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COLUMBUS As U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise continues to recover in a Virginia hospital from his recent shooting, a former congressman recalled Wednesday how he and colleagues of both parties stood together on the Capitol steps on 9/11 and sang God Bless America.

It was an extraordinarily emotional moment, said former U.S. Rep. Jim Kolbe, an Arizona Republican. You wish somehow you could capture that like capturing a firefly in a jar, keeping it going, keeping it alive.

Something similar occurred on the House floor in the immediate wake of Mr. Scalises shooting at a June 14 GOP practice for a charity baseball game against Democrats, an event designed in part to highlight bipartisanship outside the halls of the U.S. Capitol.

But the feeling didnt seem to last.

Mr. Kolbe and former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a Democrat from South Dakota, appeared before the Columbus Metropolitan Club Wednesday in an effort to contribute to what they hope will be a grassroots movement to return civility to political discourse.

What we need more than almost anything else is good, constructive leadership to set the example, and Im not seeing that today, said Mr. Daschle, whose Senate office was once the target of an anthrax attack.

But its not just the leadership, he said. Its the way leadership can now use tools that didnt exist 15, 20 years ago. The tweets didnt exist when I got into politics The social media has really changed. Truth is now just an option.

During the heart of the 2016 presidential election, the National Institute of Civil Discourse, based at the University of Arizona, held programs in Ohio to urge more civil political discussion instead of negative ads and social media insults.

The institute was created after the 2011 Arizona shooting of former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, an event similar to the shooting of Mr. Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, at the baseball practice in June.

The shooter, James Hodgkinson, had volunteered with the failed Democratic presidential campaign of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, and had apparently acted out of anger at President Trump. He was killed by security, something Mr. Kolbe said he once eschewed while in Congress but now agrees is probably necessary.

Protesters in recent months have filled town halls, sometimes drowning out meaningful discussion on hot-button topics like health care and immigration with U.S. senators and congressmen. Some lawmakers have responded by cancelling town halls altogether or substituting telephone forums limiting discussion largely to invited guests.

NICD announced Wednesday that Ohio will serve as one of four state launch pads for a program to train 100,000 citizens to learn how to improve political discourse. It will work with the League of Women Voters and community organizations to host 400 conversations on building civility in the four states.

Contact Jim Provance atjprovance@theblade.com or 614-221-0496.

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Republican, Democrat join movement for change - Toledo Blade

This article first appeared on the Daily Signal.

Its a movement that began before President Donald Trump was sworn into office and the drive for impeachment has gone through many iterations.

The earliest rationale was the Constitutions emoluments clause, which came amid loose talk of the Trump campaigns alleged collusion with Russia and emerged as the dominant theme.

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In lieu of a smoking gun in the Russian matter, the prevailing justification became that Trump tried to obstruct an FBI probe of his former national security adviser.

More recently, the emoluments issue re-emerged when Democratic lawmakers filed lawsuits.

MoveOn.org, Democracy for America, and other progressive or resistance groups have been advocating for it. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., appears to have gotten the most airtime of anyone in Congress talking about impeaching the president on talk shows and public events.

Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, delivered the first House floor speech calling for impeaching Trump. Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., called impeachment really the only way we can go.

But only Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., actually has introduced articles of impeachment. Greens speech and Shermans measure focused on allegations of obstruction of justice.

Donald Trump on the second day of the G20 economic summit on July 8, 2017 in Hamburg, Germany. Sean Gallup/Getty

The Houses Democratic leadership hasnt taken up the call, in part because such actions are unlikely, based on known facts, to go anywhere in a Republican-controlled Congress.

Before getting elected to anything, Boyd Roberts, a California congressional candidate, filed documents with the Federal Election Commission to start a political action committee called Impeach Trump Leadership PAC, as The Hill reported.

The shifting rationales demonstrate a weak argument, said Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative government watchdog group.

If they had a good case based on real information, I think they would mention it by now and put their cards on the table, Boehm, a former Pennsylvania state prosecutor and former counsel for the board of directors at the Legal Services Corporation, told The Daily Signal. They dont have high crimes and misdemeanors. They dont have low crimes and misdemeanors.

Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution includes high crimes and misdemeanors as grounds for impeachment, along with treason and bribery.

But impeachment is ultimately a political question and Republicans control the House of Representatives. Even if Democrats managed to flip the House and Senate in the 2018 election, it would require a majority vote in the House to impeach a president and two-thirds of the Senate to remove a president from office.

