Conservative: Schiff Should Have to Take an Oath
House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) turned acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire’s hearing into a “comical farce,” says the Washington Times’ Charles Hurt. Instead of reading the transcript of President Trump’s phone call with the president of Ukraine, Schiff read an “entirely made up, fraudulent and fabricated” version of the call, which he later tried to explain away as “parody.” Sighs Hurt: “And these people wonder why nobody takes them seriously.” In the future, Schiff should “be forced to stand, raise his right hand and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth” if he wants to keep participating in these hearings, let alone chairing them.
From the left: Maguire Hearing Was a ‘Waste’’
Fred Kaplan at Slate thinks the House Intelligence Committee’s hearing Thursday was “a shoddily run affair, an ill-prepared ramble through the maze of process and possible cover-ups” and “at best a waste of airtime.” Maguire explained that he was following precedent and the law by consulting with the White House about the whistleblower complaint and executive privilege, and he responded clearly even when the Democrats asked him the same questions “over and over, as if they weren’t listening the first time.” Committee members should’ve been “laser-focused” on the “damning substance of the documents that lay” before them. If Democrats seriously want to pursue impeachment, they should “hire lawyers to direct the questioning” they’re failing at themselves — before “too many other aimless hearings are held and the public goes numb.”
From the right: Why Not Let Trump Target Elites?
“In the Clown World” we live in, “the president of the United States must be removed from office” for asking that wrongdoing be investigated abroad, writes Matthew J. Peterson at American Greatness. Our elites, from the Podesta Group to Hunter Biden, “routinely feast upon precarious situations in other nations,” but only Donald Trump dared to ask about it — the real reason for “the Left’s outrageously hypocritical march towards impeachment.” In response, Trump should announce that he will work with any country to expose “the wrongdoing of the American political class” as part of his “sworn duty” under the Constitution. Trump should “build a big, beautiful door in the wall of propaganda that papers over the actions of American elites. And make the Democrats pay for it.”
Brexit watch: The UK’s Politicized Judiciary
Americans may be used to a liberal, politicized Supreme Court that “rules over an elected government,” but it’s a new reality for Brits, rues Dan Hannan at the Washington Examiner. On Tuesday, the UK Supreme Court ruled that Prime Minister Boris Johnson had illegally asked the Queen to prorogue, or suspend, Parliament — thereby tearing up Brits’ “constitutional settlement” that had “existed for 330 years” and that elevated Parliament over the judiciary. Prorogation is “plainly a political rather than a legal question,” yet the court invalidated Johnson’s action anyway. Brits now have “judges who are political but not accountable,” but “sooner or later, the people will have their say” — and the British establishment will wish it had never “ripped aside norms, violated precedent, and politicized previously impartial bodies” to stop Brexit.
Libertarian: Scrap ‘Qualified Immunity’
A federal appeals court has ruled that police officers can’t be sued for stealing “cash and property worth more than $225,000 while executing a search warrant,” reports Jacob Sullum at Reason. Welcome to “the weird world of qualified immunity,” which protects “government officials from liability for outrageous conduct if a court determines the rights they allegedly violated were ‘not clearly established.’” That “fuzzy” standard “lets cops off the hook for actions that would land ordinary people in jail.” Multiple law professors have criticized it, as have otherwise ideologically opposed Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas. And one study concluded that scrapping it “would make litigation less costly, complicated and time-consuming” — on top of preventing courts from letting cops “violate the law with impunity.”
— Compiled by Karl Salzmann
