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[Michael Scally MD]

“We are stopping cold the attacks on Judeo-Christian values”

That was President Donald Trump addressing the Value Voters Summit in Washington D.C. last Friday.

We are stopping cold the attacks on Judeo-Christian values.

That’s what he said.

Attacks.

On Judeo-Christian values.

What does that mean?

No, stop. Think about it. What does that mean? How do you attack a value?

Seriously. How do you attack a value?

Look here: Values are defined as those principles we hold important in life.

How do you attack that?

Values are personal. We each determine for ourselves what is important. Values are your personal ethics, morals, your standards of behavior. Values are often, but not always, the ideals imposed on us by our environment, ways of thinking learned from various examples: our parents when we are young, leaders, public figures, community, law, teachers, friends, societal groups, and so on. Because everyone’s experience is different, our values are often different in varying degrees.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Justin A. Amash is an American attorney and Republican member of Congress. In January 2011 he began serving as the U.S. Representative for Michigan's 3rd congressional district. The district is based in Grand Rapids. Amash was first elected to the House in the 2010 Congressional election.


Here are my principal conclusions:

1. Attorney General Barr has deliberately misrepresented Mueller’s report.

2. President Trump has engaged in impeachable conduct.

3. Partisanship has eroded our system of checks and balances.

4. Few members of Congress have read the report.

I offer these conclusions only after having read Mueller’s redacted report carefully and completely, having read or watched pertinent statements and testimony, and having discussed this matter with my staff, who thoroughly reviewed materials and provided me with further analysis.

In comparing Barr’s principal conclusions, congressional testimony, and other statements to Mueller’s report, it is clear that Barr intended to mislead the public about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s analysis and findings.

Barr’s misrepresentations are significant but often subtle, frequently taking the form of sleight-of-hand qualifications or logical fallacies, which he hopes people will not notice.

Under our Constitution, the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” While “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” is not defined, the context implies conduct that violates the public trust.

Contrary to Barr’s portrayal, Mueller’s report reveals that President Trump engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that meet the threshold for impeachment.

In fact, Mueller’s report identifies multiple examples of conduct satisfying all the elements of obstruction of justice, and undoubtedly any person who is not the president of the United States would be indicted based on such evidence.

Impeachment, which is a special form of indictment, does not even require probable cause that a crime (e.g., obstruction of justice) has been committed; it simply requires a finding that an official has engaged in careless, abusive, corrupt, or otherwise dishonorable conduct.

While impeachment should be undertaken only in extraordinary circumstances, the risk we face in an environment of extreme partisanship is not that Congress will employ it as a remedy too often but rather that Congress will employ it so rarely that it cannot deter misconduct.

Our system of checks and balances relies on each branch’s jealously guarding its powers and upholding its duties under our Constitution. When loyalty to a political party or to an individual trumps loyalty to the Constitution, the Rule of Law—the foundation of liberty—crumbles.

We’ve witnessed members of Congress from both parties shift their views 180 degrees—on the importance of character, on the principles of obstruction of justice—depending on whether they’re discussing Bill Clinton or Donald Trump.

Few members of Congress even read Mueller’s report; their minds were made up based on partisan affiliation—and it showed, with representatives and senators from both parties issuing definitive statements on the 448-page report’s conclusions within just hours of its release.

America’s institutions depend on officials to uphold both the rules and spirit of our constitutional system even when to do so is personally inconvenient or yields a politically unfavorable outcome. Our Constitution is brilliant and awesome; it deserves a government to match it.

Thread by @justinamash: "Here are my principal conclusions: 1. Attorney General Barr has deliberately misrepresented Mueller’s report. 2. President Trump has engaged […]"

People who say there were no underlying crimes and therefore the president could not have intended to illegally obstruct the investigation—and therefore cannot be impeached—are resting their argument on several falsehoods:

1. They say there were no underlying crimes.

In fact, there were many crimes revealed by the investigation, some of which were charged, and some of which were not but are nonetheless described in Mueller’s report.

2. They say obstruction of justice requires an underlying crime.
In fact, obstruction of justice does not require the prosecution of an underlying crime, and there is a logical reason for that. Prosecutors might not charge a crime precisely *because* obstruction of justice denied them timely access to evidence that could lead to a prosecution.

If an underlying crime were required, then prosecutors could charge obstruction of justice only if it were unsuccessful in completely obstructing the investigation. This would make no sense.

