Trump broke the law. GOP thinks that makes him a good president. Rest of the world watches in horror (excepting Russia).

Campaigns may not solicit or accept contributions from foreign nationals. Federal law prohibits contributions, donations, expenditures and disbursements solicited, directed, received or made directly or indirectly by or from foreign nationals in connection with any election — federal, state or local.

-- Federal Election Commission

President Donald Trump tried to bully the president of Ukraine into publicly announcing that his government would begin an investigation into corruption that would implicate -- by name, but without any evidence of criminal wrong-doing -- Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, thereby providing a personal political benefit to Trump.  Actually conducting such an investigation was not important to Trump; he wanted only the announcement.  The evidence presented to the House of Representatives impeachment investigation has made this clear.

The evidence is bipartisan -- some of the most convincing came from Trump's own political appointee, the ambassador to the European Union -- as well as professional and non-partisan, having been provided by career State Department officers.  The White House transcript of the key phone call between Trump and Ukraine president Zelensky that prompted the whistle-blower's complaint establishes Trump's intent in the conversation to be as venal as that of a mob boss intent on the shakedown of a hapless target.

The introductory text that appears above my writing is provided by the Federal Election Commission.  Since foreign time, money and effort would be needed to make the public announcement, Trump's demand for such an undertaking was a solicitation for "contribution, donations, expenditures and disbursements" on his personal political behalf.

Any other candidate for an elected office in the United States would be indicted for breaking the law.  (If Joe Biden, or other Democratic candidate for president had done something to violate the Federal elections code, that person would no longer be a candidate; the Democratic Party would not accept such a candidacy.  If you don't believe me, go ask.)  Since the Justice Department is now maintaining that a sitting president cannot be indicted, the only remedy left is impeachment.

And, yes, impeachment is political.  The Constitution sets forth impeachment in sparse wording.  Gerald Ford described it this way:  "Grounds for impeachment are whatever the House decides they are."

The Constitution's authors needed the use of only a few words to describe impeachment because they were already familiar with it.  England's Parliament created impeachment in the 1370s, more than four hundred years prior to the writing of the Constitution.  (The Constitution's authors were Englishmen before they were Americans; they knew much about English governance.)  Parliament had used impeachment multiple times during the ensuing centuries; one was underway at the time of the constitutional convention.

Impeachment was originally intended for misdeeds in international affairs and for actions that compromised the national interest in pursuit of personal gain.  This is how it had been used in England; it was with this knowledge that impeachment was included in the U.S. Constitution.  The Constitution's phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors" is not an American invention; it was first used by Parliament in 1386 for the intent described above.  That was the context in which it was included in the Constitution.

In the current case, what U.S. national interest would be served by Trump's shakedown of Ukraine's president?  Since no evidence of criminal activity on the part of Joe Biden or his son Hunter has ever been presented, then the answer to that question has to be -- None.

Then, who would benefit?  Aside from Trump, connecting the dots leads in only one direction:  To Russia and its president Vladimir Putin.

Russia covets Ukraine for economic, geopolitical and historical reasons.  Putin covets the wealth and power that comes from maintaining his grip on the Kremlin.  A weakened Ukrainian leadership is unable to offer much resistance to Putin's no longer concealed support and encouragement for the armed insurrection in the part of that nation that borders Russia.  As the results of that insurrection appear to draw those areas closer to Russia, Putin's popularity within Russia will be supported.

Add to this the fact that Putin has declared Russia's hostility to the United States, and to our American values of democracy, equal civil rights, the market-place economy, freedom of expression and independence of thought and belief, and we are left with a sum total of a huge amount of benefit for Vladimir Putin and for Russia's national interests.

(We are also left with the tantalizing and unanswered question:  What is behind Trump's apparent fondness for Putin?)

On the other hand, the U.S. is left with reduced influence caused by international mistrust of American intentions because of Trump's suborning of foreign policy to his personal interests.  In other words, if Trump's actions are allowed to go unchecked at this time, might they not be repeated in the future, if not by Trump then by a future president?

