The radical fanatic Thaddeus Stevens delivering the final speech closing the debate in the House on the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson. When conviction failed in the Senate, by one vote, it is reported that Stevens was carried from the Senate in his chair –- looking “black with rage and disappointment.”

Today, democrats in the House of Representatives, carried away by partisan fanaticism, will take advantage of their possession of an ephemeral voting majority to impeach the president they hate for a second time.

Like periodic epidemics of contagious disease, it seems that residents of the territories of today’s United States are subject as well to periodic outbreaks of madness and fanaticism.

A notable case occurred in the neighborhood of Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. Enormous fatalities, over 600,000 deaths, roughly two and half per cent of the entire population succumbed 1861-1865 to a truly devastating plague of self-righteousness, intolerance, and sectional animosity. Secondary infections lingered for years, most notably causing the takeover of the federal Congress by a majority of hydrophobic madmen.

The radical Congress came into conflict with a maladroit president, the poorly-educated, but stubborn, willful, and choleric, Andrew Johnson, whose own temper was generally exacerbated by his drinking habits. Johnson, a stubbornly Pro-Union Southerner, was disinclined to support the punitive Jacobin agenda of the Northern radicals in control of Congress, and the Revolutionary Congressional mob rapidly lost patience with the unwelcome restraint of an uncooperative Chief Executive. They enacted unconstitutional constraints on Johnson’s powers of appointment, and when he proceeded to defy their edict, provoked the ultimate sanction in their power: impeachment.

Even at its worst, 19th Century America was far better than today’s, and when push came to shove, Kansas Senator Edmund Ross won an honored place in American History (and a chapter of his own in John F. Kennedy’s (ghost-written) book Profiles in Courage by casting the deciding vote to acquit.

Non-Marxist historians shudder when they contemplate the morals and character of the radical leaders of that unhappy period, and the philosopher feels a deep sense of gratitude for human mortality that quietly moved the American Republic out of military dictatorship and Jacobin directorate, peaceably and almost imperceptibly, into mere ordinary Gilded Age Political Corruption.

Obviously, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi do not spend time worrying about what American historians a century from now will say about them. But they should.

Obviously, democrats are playing the Reichstag Fire game: opportunistically inflating the gravity of an incident and mendaciously assigning grave culpability to political opponents to justify an illicit power grab.

As their first step, they are hoping to impeach, convict, and thereby bar Trump from running again in 2024.

Their characterizations of the Capitol Hill protests as a “coup” and an “insurrection” are ridiculous, and hypocritical considering left-wing democrats’ notorious support for months of urban rioting and violence last year.

Their assignment of responsibility to Trump for individual misbehavior on a minor scale in the course of a generally peaceful protest is preposterous.

Donald Trump will be leaving office in one week, and democrats are so vindictive, so shameless, and so atrociously irresponsible as to try this.

The radical Republican attempt to impeach Andrew Johnson was such a humiliating failure that nearly a century and half went by before any House majority was bold enough to try using it again. Impeaching (the guilty) Bill Clinton failed. Impeaching Trump the first time failed.

When this disgraceful episode is finished, a second try in the last hours of a departing administration will in all probability deservedly fail again.

After this, it will be a very, very, very long time before any House majority makes fools of themselves by playing partisan games with the most dangerous and important emergency clauses of the Constitution.

Victor Davis Hanson, brilliantly as usual, discusses the Deep State, Hubris, Nemesis, and Donald Trump.

[T]hey never say to themselves, “I’m not elected.” The constitution says an elected president sets foreign policy. Period. So there’s this sense that they, as credential experts, have a value system, and the value system is they have an inordinate respect for an Ivy League degree or a particular alphabetic combination after their name: a J.D., a Ph.D., an MBA, or a particular resume. I worked at the NSC, then I transferred over to the NSA, and then, I went into the State Department. And we saw that in really vivid examples during the Adam Schiff impeachment inquiries, where a series of State Department people, before they could even talk, [they] said, “I’m the third generation to serve in my family. This is my resume. This is where I went to school. This is where I was posted.” And in the case of Adam Schiff, we saw these law professors, who had gone in and out of government, and they had these academic billets.

And to condense all that, it could be distilled by saying the deep state makes arguments by authority: “I’m an authority, and I have credentials, and therefore, ipse dixit, what I say matters.” And they don’t want to be cross-examined, they don’t want to have their argument in the arena of ideas and cross-examination. They think it deserves authority, and they have contempt—and I mean that literally—contempt for elected officials. [They think:] “These are buffoons in private enterprise. They are the CEO in some company; they’re some local Rotary Club member. They get elected to Congress, and then we have to school them on the international order or the rules-based order.” They have a certain lingo, a proper, sober, and judicious comportment.

