It wouldn't be contempt of court, but it could certainly see her referred to the disciplinary board for whichever bar/court controls her attorney's license.
Sidney Powell Declares Conservaties to be Unreasonable
- Thread starter happyninja42
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Ah, the classic "prove something doesn't exist". He was wrong and he had no evidence better than circumstantial.
That's a legal standard, not an analytical method. I don't think Clinton should be in jail without proving it in court, or even should be if her crimes were proven in court with how slight they were, but that's not the same as denying they exist.
It's the name of both parties. The Democratic Party, loyal to the general ideas of democratic governance, and the Republican Party, loyal to the specific formation and purpose of existing American Republic. The two parties aren't nonsense names like the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The Republican Party was named as such to say that the party carried the values on which the Republic was founded, believing them to be timeless, necessary, and lost in the second-party system. The name Republican was intended to say to people "we maintain the beliefs that founded the nation and formed this republic".
And that rhetoric persists to this day. I'm sure you won't disagree that Republicans are constantly on about constitutional law and foundational principles. Even the times in history when the Republican Party was the major force for change, it was always justified as a better expression of the intended ideals of the founding fathers. I do not in any way fault you if you think that rhetoric is a bunch of bullcrap, but I hope you can see my description of the party is accurate.
Since I understand my lack of credibility here in describing the Democratic Party, I will defer to a Democrat, from the book "A Democrat Looks at His Party".
You can see here not only my description of the Democratic Party as the party broadly based on representing the majority of people, you can also see a lot of the discussion that still happens on this forum. Plenty of times here it has come up that the Republicans get to be a monolith while Democrats fight among themselves because they represent a broad range of views. That book was published in 1955, by the then previous Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, and yet his descriptions of the Democratic Party remain so accurate and relevant as to be echoed in discussion 65 years later by people who've no idea he ever wrote them. Policy positions have changed greatly, multiple times, and largely for the better in the period since this was written, but none of those policy positions were ever the basis of the Democratic Party. The basis of the party, that exists across generations, is that the Democratic Party is "the party of the many". He goes on to say:
That's not my words. That is not even a criticism. It's an honest assessment from a former Democratic Secretary of State. I'll take his assessment of his own party. I'm not interested in his assessment of Republicans, who he characterizes as the party that represents the focused interests of the economically powerful, but he's a Democrat so that's what he would say. And despite his misunderstanding of Republicanism, he still nearly finds the truth I'm trying to express:
The difference in the parties to him is not conservative against liberal, it is single-interest against many interest, which is almost true. The bigger split, that he doesn't see and causes him to misunderstand the Republican Party, is that the two parties can't even be made parallel like that, they exist in different paradigms entirely. The Democratic Party is the party of the many, basing its legitimacy on the popular majority. The Republican Party is the party of principle, basing its legitimacy on the ideals on which the republic was formed. You can fairly say that Republicans don't represent the majority, and also fairly say that Democrats have no fixed principles, and neither is really a criticism because neither of those statements targets the parties' individual claims to legitimacy. The different perspectives are why you can have Democrats and Republicans agree on a lot of policies but still talk right past each other because of the very different views on the basis of governance that people often don't even realize they have.
I think you're confused. I'm not asking you to prove what isn't there. I'm asking you to demonstrate convincingly that literally all the evidence revealed in the Mueller report is nothing but circumstantial evidence of collusion.
Second, there's the issue of what "collusion" is, because collusion, per se, isn't a crime. In that sense, there can be very clear evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia - but not necessarily involving provably criminal activities. I mean the sort of collusion to warrant an investigation into potential criminality, like Adam Schiff said.
Uh-huh. Who's running round trying to to excuse his party now?
No one gives a fuck about what was. If you don't have an argument based around what is, then you don't have an argument. End of discussion.
Populists are known for their lack of practicality and their nonsensical ideas. You know, like the moronic idea of building a fuckin' wall to keep the Mexicans out and declaring that Mexico will pay for it. That type of shit. I don't see Democrats proposing nonsense like that. I see that they are in favor of policies that work in pretty much every other developed country in the world. Some of those policies already existed in the US, and were eliminated by greedy politicians who sold out their country to the corporations. It's not populism if there's a proven track record and if there's evidence that proposed policies work.
