Jump to content

Adam Schiff: An open letter to my Republican colleagues


homersapien

Recommended Posts

Adam B. Schiff, a Democrat, represents California’s 28th Congressional District in the House and is chairman of the Intelligence Committee.

This is a moment of great peril for our democracy. Our country is deeply divided. Our national discourse has become coarse, indeed, poisonous. Disunity and dysfunction have paralyzed Congress.

And while our attention is focused inward, the world spins on, new authoritarian regimes are born, old rivals spread their pernicious ideologies, and the space for freedom-loving peoples begins to contract violently. At last week’s Munich Security Conference, the prevailing sentiment among our closest allies is that the United States can no longer be counted on to champion liberal democracy or defend the world order we built.

For the past two years, we have examined Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and its attempts to influence the 2018 midterms. Moscow’s effort to undermine our democracy was spectacularly successful in inflaming racial, ethnic and other divides in our society and turning American against American.

But the attack on our democracy had its limits. Russian President Vladimir Putin could not lead us to distrust our own intelligence agencies or the FBI. He could not cause us to view our own free press as an enemy of the people. He could not undermine the independence of the Justice Department or denigrate judges. Only we could do that to ourselves. Although many forces have contributed to the decline in public confidence in our institutions, one force stands out as an accelerant, like gas on a fire. And try as some of us might to avoid invoking the arsonist’s name, we must say it.

I speak, of course, of our president, Donald Trump.

The president has just declared a national emergency to subvert the will of Congress and appropriate billions of dollars for a border wall that Congress has explicitly refused to fund. Whether you support the border wall or oppose it, you should be deeply troubled by the president’s intent to obtain it through a plainly unconstitutional abuse of power.

To my Republican colleagues: When the president attacked the independence of the Justice Department by intervening in a case in which he is implicated, you did not speak out. When he attacked the press as the enemy of the people, you again were silent. When he targeted the judiciary, labeling judges and decisions he didn’t like as illegitimate, we heard not a word. And now he comes for Congress, the first branch of government, seeking to strip it of its greatest power, that of the purse.

Many of you have acknowledged your deep misgivings about the president in quiet conversations over the past two years. You have bemoaned his lack of decency, character and integrity. You have deplored his fundamental inability to tell the truth. But for reasons that are all too easy to comprehend, you have chosen to keep your misgivings and your rising alarm private.

That must end. The time for silent disagreement is over. You must speak out.

This will require courage. The president is popular among your base, which revels in his vindictive and personal attacks on members of his own party, even giants such as the late senator John McCain. Speaking up risks a primary challenge or accusations of disloyalty. But such acts of independence are the most profound demonstrations of loyalty to country.

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III may soon conclude his investigation and report. Depending on what is in that report and what we find in our own investigations, our nation may face an even greater challenge. While I am alarmed at what we have already seen and found of the president’s conduct and that of his campaign, I continue to reserve judgment about what consequences should flow from our eventual findings. I ask you to do the same.

If we cannot rise to the defense of our democracy now, in the face of a plainly unconstitutional aggrandizement of presidential power, what hope can we have that we will do so with the far greater decisions that could be yet to come?

Although these times pose unprecedented challenges, we have been through worse. The divisions during the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement were just as grave and far more deadly. The Depression and World War II were far more consequential. And nothing can compare to the searing experience of the Civil War.

If Abraham Lincoln, the father of the Republican Party, could be hopeful that our bonds of affection would be strained but not broken by a war that pitted brother against brother, surely America can come together once more. But as long as we must endure the present trial, history compels us to speak, and act, our conscience, Republicans and Democrats alike.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/adam-schiff-an-open-letter-to-my-republican-colleagues/2019/02/21/9d411414-3605-11e9-af5b-b51b7ff322e9_story.html?utm_term=.67c139840893

Link to comment
Share on other sites





  • Replies 52
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Trump shouldn’t be forcing Republicans to choose fidelity to him or to the Constitution

By Marc A. Thiessen

If the goal is to build a border wall, then President Trump has made the wrong decision at every turn. In early 2018, Trump had the opportunity to secure $25 billion in funding for his border wall in exchange for legal status for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients. Instead of taking the deal, he blew up the negotiations with his “s---hole” countries remark and by demanding changes to legal immigration policy.

