And for those too drunk on the Trump-aid to understand the problem here, Donald is the President of the United States (as he keeps telling us ad nauseum) and he can give official orders and directives through governmental channels to remove any official that he wants to by using normal protocols. The President doesn't need to give orders to non-governmental apparatchiks working with his personal attorney using mafia-like language, circumventing Yovanovitch's boss, Mike Pompeo.

There is a reason Trump decided not to use official channels to remove this ambassador and there-in lies one of the reasons he has abused his presidential power in service of his own agenda, not that of this nation's.

Thanks Mike Pompeo! Go after another PBS woman, champ. You're on a roll....

The condensed timeline for opening arguments raises the prospect that the trial will have 12-hour days and go late into the night, as the trial begins at 1 p.m. ET each day.

The Senate will debate and vote on McConnell's resolution on Tuesday, kicking off the trial in earnest after the ceremonial proceedings last week.

Schumer said he would offer amendments on Tuesday "to address the many flaws in this deeply unfair proposal and to subpoena the witnesses and documents we have requested."

Yeah, sure. SMDH

That argument essentially says the President is above the law in this regard. ANYONE else guilty of Abuse of Power in a government position is certainly impeachable if not a criminal trial...

Catch 45 - If there isn't a statutory law broken, there are no grounds for impeachment, but while in office the President cannot be held accountable through the justice system for anything illegal before or during his presidency - including legislative disputes with Congress up to and including impeachment inquiries. Which equals no oversight, no accountability, and absolutely no restraint that the White House doesn't want to adhere to.

Not just above the law, they are the law. They can create their own reality and force the rest of us to live in its authoritarian dystopia.

In his letter to Barr, Parnas' attorney cites the president's July 2019 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump mentions Barr as a point person for a possible investigation. It also notes the August 2019 whistleblower complaint, a call for recusal by Senate Democrats on the judiciary committee and one from the New York City Bar Association.

In an interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow that aired last Wednesday, Parnas alleged that Barr was aware of the effort, now at the center of Trump's impeachment.

"Mr. Barr had to have known everything," Parnas said.

"Attorney General Barr was basically on the team," he added.

The letter says federal prosecutors have refused to meet with Parnas and delayed the production of discovery evidence in his case. As a result, Parnas "was rendered unable to comply with a duly-issued congressional subpoena in time for congressional investigators to make complete use of his material or properly assess Mr. Parnas as a potential witness," the letter says.

"Given the totality of the circumstances, we believe it is appropriate for you to recuse yourself from the ongoing investigation and pending prosecution of Mr. Parnas," reads the three-paged letter, which was signed by his defense lawyer Joseph Bondy.

This will be interesting to watch play out.

On ABC News' This Week, George Stephanopoulos posed the question to Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), who said, "I don't know that has been actually proven. You know, that's all in dispute."

It's really not. We know this for certain in part because the White House released an official call summary of Trump's July 25 conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which the American president pressed his counterpart in Kyiv to "look into" Joe Biden. A week after that call summary was released to the public, Trump stood on the South Lawn of the White House and told reporters on camera, "China should start an investigation into the Bidens." The Republican added soon after, "I would say that President Zelensky, if it were me, I would recommend that they start an investigation into the Bidens."

(M)any GOP lawmakers " most notably Iowa's Joni Ernst and Colorado's Cory Gardner " struggled mightily with the question, refusing to say much of anything.

In the months that followed, others in the party have tried to deny the existence of factual details altogether. Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.), for example, was asked whether she believes it's all right for an American president to ask a foreign power to investigate a political rival. "He didn't," the congresswoman replied, reality be damned. "He didn't do that ... . He did not do that."

Trump did exactly that. It's not one of the debatable aspects of the scandal. (above link)

Renember, the charges are abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Find these two in law.

#21 | POSTED BY PETROUS

Sorry you don't like my editing style. I explained myself and nothing that you wrote factually explains what I obviously conveyed to anyone who clicked the link and saw the same words written as I posted from the opinion piece. If there was no link at all someone might reach your conclusion, but I trust readers to think for themselves and to deduce that the long black unbroken line between the two entries demarcates that they are not connected whatsoever.

I'm so glad RCAde elevated you to be the Retort critic of standing. The job fits you perfectly. You live to criticize others, and the pay is exactly what your opinion is worth.

just bringing this up is funny.

Why? Don't you know the reason he wrote this now?

What might a child who stutters, as I did, feel when they hear a grown-up on a public stage trying to make a bunch of other adults laugh by ridiculing a public figure who also stutters? This culture of cruelty is what drives decent people from public service, and what makes millions of Americans recoil from politics, and even from participating in our democracy.

So, to every child who feels today, what I felt, after hearing those cruel remarks by an adult who should know better, here is what I want you to know:

You are fine, just as you are. You can do any job you dream of when you grow up. You can be a pilot who lands your plane on a river and helps save lives, or a president who treats people with respect, rather than making fun of them. You can become a teacher to kids who stutter. A speech disorder is a lot easier to treat than a character defect. You become a true leader, not because of how you speak, but because of what you have to say " and the challenges you have overcome to help others. Ignore kids (and adults) who are mean, or don't know what it feels like to stutter. Respond by showing them how to be kind, polite, respectful and generous, to be brave enough to try big things, even though you are not perfect.

Do that, and the sky is the limit. Take it from me.

#2

The long line (I guess for idiots like you it needs to go completely across the page) and the hyperlink are full indicators that the two sections are not from the same source. I started the second section with the hyperlink in the very first words, completely and immediately letting any reader know the origin of what follows was different that what preceded it.

I don't know why you keep implying that I try to implicate things never stated or to mislead or misrepresent as practices when I thoroughly and completely try to be open and transparent for those not seeped in deception and misdirection themselves.