Boehm said overheated impeachment talk now will delay justice if the president is involved in a legitimate, verifiable scandal.

Democrats should save the heavy artillery for substance, Boehm said. They run the risk of being the boy who cried wolf if they say impeach about everything.

The early framework was set in December 2016, six weeks before Inauguration Day, when five Senate DemocratsElizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Ben Cardin of Maryland, Chris Coons of Delaware, Dick Durbin of Illinois, and Jeff Merkley of Oregon sponsored a bill that would require the president, vice president, and their family members to divest from anything that could create a conflict of interest.

The Deemocrats bill also states:

Adopting a sense of the Congress that the presidents violation of financial conflicts of interest laws or the ethics requirements that apply to executive branch employees constitute a high crime or misdemeanor under the impeachment clause of the U.S. Constitution

Before he took office, Trump put his liquid properties such as hotels and golf courses into a trust and resigned from official positions with his businesses, turning the Trump Organization over to his adult sons.

In January, a liberal watchdog group, Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington, began raising questions about Trumps businesses and the emoluments clause of the Constitution, which states that:

no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

Essentially, the clause prohibits personally profiting from public office. Trumps children run his businesses now, but there is not a blind trust.

In February, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., filed a resolution of inquiry into Trumps investments that a Huffington Post column framed as the first legislative step toward impeachment.

Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington, or CREW, filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York on Jan. 22, two days after Trump took office.

We did not want to get to this point. It was our hope that President Trump would take the necessary steps to avoid violating the Constitution before he took office, CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder said in a statement. He did not. His constitutional violations are immediate and serious, so we were forced to take legal action.

A spokeswoman for the organization told The Daily Signal she would try to set up an interview with board Chairman Norman Eisen. However, Eisen didnt respond as of publication deadline.

However, emoluments faded as grounds for impeachment as some juicy stories about Trump and Russia emerged. After a report in The Washington Post accused Trump of talking about classified information with two Russian officials in the Oval Office, Waters said it rose to the level of impeachment.

In May, Waters referred to that alleged sharing of secrets during the Oval Office discussion at the Center for American Progress, a liberal research organization. The California congresswoman said:

We dont have to be afraid to use the word impeachment. We dont have to think that impeachment is out of our reach. All we have to do is make sure that we are talking to the American public, that we are keeping them involved, that we are resisting every day, and we are challenging every day.

Yet another major story occurred after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey while the bureaus Russia investigation was going on. Some politicians and commentators compared to President Richard Nixons Saturday Night Massacre, the multiple firings related to the investigation of the Watergate scandal.

Through a leak Comey admitted to planting, Americans learned of his accusation that the president asked him to let go of the FBIs investigation of his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, for misrepresenting his pre-inaugural conversations with the Russian ambassador.

Comey said Trump told him, I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.

Democrats were quick to suggest this amounted to obstruction of justice.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told CNN that Trumps request to Comey may well produce another United States vs. Nixon on a subpoena that went to the United States Supreme Court. It may well produce impeachment proceedings, although were very far from that possibility.

Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, who caucuses with Democrats, was asked by CNNs Wolf Blitzer: If these allegations, Senator, are true, are we getting closer and closer to the possibility of yet another impeachment process?

King replied : Reluctantly, Wolf, I have to say yes, simply because obstruction of justice is such a serious offense.

Obstruction of justice has a significant place in impeachment history. President Bill Clinton was impeached on this charge in the House in 1998, and it was the basis of one article of impeachment passed by the House Judiciary Committee in 1974 before Nixon resigned.

Obstruction of justice also is the basis for Shermans impeachment draft.

After Comeys June 8 testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee provided few revelations, and the obstruction case became more difficult to make, the focus shifted back to the emoluments clause. Democratic state attorneys general sued for information on Trumps business tiesincluding his elusive income tax returns.

Comey told the panel the president didnt order him to drop the case and, when questioned, said he knew of no prosecution based on someones hope.

Numerous legal scholars said they didnt believe there was a viable obstruction charge based on the Feb. 14 Oval Office conversation between Trump and Comey.

With an impeachment case based on Russia and obstruction of justice not as strong, emoluments made a comeback in June.

The I-word is not something you should throw around that much, and the Democrats are playing fast and loose with the emoluments lawsuits, where the merits are weak and the standing claims are laughable, John-Michael Seibler, a legal fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation who has written about Democrats various suits, told The Daily Signal.

Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh and District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine, both Democrats, sued over the emoluments clause, accusing the president of violating the Constitution regarding foreign governments doing business with the Trump International Hotel in Washington.