Trump's attempt to extort election help from Ukraine's president and government clearly is qualified as law-breaking and governing malpractice for which impeachment is the remedy.

Given what is known about Ukrainegate -- yes, let's call it that -- Republicans and the Republican Party would be expected to show some understanding of the harmful consequences that will be yielded by the dark cloud of suspicion that Trump's actions have caused to hover over current and future U.S. relations with other countries.  But, at this point, that is not the case.

So, though I expect that the Democratic-majority House will vote to impeach, I cannot expect that the Republican-majority Senate will vote to remove Trump from office.

And America's claim to world-wide moral authority will suffer.

Should Trump be re-elected in 2020, I think America's international prestige would fall even further.

Recently I have been studying America's involvement in the Second World War.  I have been reading  on-the-spot accounts reported by journalists via the media of the time.  You will probably recognize the names:  Edward R. Murrow; Ernie Pyle; William L Shirer; Howard K. Smith; Gertrude Stein; John Steinbeck; C.L. Sulzberger; the media included New York Times, CBS, Life, Scripps Howard, Associated Press; and many other journalists and media companies.

These journalists wrote about the thoughts, feelings and experiences of the soldiers, airmen, sailors, doctors, nurses, mechanics, assembly workers and all sorts of other Americans, both on U.S. soil and abroad.  A common thread in the reporting that describes the feelings of the people they came to know -- and in some cases saw perish -- is that the war was being fought to maintain American and allied independence from malign foreign influences.

After all the sacrifice of that time, and all the effort that went into establishing U.S. leadership for such a national value, it would be a great shame if the resulting moral authority were to be squandered by the careless and self-interested actions of an American president.

###  

Hey there, Labor Union! Thanks for the holiday!

Enjoying your Labor Day holiday?  Probably so.  It's the end of summer (not really), the kids go back to school in a few days (Yay!  Although the fall session for many started a couple of weeks ago.), and most of the country looks like it will have good picnic weather on Monday (as long as you are not in or near Florida and expecting a hurricane).

Why does America have a Labor Day holiday?

Labor unions started the idea of an annual event to celebrate the contribution of employed labor -- separate from management, owners and capital -- to the success of the nation's business and commerce.  That's a code-talker way of saying that workers were being cruelly exploited, they wanted better working conditions, and the unions provided them a way of gaining leverage.  Labor sought recognition as being equal to capital.

By the second half of the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution -- and the demands of the recently-concluded Civil War -- had put the nation well along a path of concentrating employment in industrial and manufacturing enterprises.  Seven day work-weeks and twelve hour work-days were common; children supplied some of that labor.  Pay was poor.  Safety and sanitation were afterthoughts.  Employment security was unheard of.

Labor unions agitated for improvements.  During the 1880's, with wealth concentrated in the hands of the railroad, banking and oil-drilling oligarchs of the Gilded Age unions and workers were becoming increasingly confrontational.  Red flags of socialism made prominent appearances in worker's parades and strikes.  Seeing money to be made out of chaos, the Pinkerton Detective Agency degenerated into a thug-army for hire, available to big businesses whose workers were striking.  Tense standoffs of workers versus authority, sometimes ending in pitched battles, were becoming common; people were killed.

Rail transportation was the dominant fast, long-distance mode of travel for people and freight.  Railroad workers were among the first to unionize.  In passenger travel, the Pullman Palace Car Company was preeminent.  Early in 1894, Pullman brought labor relations to a crisis when it sought to reduce worker's wages and fire union representatives.

Pullman's workers went on strike.  By late June, the American Railroad Union acted to boycott all Pullman railroad cars, thereby throwing a huge monkey wrench into the entire railway system.

In response, the Federal government took the side of the Pullman Company and dispatched U.S. Army troops to break the strike and boycott.  This did not end well.

Chicago -- the center of the nation's railroad action -- and other cities saw riots.  There were dozens of fatalities.  The strike and boycott were soon broken, and the ARU dissolved.  Later that year, Congress and President Grover Cleveland, acting to partially mollify organized labor's continuing unrest, declared Labor Day as a national holiday in honor of the importance of workers' efforts.