Er, not really. Right-wing populists are known for that because that's one of the few ways they can attempt to appeal to (some) ordinary people. Left-wing populists are known for increasing literacy by a lot, taking a combative line against corporate colonization, raising wages, and so on.
They do go on about this. They also don't follow the constitution or its founding principles. They pretend their ideology stand in for those principle without actually understanding them whatsoever.
To be fair, most of the founding fathers didn't understand what was written either, shown quickly by presidents like Washington, Jefferson and Adams completely abandoning the Constitution when they saw fit.
Why are you trying to relitigate an old argument that you lost? Adam Schiff lied, frequently, in Congress, and on television, completely independent of the Mueller report. I understand he was lying about his knowledge of the same events Mueller was investigating. I'm not going to go point by point through the Mueller Report for you, mostly because Adam Schiff isn't the Mueller report and was involved in a totally different investigation.
Like, why are you beating the drum of it justifying an investigation? He made those statements while he was already investigating. He then reported exclusively publicly known information, which means he lied.
You're defending Adam freaking Schiff. What motive could you possibly have, I don't know, but you're being unreasonable. I know he's a liar, you know he's a liar, but for some reason because I'm a Republican you feel the need to defend the honor of any Democrat I criticize.
Did you read to the end of the paragraph you quoted?
"I do not in any way fault you if you think that rhetoric is a bunch of bullcrap, but I hope you can see my description of the party is accurate."
I think you need to be very careful about what I'm defending Adam Schiff for. I'm not saying he's an honourable, totally trustworthy defender of the truth. I'm saying he is not untypical of most people in the field, and there are jackasses considerably worse. Politics is a non-stop parade of politicians who present things in a way advantageous to themselves rather than cleanly accurate. If you like, I'm saying Adam Schiff exaggerated. But that exaggeration rests on a certain level of fact.
The weird hate boner you have for Adam Schiff is really just that he so vigorously led the charge to take down your president.
"Republican" doesn't mean "representing the values upon which the Republic was originally founded"; that's not the meaning of the word. It merely refers to a presidential system of government, which both parties espouse. You've ascribed its usage additional meaning that reflects how you, personally, see the role of the party.
Republicans are constantly on about constitutional law and foundational principles because they're the more conservative party. That's literally it. Right-wing parties the world over do the same thing, appealing to how things used to be done and how that's better.
More than a little convenient to consider Acheson an authority on your political opponents, but not your political allies, but I digress.
The idea that a party should be reflective of their constituents' views is common among political groups across the spectrum. Both the Tories and Labour claim the same, even with diametrically opposed viewpoints. In fact, even the Republicans frequently claim to be more reflective than the Democrats, with the "silent majority" stuff. It's damn rare to find a party that doesn't claim such, and the Republicans are no exception.
The current Republican Party is pretty alien to the ideals on which the Republic was formed. It has, like every other political party, evolved over time; and the appeals to constitutionality are straightforward appeals to the conservative mindset, the lauding of a mythical golden-age that conservative parties the world over say they wish to return to. When the UK Conservatives talk nebulously about the "good old days", or the Churchillian attitudes we had during the war, they're creating much the same evocative image: things were better back then, so let's go back.
The fact that their current raft of policies are utterly at odds with the politics of the time period they're evoking is largely irrelevant, because your average voter has little-to-no actual knowledge of historical politics. But myth-crafting around the past has always, always, been central to conservative rhetoric, even as far back as the Roman Republic. And Republican talk of constitutionality is no different, because modern Republican policies have fuck-all to do with the ideals the republic was founded on.
(Well, maybe you would call this rhetoric, but...)
I was specifically talking how they pretend their rheotric has something to do with the constituion. If you want me to call that accurate, I would say it's very false. (I wouldn't call it rhetoric, Id just call it the appeal to authority fallacy)
They very clearly build up their talking points first and then pretend it's got something to do with the constitution afterwards
The Origins of the Republican Party
A historical overview of the origins of the Republican party, formed in 1856 to expand federal authority in order to oppose slavery and polygamy
www.ushistory.org
This argument began with:
"This is not a "whatabout" meant to defend the behavior. It's awful horrible behavior that I wish they'd stop doing. I just need you to know that when a private employee of Donald Trump follows the Democratic playbook, your conclusion that "the conservative party is unreasonable" is either a total non-sequitur or suspiciously forgiving to the Democratic Party. "
My position the entire time is "both parties have awful horrible behavior, stop making this partisan", if your response is "liars are typical in the field" you're just agreeing with me.