Following that, 198 congressional Democrats filed a lawsuit making essentially the same claim.

The lawsuits would define emoluments so broadly [that the provision] would be used against anyone, Seibler said. Its basically an op-ed before the court.

You look at the bill Sen. Warren sponsored, he added. The lawsuits ask for declaratory judgment to fill in very wide gaps and reasoning.

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal.

View original post here:
Democrat Plans to Impeach Trump Advance on Many Fronts - Newsweek

Matthew Daly, Associated Press

Photo: Carolyn Kaster, AP

Representative-elect Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif., before a ceremonial swearing-in on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, July 11, 2017.

Representative-elect Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif., before a ceremonial swearing-in on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, July 11, 2017.

Democrat Jimmy Gomez sworn in to House seat from California

WASHINGTON (AP) Democrat Jimmy Gomez was sworn in as the newest member of Congress on Tuesday, replacing former Rep. Xavier Becerra, now California's attorney general.

Gomez, a former state legislator from Los Angeles, was elected June 6, but his swearing-in was delayed amid hopes by California Democrats that he could help win a measure to extend the state's cap-and-trade program to address climate change.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., criticized Gomez for weeks for not assuming his seat in Congress earlier. In a speech on the House floor, Gomez jokingly thanked McCarthy "for all the attention he's given me," drawing knowing laughter from lawmakers in both parties.

McCarthy smiled and waved to his newest colleague. With Gomez seated, the House now has 240 Republicans and 194 Democrats, with one vacancy.

Gomez, 42, said he will focus on protecting the rights of immigrants, expanding access to health care and lowering debt for college students issues he said were important to his constituents and extremely personal.

His parents and four siblings are immigrants from Mexico, and Gomez often speaks of their struggles in their adopted country.

He grew up in Riverside, about 60 miles east of Los Angeles, and went on to earn a master's degree from Harvard University. When he was young, he spent a week in the hospital with pneumonia, an experience he said almost bankrupted his family.

"I believe young people from working families should have access to debt-free education because I know from my own experience that a high-school degree is not always enough, and a higher education can change a life," Gomez said in his first floor speech.

The former union organizer emerged as the establishment pick in his race against fellow Democrat Robert Lee Ahn in the 34th Congressional District, winning endorsements from Gov. Jerry Brown and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.

A liberal, Gomez calls himself a member of the "resistance" to President Donald Trump and said he would push for federal polices to combat global warming. Trump has called climate change a hoax and withdrew the U.S. from a global climate agreement signed in Paris by nearly 200 nations.

"I believe everyone deserves access to clean air and water, and that climate change has exacerbated this challenge," Gomez said.

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Democrat Jimmy Gomez sworn in to House seat from California - SFGate

A political action committee formed to help elect Democrats to the House says it will no longer accept contributions from people associated with the company Backpage, an advertising business that has been under fire for allegations that it enabled prostitution and sex trafficking.

In October, Backpage founder James Larkin donated $10,000 to the House Majority PAC, and to several Democratic efforts in Arizona and Colorado, according to the elections clearinghouse website opensecrets.org.

On Tuesday, the Washington Post published a new expos revealing more evidence that a contractor for Backpage was "aggressively soliciting and creating sex-related ads, despite Backpage's repeated insistence that it had no role in the content of ads posted on its site."

A statement from an official with the Democratic House Majority PAC seemed to imply that they weren't able to return the donations, but said it would no longer take money from the company.

"The contribution from James Larkin was received and spent during the 2016 election cycle," said Charlie Kelly, Executive Director of House Majority PAC, in an email to the Washington Examiner. "The allegations against Larkin are reprehensible, and HMP will not accept any future contributions from Larkin or his associates at Backpage.com."

The House Majority PAC has been an instrument for Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to try to increase the Democrats' numbers in the lower chamber of Congress. The political action committee recently spent about $700,000 in the recent special election in Georgia, in which Democrats hoped to show they were gaining momentum against the Trump administration by plucking off a safe Republican seat. The efforts didn't pay off however, as the GOP kept the seat.

An investigation into the company by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee was released earlier this year, finding that, "Backpage has maintained a practice of altering ads before publication by deleting words, phrases, and images indicative of criminality, including child sex trafficking."

This year, Rep. Krysten Sinema, D-Ariz., distanced her 2016 campaigns from donations received from Backpage founders by making an equal donation to a Phoenix group that works for victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse.