The Pullman strike was not generally popular, even among other railroad unions and guilds.  But labor unions persisted in their efforts to improve pay and fix problems, and as a result we enjoy much improved working conditions:  Standard eight-hour workdays, a five-day workweek, paid holidays and vacation time, no child labor, and greater workplace safety.

So, thank you, labor unions, for the holiday and for a lot of other very good things, too.

Last night's Democratic debate was on target

Those who think that politics and governing should be blood sports -- or at the least should take place in an arena where the weapons of choice are puerile verbal put-downs and taunts -- have probably been disappointed in the Democrat presidential debates so far.  Why?  Because these events feature people who actually talk in complete and informative sentences as they answer questions put to them about things that the nation's voters have said are important issues.  Yesterday's event was Part 1 of the current debate cycle; we get Part 2 tonight.

I've got to give credit to the CNN folks who anchored last night's debate.  They had good questions that covered the issues of the day, they were polite but firm, they kept track of a candidate's answer to each question and circled back if the answer was not on the topic of the question, and they managed the entire event according to the rule book.  Also, Detroit supplied a beautiful venue.

For their part, all of the candidates were respectful of each other, of the audience and of the moderators.  Disagreements did not change any of that; these people were professional.  Donald Trump's name came up often -- as should be expected -- but always in the context of a legitimate governing issue.  There were no personal attacks, no sleazy name-calling, nothing disrespectful.  (Although Trump defenders might quibble about a remark regarding Trump's record on truthfulness.)

It was a lively two and one-half hours, including commercials for the television audience.  (What did they do in the theater while the rest of us waited for the commercials to end?)  All of the candidates were articulate and thoughtful.

We heard a lot about healthcare; I suppose that was the most-discussed topic.  It had top billing, anyway.  But significant time was spent on immigration; education; climate change; foreign policy; employment; innovation; infrastructure; taxation; slavery-related reparations; geographic appeal; structural governing changes; constitutional amendments; age appeal; nature of leadership; ethics; it was a busy evening.  (Interesting thing:  I don't remember any mention of election meddling by Russia or other hostiles, or of the increasing Federal debt.  Did I miss those?)

There were some agreements among the candidates on how things should get done; there were lots of disagreements.  This is how government works best -- something needs to be accomplished, there are different ideas on how to do that, the ideas get tossed around, a plan emerges and eventually there is action and legislation.

All of these candidates gave me the feeling that if they were to be the next president of the United States, they would be capable of the give-and-take, wheeling-and-dealing machinations that have been the lifeblood of great and significant governing accomplishments.

Sure, it's messy and time-consuming, but that's democracy for you.  If there's a better way to run a country I'm waiting to hear about it.

Did somebody (or somebodies) "win" the debate?  Probably, but we won't know until new opinion polling is done, and new fundraising is tallied.  These things are not real debates, where an impartial authority judges according to evidence presented and the logic in doing so.  These are "get to know the candidate" events.  Last night, ten Democrats who want to be president told us about themselves and their ideas.

I like all of them.

My open letter to the current occupant of the White House

Dear Mr. Trump:

I have several bones to pick with you. 

Before getting to the meat of the matter:  Thank you for having a fill-in-the-blanks form on the White House website for use in writing to you.  However, it did not allow me to send you this letter.  The form accepts only something that would be much shorter, and, besides, it fails to allow this nice spacing between paragraphs so that there is no reading enjoyment for you in a letter's final appearance.  I think you will find the visuals of this posting to be much more pleasing to your eye.

Let me introduce myself.  In some ways, I am a member of the demographic to which you hope to appeal:  WASPish, on Medicare, former (now retired) small business owner.

Don’t get excited.  I live in California and am a card-carrying Democrat (at this point, I can’t blame you for being a bit deflated), I have college degrees, I disagree with you on. . .well, I cannot think of a single area of agreement with regards to your conduct as president, and I'll leave it at that. . .and I am the father of a daughter whose mother is a member of a racial minority.

Being a parent is, of course, an intensely personal thing.  You have children, so you probably understand that.