So you can imagine that Donald Trump—to take a metaphor, Rodney Dangerfield out of Caddyshack—comes in as this, what they would say, stereotype buffoon and starts screaming and yelling. And he looks different. He talks different. And he has no respect for these people at all. Maybe that’s a little extreme that he doesn’t, but he surely doesn’t. And that frightens them. And then they coalesce. And I’m being literal now. Remember the anonymous Sept. 5, 2018, op-ed writer who said, “I’m here actively trying to oppose Donald Trump.” He actually said that he wanted him to leave office. Then, Admiral [William] McRaven said, “the sooner, the better.” This is a four-star admiral, retired. [He] says a year before the election … Trump should leave: “the sooner, the better.” That’s a pretty frightening idea. And when you have Mark Zaid, the lawyer for the whistleblower and also the lawyer for some of the other people involved in this—I think it’s a conspiracy—saying that one coup leads to another. … People are talking about a coup, then we have to take them at their own word. …

I think that people feel that for a variety of reasons—cultural, social, political—that Trump is not deserving of the respect that most presidents receive, and therefore any means necessary to get rid of him are justified. And for some, it’s the idea that he’s had neither political or military prior experience. For others, it’s his outlandish appearance, his Queens accent, as I said, his Rodney Dangerfield presence. And for others—I think this is really underestimated—he is systematically undoing the progressive agenda of Barack Obama, which remember, was supposed to be not just an eight-year regnum, but 16 years with Hillary Clinton. That would’ve reformed the court. It would have shut down fossil fuel exploration, pipelines, more regulations—well, pretty much what Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are talking about right now. That was going to happen. And so for a lot of people, they think, “Wow, if Donald Trump is elected in 2020”—and he will be, according to the fears of Representatives Al Green or [Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez or Nancy Pelosi; remember, they keep saying this impeachment is about the 2020 [election]—“we’ve got to ensure the integrity.” That’s what Nadler said today.

But if Trump is elected, that would mean eventually in five more years, [we’d have a] 7–2 Supreme Court, 75 percent of the federal judiciary [would be] conservative and traditional and constructionist. … We are the world’s largest oil and gas producer and exporter, but we probably would be even bigger. And when you look at a lot of issues, such as abortion, or identity politics, or the securing of the border, or the nature of the economy or foreign policy, they think America as we know it will be—to use a phrase from Barack Obama—“fundamentally transformed.” So that’s the subtext of it. Stop this man right now before he destroys the whole progressive project—and with it, the reputation of the media. Because the media saw this happening and they said, “You know what?”—as Jim Rutenberg in the New York Times or Christiane Amanpour have said—“… you really don’t need to be disinterested.”

Trump is beyond the pale, so it’s OK to editorialize in your news coverage. And so the Shorenstein Center has reported that 90 percent of all news coverage [of Trump] is negative. So they’ve thrown their hat in the ring and said, we’re going to be part of the Democratic progressive agenda to destroy this president. But if they fail, then their reputation goes down with the progressive project. And that’s happening now. CNN is at all-time low ratings, at least the last four years. And the network news is losing audiences, and most of the major newspapers are, as well. So there’s a lot of high stakes here. And if Donald Trump survives and were to be reelected, I don’t know what would happen on the left. It would make the 2016 reaction look tame in comparison.

RTWT

HT: The News Junkie.

Failed Kamikaze strike on HMS Sussex.

Tyler Grant, in the Spectator:

[T]he path forward is clear. Following the examination of the ‘evidence’ by a prosecutor, some Republican senator will rise to make a motion to dismiss. Chief Justice Roberts bound to Senate rules and eager to get back to his seat across the street where real lawyering happens, will call for a second, and there will be a floor vote, and the motion will carry. Alternatively, they’ll vote on the Articles after the close of evidence and both will fail.

The gavel will fall. Trump will remain in office. Democrats will mourn. Pollsters will poll and 2020 will be a nasty, nasty election that will strain the very fabric of our nation’s unified resolve and the parchment the Constitution is written on. There is some applicable wisdom from 1868 as Sen. James Grimes offered during the Johnson impeachment: ‘I cannot agree to destroy the harmonious working of the Constitution for the sake of getting rid of an unacceptable president.’ “

The democrats have gone absolutely crazy. Deciding that it’s a good idea to undertake one of the gravest constitutional procedures on the completely subjective conviction of their own righteousness and their rival and opponent’s villainy with no hope of convincing anyone or winning, and having so recklessly proceeded, ignoring the consequences and the damage they are inflicting on the system, they ended up congratulating themselves for reducing the Constitution’s ultimate check upon the Executive designed for use in the event of the most extreme kind of circumstances into a petty instrument for gratifying their demented radical base and expressing futile political spite. Their pet media is full of editorials explaining how wise and clever they are to have taken the ultimate sanction, meant to be invoked for high crimes like treason and bribery, and turned it into a spitball.

Sci Fi Author and Instapundit blogger Sarah Hoyt is a naturalized US citizen born in Portugal. Sarah had a few choice words about impeachers in the democrat-controlled House today.

