Lets Play Jeopardy!
"I'll take Presidents for Four Hundred"
The answer is "The House of Representatives has approved Presidential articles of impeachment four times. Two of them for this President"
(Buzzer sound) Q: Who is Richard Nixon?
Host- oh, no that is incorrect.
(Buzzer sound) Q: Who is Donald Trump?
Host- correct!
So the 45th President of the United States was impeached for the second time on Wednesday.
What is next? A new recount in Georgia, obviously.
Senator Mitch McConnell, the current majority leader is prepared to set a trial on the matter using the "Miami REGJB Scheduling Method". Current estimates, after depos, is a trial sometime in 2024.
And now something for the author of the Constitutional Calendar and fellow Lincoln-philes.
President-elect Joe Biden announced he will ride the train to his inauguration. The current atmosphere in Washington, with armed national guard troops billeted on the floor of the Capitol, brings to mind the atmosphere in February, 1861, when President elect Lincoln left Springfield, Illinois and made a 90 plus train stop on the way to DC for his inaugural on March 4, 1861.
On February 21, 1861, Lincoln's train arrived in Philadelphia, where over 100,000 lined the streets as the President elect traveled via carriage to his hotel. From Philadelphia Lincoln went to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and then Baltimore, Maryland, where things got really interesting.
The railroad had hired detective Alan Pinkerton to coordinate security for the President elect. Pinkerton was concerned that as the train left Harrisburg for Baltimore, a plot to kill Lincoln would be executed in Baltimore. So Pinkerton did a few things. First he had the communication lines between Harrisburg and Baltimore cut. Second, he had Lincoln's train arrive at 3:30 a.m. Third, because the law in Baltimore forbade train travel at night, Pinkerton arranged for a team of horses to pull Lincoln's train between the President Street and Camden Street stations before the train left for Washington.
Having safely taken the President elect through the danger, Pinkerton sent this wire to the head of the railroad lines that had hired him: "Plums delivered nuts safely".
Lincoln's friend and self appointed body guard Ward Hill Lamon clashed with Pinkerton over Lincoln's safety. Lamon wanted to give Lincoln a revolver and bowie knife to protect himself. Pinkerton objected, saying he would not have it be said that the president elect had to enter Washington armed.
For the rest of his life Lincoln was ridiculed for his act of cowardice of sneaking through Baltimore in the middle of the night.
In the interregnum between his election and assuming office several southern states seceded from the Union.
In turn Lincoln gave the greatest peroration in inaugural address history- words that President elect Biden should echo. They are worth repeating at this hour in our history:
You can have no conflict without being yourselves being the aggressors. You have no oath in Heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it...We are no enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
We cannot tell you greater words were ever spoken by any President, ever. The address and peroration ranks with the greatest of all time, sharing first place, in our opinion, with Winston Spencer Churchill's address to Parliament on June 5, 1940. Having just secured the British Expeditionary Force from France via Dunkirk, Churchill thundered "We shall prove ourselves able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storms of war, and outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone...we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and the streets, we shall fight in the hills, we shall never surrender!"
Some days we give the edge to Lincoln, other days to WSC. It is a very very close call. Lincoln did not stop the war, although he tried. Churchill rallied a nation and a world, at its darkest hour, to cause in which he would never accept failure as an outcome whatever the cost. As President Kennedy said when awarding him an honorary American citizenship, "He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle." This was a quote from the famous American journalist Edward R Murrow, who was in England as a reporter during the war. These days we give the edge, however slight to WSC, but that could change tomorrow.
Ibid
ReplyDeleteThose who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it--we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.
ReplyDeleteYet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are first, and, therefore, we intend to be first. In short, our leadership in science and in industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort, to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the world's leading space-faring nation.
We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say the we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.
There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency.
Yes, all the great lawyers were born at least 70 years ago. All the lawyers born afterward are shitbags.
ReplyDeleteGreat words bear repeating in these perilous times:
ReplyDeleteIn your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to “preserve, protect and defend” it.
I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
ReplyDeleteA great speech by one of our greatest orators of the 20th century. Delivered in a football stadium at Rice University in September of 1962. (Why does Rice play Texas?). JFK’s words motivated this country “to land a man on the moon, and bring him back safely to earth, in this decade.
Sadly he did not live to see his dream become reality.
Cap
And the 17 Republican Senators willing to vote to impeach Trump are; drumroll please... I am waiting for 17 names. That's what I thought. And now a freshman congresswoman is poised to file articles of impeachment the day he is sworn in. The chickens have come home to roost, unfortunately.
ReplyDelete