Not exactly the deep state mentioned by mental morons.
“At the beginning of last week, the House Rules Committee met to discuss the procedures under which a particular resolution—H.R. 660—would be handled on the floor of the House. According to its introduction, this resolution would inquire,
‘…into whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to exercise its constitutional power to impeach Donald John Trump, President of the United States…’
The chairman of the Rules Committee, a studious looking bald man, read the resolution in a deliberate affectless voice, but anyone who knows the Rules Committee chairman, and who knows something about what he did before he became chairman—and, indeed, before he’d been elected at all—knows three things for sure about the chairman. One, he fears nothing; two, he knows how authoritarianism works; and three, in the pursuit of justice, he never, ever stops.
In the early 1980s, when Ronald Reagan and his advisers were running bloody little games in Central America, breaking bread with murderers and comparing terrorists in the service of oligarchy to Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson, Jim McGovern was an aide to the late, great Congressman Joe Moakley of South Boston. Reagan was replaced by George H.W. Bush in 1988, and the bloody little games went on. In November of 1989, soldiers of the army of El Salvador, trained and equipped by the United States, slaughtered eight people, including six Jesuit priests. The Bush administration doled out the customary bullshit pablum, but Joe Moakley was having none of it. Prior to this massacre, over the previous several years, Salvadoran government troops had killed four American nuns, and they’d shot down Archbishop Oscar Romero while he was saying Mass. Moakley, a son of St. Augustine’s Parish in South Boston, wanted this to stop. He sent Jim McGovern to Central America to look into it.
McGovern’s work informed what became known as the Moakley Commission, which played a vital role in turning off the murderous spigot of American aide to the killers of clergymen and women. Eventually, the Salvadoran government, through a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, copped to the murders, and they threw a couple of lower-ranking soldiers in jail. This year, when refugees from that war-ravaged area’s ongoing violence flooded northward, McGovern drew on his experience of having been there when the United States kicked off—or, at least, encouraged—the beginnings of this cycle of killing, writing:
‘I believe that given our history in the region, America has a moral obligation to help those who flee the conditions created by many of our own foreign policy decisions. This isn’t an idea I’ve just developed recently. My first visit to El Salvador was in the early 1980s. While there, I saw firsthand how the United States government supported the brutality of the Salvadoran government and military toward its own people. I discovered we were an apologist for a military that massacred a thousand people, including scores of children, at and around a village called El Mozote.’
Jim McGovern, chairman of the House Rules Committee, exercises a different kind of power.
‘I learned that during the 12-year civil war, over 75,000 civilians were killed and an unknown number, likely in the thousands, were forcibly disappeared, mainly at the hands of state actors. And towards the end of the war, I watched as some of the highest officials of my country conferred medals on Salvadoran military officers even after we knew they had given the orders to murder six Jesuit priests and two women, including the rector and faculty members of the University of Central America.
Over the past 35 years, I have returned to El Salvador many times, and traveled throughout the region, including in Honduras and Guatemala. I have learned that to make the best policy decisions and investments in U.S. aid, we need to confront and learn from our own history and mistakes…As former Senator Frank Church correctly wrote in 1984, in Central America too often we supported a “selfish property-owning minority” and an “indifferent middle class intransigently protecting their privileges” and ignored the “limitless misery” of a majority that often “lives on the margin of subsistence.”’
Last Wednesday, with civility and dispatch, McGovern ran a meeting of the Rules Committee at which the procedures for the open impeachment inquiry would be discussed and voted upon. His Republican counterpart, Tom Cole of Oklahoma, offered amendment after amendment, all of which were voted down by the Democratic majority, a result, like so many others, of the House’s having changed hands in 2018. When Cole began dealing in the shopworn talking-points about how unfair the process had been to the president*, McGovern was ready for him. Politely, of course. Civilly.
But I do feel compelled to state for the record. If we’re going to talk about process, we ought to respect the constitutional authority of the House of Representatives. And this White House has obstructed our investigations, ignored our authorized subpoenas, withheld key documents, prevented witnesses from testifying and intimidated witnesses. They have tried to disparage members of Congress who are trying to fulfill their responsibilities under the Constitution of the United States.
If the renegade presidency* of Donald Trump is going to be brought to an end by constitutional means, it is going to happen in the quiet places in the government, where powerful, quiet people do important things quietly, through handshakes and winks and the delicate calibration of the instruments of power. Jim McGovern is one of those people. He is not Uncle Joe Cannon. He is merely someone you don’t want on the other side of the door when you’re trying to hide.”