Then let me ask you something:  How would you feel if a highly visible and influential public figure were to take some characteristic of one or more of your children and say that characteristic is such that your offspring should leave home in America and go live somewhere else?  If that public figure were the nation’s president – yes, I’m speaking about you; this is not hypothetical – would you feel the stirrings of an increasingly threatening environment that was being built to “cleanse” the country of people of that characteristic?  I am feeling that way; I imagine you would, too, if the shoe were on the other foot.

And now, if I am understanding what you are also saying – and I believe that I am – you maintain that it’s really all about people who “hate our country” because they disagree with you and they say so.  After all, you say, you don’t “have a racist bone” in your body; instead, you blame all this on others who “hate.”  As if that makes a difference.  

It doesn’t.

 

In your mind, disagreement equals hate.  I have already told you that I cannot think of a single area about governing policy and practice in which we would agree; to you, does that mean that I hate the U.S. and should leave for somewhere else?  Apparently so.

Unfortunately for you, our country has a two-and-a-half century history that says otherwise.  You cannot change that.  True enough – that history includes a lot of evolution in the country’s diversity of cultures and its acceptance of that diversity, but it is an evolution that in fits and starts, in two-steps-forward-and-one-backward, has never stopped, and has never been undone.  It’s an imperfect history, but taken in total it is an honorable one.

But, I guess you think you can change all that.  That’s very unfortunate for our country, because that kind of change will diminish it.

I understand that you are playing a political game here in conflating racial appearances and differences of opinion with what you label as too much immigration into the U.S.  It’s your marketing plan for the next election.  Everybody needs a marketing plan, right?

Your plan, though, is hurtful to our country.  In fact, upon retiring from the presidency Ronald Reagan put it this way:  “If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.” 

(Yes, I know that particular sentence shows up in the recent U.S. House of Representatives Resolution 489 that has you on edge, but I thought you ought to know of its origin.)

Your insecurity about disagreements goes beyond the issues of immigration.  But you are the one who has ginned-up anxieties about immigration, diversity and cultural change, so I think it’s fair for me to make the connection.

If you insist in trying to change America’s history and erase its progress, all that you will accomplish is to diminish the nation’s stature by attempting to make it into some kind of “fortress America” instead of the “welcoming America” that it had become prior to your presidency.  We already know that building on the honorable successes of the past yields a better future.  Doing otherwise results in diminishment; unchecked, that would end in irrelevancy.

You will fail, because you have now made things very, very personal and very much about family, country and their combined future.  And I believe I say that not only for myself, but also on behalf of a great many others.

Sincerely,

Garry Herron

Go to college. Learn new things. Live better. (Should it be "free?")

It's not complicated.  More education means better earnings power.

The Social Security Administration illustrates the differences in lifetime earnings this way:

 

The chart is from 2015 (the most recent data available).  Yes, it also shows disparities between men's and women's earnings. That's a conversation for another time.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics describes weekly earnings in detail.  The numbers are updated to 2019, but the message is the same.

There is value in higher education.  Employment earning potential is part of it, but post-secondary education yields more than just money.  There's also knowing more about the world outside of the employment picture:  Its peoples, its societies and communities -- the values, histories and cultures that link those communities, even when they are different, and that define each community, including our own.

"College isn't for everybody."  I hear people say that.  Fiddlesticks.  College is for everybody.  It's not required for everybody, and many people have very good lives without going to college.  But higher education has something for everybody. 

There's a price tag on getting a college education, especially a college degree.  It's worth it.  I know many people with college degrees, and not a single one says that it wasn't worth the price paid.  And that includes some very young college graduates.

Americans have been getting college educations for almost 400 years.  That's 200 years longer than public schools -- what we now call K through 12 education -- have been available.  Since colonial times, Americans have sought out higher education to acquire expertise and knowledge.  What could be more American than that?

The first American institution of higher education was Harvard College.  Now known as Harvard University, it was founded in 1636; that was only sixteen years after the ship Mayflower landed the Pilgrim party at a nearby location to start the Plymouth Colony.  Among its notable graduates was future president John Adams.

