Congress trying to become virtually useless

With a vote to hold Barr in contempt scheduled for Wednesday, the Justice Department requested a meeting, prompting House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) to issue a statement. “I am pleased that the Department of Justice has agreed to meet with my staff [Tuesday] — and not Wednesday afternoon, as originally proposed by DOJ,” the letter began. “It remains vital that the Committee obtain access to the full, unredacted [Mueller] report and the underlying materials. At the moment, our plans to consider holding Attorney General Barr accountable for his failure to comply with our subpoena still stand.”

At issue is also Barr’s refusal to appear for questioning by the committee’s counsel, a remarkable if unintended signal that he recognizes the flimflam, evasion and nonresponsiveness he used to avoid answering Senate Judiciary Committee members’ questions last week will not work with a skilled attorney’s staccato questions and exacting follow-ups.

If the committee and House do vote to hold the attorney general in contempt, it is not clear what the next step might be. The attorney general would direct the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia not to enforce the contempt finding in court. The House could proceed with a civil case to enjoin and fine Barr. The most appropriate response, however, to an attorney general who has dissembled about the Mueller report, refused to produce the report for Congress and defied a duly passed contempt citation would be impeachment.

[...]

Impeachment of a Cabinet secretary (the first since Reconstruction) would be a fitting capstone to a career that will be defined by Barr’s rabid partisanship and disdain for the Constitution.

  WaPo

Nancy might not approve.

And here's another cabinet member who could use the boot...

Impeachment of a Cabinet secretary (the first since Reconstruction) would be a fitting capstone to a career that will be defined by Barr’s rabid partisanship and disdain for the Constitution.

[...]

Mnuchin, in a letter to House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.), said he had consulted with the Justice Department and that they had concluded that it would not be lawful for the Trump administration to turn over the tax returns because of potential violations of privacy.

Who's "they"? Mnuchin and Barr?

Mnuchin argues that the request must serve a legitimate purpose, but the statute requires no such showing. Moreover, it is not up to the president to decide what is a legitimate purpose.

Like seeing where he's reporting income from?

The statute plainly states the treasury secretary “shall” turn over a tax return upon request by the House Ways and Means Committee chairman. All tax returns have private information, but Congress previously decided by statute that concerns about privacy are secondary to the House’s oversight responsibilities.

The propriety of the law might be argued, but at the moment, it IS the law.

Here, Mnuchin’s obstruction is designed simply to protect Trump from embarrassment and conceal potential conflicts of interest and possible improper receipt of foreign emoluments.

As with Barr, the House should proceed along two tracks. It should hold Mnuchin in contempt and proceed with civil litigation when the Justice Department refuses to enforce the contempt finding in court. Mnuchin’s impeachment hearings should also proceed.

Line 'em up. Impeach 'em all.

The contempt findings and impeachment proceedings against two Cabinet officials will serve several purposes.

Nitpick: I think the proper verb should be "would serve" since "will" sounds like they're actually going to do it.

The House will underscore the administration’s utter lawlessness and the degree to which Trump has corrupted public functions for private purposes. It will provide a forum to educate the American people about Trump’s underlying misconduct (e.g. receipt of foreign emoluments, obstruction of justice in the Mueller probe). And perhaps most important it will serve as a deterrent for other Cabinet officials in this and future administrations: If you join a lawless administration and work to enable and defend it, you will suffer severe consequences, including career destruction.

Forgive me if I don't think that's a big enough threat for Republicans. They seem to need jail time. Indeed, anything less, even conviction without jail time, doesn't work (see, eg: Abrams, Elliott).  His career seems to have survived quite nicely.

The president of the United States routinely orders his subordinates to subvert the law. He believes that the Justice Department should comport itself as his personal detective agency — and that the attorney general’s first responsibility is to protect the White House from legal accountability. And he has used one of his office’s most extraordinary powers — the authority to pardon convicted criminals — to undermine a federal investigation.

These realities were already apparent before Robert Mueller’s report was released [...] . But they have now been formally confirmed by federal law enforcement. The branch of government responsible for enforcing the rule of law is led by a man with contempt for that very concept. Congress’s constitutional obligation in this circumstance is unambiguous. The president swore to “faithfully execute” the duties of his office. He has not. Thus, Congress should evict him from that office.

This would be true even if Donald Trump displayed no inclination to persist in his lawlessness. But he is displaying the opposite. Impeachment is therefore required not merely to punish the president for his past indiscretions — or to deter a future president from emulating them — but to halt the rampage of a serial offender.

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There is no defensible argument against impeaching this kind of president as a substantive matter. The only debate worth having concerns the political merits of such an endeavor.

  NY Magazine

And that's an argument that debases the Constitution and the relegates rule of law to worthlessness.

To the extent that the impeachment process would register at all with low-information swing voters, it would likely register as an unresolved partisan squabble. Trump’s malfeasance is surely a political asset for Democrats. But the president’s lawlessness isn’t subtle. Anyone who is willing and able to see that Trump is a crook already has. Better then [politically for the Democrats] to focus the party’s messaging on bread-and-butter issues that might speak to voters who are indifferent to Trump’s corruption.

[...]

[I]f House Democrats are taking the position that the Republican Party is so corrupt — and our system of checks and balances so obsolete — it isn’t even worth trying to uphold their constitutional responsibility to impeach a lawless president, then they need to acknowledge the radical implications of that stance.

If there is no bipartisan consensus on upholding the rule of law, then bipartisan consensus is not an end worth pursuing.

Bingo. It wasn't worth pursuing for the eight years Obama tried to appease the Republicans.

If the Republican Party can’t be trusted to even consider putting its allegiance to lawfulness above its fealty to Donald Trump, then the GOP is a cancer on the body politic.

There's no "if" to it. In fact, the GOP is not showing fealty to Trump. Trump is showing fealty to the GOP, which is why they protect him.

Democratic senators have argued that their party should never abolish the legislative filibuster — because the Senate’s 60-vote threshold is a well-established institution that combats political polarization by forcing lawmakers to embrace bipartisan compromise. This argument fails on its own terms: The automatic 60-vote requirement for nearly all legislation is an invention of the 21st century, and its establishment has not coincided with a golden era of bipartisan compromise, but rather of gridlock and dysfunction.

[...]

If Democrats have the power to reduce the Republicans’ structural advantage in the Senate by granting statehood to D.C. and Puerto Rico on a party-line vote, they must do this. If the conservative judges continue to abet the GOP’s efforts to insulate itself from popular rebuke through voter suppression and gerrymandering, then Democrats must be prepared to reform the judiciary.

Democrats can insist that impeachment is a hopeless cause. And they can sing paeans to congressional norms and bipartisan comity. But if they do both, they will confirm that their party is just another one of our republic’s failing institutions.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.