Then in June, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved $1.6 billion for 65 miles of fencing by an overwhelming bipartisan 26-to-5 vote. This could easily have passed the House and Senate. Instead, Trump later shut down the government over wall funding and demanded $5.7 billion. Result? After a disastrous 35-day shutdown, he got less — $1.38 billion — than he would have if he had just gone along with the bipartisan deal six months earlier.

Now, the smart move for Trump would have been to pocket that $1.38 billion and bolster it with an additional $3.1 billion he could arguably use without a declaration of a national emergency — by reprogramming $600 million from the Treasury Department’s drug forfeiture fund and $2.5 billion from the Defense Department’s drug interdiction program. That would have given him $4.48 billion in wall funding — nearly the full amount he was demanding from Congress. Then, in December, he could demand more money with leverage over Democrats when an automatic sequester kicks in, forcing $55 billion in across-the-board cuts to domestic discretionary spending unless Trump agrees to raise spending caps.

Instead, Trump has made the wrong move once again — declaring a national emergency, despite warnings from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and other Republicans that it could provoke a backlash from within his own party.

His order will face an immediate court challenge, which means he won’t be able to spend the emergency funds anytime soon, if at all. And if he prevails in court, it will be a disaster for the cause of limited government. If Trump can declare a national emergency to build a border wall Congress refused to fund, then the power of the president to override Congress’s power of the purse will be virtually unlimited. As Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) pointed out, a future liberal president could declare climate change a national emergency and “force the Green New Deal on the American people.” Or, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) suggested, a Democratic president could one day declare the “epidemic of gun violence in America” a national emergency thanks to Trump’s action.

Just as the Democrats’ decision to eliminate the filibuster on lifetime judicial appointments below the Supreme Court backfired — setting precedent for a Republican rules change to put two justices on the Supreme Court and secure its conservative majority for a generation — Republicans will rue the day if they go along with Trump’s executive power grab. More than a dozen Senate Republicans have spoken out against his emergency declaration — including Marco Rubio, Ron Johnson, Pat Toomey, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Lamar Alexander, Ben Sasse, Thom Tillis, John Cornyn, Mike Rounds, Charles E. Grassley and Roy Blunt. If their votes comport with their words, that is more than enough to pass a resolution of disapproval.

In fact, every Republican in Congress should vote for such a resolution. Stopping executive overreach and restoring Congress’s Article I powers was a key plank in Republicans’ 2016 Better Way agenda. “Our President has been acting more like a monarch than an elected official,” House Republicans declared. “That stops now.”

Trump would no doubt veto a resolution. But the fact that a bipartisan majority of both houses voted to overturn Trump’s declaration would bolster the legal case against his action. As Justice Robert H. Jackson wrote in a concurring opinion for Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer , presidential powers “are not fixed but fluctuate, depending upon their disjunction or conjunction with those of Congress.” When a president acts with congressional support, his power is “at its maximum.” When Congress has not spoken, “there is a zone of twilight.” But “when the President takes measures incompatible with the expressed or implied will of Congress, his power is at its lowest ebb,” Jackson declared. A disapproval resolution would make clear that not only is Trump ignoring the will of Congress, but also Congress has further expressly disapproved of his actions.

Trump’s defenders will argue that Republicans should not deliver such a rebuke to their president. In fact, the opposite is true: It is Trump who should not be forcing Republicans to choose between fidelity to their president and fidelity to the Constitution. And if forced to choose, they must choose the Constitution.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-shouldnt-be-forcing-republicans-to-choose-fidelity-to-him-or-to-the-constitution/2019/02/19/49dd762e-345b-11e9-854a-7a14d7fec96a_story.html?utm_term=.016fa07cb1d2

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, homersapien said:

Adam B. Schiff, a Democrat, represents California’s 28th Congressional District in the House and is chairman of the Intelligence Committee.

This is a moment of great peril for our democracy. Our country is deeply divided. Our national discourse has become coarse, indeed, poisonous. Disunity and dysfunction have paralyzed Congress.

And while our attention is focused inward, the world spins on, new authoritarian regimes are born, old rivals spread their pernicious ideologies, and the space for freedom-loving peoples begins to contract violently. At last week’s Munich Security Conference, the prevailing sentiment among our closest allies is that the United States can no longer be counted on to champion liberal democracy or defend the world order we built.