Not exactly the deep state mentioned by mental morons.
“At the beginning of last week, the House Rules Committee met to discuss the procedures under which a particular resolution—H.R. 660—would be handled on the floor of the House. According to its introduction, this resolution would inquire,
‘…into whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to exercise its constitutional power to impeach Donald John Trump, President of the United States…’
The chairman of the Rules Committee, a studious looking bald man, read the resolution in a deliberate affectless voice, but anyone who knows the Rules Committee chairman, and who knows something about what he did before he became chairman—and, indeed, before he’d been elected at all—knows three things for sure about the chairman. One, he fears nothing; two, he knows how authoritarianism works; and three, in the pursuit of justice, he never, ever stops.
In the early 1980s, when Ronald Reagan and his advisers were running bloody little games in Central America, breaking bread with murderers and comparing terrorists in the service of oligarchy to Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson, Jim McGovern was an aide to the late, great Congressman Joe Moakley of South Boston. Reagan was replaced by George H.W. Bush in 1988, and the bloody little games went on. In November of 1989, soldiers of the army of El Salvador, trained and equipped by the United States, slaughtered eight people, including six Jesuit priests. The Bush administration doled out the customary bullshit pablum, but Joe Moakley was having none of it. Prior to this massacre, over the previous several years, Salvadoran government troops had killed four American nuns, and they’d shot down Archbishop Oscar Romero while he was saying Mass. Moakley, a son of St. Augustine’s Parish in South Boston, wanted this to stop. He sent Jim McGovern to Central America to look into it.
McGovern’s work informed what became known as the Moakley Commission, which played a vital role in turning off the murderous spigot of American aide to the killers of clergymen and women. Eventually, the Salvadoran government, through a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, copped to the murders, and they threw a couple of lower-ranking soldiers in jail. This year, when refugees from that war-ravaged area’s ongoing violence flooded northward, McGovern drew on his experience of having been there when the United States kicked off—or, at least, encouraged—the beginnings of this cycle of killing, writing:
‘I believe that given our history in the region, America has a moral obligation to help those who flee the conditions created by many of our own foreign policy decisions. This isn’t an idea I’ve just developed recently. My first visit to El Salvador was in the early 1980s. While there, I saw firsthand how the United States government supported the brutality of the Salvadoran government and military toward its own people. I discovered we were an apologist for a military that massacred a thousand people, including scores of children, at and around a village called El Mozote.’
Jim McGovern, chairman of the House Rules Committee, exercises a different kind of power.
‘I learned that during the 12-year civil war, over 75,000 civilians were killed and an unknown number, likely in the thousands, were forcibly disappeared, mainly at the hands of state actors. And towards the end of the war, I watched as some of the highest officials of my country conferred medals on Salvadoran military officers even after we knew they had given the orders to murder six Jesuit priests and two women, including the rector and faculty members of the University of Central America.
Over the past 35 years, I have returned to El Salvador many times, and traveled throughout the region, including in Honduras and Guatemala. I have learned that to make the best policy decisions and investments in U.S. aid, we need to confront and learn from our own history and mistakes…As former Senator Frank Church correctly wrote in 1984, in Central America too often we supported a “selfish property-owning minority” and an “indifferent middle class intransigently protecting their privileges” and ignored the “limitless misery” of a majority that often “lives on the margin of subsistence.”’
Last Wednesday, with civility and dispatch, McGovern ran a meeting of the Rules Committee at which the procedures for the open impeachment inquiry would be discussed and voted upon. His Republican counterpart, Tom Cole of Oklahoma, offered amendment after amendment, all of which were voted down by the Democratic majority, a result, like so many others, of the House’s having changed hands in 2018. When Cole began dealing in the shopworn talking-points about how unfair the process had been to the president*, McGovern was ready for him. Politely, of course. Civilly.
But I do feel compelled to state for the record. If we’re going to talk about process, we ought to respect the constitutional authority of the House of Representatives. And this White House has obstructed our investigations, ignored our authorized subpoenas, withheld key documents, prevented witnesses from testifying and intimidated witnesses. They have tried to disparage members of Congress who are trying to fulfill their responsibilities under the Constitution of the United States.
If the renegade presidency* of Donald Trump is going to be brought to an end by constitutional means, it is going to happen in the quiet places in the government, where powerful, quiet people do important things quietly, through handshakes and winks and the delicate calibration of the instruments of power. Jim McGovern is one of those people. He is not Uncle Joe Cannon. He is merely someone you don’t want on the other side of the door when you’re trying to hide.”
Charles Pierce
I hope you are right . . . .