The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia was founded in 1693, making it the second American institution of higher education.  Three U.S. presidents studied there:  Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe and John Tyler.  George Washington, the first U.S. president, received his surveyor's license from the College.

These are private, not public institutions.  Such colleges and universities have their own private sources of financial backing.  They may also be beneficiaries of government grants and taxation preferences.

Public higher education in the U.S. started only in the 1860's, at about the same time as the founding of public K through 12 education.  Its enrollment now eclipses that of private higher education institutions.

Agricultural expertise was the initial focus of those early public "land-grant" colleges.  As the nation's economy developed beyond its agricultural foundations, the educational offerings of those colleges changed to keep pace with the changing needs of the local populations. 

A land-grant college that once put significant resources into the techniques of animal husbandry might now be allocating much of those resources to the study of cyber security; there's more job growth in technology occupations than in farming.  Last year Forbes reported an estimated half-million unfilled cybersecurity jobs in the U.S.  And with more needed in the future.

In addition, agriculture (and almost every other type of business) benefits from the use of more sophisticated technology and automation.  Use of such tools in a farming environment drags along the need for cyber security, just as it would in any other enterprise.  Effective use of these tools requires workers with significant amounts of post-secondary education; a high school diploma by itself is not enough to qualify for such a job.

U.S. institutions of public higher education enroll millions of students every year.  In California alone, the state's three public higher education systems -- University of California, California State University, and California Community Colleges -- enroll almost three million students at about 150 campuses.  I have come to know a few of them through volunteer activities at Long Beach City College (LBCC) and California State University Long Beach (CSULB).

Most students in public higher ed pay tuition in one form or another; some finish their college educations with significant amounts of debt, due in part to tuition costs, but also because of the cost of books and materials, lab fees, living expenses, and other things.

Should public higher education in the U.S. be made free of tuition?

There's a solid national economic case in favor of that:  Higher-paying employment favors job candidates with college education, especially those with college degrees.  Growing the nation's economy depends in large part on increasing the productivity of its goods and services industries, and of its government.  Increases in productivity are hard to come by without knowledge and expertise, both of which are readily available at public institutions of higher education.

I favor the idea of putting more tax monies into public higher education.  There should be a national standard of tuition affordability so that former students are not saddled with life-altering amounts of education-related debt.  At least some of the funding for that should come from the Federal budget so as to avoid the recession-time cutbacks common in state budgeting.  Higher unemployment during a recession would seem to be the perfect time to increase the availability of higher education so as to prepare those who are unemployed for future opportunities.

But the tuition issue needs to be parsed:  Resident vs. non-resident; bachelor's degree study only?  Or also certain post-graduate work?  Should some existing debt be canceled?  How much money is needed?  Should there be judgment calls based on individual and/or family financial need?

Speaking of money (and why not?  Nothing happens without funding.) -- Lower or no tuition costs probably means greater demand for higher education.  That would be a good thing.  But to satisfy that demand would mean more supply is needed:  More professors, more classroom space, more labs, more staffing of other types, too.  Funding for all those things, and others, would have to be planned and committed.

It's also worth noting that some of the currently-reported student debt is due to education at for-profit colleges and universities.  Not all of those enterprises honored post-graduation employment commitments that were made to entice students to sign up for expensive coursework, and some portion of that high-priced tuition was debt-financed.  This is a different set of issues and should be handled separately from the subject of tuition-free public higher education.

Public higher education has been more affordable in the past than now.  I benefited from that affordability.  During my years at UCLA in the early 1970s I paid educational "fees" (I don't believe it was called "tuition").  The amount was so modest, though, that even if those dollars were inflation-adjusted to 2019 prices, it would still be a fraction of today's charges for tuition and fees.

In my case, the affordability of my time at UCLA was also due to qualifying for fee-related loans.  Payment was deferred until a year or two after graduation; I've forgotten the details.  Once employed, I quickly covered my debt.  The experience helped me establish a good credit record, and taught me some fiscal responsibility. 

I mentor graduating seniors in the College of Business at California State University Long Beach (CSULB) and participate in awarding scholarships to Long Beach City College (LBCC) students.  Both engagements have helped me to learn a lot about today's students in public higher education.

