Rise and whine

He's tripling down.

I WISH they were destroying the Democratic Party, or moving it substantially left.  That would be a hell of an accomplishment.

They don't think America was wicked in its origins.  They think there were wicked things being done at its origin, and those things are still wicked and need to be changed.  If you disagree, then you ARE racist.

Also, even if destroying the Democratic Party were a bad thing, it's certainly preferable to destroying the country, which is what Trump and his enablers are doing.



And that's just laughable (as is so much of what the Asshole in Chief says).  The Republican Party was less unified on this vote than it's ever been since he took office.  Four Republicans voted with the Democrats.  Has that happened in Trump's term before?   John McCain may have been the last one to do it.  Or Justin Amash, but he wasn't a Republican on this vote.



"Wow!" indeed.  Unlike the AIC, the Speaker was totally exonerated.

“Every single member of this institution should join us in condemning the president’s racist tweets,” Pelosi said.

[...]

Republicans called for Pelosi’s words to be removed from the official record, arguing the speaker broke a House parliamentary rule that states lawmakers cannot malign the character of the president.

What ensued was hours of tumult that pushed Democrats and Republicans into their respective corners, caused the former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus to “abandon” his duties presiding over the House floor, and that left Pelosi — the House speaker — temporarily banned from speaking on the floor for the rest of the day.

[...]

The mayhem comes down to House Republicans’ refusal to censure Trump, no matter the extremity of his rhetoric. Since his weekend tweets, Trump has not backed down on his comments about Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib, saying they “hate” the United States. Republicans have been steadfast in defending him.

[...]

In the middle of a vote, civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) told reporters outside the floor of the House, “The president is a racist. We cannot deny that.”

[...]

Pelosi said the parliamentarian (the official who advises representatives on the House’s rules) had already signed off on her speech, and refused to withdraw her words. Then came the chaos.

[...]

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO), the former leader of the Congressional Black Caucus who was presiding over the House floor during Pelosi’s speech, decided to “abandon the chair” out of frustration.

“We don’t ever, ever want to pass up, it seems, an opportunity to escalate,” Cleaver said, chastising the lawmakers on the floor. “I dare anyone to look at any of the footage and see if there was any unfairness. But unfairness is not enough because we just want to fight. I abandon the chair.”

  Vox

Would he also abandon the country?  Dems need to replace him for abandoning his chair.

In Cleaver’s absence, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) took the chair and brought with him a decision — one that surprised his own party. He ruled that Pelosi’s remarks were not in order. In other words, he ruled that lawmakers, including Pelosi, could not say Trump or his tweets were racist.

The truth must never be spoken in the halls of Congress.

Instead, they would go on to say the rhetoric coming out of the White House was. (That’s how closely House members were parsing their words.)

Technically speaking, it's coming out of Trump's Twitter.

The crux of this fight is a line in House parliamentary procedure that “personal abuse, innuendo, or ridicule of the President is not permitted.”

Is that in the spirit of the Constitution handed down from the founders?

As Josh Chafetz, a law professor at Cornell Law School, pointed out in a Twitter thread, this is not actually a standing rule of the House. Instead, it’s a “precedential ruling of the chair” of the House, which is laid out in the Thomas Jefferson Manual of Parliamentary Practice.

I did not know that. So old Tom wasn't one hundred percent in favor of abolishing royalty.

The part of Jefferson’s parliamentary manual that applies to the current situation with Pelosi was adopted from the British Parliament; members of Parliament could not “speak irreverently or seditiously against the King.” Basically, they couldn’t insult the monarch on the floor of Parliament.

[...]

“This manual Thomas Jefferson created for himself when he was vice president,” Chafetz told Vox in an interview. “It was a manual of precedence he thought would be useful from British parliamentary practice.”

Looking forward to becoming president.

Though Jefferson’s parliamentary manual was first used and then later discarded by the US Senate, the House adopted also it in 1837 — and they’ve continued to use it.

[...]

[Hoyer's] ruling [against Pelosi] pushed the House floor to a vote: The body as a whole would have to decide whether Pelosi’s comments calling Trump’s tweet’s racist would be removed from the official record. Democrats stood in lockstep: The motion to strike them failed 190-232. Independent Rep. Justin Amash (MI), who recently left the Republican Party, voted with Democrats.

[...]

Because Hoyer ruled that Pelosi’s words had violated decorum, Pelosi got the punishment House members receive for speaking out of turn: not being allowed to speak on the floor for the rest of the day. That punishment was overturned by a vote, too.

[...]

“The speaker engaged in a small-but-necessary act of legislative civil disobedience,” Rep. Raskin said. “She needed to tell the truth about the president’s remarks.”

[...]

“There is a logic for parliamentary rules to prevent us from engaging in ad hominem attacks, where we attack the personality or character of the president. But Speaker Pelosi didn’t do that. She criticized his remarks. And members of the House have to have the right to do that. To criticize policy and remarks of the president. That’s a necessary implication of the separation of powers.”

Pelosi should be sidelined for refusing to hold Trump accountable for his many actions that render him unfit for office, not for calling him what he is.

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

UPDATE: