Guest Commentary on Impeachment in the Cheney Free Press Gets Me Riled Up

It was a "perfect call"

A recent opinion piece by Frank Watson in the Cheney Free Press got my ire up enough to compel me to respond. Watson and I have several things in common: we're both retired Air Force officers, we've both taught, we like to write, and we're both older than dirt. When it comes to our political views, the similarities end there.


Watson is firmly ensconced on the far right of the political spectrum. I lean liberal. Watson's recent offerings in the Cheney Free Press included pieces titled:

• "Socialism is a one-way trip to disaster"
• "Minimum wage creates more disincentives than reward"
• "Once useful to workers, unions have run their course"
• "When all else fails, it's time to impeach the president"

You get Frank's drift, or should I say, yaw, since he's a pilot. All these offerings by Frank are biased and full of logic flaws. But the opinion piece that really got me riled up was the last one, on impeachment.


Frank followed up a May 2018 commentary charging that the Mueller Investigation was a waste of money, with an October 2019 piece claiming that the impeachment inquiry of Donald Trump has no Constitutional basis — “there’s no impeachable offense.” Even if there is, he writes that if the House does go so far as to impeach Trump, the Republican-controlled Senate will surely not vote to impeach him. Because the Senate won’t impeach (according to Watson), it’s all a political stunt. I know what you're going to say, 'What about the fifty or sixty times the Republican-controlled House voted to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act, aka, “Obamacare” while Obama was still President? Wasn't that political theater?' Yeah it was, but Republicans are hypocrisy-challenged.


In what Watson must think is his most telling argument against impeachment he writes that if Democrats attempt an impeachment of Trump, Republicans may come back with an impeachment of Dianne Feinstein or even Nancy Pelosi. Never mind the fact that members of Congress are not impeachable. This childish “goes around comes around warning” is a pathetic argument against Congress fulfilling its constitutional and legitimate oversight obligation.



Let’s be clear, the fact that Donald Trump is a compulsive liar is not sufficient grounds on which to impeach him. The fact that he abused his office as President to extort a foreign power — the Ukraine — to manufacture dirt on a political opponent most certainly is.

As John McCallum, the Managing Editor of the Cheney Free Press writes in his article in the same edition of the paper, “Impeachment is not a criminal proceeding, but rather one dealing with violation of the public trust. We trust our leaders to … not abuse the power of their office to benefit themselves.”



Furthermore, the Trump Administration’s strategy of obstructing Congress’s constitutional oversight responsibility, on top of President Trump’s clear obstruction of the Mueller Investigation, is a violation of 2 U.S. Code § 192, “Refusal of witness to testify or produce papers.” It also flies in the face of the Constitution, and goes against established precedent. Not that Trump has ever concerned himself with either.


A 1982 executive branch memorandum, which remains in force, explicitly states that it is executive branch policy “to comply with congressional requests for information to the fullest extent consistent with the constitutional and statutory obligations of the Executive Branch.” This memorandum is known as the Reagan Memorandum.


The Trump Administration's efforts to obstruct Congressional oversight has been termed "unprecedented," by a former House General Counsel. Trump has made his feelings about the House's impeachment inquiry very plain, calling it a "kangaroo court." He vows to prohibit testimony by government officials and to withhold documents subpoenaed by Congress. This in itself is impeachable.


In its 1974 Judiciary report a House of Representatives Committee identified three types of general impeachable conduct: (1) improperly exceeding or abusing the powers of the office, (2) behavior incompatible with the function and purpose of the office, and (3) misusing the office for an improper purpose or for personal gain. Trump's attempt to extort the newly elected President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, to dig up dirt on Joe Biden, a political opponent, and telling him that U.S. Attorney General William Barr and Rudy Giuliani (Trump's personal attorney) would be contacting him about the matter, qualifies in all three areas.


Another example of misusing the office for an improper purpose or for personal gain is Trump's continuing violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution. He demonstrated his disdain for the Constitution when he directed that his own Doral Golf Resort be used as the site for the 2020 G-7 Summit. A bipartisan backlash ultimately dissuaded him from this, after which he called the Emoluments Clause, "phony." 


And then there's what we learned from the Mueller Report.

All told, an embarrassment of riches.

But Watson thinks it's all a political trick designed to help Democrats win the 2020 Election. There's actually a pretty good argument that the impeachment inquiry could hurt Democrats leading up to 2020. Some Democratic Congressional Members in swing states still feel that way. But as it turns out, Democrats have more respect for the rule of law, and the Constitution, than do Republicans. And certainly more than Frank Watson.

The right of the people to peaceably assemble

Donald Trump’s diatribe against NFL players kneeling during the National Anthem is the height of hypocrisy. Trump recently pardoned Joe Arpaio, found guilty of criminal contempt for violating the 4th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution. Arpaio trampled the significance of our flag in the desert sands of his Arizona “concentration camps.”

As appalling as Trump’s pardon of Arpaio is, the growing likelihood that Trump conspired with Russia to swing the 2016 election his way, is a traitorous repudiation of the very foundations upon which our Republic is based, and over which our flag flies.

I stand for the National Anthem. I proudly fly my flag. My respect for the flag, inculcated in me over my 20 years of military service, is based on what the flag stands for — the values, and beliefs, and behaviors that we share as Americans. One of those values is an abiding respect for the Constitution, under which, “the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition for a redress of grievances,” is protected.

Where was Donald Trump when the American Flag flew over the battlefields of Vietnam — on the sidelines. Go there now, Mr. Trump, and hear the petition of the aggrieved.