I remember thinking Americans were completely insane. I remember it as through a glass darkly, from the other side of acculturation. But that person and I did share a brain, and I remember my utter bafflement at the American people being mad at taxes — because well, every country levies taxes, right? It’s the price to pay for civilization? — and at American people being furious that the government wanted to take their guns away — what is it with Americans and guns, anyway? The government always takes people’s guns away, to keep them safe! — and at Americans getting all hot under the collar at the idea of a national id card, and…

I also remember coming to the states and being baffled and astonished at people leaving stuff outside, just lying there, and no one stealing it. And at the way you didn’t bribe the police at a traffic stop. And at the amazing amount of civility in everyday life.

Eventually I realized those were two sides of the same coin. The respect for the law in the US, specifically the respect for our foundational law of the constitution is woven all the way through.

Which is why places like Chicago or St. Louis, or other places where corruption is naked and in your face are jokes and bywords here. In the rest of the world with the exception of certain anglophone parts of the world, they’re “Saturday Night.”

And it’s why we’re outraged, frothing mad, chomping at the bit.

Look, let’s level set: I’m waiting for the boss over at Instapundit to tell me I stepped over the line with my intimation that I want everyone who was/is involved in this attempted coup (against we the people who voted for Trump as president,) to be hanged, cut down while still living and their entrails burned before their eyes.

For those who didn’t get the reference, it was actually the Elizabethan punishment for heresy/treason, since the two were enmeshed in that era, and as such it fits the crime against the most basic beliefs that make us a nation. So, yeah, as graphic as that was, it was a reference joke. And I was being a nerd.

On the other hand, the reason that joke was made was that a part of me is frothing at the mouth furious and has nowhere to put it.

Because the guy who jacks your car might be showing a lack of respect for the law, but he’s not in elected office, and he most likely hasn’t sworn to defend the constitution. BUT most importantly he’s probably not doing it in the full light of day. His reach is limited. The ass-clowns in government right now, however, are screaming from the rooftops that they’re no longer our countrymen and they don’t want to live by the very same constitution they swore to protect.

I think the proper term for what they’re doing is Sedition.

Roger Kimball marvels, as do I.

“τὸ κακὸν δοκεῖν ποτ᾽ ἐσθλὸν τῷδ᾽ ἔμμεν’ ὅτῳ φρένας θεὸς ἄγει πρὸς ἄταν” [“Evil appears as good in the minds of those whom god leads to destruction”.]

— Sophocles, Antigone, 620-623.

I have to acknowledge that I never thought it would get this far. I didn’t think that the instinct of self preservation had been entirely bred out of Democrats. I realize that they have been talking about impeaching Donald Trump from before he took office. Rashida Tlaib really countered the ‘crude’ Donald Trump when, upon being elected in 2018, she promised ‘we’re gonna go in there and we’re going to impeach the motherfucker’. She seems nice.

I thought that the prospect of the 2020 election would have made the Democrats fold their cards before now and retreat muttering, ‘well, anyway, we don’t like him’. Yet here we are. If anything has become clear over the past couple of months, it is that the Democrats have no case against the president; there are no crimes alleged, just the emission of a turgid vapor about ‘abuse of power’ and ‘obstruction of Congress’. There was no ‘quid pro quo’, no ‘pressure’, no ‘abuse of power’. All people with first hand knowledge of the infamous conversation between President Trump and President Zelensky acknowledge this. There was just the president doing the people’s business, legitimately exercising his power.

The public is sick, sick, sick of the spectacle. Not the news media, of course: drama sells papers and commercials. But the voters have seen, and seen through, this nakedly partisan folly. We know this in part because of the polls, which have the president riding high, but even more because of the current of feeling — ‘incapable of definition’, as Edmund Burke said in another context, ‘but not impossible to be discerned’ — that all cultural barometers are registering. Donald Trump has enjoyed ostentatious success during his first term: the economy, the stock market, the unemployment figures, the vibrant business environment, at long last tearing the albatross of misguided regulation of its neck — all that and more. Indeed, perhaps even more central is the rebirth of patriotic pride that ordinary Americans feel, in their country, and in themselves.

This was a theme that Rep. Jim Jordan stressed in his brief remarks this evening. Donald Trump has been a great success, and the Democrats hate him for it. ‘Democrats,’ he noted, ‘have never accepted the will of the American people’.

RTWT

Steven Kruiser notes that the democrats’ impeachment antics are resulting in a deluge of campaign contributions for Trump.

The leftist fantasy about this toilet-paper-thin case for impeachment ends with the president being removed from office once all of the Republicans in the Senate are body-snatched and replaced by liberal aliens, after which Mike Pence vanishes into thin air and Hillary Clinton rides triumphantly into Washington on a gender-neutral unicorn to be installed upon her throne.

RTWT

HT: Karen L. Myers.

BREAKING: The whistleblower is a registered Democrat & CIA analyst who was detailed before the 2016 election to the Obama White House,where he worked on the NSC's Ukraine desk & met w anti-Trump Ukrainian officials before being sent packing by the Trump NSC & becoming disgruntled

— Paul Sperry (@paulsperry_) October 4, 2019