The students at LBCC (a California community college) are early or mid-way in their college educations; often, they are in transition from one career to the next.  Many clearly struggle with affordability overall; often they are disadvantaged in some way; a few are homeless.  Most are employed, usually part-time in work that pays at the lower end of the pay scale.  Those who qualify for it are grateful for the LBCC College Promise program that covers tuition for their education at LBCC.

Scholarships awarded by the LBCC Foundation are provided according to various criteria, some of which are influenced by the student's financial need.  In the personal essays I have read from the scholarship applicants, financial needs for living expenses play a bigger role than do such needs for direct educational expenses.

The LBCC student population is composed of thousands of local residents, the great majority of whom intend to learn and gain expertise and use these things to improve themselves and make larger contributions to their families and to the community.  Such goals are deserving of community support.

The graduating students at CSULB are earning Bachelor's degrees.  Notably, I have yet to hear a single one complain about education-related debt.  That's different from saying that they have no such debt, or saying that debt has no influence on their futures.  I think what it does say is that they have gained the confidence that comes from committing themselves to a lengthy and challenging process, and seeing it through to a satisfying end.

Each student whom I have mentored, as well as the other students in the mentoring program with whom I have spoken at the various mentoring events, is prepared for a promising and rewarding career.  Most will (and have) gone immediately into career-type employment; some will do post-graduate work.  In all cases, they are confident of professional success.

And, they know more about the world outside of their immediate culture and community than we did when we graduated from college in the early 1970s.  They know a lot more; I speak of this from personal experience.

Public higher education institutions welcome assistance that they can pass directly on to their students.  I can recommend the Long Beach City College Foundation by clicking here, and the Student Center for Professional Development at the College of Business, CSULB, by clicking here.

Should public higher education be "tuition free?"  I don't know.  But I do know this:  There is enough value in public higher education that it should be more affordable for the students, and the institutions themselves should have more public money support to meet an increased demand for what they have to offer.

The end result will be a working-age population with better ability to match skills and knowledge with the requirements of an evolving and more complex work environment.  And, also, those same people will be better able to understand, work alongside of, and live near other people from entirely different backgrounds and cultures.
 
What we are talking about here is nothing less than an investment for the future.

You are Speaker of the House of Representatives -- will you impeach the president?

Lincoln was moved by the wounded and dying men. . . .For him it was impossible to drift into the habitual callousness of the sort of officialdom that sees men only as pawns to be shifted here and there. . . .Is it possible to recall anyone else in modern history who could exercise so much power and yet feel so slightly the private corruption that goes with it?  Here, perhaps, is the best measure of Lincoln's personal eminence in the human calendar -- that he was chastened and not intoxicated by power.

--  Richard Hofstadter, "The American Political Tradition" (1948) 

American historian Richard Hofstadter has been described as having no heroes to worship. Clearly, though, he thought highly of Lincoln, and with good reason.

Hofstadter's analysis of Abraham Lincoln's exercise of the powers of the presidency would make excellent reading for any future American president.  The conditions during Lincoln's presidency were extraordinary.  We should expect similar restrained behavior from any other president.  It should be easy -- since the Civil War, there has been no further threat of secession.

The voting public has the option to deny reelection to any president who does not equal or exceed Lincoln's measure of restraint.  And, if something in presidential conduct is deemed to be immediately amiss and harmful to the nation, and therefore should not await a coming election, the Constitution provides for impeachment and possible removal from office.

Read what follows as if you have been elected to Congress.  You are experienced in governing, respected by most, feared and disliked by some (apparently including today's president), and liked by many -- currently those who like you are much more numerous than those who dislike you, but that could change.  "It's politics" as the saying goes.  

You are the Speaker of the House of Representatives.  Don't pretend that your name is Nancy.  It's whatever it is, and you are the Speaker.

Soon, you are going to have to make a major political and governing decision.  It might become the most important decision of your career.  You will have to answer this question:  Should the president be impeached?

