Forget what they say House Democrats are readying for impeachment

No, Trump cant pardon himself. The Constitution tells us so.

I've excerpted what I think are the most important parts of authors' the argument below. Read the whole thing, It's short and powerfully reasoned.

Can a president pardon himself? Four days before Richard Nixon resigned, his own Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel opined no, citing “the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case.” We agree.

The Justice Department was right that guidance could be found in the enduring principles that no one can be both the judge and the defendant in the same matter, and that no one is above the law.

The Constitution specifically bars the president from using the pardon power to prevent his own impeachment and removal. It adds that any official removed through impeachment remains fully subject to criminal prosecution. That provision would make no sense if the president could pardon himself.

Self-pardon under this rubric is impossible. The foundational case in the Anglo-American legal tradition is Thomas Bonham v. College of Physicians, commonly known as Dr. Bonham’s Case. In 1610, the Court of Common Pleas determined that the College of Physicians could not act as a court and a litigant in the same case. The college’s royal charter had given it the authority to punish individuals who practiced without a license. However, the court held that it was impermissible for the college to receive a fine that it had the power to inflict: “One cannot be Judge and attorney for any of the parties.”

The Constitution embodies this broad precept against self-dealing in its rule that congressional pay increases cannot take effect during the Congress that enacted them, in its prohibition against using official power to gain favors from foreign states and even in its provision that the chief justice, not the vice president, is to preside when the Senate conducts an impeachment trial of the president.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/no-trump-cant-pardon-himself-the-constitution-tells-us-so/2017/07/21/f3445d74-6e49-11e7-b9e2-2056e768a7e5_story.html?utm_term=.4519b526f727

Putin doesn't care whether of not Trump is impeached.

Either way it is "mission accomplished" because he has successfully sown a prodigious amount of discord and confusion among the US population and within the government itself.

Trump says he has the best words. Merriam-Webster disagrees.

The Miriam-Webster Dictionary has been tweeting amusingly snarky jabs at Trump since his election.

When John Dean of Watergate fame predicted “calamity” for Donald Trump’s presidency, Merriam-Webster’s official account tweeted about the prognostication, adding its definition: “an event that causes great harm and suffering.”

If you are unaccustomed to finding such information in the dictionary, you haven’t been keeping up with the new Merriam-Webster, which has been throwing the book — definition: “to punish (someone) as severely as possible” — at Trump.

fter Trump won the election, the dictionary announced that “lookups for ‘misogyny’ spiked after Trump’s victory” — and illustrated the tweet with a photo of Tic Tacs, a reference to Trump’s on-camera boasting about sexual assault.

Merriam-Webster has shown that a word can be worth 50,000 retweets, as when it responded to Conway’s “alternative facts” remark by saying: “A fact is a piece of information presented as having objective reality.” After Conway said she was uncomfortable being called a feminist, Merriam-Webster tweeted: “ ‘Feminism’ is defined as ‘the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities.’ ”

Its Unconstitutional: Trumps executive order is an unlawful attack on Muslims that must be struck

Trump’s executive order officially prefers Christians and Christianity and disfavors Muslims and Islam. The order is sloppy and at times indecipherable—it was apparently signed without any input or review by the executive agencies it affects—but whoever wrote it was smart enough to attempt to dress up its animus in pretext. That pretense, however, does nothing to obscure its discriminatory intent and effect. In addition to targeting seven majority-Muslim countries, the order suspends the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program for 120 days, no matter a refugee’s country of origin. When that freeze ends, the order directs the secretary of state, “in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security,” to make changes, to the extent permitted by law, to prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual’s country of nationality. (Emphasis mine.)

That limitation is critical—and illegal. It is normal to prioritize “refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution.” There is a long-standing and bipartisan agreement that America’s refugee policies should always focus, at least in part, on those being persecuted on the basis of religion. But this principle is dramatically altered in the very next clause, which states that a refugee persecuted because of his religion will only be prioritized if he “is a minority religion in the individual’s country of nationality.”

The purpose of this limitation is obvious when applied to the Muslim-majority countries with which Trump is concerned: It favors Christian refugees over Muslim refugees. Trump’s executive order will not help Muslim refugees in Muslim countries who face religious persecution. It is instead designed to help Christians in Muslim-majority countries. On a textual and structural level, the order distinguishes between refugees on the basis of religion, helping Christian refugees because they are Christian, and turning away Muslim refugees because they are Muslim. This discrimination plainly contravenes the “clearest command” of the Establishment Clause.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/01/trump_s_executive_order_is_an_unconstitutional_attack_on_muslims.html

The Emperor Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Trump, on the other hand...

[url=https://flic.kr/p/QYCPmH][img][/img][/url][url=https://flic.kr/p/QYCPmH]piddling[/url] by [url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/martindj1/]Martin Johnson[/url], on Flickr

Counter-Sting Catches James OKeefe Network Attempting To Sow Chaos At Trumps Inauguration

Source: Huffington Post

WASHINGTON ― A left-wing political group released a new video Monday of a counter-sting that has uncovered evidence of right-wing activists trying to sow chaos at Donald Trump’s inaugural ceremony, an effort to portray critics of Trump who march against him as violent fringe figures.

The counter-sting, carried out by The Undercurrent and Americans Take Action, a project of a previous target of provocateur James O’Keefe, managed to surreptitiously record elements of O’Keefe’s network offering huge sums of money to progressive activists if they would disrupt the ceremony and “put a stop to the inauguration” and the related proceedings to such a degree that donors to the clandestine effort would “turn on a TV and maybe not even see Trump.” To have riots blot out coverage of Trump, the donor offered “unlimited resources,” including to shut down bridges into D.C.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/counter-sting-catches-james-okeefe-network-attempting-to-sow-chaos-at-trumps-inauguration_us_5873e26fe4b043ad97e516f7