It is not very often that I get to break news before it happens but the following series of events has all the inevitability of a game of Candy Land provided you rigged every card beforehand and in exactly the order that you wanted the game played in.
President Donald J Trump was acquitted of both counts of impeachment 51-49, after an overtly political process which is not designed to test guilt but rather the willingness of the Congress to remove a President, fell 16 votes short and in doing so refused to test the President's guilt and demonstrated the Congress' unwillingness to remove a President in the face of demonstrated unsuitability and overwhelming corruption. The defence used was 'yeah, he did it but if he thinks it's in the national interest, then it is'.
- Jeff Jefferson, Jefferson Chronicle (Jefferson City, JF¹), 4th Feb 2020
The standard of proof in a Senate impeachment trial is different from the courts because the Senate is not a court. If it were a court, then none of the Congress would be allowed to sit on a jury and neither would they be acting as judge on the case. Unlike a civil trial where the standard of proof is either equity, or the likelihood of a thing happening; and unlike a criminal trial where the standard of proof is whether or not the thing happened beyond reasonable doubt, the standard of proof in the Senate is either 'yeah, nah' or 'yeah, yeah'.
The Senate judgement represents a deliberate betrayal of justice; for the sole purpose of protecting the President.
We had at the weekend, a vote which refused to hear from witnesses in the trial; which is in stark contrast to the demands of the President during the House process of impeachment. During the argument before the vote was taken to deny hearing from witnesses, the Defence's case was that if the Prosecution was allowed to call its witnesses, then they would be allowed to call their own; as if that were some kind of threat.
Perhaps most galling of all is that the phone call which lies at the centre of this case, will never see the light of day. The President's repeated cry for people to 'read the transcript' is itself a piece of obstruction as the only document which has been released is a Memorandum Of A Telephone Conversation which is not a verbatim record (it contains many ellipses) and is therefore not a transcript. If an audio copy of the phone call ever existed, it will have been destroyed; which itself is an obstruction of justice.
The result of 51-49 which will include two dissenters (one of whom will be Mitt Romney) will be just enough to placate those people who would have wanted a conscience vote and will be mechanical enough to provide a simple majority. This enables everyone who might have a problem with voting to return the President for another term on moral grounds, to ignore their conscience in spite of everything that he has said and done, on the grounds that the other side is worse.
This will of course hit exactly in the middle of a newspocalyse in the United States, with the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire primaries all happening and the State of the Union address next week. Add this to Brexstravaganza, the criminal trial of Benjamin Netanyahu and Australia's Sports Rorts scandal and political news desks must be having a field day².
Since the news cycle has a memory of no longer than ten days, then by the time of the general election in November, this whole thing will have been long consigned to the mists of oblivion. The facts of the case, which even the defence concedes are true, are not enough to remove a President from office. This means to say that if it is still an open legal question of whether or not a President can be tried of a crime in a criminal court, and a President will not be removed from office even though crimes and misdemeanors have been committed, then what are the grounds for removing a President?
51-49 - The President is a king in everything but name; he can do whatever he likes; there are no checks or balances.
¹Jefferson being the 51st state³ of the Union.
²They will of course not have a field trip, as that means employing actual journalists to go out and collect the news; instead of just writing opinion pieces⁴.
³Which also helps to explain Disneyland who have 51 star flags on Main St, USA. They know the truth.
⁴The irony is not lost on this publication; which only ever produces think pieces.
Aside re the Wuhan/Corona virus:
Peter Dutton on ABC Radio actually said that he didn't want people coming from mainland China with the Corona virus, as the virus was more efficient than domestic viruses at killing people.
I do not know if this is a genuine healthcare policy or a covert isolationist nationalist racist policy. It almost sounded like he didn't want Chinese viruses coming in and taking Australian viruses' jobs.
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