The LuLac Edition #4,219, February 5th, 2020

WRITE ON WEDNESDAY

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Last week we featured an Editorial from Times Shamrock urging Senator Pat Toomey to do the right thing. He didn’t! This week the news organization goes after Toomey for missing a chance to be a statesman instead of a henchman as a Senator.

TOOMEY HAS MISSED HIS CHANCE

It’s rare for a member of Congress to have the opportunity to preserve the very nature of democratic governance into the distant future. History will record that when Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania was presented with that opportunity last week, he rolled over for the sake of political expediency and blew his chance to provide Americans with the most complete picture possible of impeached President Donald Trump’s conduct.
Toomey voted against calling witnesses in Trump’s impeachment “trial.”
His fellow Republicans had complained that evidence of Trump’s effort to bully the Ukrainian president into announcing an investigation of a U.S. presidential candidate, Joe Biden — using congressionally appropriated U.S. military aid as leverage — was based on hearsay.
But when a draft of former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s book was leaked, revealing that he had first-hand knowledge of Trump’s scheme to solicit foreign intervention for his own poolitical gain, and of which other administration officials were involved in it, Toomey voted against hearing that first-hand, eyewitness testimony. His vote also precluded testimony from acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, who in other forums had indicated that Trump had strong-armed Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky on the Biden matter.
The refusal to call witnesses to detail what Trump knew and when he knew it let stand the absurd position voiced by Trump defense lawyer Alan Dershowitz that, since all presidents believe that they are elected in the public interest, any conduct that they pursue in furtherance of their election cannot be impeachable.
That view is a formulation for authoritarianism, and a pass for Trump to engage further in undemocratic, unconstitutional behavior.
Toomey and his colleagues have defied the will of the 75% of Americans who consistently have said through a wide array of polling that they wanted to hear from witnesses.
But this is not about what the American people want. It’s about what Trump wants from his sycophants in the Senate. Toomey has shamed himself by becoming one of them.