The LuLac Edition #4,215, January 29th, 2020

WRITE ON WEDNESDAY

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This week we feature a Citizens’ Voice editorial that calls for Republican U.S. Senator Pat Toomey to join others in calling for witnesses in the Impeachment trial of Donald Trump. Toomey,  a few days after the editorial appeared asked for a witness one on one swap. Remember it was Toomey who was unavailable to even attend the GOP convention in Cleveland in 2016 when Trump was nominated. He should at least try to be impartial in hearing more.

TOOMEY, BE FAIR AND IMPARTIAL

Republican U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania is temperamentally and politically moderate — not unlike his Democratic counterpart Sen. Bob Casey and, for the most part, the commonwealth that they both represent in the Senate. That is especially so in comparison with the partisan flamethrowers and Trump acolytes who have come to dominate Toomey’s party.
President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate, as it has been structured by hyper-partisan Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, raises the question for Toomey whether that partisan prerogative will supersede the pressing need for comprehensive disclosure of President Donald Trump’s conduct.
There are two juries that must render verdicts on that conduct.
Senators themselves are jurors by constitutional designation, although many of them — including McConnell and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — already have violated the jurors’ oath to be fair and impartial. Just about everyone recognizes that the Republican majority in the Senate will acquit Trump.
The second jury comprises all but the 100 Americans who are not U.S. senators, especially voters. They are entitled to all of the information necessary to render their own verdicts, including documents that the Trump administration has refused to release and an array of witnesses who have first-hand knowledge of the matters at hand.
Impeachment testimony in the House demonstrated clearly that Trump tried to strong-arm the Ukrainian government into announcing an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, and to support a long debunked conspiracy theory promulgated by Russia that Ukraine, rather than Russia, had meddled in the 2016 president election with the goal of helping Trump. There also is no doubt that Trump attempted to stonewall the House investigation.
It’s one thing if the Republican senators’ partisanship leads them to conclude that such conduct by a president is acceptable. It is unacceptable, however, for those senators to deny relevant information to the second set of jurors.
Toomey should be among Republican senators who vote to call witnesses and subpoena documents in the cause of comprehensive disclosure of the president’s conduct.