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OPINION:
Mountain View News Saturday, January 25, 2020
A JEW FINALLY WALKS
OUT OF THE HOUSE
STUART TOLCHIN
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I have been
recuperating from
surgery for the
past five weeks and
have basically been
unable to leave the
house other than
to have my wife
drive me to doctor’s
appointments.
During this period
I have also taken the giant steps of
retiring from the practice of law after
fifty years and am now feeling much like
a stranger in a strange land needing to
hold on to whatever is left of my identity
as I proceed jobless and redundant into
the Brave New World that is out there
beyond my front door.
I have lived in this same spot
in Sierra Madre Canyon for over 40
years. In that time almost all of my
known neighbors have come and gone
many times. The small cabins that were
here have been knocked down and new
multiple storied houses have risen in
their place. My little cabin had become
a four level home with stairways to each
level that have become increasingly
difficult to climb. At times I fondly long
for the return of my original one story
stairless 600 square foot cabin. But time
does not seem to flow backwards and
the wonderful canyon views are now
blocked by the enlarged homes.
Of course I no longer know
many of my canyon neighbors. The
reason for this is simple. During the
years that I have lived here my wife and
I have had two wonderful dogs each of
which lived long lives and eventually
had to be put down. During their
lifetimes I faithfully walked two laps
around the circle in the morning before
work and then two more after work. As
a result of these walks it seemed that I
eventually knew and was on pleasant
speaking terms with everyone. Those
times have passed. Also, I hate to admit
this, but because of my advanced age
and resultant short term memory loss I
seem to forget being introduced to new
people and am embarrassed to display
my ignorance.
Okay what am I left with, an
old man with no identity, no longer a
lawyer, and no memory, who only sees
his children once a week, and doesn’t
know his neighbors—so who am I.
As a result of being so cooped up in
the house I have without much relish
been an avid follower of the attempts
at removing the President from office.
I am very much in favor of such a
procedure but honestly the proceedings
are long, repetitive, and often not
very interesting. Perhaps to make my
continuous viewing more palatable I
have begun to identify strongly with
the Democratic Chairmen of the House
sub-committees, particularly Adam
Schiff and Jerrold Nadler and the Senate
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. All
three of these men are Ashkenazi Jews
as am I and perhaps to create some sort
of attachment for myself I began to read
about other accomplished Ashkenazi
Jews.
Before talking about the afore-
mentioned contemporary figures let
me share with you a little of what I have
learned. My mother’s family are what
is known as Litvaks, Lithuanian Jews.
I poked around on the internet and
learned that my two favorite singer-
songwriters were and are men born
to Litvak families. Their names are
Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan. Pretty
amazing don’t you think? I poked
around a little more and learned that
probably the most famous song writer
of the century who had been described
by Walter Cronkite on reaching his
100th birthday as “helping to write the
story of this country capturing the best
of who we are and the dreams that
shape our lives”. That songwriter is
known to us as Irving Berlin but he was
born with the name of Israel Beilin in
a small village in what is now Ukrania.
Are you ready for the name of the small
village—TOLCHIN—yes my name and
the place where my grandfather was
born. Somehow this makes me proud
even though the stories that I heard
from my father made me very aware of
the persecution that Jews experienced
in their small villages. I next looked up
my favorite architect Frank Gehry who
as most you know is one of the most
honored architects in the world.
I knew he was Jewish and had changed
his name in an attempt to escape from
anti-Semitism. It turned out his name
at birth was Frank Owen Goldberg and
was born to a Russian Jewish family
and, are you ready for this?, has been
married for 44 years to a woman whose
maiden name is Berta Isabel Aguilera.
For those readers who do not know me
personally I want to inform you that
for 25 years I have been married to a
woman whose maiden name is Irene
Aguilera. I stand amazed.
Catching my breath I want
to remind you that Adam Schiff and
Jerrold Nadler are both Ashkenazi
Jews as is Chuck Schumer the Senate
Minority Leader and if anyone is going
to save this country it will be through
the efforts of these men in addition
to Senator Bernie Sanders who, even
without doing any research, I am sure
is another Ashkenazi Jew. How dare I
complain that I am left with no identity?