For the past two years, we have examined Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and its attempts to influence the 2018 midterms. Moscow’s effort to undermine our democracy was spectacularly successful in inflaming racial, ethnic and other divides in our society and turning American against American.

But the attack on our democracy had its limits. Russian President Vladimir Putin could not lead us to distrust our own intelligence agencies or the FBI. He could not cause us to view our own free press as an enemy of the people. He could not undermine the independence of the Justice Department or denigrate judges. Only we could do that to ourselves. Although many forces have contributed to the decline in public confidence in our institutions, one force stands out as an accelerant, like gas on a fire. And try as some of us might to avoid invoking the arsonist’s name, we must say it.

I speak, of course, of our president, Donald Trump.

The president has just declared a national emergency to subvert the will of Congress and appropriate billions of dollars for a border wall that Congress has explicitly refused to fund. Whether you support the border wall or oppose it, you should be deeply troubled by the president’s intent to obtain it through a plainly unconstitutional abuse of power.

To my Republican colleagues: When the president attacked the independence of the Justice Department by intervening in a case in which he is implicated, you did not speak out. When he attacked the press as the enemy of the people, you again were silent. When he targeted the judiciary, labeling judges and decisions he didn’t like as illegitimate, we heard not a word. And now he comes for Congress, the first branch of government, seeking to strip it of its greatest power, that of the purse.

Many of you have acknowledged your deep misgivings about the president in quiet conversations over the past two years. You have bemoaned his lack of decency, character and integrity. You have deplored his fundamental inability to tell the truth. But for reasons that are all too easy to comprehend, you have chosen to keep your misgivings and your rising alarm private.

That must end. The time for silent disagreement is over. You must speak out.

This will require courage. The president is popular among your base, which revels in his vindictive and personal attacks on members of his own party, even giants such as the late senator John McCain. Speaking up risks a primary challenge or accusations of disloyalty. But such acts of independence are the most profound demonstrations of loyalty to country.

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III may soon conclude his investigation and report. Depending on what is in that report and what we find in our own investigations, our nation may face an even greater challenge. While I am alarmed at what we have already seen and found of the president’s conduct and that of his campaign, I continue to reserve judgment about what consequences should flow from our eventual findings. I ask you to do the same.

If we cannot rise to the defense of our democracy now, in the face of a plainly unconstitutional aggrandizement of presidential power, what hope can we have that we will do so with the far greater decisions that could be yet to come?

Although these times pose unprecedented challenges, we have been through worse. The divisions during the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement were just as grave and far more deadly. The Depression and World War II were far more consequential. And nothing can compare to the searing experience of the Civil War.

If Abraham Lincoln, the father of the Republican Party, could be hopeful that our bonds of affection would be strained but not broken by a war that pitted brother against brother, surely America can come together once more. But as long as we must endure the present trial, history compels us to speak, and act, our conscience, Republicans and Democrats alike.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/adam-schiff-an-open-letter-to-my-republican-colleagues/2019/02/21/9d411414-3605-11e9-af5b-b51b7ff322e9_story.html?utm_term=.67c139840893

Is this the Adam Schiff that you speak of........I guess he is guilty of "colluding" with RUSSIANS huh?  He talked with these guys thinking he had to goods on Donald....He was wrong.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

55 minutes ago, homersapien said:

Wrong forum.

Right forum. We should all be willing and able to point out blatant lies and distortion from a representative of congress.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, AUFAN78 said:

Right forum. We should all be willing and able to point out blatant lies and distortion from a representative of congress.

Well, can you expand on "a$$ clown"?

How about identifying the "blatant lies and distortions".  Enlighten us.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, homersapien said:

Well, can you expand on "a$$ clown"?

How about identifying the "blatant lies and distortions".  Enlighten us.

I posted an entire article. I suggest you read it. :dunno:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, AUFAN78 said:

I posted an entire article. I suggest you read it. :dunno:

In Schiff's letter.  What are the lies and distortions?  Point them out.

What a hopeless MAGA you are.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, homersapien said:

In Schiff's letter.  What are the lies and distortions?

What a hopeless MAGA you are.

I posted an entire article. I suggest you read it. :dunno:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

27 minutes ago, AUFAN78 said:

I posted an entire article. I suggest you read it. :dunno:

So, you cannot point out any lies and distortions in Schiff's letter, so instead you feel you must divert the discussion to another document.

Got it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 minutes ago, homersapien said:

So, you cannot point out any lies and distortions in Schiff's letter, so instead you feel you must divert the discussion to another document.

Got it.

I pointed out an entire article DA. You typically drink this early?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, AUFAN78 said:

I pointed out an entire article DA. You typically drink this early?

I am not interested in another article written by someone else. That's diversionary weaseling.

Let's discuss Schiff's letter, not what someone else thinks of Schiff.  You said there were lies and distortions in it.  Point them out.  Highlight them.  That's easy enough. 

 Let's hear what you think.  You made the claim lies and distortions, you point them out.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 minutes ago, homersapien said:

I am not interested in another article written by someone else. That's diversionary weaseling.

Let's discuss Schiff's letter, not what someone else thinks of Schiff.  You said there were lies and distortions in it.  Point them out.  Highlight them.  That's easy enough. 

 Let's hear what you think.  You made the claim lies and distortions, you point them out.

Do you start with Bloody Mary's or Irish Cream and coffee? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, AUFAN78 said:

Do you start with Bloody Mary's or Irish Cream and coffee? 

OK, you're just not up to it.  That's fine.

Typical MAGA poo-flinging with no substance is what I expect from you.  Just thought I'd give you a chance to prove me wrong.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, homersapien said:

OK, you're just not up to it.  That's fine.

Typical MAGA poo-flinging with no substance is what I expect from you.  Just thought I'd give you a chance to prove me wrong.

Homes again, I posted an entire article. I suggest you read it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, AUFAN78 said:

Homes again, I posted an entire article. I suggest you read it.

And I suggested you personally point out the specific errors or deceptions in Schiff's article.  You can always use whatever references you chose to support your opinions after we see them.

I suspected MAGA's can't think for themselves.  Thanks for proving it.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, homersapien said:

And I suggested you personally point out the specific errors or deceptions in Schiff's article.  You can always use whatever references you chose to support your opinions after we see them.

I suspected MAGA's can't think for themselves.  Thanks for proving it.

 

So be it. I suggest you can't read.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 hours ago, AUFAN78 said:

So be it. I suggest you can't read.

I can not only read, I can express my personal opinion about a piece - in this case a letter - if someone asks me to.  I don't evade the question by simply referring them to a different article.  So be it.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, homersapien said:

I can not only read, I can express my personal opinion about a piece - in this case a letter - if someone asks me to.  I don't evade the question by simply referring them to a different article.  So be it.

 

 

No you can't read or else you are a fool.

Mr. Schiff & Co. for years have pushed fake stories that accused innocent men and women of being Russian agents. What’s mind-boggling is that reporters would continue to take Mr. Schiff seriously, given his extraordinary record of incorrect and misleading pronouncements. 

Anyone with menial skills could research and verify the accuracy of the piece and back down from such a foolish perch. But you carry on. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 minutes ago, AUFAN78 said:

No you can't read or else you are a fool.

Mr. Schiff & Co. for years have pushed fake stories that accused innocent men and women of being Russian agents. What’s mind-boggling is that reporters would continue to take Mr. Schiff seriously, given his extraordinary record of incorrect and misleading pronouncements. 

Anyone with menial skills could research and verify the accuracy of the piece and back down from such a foolish perch. But you carry on. 

Can you please point out the part of Schiff's letter you are referring to?

Let's parse it directly for accuracy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, homersapien said:

Can you please point out the part of Schiff's letter you are referring to?

Let's parse it directly for accuracy.

I am pointing out precisely what I stated above. I really don't have time, nor care to make any further time, for your ignorance. You carry on convincing yourself of Schiff's nonsense.  Just trust me when I tell you I'll be laughing. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

46 minutes ago, AUFAN78 said:

I am pointing out precisely what I stated above. I really don't have time, nor care to make any further time, for your ignorance. You carry on convincing yourself of Schiff's nonsense.  Just trust me when I tell you I'll be laughing. 

Why are you so reluctant to critique specific statements in Schiff's letter?

It looks like you are afraid you cannot effectively rebut his exact words so you rely on generalizations written by someone else as a (cheap and lazy) substitute.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.




×
×
  • Create New...