in the world. When men are deprived of the public space—which is constituted by acting together and then fills of its own accord with the events and stories that develop into history—they retreat into their freedom of thought.

Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954

Hannah Arendt

Since the greatness, but also the perplexity, of all laws in free societies is that they only indicate what one should not do, and never what one should do, political action and historical movement in constitutional government remain free and unpredictable, conforming to, but never inspired by, its essence.