Sure I am a non-practicing Jew, un- Bar
Mitzvahed, and ignorant of much of
Jewish tradition. Nevertheless, I am
proud to identify as a Jew and am ready
to walk out my door into the world clear
about my values and able to identify
strongly with those who are on the side
of right.
Oy, I forgot to mention Diane
Feinstein and Barbara Boxer.
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LEFT TURN /RIGHT TURN
MICHAEL REAGAN
DICK POLMAN
TRUMP'S TRIAL IS DEMOCRACY'S
ULTIMATE
STRESS TEST
NEW RULES OF IMPEACHMENT
I must have said it a dozen times since the
Democrats’ impeachment miniseries took
over our televisions, but I’ll say it again.
The Democrats and their allies in the liberal
media think history began this morning
when they rolled out of the left side of
their beds.
It happened again during the Democrats’
opening impeachment tirades in the
Senate.
Democrats are still wasting our time – and
ignoring their jobs – trying to prove that
President Trump should be impeached
because he abused the power of his office
and because he obstructed Congress by
claiming executive privilege.
The obstruction charges against Trump
are for refusing to let administration officials
testify before the impeachment hearings
in the House and for withholding
documents the House had requested.
Well, if using or threatening to use executive
privilege for those reasons are
impeachable crimes, George Washington
and every president since JFK, including
my father, is guilty – often on multiple
counts.
In 1962, for example, JFK used executive
privilege to order his military adviser
General Maxwell Taylor to refuse to testify
before a congressional committee investigating
the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
Between 1980 and 2012 it was used 25
times.
President Clinton, the all-time modern
leader, asserted executive privilege 14
times to try to keep his staff from appearing
before various grand juries and congressional
committees.
George W. Bush used it six times, including
in 2008 when he told his Attorney
General to assert executive privilege in
response to a congressional subpoena
for documents related to an investigation
into who outed Valerie Plame as a CIA
operative.
Meanwhile, President Obama employed
executive privilege so many times that
even the liberal media of the day questioned
the legitimacy of invoking it.
The prime example was the infamous
“Fast and Furious” case in 2012, when Attorney
General Eric Holder used executive
privilege to shield documents from
Congress that were related to the Obama
administration’s program to let illegally
purchased guns
flow across the
Mexican border.
Congress obviously
didn’t rush
out and impeach
those pre-Trump
presidents for obstructing
Congress
or for posing an existential threat to the
U.S. Constitution.
They let the legitimacy of invoking executive
privilege in each case be decided in
the courts, where it belonged. That’s why
we have three branches of government.
But now, thanks to the Democrats’ blind
hatred of President Trump, the bar has
been lowered to where if a president
doesn’t immediately roll over and give
Congress whatever people or documents
it wants, he’ll get impeached.
It’s been frustrating having to watch the
first three ridiculously long, tedious days
of the Senate impeachment hearings,
which Democrats are cynically using as a
weapon to stain Trump ahead of the 2020
election and hurt some Republican senators
who face tight races in the fall.
Everyone has known for months what the
outcome of the House Democrats’ impeachment
show trial will be – the Republican
Senate will never find Trump guilty.
I’m starting to really feel sorry for the
members of the Senate who are trapped
at their desks for twelve-hours at a time
without their smartphones.
They have to sit in silence as Schiff and his
solemn crew say over and over again how
the U.S. Constitution and our national security
were put at risk by a phone call our
treasonous president made to the president
of Ukraine last summer.
All those poor senators are allowed to
drink is milk and water. The rest us watching
the hearings on TV are lucky.
We can always get up and do a few Jello
shots or drink some tequila to pass the
time and ease the pain.
Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald
Reagan, a political consultant, and the author
of “Lessons My Father Taught Me: The Strength,
Integrity, and Faith of Ronald Reagan.” He is the
founder of the email service reagan.com and
president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation.
Visit his websites at www.reagan.com and www.
michaelereagan.com. Send comments to Reagan@
caglecartoons.com. Follow @reaganworld
on Twitter.