An Open Letter to the New Treasury Secretary

February 20, 2017

The Honorable Steven T. Mnuchin
Secretary of the Treasury
United States of America

Dear Mr. Secretary:

I’m seventy-nine years old and have never failed to submit a tax return, from the time I worked as a delivery boy in high school, through my two decades in the U.S. military, two decades working for a government laboratory in national security, right up until today, in my retirement.

I’ve willingly paid my taxes under 11 presidents; six republicans and five democrats. Like serving in the military, for me, paying taxes was a way of giving back to my country for the rights and privileges I enjoyed as a citizen of this great nation.

Now I am looking at the prospect come April 15th of paying taxes under another president, Donald J Trump. I have to tell you, Mr. Secretary, that for the first time ever, I hesitate to do so. Not for ideological reasons — although I strongly disagree with Mr. Trump’s ideology — and not because Mr. Trump avoided paying taxes for so many years. I hesitate because Mr. Trump refuses to make a clean break from his global business interests. Until he does so, he will unavoidably be violating the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Mr. Trump claimed that he eliminated potential trouble with emoluments by turning over operation of the business to his children. That argument is inane, but even if we believed that the President would not discuss Trump business dealings with “the kids,” as long as he continues to profit from his business empire—which he does whether or not he is nominally in charge, the possibility that foreign actors will attempt to affect his policies by frequenting his hotels, golf courses, resorts, and casinos, remains an issue of national concern.

Mr. Trump apparently feels that divestiture is too high a price to pay to be President of the United States, just as he felt it was “smart” not to pay taxes.

We might understand better the intricacies and entanglements of Mr. Trump’s business holdings and partners if we could examine his tax returns, but he has steadfastly refused to release them  — something every president has done since Gerald Ford.

So you see the reason for my hesitation to submit my tax return on April 15 — I can’t be sure that my tax dollars won’t be going to line the pockets of foreign actors whose business dealings with the President have curried his favor. Maybe Mr. Trump is right; maybe it isn’t smart to pay taxes. At least, not until we have a president willing to abide by the Constitution.

Thank you for your understanding.

Very Respectfully,

Richard Badalamente, LTC, USAF (Ret.)

American Exceptionalism: Part II

Read Part I Here

The United Nations Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), regulating the international trade in conventional arms -- from small arms to battle tanks, combat aircraft and warships -- entered into force on Christmas Eve, December 24, 2014. It had been signed by 130 countries (including the U.S.) and ratified by 60, ten more than it needed to become effective. The United States was not, however, among the countries that ratified the ATT.

The treaty establishes standards for the global trade in conventional weapons, with the goal of preventing such weapons from being sold to those who would use them to commit genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Congressional Republicans were strongly opposed to the global treaty. You might even say they were up in arms about it. In fact, 50 senators sent President Obama a letter expressing their opposition to the ATT, including every Republican except one, plus five Democrats worried about backlash from the NRA.

Some have called for the Obama Administration to "unsign" the treaty; something George W. Bush did in 2002 when he renounced U.S. obligations as a signatory to the 1998 Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court (ICC). It was just as well that he did so, given the recently released Senate Report on the Bush Administration's execrable program of torture and extraordinary rendition during the Iraq War. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Tenet in the dock at the ICC at The Hague might cast an unfavorable light on America's human rights record.

But I digress. This little essay is about how Congressional Republicans, concerned more about currying favor with arms dealers, legal and illegal, and the broader Military Industrial Complex, along with their NRA quislings, have, with malice aforethought, killed any attempt to reign in the international arms trade. Their intransigence has doomed untold millions of people from Syria to Nigeria and beyond to death and destruction. On the other hand, it has made millionaires and billionaires of people like Adan Khashoggi, and Pierre Konrad Dadak, who threatened to put anyone who crossed him, "in a jar."

Overseas weapons sales by the United States comprise more than three-quarters of the global arms market, valued at $85.3 billion in 2011. America is without peer when it comes to supplying the world, especially developing countries, with the means to murder, maim, and mutilate. And in this, we are speaking only of reported arms sales. Illegal trafficking of firearms -- the weapons that end up in the bloody hands of Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab, Al-Qa'ida, and the ever popular Islamic State -- very probably rivals that of the legal trade. The bottom line is the bottom line, i.e., we are dealing with a hugely profitable business.

Republicans have always been known as the party of big business. And the arms trade is just that. Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Boeing are far and away the top three arms-producing companies in the world. In fact, the United States has a larger share of the worldwide arms market than the rest of the world combined and double the market share of all of the Western Europe OECD combined. Indeed, in this respect, America is exceptional.

Republicans argue that America’s arms trade is part and parcel of the implementation of its foreign policy, and should not be subject to the whims of a U.N. secretariat consisting of a ‘bunch of foreigners.’ In this regard, the non-partisan Congressional Research Service has said,

"Whereas the principal motivation for arms sales by key foreign suppliers in earlier years might have been to support a foreign policy objective, today that motivation may be based as much, if not more, on economic considerations as those of foreign or national security policy."

Still, Republicans have other reasons besides money and money to rail against the treaty. Listen to their ‘speechifying’ on the Senate floor and you’ll hear them lament a further intrusion into the inalienable rights of “patriotic Americans” -- the Arms Trade Treaty violates our Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms.” Top NRA lobbyist Chris Cox said the treaty represents, "blatant attacks on the constitutional rights and liberties of every law-abiding American." The thing is, that’s just not true. No international treaty overrides our Constitution. Period. So the Second Amendment argument is bogus and that brings us back to the real argument, MONEY. Republicans value money. Life? Not so much.

ISIS Mass Execution. Where do they get their weapons?