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Democrat PAC to stop taking money from company accused of enabling sex trafficking - Washington Examiner

Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin smiled merrily when he saw the reporters approaching him. It was Tuesday, the day of Donald Trump Jr.s kamikaze tweetstorm, and a deeply enjoyable day to be a Democrat in the hallways of the U.S. Capitol.

If I were in a similar situation and that request was made, the Maryland Democrat said, I would have called law enforcement. And then a flood of additional reporters swept over him, and he gamely accommodated this media mosh pit, taking on the next question, and the next, and the next.

Nationwide, the rattled American psyche tried to soothe its Twitter jitters, and meanwhile the halls of Capitol Hill were split into two neat camps: Democrats who had oodles of time to talk about the tweets in question, and GOP lawmakers who had not even heard of the tweets in question, and who is Donald Trump Jr., and what is a Twitter anyway?

I really havent seen it, Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) demurred, as he fled a storming flock of journalists, all of whom had time to see the tweets, discuss the tweets, get in cabs and descend upon the Hill to bring up the tweets with senators.

I havent seen it yet, no comment, said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) as he waited for the elevator to liberate him from the media pack.

Republican senators race-walked with haunted eyes while Democrats struggled to keep the pie-eating grins off their faces on this day when the presidents son, in a frankly impressive display of self-immolation, cast aside months of protestations that hed never had contact with Russians by posting an email chain with the literal subject line, Russia Clinton private and confidential.

In the emails, Trump Jr. made plans for a meeting with what his contact described in printed words as a Russian government attorney to discuss information his contact promised would incriminate Hillary. Trump Jr.s response: How about 3 at our offices?

In quick succession, two senators hopped off the trams that run beneath the Capitol.

I havent even looked at it, said the first, Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) as reporters staggered after him up the stairs.

Lets try the other:

Senator Schatz?

Its Schahtz. The Democratic senior senator from Hawaii, seemingly gratified just to be recognized, patiently corrected our pronunciation.

What do you think about the tweets, Sen. Brian Schahtz?

It becomes, now, impossible to have a charitable explanation of whats going on thats over, he said. And anybody who tries to spin this as anything other than exactly what it looks like is going to lose all of their credibility.

Soooo, what does it look like?

His mouth broke into a grin that spread across his face in crinkles so audible they became crackles. He grinned for four seconds without speaking. He tried to stop grinning long enough to answer:

It looks like laws were violated.

Another tram arrived:

It seems to be all coming out now, said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md). When you get an email essentially saying the Russian government tried to help elect your dad, it should be shocking to everybody in the country. AND THEN HE TOOK THE MEETING?!

What is happening. What is happening?

Theory: Donald Trump Jr. is a bonehead.

Theory: Donald Trump Jr. is just playing dumb.

Theory: Donald Trump thinks he is playing dumb but is actually a bonehead.

Also, is this a big deal? It seems like it is, but after a while its hard to tell. Everyone kept saying the Russia investigation was all smoke and no fire, but maybe at a certain point you realize youre already living in the tar-pit flames of hell?

We are reminded of Winston Churchill: This is not the end. This is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, a sign that reality has become untethered from itself and we have fallen into a parallel dimension where there is no beginning or end.

I just heard about it, said Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.V.). I just couldnt believe it. It gets more and more bizarre every day.

Up the stairs from Manchin, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) gravely told reporters that the context of the meeting was pretty clear, while behind her, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) was shuffling past with his hands clamped on the shoulders of two small children walking in front of him. Im just trying to have lunch with my daughters, he explained.

Elsewhere, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) had no daughters to lunch with, and so he kept his hand clamped firmly to his cellphone as he strode past, talking into it loudly in a way that pretty much discouraged anyone from interrupting: Yeah, I think thats a good idea, he said to the person on the other end of the line. (We are working on the assumption there was a person on the other end of the line.)

Late in the morning, Pauls fellow Kentuckian, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, held a news conference at which he repeated, Theyll get to the bottom of whatever happened, with Pavlovian dedication to all questions related to possible Trump campaign interactions with Russia.

The investigation in the Senate is being handled by the intelligence committee and Im sure theyll get to the bottom of whatever happened, he said.

Had his trust of the president changed at all? a reporter asked.

Theyll get to the bottom of whatever may have happened.

There is no bottom. We know that now. There are Democrats making hay, and there are Republicans ducking their heads. But there is never, ever any bottom.

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Donald Trump Jr. and the kamikaze tweetstorm that set Washington on fire - Washington Post