The Republicans have been around the better part of two centuries. In that time, they have had plenty of manifestly corrupt presidents, unethical political machines, demagogic rabble-rousers, racists, and all manner of general shitheels in high office or influence. It might be the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Eisenhower, but it's also the party of Harding, Nixon and Trump, with a vast panoply of disreputable scum like Karl Rove and Joseph McCarthy keeping the cogs turning too. You can whine "Democratic playbook" all you like, but all it ever does is demonstrate you're unwilling to face up to your own party's shortcomings.
If I were to sum up your political view over the last 4-5 years as simply as possible, it would be cognitive dissonance: trying to stick up for the Republicans despite tacitly conceding that it has (by your own standards) collapsed into out-Democrating the Democrats.
No, Sidney Powell is effectively arguing the conservative party is unreasonable. She argues she made claims no reasonable person could believe. And yet many tens of millions of Americans appear to have believed those claims: therefore, according to Sidney Powell, they are not reasonable people.
I am arguing that Sidney Powell is not reasonable.
Not to mention that the current day Republican party is far more the party of Hardin, Nixon and Trump than it is the party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Eisenhower.
The Republican party is taking lessons from the worst aspects of the party as opposed to their best. The current Republican leaders are not larger then life men who rise to meet a national crisis. They are Trump the openly corrupt president, McConnell who abuses tricks of procedures for partisan gains, and Ted Cruz who's....Ted Cruz.
These men aren't akin to Roosevelt, Lincoln or Eisenhower. They are akin to Nixon, to Hardin and to Hoover. And they govern accordingly. Trump in particular seems to be a combination of all the horrible or incompetent traits that previous Republican presidents had without even a single one of their virtues. Extremely corrupt and easily influenced like Hardin, unwilling or unable to effectively handle a global crisis like Hoover and a power abusing crook like Nixon. The rest of the party is complicit in this because they either lionize Trump or they fall into line and refuse to resist him purely for their own electoral gain.
The Republican party is in a deep moral decline and they seem completely unwilling to climb out of it.
The Republican party is taking lessons from the worst aspects of the party as opposed to their best. The current Republican leaders are not larger then life men who rise to meet a national crisis. They are Trump the openly corrupt president, McConnell who abuses tricks of procedures for partisan gains, and Ted Cruz who's....Ted Cruz.
These men aren't akin to Roosevelt, Lincoln or Eisenhower. They are akin to Nixon, to Hardin and to Hoover. And they govern accordingly. Trump in particular seems to be a combination of all the horrible or incompetent traits that previous Republican presidents had without even a single one of their virtues. Extremely corrupt and easily influenced like Hardin, unwilling or unable to effectively handle a global crisis like Hoover and a power abusing crook like Nixon. The rest of the party is complicit in this because they either lionize Trump or they fall into line and refuse to resist him purely for their own electoral gain.
The Republican party is in a deep moral decline and they seem completely unwilling to climb out of it.
Cool, but that's still not what the word "republican" actually means. The modern Republican Party still has bugger all in common with the founding principles; and it appeals to constitutionality in much the same fashion as right-wing parties around the world do. It's evocative, good-old-days myth-making, and appeals to conservative attitudes.
Actually, here’s a fun one, if Republicans are about founding principles and respecting the laws of the Nation, why the fuck they love the pipeline so much? Native Treaties typically involve tribes having water rights. The tribe should’ve had every right to just shut down the pipeline with zero consideration of anything else if the debate was all about “principles.”
Let's also not forget that the idea of there being one single set of "founding principles" is ridiculous. Even before Washington left office, there were political parties forming with vastly different governing philosophies and visions for the new republic. These were the very men who signed the constitution, and they didn't even agree with each other.
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Disagree with you somewhat Nixon was like Roosevelt in that they both love invading countries to make them more civilised.
Trump is different because he didn't invade that many countries and was more protectionist than, making him more like Hoover. Nixon didn't have a religious right to back him up and he would have pissed them off with some of his policies. But then making sense of the religious right is hard considering their first big influence on the politcal sense was AGAINST the most hardcore evangelical president and for a 'liberal elite' who had gay friends.... (and then egged on a diease which killed said friends.)