Thanks to Maui journalist Susan Halas for recommending “Letters from an American,” a blog providing insight into the Ukraine scandal at the heart of the impeachment hearings, written by Heather Cox Richardson.
It’s both informative and entertaining.
Here’s how her post on yesterday’s testimony begins.
Today was a day for the history books.
Gordon Sondland, the Ambassador to the European Union who became Trump’s point man for pressuring Ukraine to announce an investigation into the Bidens, took the floor at the impeachment hearings. The testimony of other witnesses has made it clear that they were setting up Sondland to be the fall guy for whatever trouble came from the Ukraine scandal, and today Sondland set out to protect himself by burning it all down. He flipped from an administration man to a witness for those trying to figure out what really happened, and in the process, he implicated Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker, and, of course, Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
Everyone was “in the loop” on the scheme to force the Ukrainians to declare they were opening an investigation into the Bidens, he said, and it was understood that Ukraine would not get a visit to the White House—a vital signal of American support in the face of Russian aggression—until that declaration was made. When asked if the deal was a “quid pro quo,” Sondland answered “yes.”
She provides plenty more material to pore over, and you can scroll down to read her earlier posts.
From Wikipedia on Heather Cox Anderson:
Heather Cox Richardson
Occupation Professor of History at Boston College
Academic background
Education Harvard University
Academic advisors David Herbert Donald and William Gienapp
Heather Cox Richardson is an American historian and Professor of History at Boston College, where she teaches courses on the American Civil War, the Reconstruction Era, the American West, and Plains Indians. She previously taught at MIT and the University of Massachusetts.Richardson has authored five books. Her sixth, entitled How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for America, is forthcoming in March 2020 with Oxford University Press.
She is also a founder and editor at Werehistory.org, which presents professional history to a public audience through short articles. Between 2017 and 2018, she co-hosted the NPR podcast Freak Out and Carry On. Most recently, Richardson started publishing “Letters from an American,” a nightly newsletter that chronicles the 2019 Ukraine Scandal in the larger context of American history.
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The eternal black vs. white debate continues.
It is unfortunate that political partisan lines are set in granite. The House should have studied Watergate history and it’s bipartisan success. Where a young Senator Daniel K. Inouye upheld tenants of professional justice without partisan editorial. The daily Committee Chair closing overt partisan extremism by Rep. Schiff only serves to deepen divisions.
Perhaps a larger security threat than China & Russia is the march toward domestic war between Red and Blue. At this rate Americans may rival Israel and Palestine till mutually assured destruction. As even an undisputed election is completely unacceptable!
Ray McGovern writes:
Hill’s education on Russia came at the knee of the late Professor Richard Pipes, her Harvard mentor and archdeacon of Russophobia. I do not dispute her sincerity in attributing all manner of evil to what President Ronald Reagan called the “Evil Empire.” But, like so many other glib “Russia experts” with access to Establishment media, she seems three decades out of date.
I have been studying the U.S.S.R. and Russia for twice as long as Hill, was chief of CIA’s Soviet Foreign Policy Branch during the 1970s, and watched the “Evil Empire” fall apart. She seems to have missed the falling apart part.
a lot more here:
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/11/22/ray-mcgovern-the-pitfalls-of-a-pit-bull-russophobe/
I have great respect for Ray McGovern. Thanks for posting.
In her Letters from an American May 28 Prof. Heather quoted Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) as he offered his interpretation of the controversial Second Amendment to our Constitution. His opinion is worth reading if you want to see what a spiel of bovine excrement reads like. The professor quoted Gaetz saying, “the nation’s founders wrote the Second Amendment to enable citizens to rise up against the government. ‘It’s not about hunting, it’s not about recreation, it’s not about sports,’ he said. ‘The Second Amendment is about maintaining, within the citizenry, the ability to maintain an armed rebellion against the government if that becomes necessary’.”
First of all, the Founders didn’t write the Bill of Rights. Few of the Founders were still around to serve in the First Congress. It was written by a panel of 10 members of the First Congress with James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, as the leader. Madison would never propose the citizenry be armed to overthrow the government he spend half his political life proposing; the second half defending.
Here’s a brief timeline describing the origins and function of the Second Amendment.
Fifty-five delegates gathered in May of 1787 to amend the failing Articles of Confederation, but wrote a Constitution instead. May was also the month that Shays’ Rebellion in Massachusetts was being brought to an end. The delegates knew of the rebellion so wrote into the Constitution in Article I, Section 8, paragraph 15 the duties of the militia when in service to the federal government would be enforce federal law, suppress insurrection and repel invasion.
At the convention’s close Sept. 17, 1787, the full ramifications of the rebellion had not been resolved. When Massachusetts was disarming much of its population — participants of the rebellion, supporters of the rebellion and those thought to have participated or supported — the First Congress became alarmed because, at the time, an armed public was needed to maintain the militias. So Madison and his cohorts created the Second Amendment in order to sustain militias so they could fulfill their duties listed in Article I, Section 8, paragraph 15.
The Amendment is all about — and only about — national defense of a lawful and peaceful nation (if we ever reach that status).
It is not about overthrowing or challenging the government, not about self-defense (but arms can be used lawfully for that purpose) and it is not about blowing Bambi or Thumper into oblivion, although Thumper may deserve it from time to time. The “right of the people to keep and bear arms” in the Second was intended to prevent states and lesser governments from disarming their populations. Not the federal government; it wanted and needed an armed population.
It should be depressing for loyal Americans to be shown the utter ignorance some of their elected officials have about the system they were elected to serve and protect. The professor wrote, “As the audience cheered, Gaetz continued: ‘I hope it never does, but it sure is important to recognize the founding principles of this nation and to make sure that they are fully understood’.” Unfortunately it is Gaetz who doesn’t understand our “founding principles.” Whether he will ever fully understand any of them is questionable.