In a column
on the eve of
the 2016 election,
I warned
that if Donald
Trump were
to inexplicably
occupy the
White House,
he would
wreak havoc on American values, and
his “authoritarian sensibility” would precipitate
“a systematic breakdown of our
democratic institutions.” I was merely
stating the obvious. Any two-bit seer
could foresee how his destructive reign
would play out.
Now it’s playing out.
The 53 Republicans who run the chamber
are busily abetting Trump’s authoritarian
assault on democracy and the rule
of law by systematically sabotaging any
semblance of a fair impeachment trial.
On Tuesday, in a series of votes, they
blocked all attempts to subpoena witnesses
and new evidence. And Wednesday,
in Davos, Trump openly boasted
about his coverup: “We have all the material.
They don’t have the material.”
Trump has predictably stressed our constitutional
system to its breaking point.
Mitch McConnell and his lockstep legions
seem determined to break it.
They’re doing so in defiance of American
majority sentiment. According to a
Washington Post-ABC poll, 71 percent
want to hear witnesses at trial. Other recent
mainstream polls have seen similar
results, including a new Quinnipiac poll,
where 66 percent say they want key ex-
aide John Bolton to testify.
In the Senate chamber, they appear totally
unperturbed that Trump’s lawyers
are offering zero evidence to refute the
Articles of Impeachment – which prove
that Trump shook down a foreign power
to get domestic campaign dirt for his re-
election bid, then covered up his abuses.
They apparently don’t care that Trump’s
core anti-impeachment argument is a
crock that would shock the Founding
Fathers.
Basically, Trump’s legal eagles claim that
the two impeachment articles are “ridiculous”
because they don’t specify that
Trump committed a crime. One of those
lawyers, TV talking head Alan Dershowitz,
said last weekend that Trump should
not have been impeached because the articles
merely describe “non-criminal actions.”
He said on TV that “the (House)
vote was to impeach on abuse of power,
which is not within the constitutional
criteria for impeachment.”
But here’s the obvious rebuttal: “(Impeachment)
certainly doesn’t have to be
a crime if you have somebody who completely
corrupts the office of president
and who abuses trust and poses great
danger to our liberty. You don’t need a
technical crime.”
Thank you, Alan Dershowitz! Because
that’s what he said on TV back in 1998,
when he deemed Bill Clinton’s extramarital
sex to be sufficient grounds for
impeachment.
The Founders never specified that impeachment
and removal required a
crime – because at the time the Constitution
was being drafted, there was, as
yet, no federal criminal code. Instead,
the Founders anticipated that Congress –
awarded the sole power of impeachment
– would take its cues from Alexander
Hamilton, who spoke broadly about “the
misconduct of public men…the abuse or
violation of some public trust.”
Remember, last month, when Republicans
were lauding law professor Jonathan
Turley, who’d testified at the House
hearings that he thought Democrats
were moving too fast on impeachment?
Well now Turley says that Trump’s lawyers
are wrong to claim that impeachment
requires a crime. That claim “is at
odds with history and the purpose of
the Constitution…I do not believe that
the criminal code is the effective limit or
scope of possible impeachable offenses.”
The gist of Trump’s defense argument –
the argument that Senate Republicans
are destructively indulging – is that
he can do whatever he wants, and that
whatever he wants is sanctioned by divine
right simply because he wants it.
Who is he, King George III? That’s the
monarchist mindset that the American
Revolution’s soldiers fought and died to
overthrow.
So now we’ve arrived at the end game.
McConnell and his colleagues appear
bent on ratifying Trump’s power abuses,
thereby destroying the checks and balances
that are crucial to our constitutional
order. The only hope is that Democrats
– with the winds of public opinion
at their backs – can hold Trump and the
Senate Republicans accountable at the
ballot box.
I warned in my 2016 pre-election column
that a Trumpist future “is down the
dark path at the fork in the road. If we
take it, we own it.” We took it, we own it,
and the election 10 months hence is our
last best chance to reverse it.
Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist
based in Philadelphia
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Mountain Views News 80 W Sierra Madre Blvd. No. 327 Sierra Madre, Ca. 91024 Office: 626.355.2737 Fax: 626.609.3285 Email: editor@mtnviewsnews.com Website: www.mtnviewsnews.com
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