Adam Schiff's impeachment inquiry is underway, and as it turns out you "Trumpsters" out there had nothing to worry about. The first three major witnesses, as we indicated last week, did not actually witness anything.  Normally, that would be a problem, as American jurisprudence generally requires that people who provide testimony accusing someone of a crime or an offense actually have first-hand knowledge, but if we are expected to put our faith in a whistleblower who reports third hand hearsay, anonymously, it isn't too much of a reach to have witnesses who traffic in hearsay and impressions and feelings.
  One of the many laughably embarrassing moments for the Democrats on the Schiff's committee was when Schiff's committee member Rep. Mike Quigley, from the fifth District of Illinois, dealt with the issue head-on and produced this gem: "...countless people have been convicted on hearsay, because the courts have routinely allowed and created needed exceptions to hearsay.  Hearsay can be much better evidence than direct, as we have learned in painful instances and it's certainly valid in this instance."
  We can imagine that the standards in Illinois and the Schiff committee may be a tad different from those places where due process is observed, but contrary to Rep. Quigley's contention, courts routinely deny hearsay testimony, and most often do not even admit it into evidence.

  Yes, the title is not a typographical error. We believe the “impeachment inquiry,” as presently constituted, is far more a persecution than a prosecution.
  So, let’s play “let us pretend,” and by “us” we mean all of the people who are apoplectic about folks who seek to disclose the identity of the self-styled whistleblower in the “Trump – Ukrainian phone call incident.”
  Let “us” pretend that a Democrat is elected President, and that the holdover Republicans in the bureaucracy are angry that their party lost. So, let’s pretend they go out of their way to “resist” every act the incoming President promises, every move he makes, every word he utters, everyone he nominates; but more than that, they decide to “go public” by “blowing the whistle” on the  new President  by reporting  the contents of some communication he held with a foreign leader, a communication containing something that goes against the norms of established policy. That makes him, by current definition, a “whistleblower.”  Well, let’s pretend our whistleblower doesn’t report the contents, but fabricates them, based on third or fourth hand gossip from someone who supposed that something occurred because somebody told somebody else that he has the impression that it occurred.
​   Anyway, to continue: our “whistleblower” knows that his close involvement with Republican presidential campaigns and candidates, and his associations with the officeholders in the previous administration might undercut his pretense of neutrality were his identity to be disclosed, so he masks it, and insists upon full anonymity, even though what he is blowing the whistle about could lead to President-elect falling from grace, or even being toppled from office.

  Impeachments of Presidents are still rare enough that they command entertainment value if nothing else. We already have mentioned how amusing it is to hear the leading proponents of impeachment assure us that is a solemn and portentous step that they are taking very reluctantly and wish they didn’t have to take at all – when they have been talking about impeachment since before President Trump was sworn in and have mentioned the word hundred of times since then.
It is also entertaining to hear how many things the President is alleged to have done to warrant said impeachment. None of them illegal, of course, but just because actual crimes were committed which led to the impeachments of President Nixon and President Clinton, doesn’t mean there has to be a crime to impeach a President.  At least that is what we hear, sometimes, from those leading proponents of impeachments; though just as often they assert that their Constitutional duty DEMANDS that they carry through with this impeachment.
We actually have lost count about how many times the Democrats have wanted to impeach President Trump – years before the Ukrainian phone call – and also lost track of how many reasons they gave. We think the walls first closed in on the President when the Russian collusion case was brought forth, but that journey to justice ended when Robert Mueller failed to discover whatever it was that Cong. Adam Schiff discovered to prove the President’s crimes.  We think they were going to impeach President Trump along with Justice Kavanaugh – of course, no reason was needed, but we think it was because Kavanaugh did something that nobody saw or could remember when he was in high school, and Trump because he nominated Kavanaugh. Rep. Maxine Walters has often talked of impeaching the President, and she has the goods on Vice-President Pence too, she says. Well, at least she wants to impeach him, too.
Yep, the Democrats have fired the impeachment cannon several times since January 2019, but they think that this time, with the President’s phone call to the Ukrainian President, they have him in a box he can’t escape.  Well, maybe they would have, if we had been allowed to rely on only Cong. Schiff’s account of that infamous phone call, for that revealed a truly explicit and blatant criminal act – on the part of Cong. Schiff, not the President.  Of course, when the President released the actual transcript of the phone call, and it said nothing like Cong. Schiff’s account, and the Ukrainian President denied any pressure, that charge was on shaky ground.  And, just as Christine Blasey Ford’s witnesses against Brett Kavanaugh, each and every one of them, failed to back up her account, Cong. Schiff’s witnesses against President Trump also undercut the case for impeachment.
Especially his latest “star witness,” Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who claimed that he was upset by the phone call because the President was the “superior,” so “the whole thing was a demand asking for a favor.” Whatever that means, it isn’t a crime.  And Col. Vindman does not allege that the transcript is inaccurate. From his opening statement:  “As the transcript is in the public record, we are all aware of what was said.” Although he does “remember” things remembered by no one else who heard it, he was outvoted when the final transcript was approved.
Col. Vindman was also concerned about, according to the Washington Post – and pay close attention to this – “[Vindman] was deeply troubled by what he interpreted as an attempt by the President to subvert US foreign policy.”  This leads us to ask how a US President can “subvert” foreign policy, because it is the President who makes our foreign policy. “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” – US Constitution, Article II, Section 1.
The power to set foreign policy is now and always has been the prerogative of the US President, from the days of Washington’s warnings about entangling alliances to today.  It has never been “left to the bureaucracy” and the actions of a President in the foreign policy field, good or bad, by definition, cannot “subvert” foreign policy. Not infrequently are the actions of one President that take US policy in a different direction reversed by a subsequent President.  “Reversed” or “changed” is not the same thing as “subverted.”