Impeachment starts in the House.  Committees investigate actions by the president that could be impeachable, as defined by the Constitution:  "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."  If the results of the investigations fit into any of those categories, then the Judiciary Committee draws up articles of impeachment.  The articles describe the accusations of presidential misconduct, each one of which would merit removal from office.  Once approved by the House, impeachment moves to the Senate where Representatives from the House plead the case.  At the conclusion of the testimony, the Senate votes on each article individually.

Removal from office requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate.

As the Speaker, you are in control.  Each one of the 435 Representatives in the House has something to say about impeachment, so you are probably hearing 435 (at least) different sets of opinions on whether or not to impeach the president; that's a lot to absorb.  But Congress has rules -- yes, it actually has rules, and for the most part those rules are followed and they don't change very often -- and when all those rules are said and done what it amounts to it that the Speaker is in control.

By the way, you have probably already assumed this, but just so there's no confusion:  You are a Democrat, because Democrats are in a solid majority in the House.  Republicans, however, have 53 of the 100 Senate seats.

The Mueller report is out, although at this point all that you have seen is the redacted version.  That's the one delivered by the Attorney General after he and his staff have gone through all 448 pages with black markers and covered up the stuff that they think, for one reason or another, should not be shared with the public.  Let's not agonize over the hidden pieces; the picture of this puzzle will become clear in time.

You and your staff and all your Democrat Representatives and their staffs have read the report.

You wouldn't want to be the subject of the report.

The report's pages are organized into two volumes.  They are named Volume I and Volume II.  In using those names the Special Counsel showed that he has no imagination, which could be a good thing in this case.

The Introduction to Volume I begins on the ninth page of the document, and an Executive Summary begins on the twelfth page of the document.  Together they are ten pages.  The Introduction survived the redaction process in its entirety; not so the Executive Summary.

The Introduction to Volume II begins on the 213th page.  Together with the Executive Summary, they occupy the first eight pages of Volume II.  Once again, the Introduction is clear, and parts of the Summary are redacted.

In reading only those 18 pages you learn:

1. The Special Counsel has determined that "the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion."
2. The Russian operations "favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton."
3. The investigation concluded that "the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the [Trump] Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts." 
4. The Special Counsel, acting "as an attorney in the Department of Justice," was not in a position to make a "criminal accusation against a sitting President" in the matter of obstruction of justice.
5. However, the Special Counsel went to considerable efforts to include several shiny nuggets regarding the president's intent to obstruct justice ( Volume II: page 4, "The appointment of a Special Counsel and efforts to remove him;" and related material on pages 5, 15, 31, 32 and elsewhere outside of the introductory and summary pages).
6. And, finally, regarding a potential charge against the president of obstruction of justice:  ". . .while this report does  not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."  Also, "no person is above the law."

Do you begin the impeachment process now?

The bar that must be crossed to qualify for presidential impeachment is low.  Constitutional law scholars might say otherwise, but you know the uneven history of impeachment.

Presidential impeachment has been used three times.  Only once did it cause the removal of the president, and that episode comes with a qualification.  If the goal of impeachment is to remove the president from office, then impeachment's track record is not good.

The first impeachment was of Andrew Johnson, successor to Abraham Lincoln.  The case against Johnson was stated in almost a dozen articles of impeachment.  One accused Johnson of making speeches that "attempt to bring into disgrace, ridicule, hatred, contempt and reproach, the Congress of the United States."  This was amplified by the next one which claimed harm because of Johnson's "Bringing disgrace and ridicule by his aforementioned words and actions."

(Yes, I know, it's tempting to consider a little copy/paste at this point, but give it a pass.)

The House of Representatives' impeachment case focused on Johnson firing his Secretary of War without the advice and consent of the Senate.  This sounds odd, and it should, because there is no such constitutional requirement.  But Congress had passed a piece of legislation (Tenure of Office Act) over Johnson's veto that added this requirement to the Constitution's advice and consent clause.  Congress did this when it became apparent that Johnson wanted to replace Lincoln's appointee with one of his own.  (The Act subsequently faded into near-obscurity and was repealed twenty years later.)