Try it sometimes.

Parnas is but the latest. He was sent abroad to make an offer Zelensky presumably couldn't refuse, plausibly delivered with the finesse of a gangster " Giuliani-style if not Corleone-style.

If Parnas is going down, he apparently doesn't plan to be lonely. He has also implicated Attorney General William P. Barr and Vice President Pence, who, Parnas says, were both in the now-storied "loop." Both Barr and Pence deny it. And, of course, there's Giuliani, who has been tangled in his own web of weirdness for some time. Whatever legacy he once had as America's mayor following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he has surrendered it to ego and a rapacious appetite for relevancy.

Whether Parnas will be invited to tell his tale under oath before the Senate seems doubtful, but he'll find plenty of company among his predecessors in the presidential purgatory he has now entered. In Trump's underworld, disloyalty is usually rewarded with some fresh new hell.

The nearest MRI is in Germany.

As it regards the military's MRIs specifically for brain trauma, the statement appears to be true. I found these when I did a search, but it doesn't give specific details regarding exactly where the machines are today.

Now that my fe-fe's have been adequately addressed, it appears that Boston and the Mets are going to lose managers from this fiasco too. Joey Cora; who's alleged to have designed Houston's signaling scheme before he left, and Carlos Beltran, who was involved as a player then too.

This one is going to reverberate for quite a while I predict.

Not really. That's kinda my point. I wasn't trying to be snarky toward YOU. It was simply my question to you for a firsthand viewpoint.

I anticipated that many Dodger fans are incensed right now, and you're right there at ground zero.

I was asking you if my guess of many angry LA-area folks was confirmed by your experiences, that was all. I was asking about them, not assigning you that position - unless you replied that you were upset too, which you didn't.

I just thought it was obvious that the comment was one of me seeking information, not assigning anything negative towards you personally.

And I do understand how it can be perceived that way, but the way I say it to myself must be far different than others hear it for themselves.

I'll have to remember that.

vested....

I am sure you can relate since you thought you were giving me a dig.

Sorry to disappoint.

Why do you always think that I'm trying to imply something negative toward you? I wasn't. I know that you're connected in LA and Plaschke (among many others) wants to see Houston's 'chip vacated. You of all posters here would probably know people with strong opinions if not vest interests in this topic.

I don't go through my life beefing with people. I hope everyone is happy doing whatever it is that supplies them joy. I'm no wallflower (no ish, huh?) but every single thing is not about trying to show up someone unless they deserve it or came at me first. I was reaching out to you because you're likely in the know. If anything happens in Indy you might want to know about, I'd expect the same from you.

Let us know what you hear because I'm sure the dust hasn't settled yet.

There's a lot of hurt feelings and anger coming from the SoCal area after this. Right ROC?

Experts say the timing and scale of the attacks suggest that the Russians could be searching for potentially embarrassing material on the Bidens " the same kind of information that Mr. Trump wanted from Ukraine when he pressed for an investigation of the Bidens and Burisma, setting off a chain of events that led to his impeachment.

The Russian tactics are strikingly similar to what American intelligence agencies say was Russia's hacking of emails from Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman and the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 presidential campaign. In that case, once they had the emails, the Russians used trolls to spread and spin the material, and built an echo chamber to widen its effect.

Then, as now, the Russian hackers from a military intelligence unit known formerly as the G.R.U., and to private researchers by the alias "Fancy Bear," used so-called phishing emails that appear designed to steal usernames and passwords, according to Area 1, the Silicon Valley security firm that detected the hacking. In this instance, the hackers set up fake websites that mimicked sign-in pages of Burisma subsidiaries, and have been blasting Burisma employees with emails meant to look like they are coming from inside the company.

The hackers fooled some of them into handing over their login credentials, and managed to get inside one of Burisma's servers, Area 1 said.

"The attacks were successful," said Oren Falkowitz, a co-founder of Area 1, who previously served at the National Security Agency.

I seem to remember posters like Danni doing so, and calling anyone who didn't support it traitors.

I'm gonna call BS on that one. Danni has always respected innocent ex vivo human life to the best of my recollections. The universal problem with drone strikes has always been collateral damage not associated with the targets.

You'll have to post something proving your point. It doesn't ring true and I've been here for over 16 years.

People on the left who defended if not outright praised Obama for his drone attacks should not be tearing into Trump for this.

I don't recall anyone from the left "praising" Obama for drone attacks, it was just the opposite. While most did not take to the streets in opposition, this was one of the most controversial aspects of his presidency.

#3

Senator Mike Lee of Utah, one of the administration's most outspoken Republican critics in the aftermath of the strike, said on CNN on Sunday that he was "worried" about the quality of the information that national security officials were sharing with Congress and had not "been able to yet ascertain specific details of the imminence of the attack."

"I believe that the briefers and the president believed that they had a basis for concluding that there was an imminent attack, I don't doubt that, but it is frustrating to be told that and not get the details behind it," he said.

Asked specifically whether administration officials had briefed Congress on Iranian threats to four American embassies, as they have subsequently claimed, Mr. Lee said he did not believe so.

"I didn't hear anything about that," he said. "Several of my colleagues have said the same. So, that was news to me, and it is certainly not something that I recall being raised in the classified briefing."

Yet again, you make the brain-dead appear to be geniuses Mortibund Mattress. Go take your belated dirt nap fool. There are hungry worms waiting for your useless carcass.

#34

I'm not an expert on US military and it's direct involvement and coordination with NATO, but the short answer has already been shown to you in quoted context above.

There is a bold line difference between the US military taking orders through the domestic chain of command and US military assets under the control of NATO command.

Are really trying to put forth that NATO actions are separate from the US? Do you believe that's how the rest of the world sees it?

Let me answer your question with a couple other questions.