When witnesses testify in a courtroom and offer varying, contradictory or even unlawful explanations of the events under scrutiny, juries tend not to believe them. The same is now happening with the Trump administration's defense of its killing Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani by the use of an unmanned drone while he was being driven peacefully along a public highway in Iraq two weeks ago. Why the shifting justifications?
Here is the backstory.
The general was the commander of Iran's elite military and intelligence forces. He was a fierce opponent of ISIS and the American military. . .
"America ... goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy." — President John Quincy Adams (1767-1848)
Last week, President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. military to invade a then-friendly country without the knowledge or consent of its government and assassinate a visiting foreign government official. The victim was the head of Iran's military and intelligence. The formerly friendly country is Iraq. The killing of the general and his companions was carried out by the use of an unmanned drone. The general was not engaged in an act of violence at the time he. . .
1) In 2020, President Donald Trump will...
a. start a war with Iran.
b. refuse to enforce Obamacare.
c. retain the core of Obamacare because he will have a change of heart.
d. be re-elected.
2) At the end of 2020...
a. more American troops will be deployed around the world than are today.
b. the United States will be directly involved in a land war in Syria.
c. the United States will renounce its membership in NATO.
d. all American combat troops will be back home in the United States.
3) In 2020, Trump will...
a. issue more. . .
What if Christmas is a core value of belief in a personal God who lived among us and His freely given promise of eternal salvation that no believer should reject or apologize for? What if Christmas is the rebirth of Christ in the hearts of all believers? What if Christmas is the potential rebirth of Christ in every heart that will have Him, whether a believer or not?
What if Jesus Christ was born about 2,000 years ago in Bethlehem? What if He is true God and true man? What if this is a mystery and a miracle? What. . .
The rule of law is a cornerstone of American democracy and is integral to the Constitution. It stands for the principles that no person is beneath the laws' protections. No person is above the laws' requirements. And the laws apply equally to all people. That is the theory of the rule of law.
In practice, as the power of the federal government has grown almost exponentially since 1789 and the power of the presidency has grown with it, presidents have claimed immunity from the need to comply with the law while in office. They have also claimed immunity. . .
Congress enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1978 in response to the unlawful surveillance of Americans by the FBI and the CIA during the Watergate era. President Richard Nixon — who famously quipped after leaving office that "when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal" — used the FBI and the CIA to spy on his political opponents.
The stated reason was national security. Nixon claimed that foreign agents physically present in the U.S. agitated and aggravated his political opponents to produce the great public unrest in America in the late 1960s. . .
In a 2008 case called District of Columbia v. Heller, and again in a 2010 case called McDonald v. City of Chicago, the Supreme Court interpreted the Second Amendment.
That amendment was written, the court ruled in both cases, to mandate the obligation of the federal government, as well as cities and states, to recognize, respect and permit the exercise of the right to self-defense, using the same level of technology as might be used against someone in the home. Stated differently, the high court twice held in the past 11 years that the right to own and keep. . .
Throughout the House of Representatives' impeachment inquiry, President Donald Trump has been pushing Attorney General William Barr to make a public statement on the president's behalf. He wants Barr to state publicly that even if the president did what congressional Democrats claim — conditioning the release of $391 million in vital military and financial aid to Ukraine upon the announcement of a Ukrainian government investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden — such behavior did not constitute impeachable offenses.
The attorney general, to his credit, has declined to comply with the president's wishes. But he. . .
"Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal." — Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994)
As public hearings on impeachment begin this week, we will see the case for and the case against impeaching President Donald Trump. The facts are largely undisputed, but each side has its version of them.
The Democrats will argue that in his July 25, 2019 telephone call with his Ukrainian counterpart, seen in the context of months of negotiations between American and Ukrainian diplomats, Trump made it known that if the Ukrainian government wanted the $391 million in military. . .
Peggy Noonan, who wrote brilliant speeches for Ronald Reagan and now writes gifted columns for The Wall Street Journal, and whose friendship I have enjoyed for many years, recently put forth a hypothetical historical analogy that stopped me in my tracks.
Let's look at some background before getting to it.
Late last week, the House of Representatives adopted a resolution authorizing formal investigations into whether President Donald Trump has committed impeachable offenses while in office. The resolution directed five House standing committees to investigate the president's behavior and to report the results of those investigations to. . .