3. They imply the president should be permitted to use any means to end what he claims to be a frivolous investigation, no matter how unreasonable his claim.

In fact, the president could not have known whether every single person Mueller investigated did or did not commit any crimes.

4. They imply “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” requires charges of a statutory crime or misdemeanor.

In fact, “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” is not defined in the Constitution and does not require corresponding statutory charges. The context implies conduct that violates the public trust—and that view is echoed by the Framers of the Constitution and early American scholars.

Thread by @justinamash: "People who say there were no underlying crimes and therefore the president could not have intended to illegally obstruct the investigation—a […]"

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

WASHINGTON — President Trump is preparing to instruct his former White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, to defy a congressional subpoena and skip a hearing scheduled for Tuesday, denying Democrats testimony from one of the most important eyewitnesses to Mr. Trump’s attempts to obstruct the Russia investigation, a person briefed on the matter said on Monday.

The House Judiciary Committee has subpoenaed Mr. McGahn to appear. The White House plans to provide Mr. McGahn, who left the post last year, with a legal opinion from the Justice Department to justify his defying the subpoena, the person said.

If Mr. McGahn does not appear before the committee on Tuesday, he risks a contempt of Congress citation. At the same time, if he defies the White House, Mr. McGahn could not only damage his own career in Republican politics but also put his law firm, Jones Day, at risk of having the president urge his allies to withhold their business. The firm’s Washington practice is closely affiliated with the party.

It was not immediately clear how the Judiciary Committee or its chairman, Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, would respond. The White House declined to comment on Monday.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Two weeks ago, Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia signed a “fetal heartbeat” bill that bans abortions after six weeks. It is effectively a total ban, since most people who are pregnant won’t know it until sometime between the fourth and seventh weeks.

Last week, Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama signed the strictest abortion law in the country, which bans the procedure except in circumstances where the pregnant person’s life is at risk. Missouri followed suit, with an eight-week ban with no exceptions for rape or incest.

Both laws, as well as the “heartbeat” bill signed in April by Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, are designed to bring fetal personhood to the Supreme Court, where a conservative majority can overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark decision that established a woman’s right to abortion. Will Ainsworth, the lieutenant governor of Alabama, made this explicit: “It is important that we pass this statewide abortion ban legislation and begin a long overdue effort to directly challenge Roe v. Wade.”

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The Ohio and Alabama laws do not include exceptions for rape or incest, and Alabama allows a sentence of up to 99 years in prison for any doctor convicted of providing an abortion. A world where those laws stand is one where, for example, an 11-year-old girl is forced to bear the child of her 26-year-old rapist. It’s a world where predatory men are practically empowered to commit sexual violence.

It’s also a world with even more avenues to enforce racial hierarchy. The criminal justice system is already weighted against black and brown communities, which bear the brunt of police violence and mass incarceration. And when it comes to medical care and reproductive health, black women https://www.reproductiverights.org/node/861, with far worse outcomes than their white counterparts. There’s no question that these laws will lead to the criminalization of black and brown women above and beyond what already exists.

Never mind the jobs or economic growth, what “Make America Great Again” looks like in practice is the imposition of social control on groups that threaten a regressive, hierarchical vision of the country. MAGA is the Muslim ban; MAGA is child separation; MAGA is a woman in handcuffs for thinking she had the right to her own body.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Access to a government jet 24 hours a day. An office in the West Wing, plus guaranteed weekends off for family time. And an assurance of being made secretary of homeland security by November.

Those were among a list of 10 conditions that Kris Kobach, the former Kansas secretary of state, has given to the White House if he is to become the administration’s “immigration czar,” a job President Trump has been looking to create to coordinate immigration policy across government agencies. The list was described by three people familiar with it.

Mr. Kobach, who once served as an adviser to the hard-line immigration Sheriff Joe Arpaio and helped write an Arizona law requiring local officials to verify the citizenship of anyone they had “reasonable suspicion” to believe was an unauthorized immigrant, said he would need to be the main television spokesman for the Trump administration on immigration policy. And he said he wanted a guarantee that cabinet secretaries whose portfolios relate to immigration would defer to him, with the president mediating disputes if need be.

The list was submitted by Mr. Kobach in recent weeks as he discussed his interest in the job. Other conditions included having a staff of seven reporting to him, “walk in” privileges to the Oval Office, a security detail if deemed necessary and the title of assistant to the president.