Star Chamber follies

I was away on business and missed a lot of news this past week.  I was hoping that, by the time I returned, the Democrats would - finally - articulate exactly what high crime President Trump committed to warrant overturning a national election.  Alas, it was not to be.

American Thinker: "Schiff goes Full Stalin"  Let the show trial begin:

These questions ask, essentially, if the witnesses believe President Trump is guilty of pressuring Ukraine to dig up dirt on the Bidens in exchange for military aid. The GOP, it seems, will not be allowed to call witnesses who have testimony or evidence to the contrary, that there was no pressure and no quid pro quo. Nor will the GOP be allowed to present witnesses or evidence that confirms that the “dirt” is accurate, that the crime of threatening to withhold aid for a personal and political favor, a crime Biden has already confessed to, was committed by Biden, not Trump, on behalf of Biden’s son Hunter. Nor will the GOP be allowed to make the case that any Trump inquiry of the Ukrainians was mandated by a treaty signed by President Bill Clinton. This is, dare I use the term Democrats used during the impeachment of Bill Clinton for a real crime, a phrase used by Joe Biden himself,  a political lynching. 

The "crimes" of Trump are yet to be determined:

Now it seems you don’t even need real crimes defined by statute. You can invent them, as Dershowitz charged Democrats with doing in an appearance with former U.S. Atty Guy Lewis on the November 7 edition of “The Ingraham Angle” on Fox News.

One of the proposed Schiff articles of impeachment is something called “Obstruction of Congress.” As Dershowitz asks, just where is the statute defining this? Congress and the President are co-equal branches of government. If a Trump administration official refuses to comply with a subpoena based on executive privilege of other grounds, you take them to court. You don’t impeach the President and charge him with an invented crime.

There is no crime: there is only the continuation of the now three-year temper-tantrum that Hillary was denied her spot behind the Resolute desk.  Andrew Sullivan pretty much admitted as much in this thumb-sucker article full of ambiguities masquerading as serious thought.  We're in mortal danger from "regime cleavage", you see, and Trump has committed "abuses" such as correctly calling the Mueller investigation a witch hunt and mean tweets.  In Sullivan's world, Trump is a "shabby tyrant" because he talks bad and advances policies with which Sullivan disagrees.

And this is where we are: they really hate Trump and that's enough to cancel 2016, through whatever Stalinesque means necessary.