Die Zeit: AfD: Als hätten sie schon die Macht. “Nichts ist im Bundestag seit dem Einzug der AfD wie vorher. Viele Abgeordnete fürchten um die Demokratie – aber niemand hat eine Strategie gegen die Verrohung.” Von Mariam Lau.
Category Archives: Politics
‘Der Idiot hat befohlen. Was können wir anderes als zu gehorchen?’
Deutsche Welle: Gedenken an die Ardennenoffensive vor 75 Jahren. “Sie war der letzte größere Versuch Hitler-Deutschlands, die drohende militärische Niederlage und damit den Untergang doch noch abzuwenden. Für Bundespräsident Steinmeier kann das sinnlose Unterfangen nur eines lehren.”
Der Überlebende der Ardennenoffensive. “Vor 75 Jahren versucht Nazi-Deutschland mit einer letzten verzweifelten Schlacht im Westen den Zweiten Weltkrieg noch zu drehen. Doch die Ardennenoffensive scheitert. Die DW traf einen der letzten Zeitzeugen.”
Update: MetaFilter of course has a thread about the Battle of the Bulge today.
“Evidence Of The President’s Wrongdoing Is Overwhelming”
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert: Rep. Adam Schiff: Trump Risked National Security For His Political Gain. Rep. Adam Schiff: Evidence Of The President’s Wrongdoing Is Overwhelming. (YouTube, 7:36min and 6:32min)
“we care about having a president who takes seriously his oath to preserve and protect our Constitution”
The New York Times – Opinion: Impeach Trump. Save America. “It is the only thing to do if our country’s democracy is to survive.” By Thomas L. Friedman.
“If we say, as Republicans do, that what Trump did is not an impeachable offense, we are telling ourselves and every future president that — in direct contradiction of what the founders wrote in the Constitution — it is O.K. to enlist a foreign power to tilt the election your way. Can you imagine how much money candidates could raise from Saudi Arabia or China to tilt a future election their way, or how many cyberwarriors they could enlist from Russia or Iran to create fake news, suppress voting or spur outrage?
[…]
If Congress were to do what Republicans demand — forgo impeaching this president for enlisting a foreign power to get him elected, after he refused to hand over any of the documents that Congress had requested and blocked all of his key aides who knew what happened from testifying — we would be saying that a president is henceforth above the law.We would be saying that we no longer have three coequal branches of government. We would be saying that we no longer have a separation of powers.
We would be saying that our president is now a king.
If we do that, the America you studied in history class, the America you grew up knowing and loving, and the America that the rest of the world has so long admired as a beacon of democracy and justice will be no more. Oh, how we will miss it when it’s gone.”
Link via MetaFilter.
“Donald Trump claims executive power, but he also claims an arbitrary power to act without any system of law or procedure to constrain him.”
The New Yorker: Stop Saying That Impeachment Is Political. Daily comment by Adam Gopnik.
“Recall that both modern-day impeachments in this country were launched against Presidents who had won overwhelming reëlection victories. Impeachment in this sense is anti-politics; it presumes that there exists a constitutional principle that overrules the politics of popularity. The point of an impeachment is not to do the popular or the poll-tested thing but to have the courage to do an unpopular thing, because what is at stake is a larger, even existential matter. […]
It is the unprecedented gravity of our moment, still perhaps insufficiently felt, that makes this confrontation essential, whatever the political consequences. Pelosi, too, now acknowledges this fact. As she told The New Yorker in September, about Trump, “He has given us no choice. Politics has nothing to do with impeachment, in my view.“ The political consequences of impeachment are no longer the primary or even the secondary issue at stake; more important is the survival of the principle of the rule of law against the unashamed assertion of arbitrary power.
Postponing a reckoning until the next election implies that what is at issue in Trump’s attempted extorting of the Ukrainian government are a series of policy choices, which voters may or may not endorse. According to this reasoning, if Watergate had happened during Nixon’s first term, and he had been reëlected anyway, attempted political burglary and obstruction of justice would have become acceptable practice. By invoking law against arbitrary power, the Democrats may not “win,“ and who knows what the political outcome will be, but, as Pelosi says, there is no longer a choice. Law and arbitrary power remain in eternal enmity. You pick your side.”
Link via MetaFilter.