Nowhere in the articles of impeachment was there mention of the real reason.  It was political:  Congress was controlled by Republicans who had their own ideas of post-Civil War southern states reconstruction to which Johnson, a Tennessee Democrat, was opposed.

The case for impeachment failed in the Senate, thanks to some Republican senators who didn't have the stomach for the extra-Constitutional manipulation.  Johnson served out his term as president, but by then had no chance of winning a second term.  The Republican legislative strategy for Southern Reconstruction was firmly in place.  (Johnson was elected a U.S. Senator and served briefly until his death.)

Impeachment of Bill Clinton (a Democrat) also failed in the Senate.  The articles for his impeachment were briefer than for Johnson:  perjury in testimony to a grand jury, and obstruction of justice, both in connection with his attempts to conceal extramarital relationships.  However, these were the result of a special counsel-like investigation into a decades-old real estate deal.  Failing to discover evidence of wrong-doing, the investigation went elsewhere and stumbled upon the affairs.

When Erskine Bowles, Clinton's Chief of Staff, questioned Newt Gingrich, Republican Speaker of the House, on why he was going to impeach Clinton, Gingrich's answer was:  Because we can.

The only other presidential impeachment episode concerned Richard Nixon.  In the wake of the Watergate affair -- which included considerable amounts of independent investigation and the infamous "Saturday Night Massacre" -- the House Judiciary Committee prepared articles for impeachment.  Within a few days, but before a House vote on the matter, Nixon resigned.

If the goal of impeachment is to remove the president from office, then impeachment has failed in both cases where it was pursued in its entirety.  The only time it succeeded was when the post-investigative process had just barely started.   The results of the investigations were by themselves conclusive.

The House has the obligation to consider possible breaches of the rule of law, such as obstruction of justice.  If the Mueller report raises the possibility of such a breach, failure of the House to follow up with further investigation could be considered an abandonment of the rule of law.

As things stand now, a two-thirds Senate vote to remove the president seems unlikely.  Revelations from House investigations might change that, but until the investigations happen and the results are revealed to the public, there is no way of knowing if removal can be a sure thing. 

The Speaker, as the highest-ranking elected Democrat office-holder in the country, has the obligation of minding the politics of the thing as well as the legal issues.  A president who does not come close to meeting the standard set by Lincoln is not necessarily impeachable, but could become increasingly vulnerable politically.

You have three choices:  Ramp up the impeachment talk; use your very large Speaker's thumb to squash any talk of impeachment; and, conduct further investigations while going easy on the impeachment talk.

You are the Speaker of the House of Representatives.  What are you going to do?

What should Democrats do now?

"I am not a member of any organized political party.  I am a Democrat."

--Will Rogers

Democrats had a big win in November's election.  Now they control the House of Representatives, in addition to racking up major successes in state capitols.  That's a huge change, going from having no control in Washington, D.C. to controlling half of Congress.

Now, they have to figure out what to do with that new power.

Today's Democratic Party is not all that much different from the party that emerged from America's riches-to-rags story of the 1920's and 1930's.  As Will Rogers observed at the time, it was a motley and fractious collection of liberals, intellectuals, small-holder farmers, organized laborers, urban dwellers, and the remaining Wilsonian idealists and internationalists.  They shared the principles of an activist, progressive government and demand-side economics.  Originally isolationist, the Democratic Party eventually dismantled the protectionism of the Smoot-Hawley Tariffs, forged the international alliances that won World War II, and championed the continuation of those alliances in the cause of a global expansion of democracy, regulated free markets and increasing prosperity.

Sound familiar? It should.

Democrats are still pretty much the same type of motley collection as they were seven or eight decades ago. And they have a whole bunch of ideas on what to do with their newly-acquired Congressional powers.

"Hey there, Nancy Pelosi!  It's great to see you back in the corner office with a view!"
-- Lots of people (but including very few Republicans)

Nancy Pelosi is once again Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.  That makes her second in line of presidential succession, immediately following the Vice President.  Since the beginning of the 20th century, Pelosi is only the second person to have, lose, and then reclaim the Speaker's chair.  (Sam Rayburn did it twice, for a total of three different stints as Speaker of the House.)

Under Pelosi's leadership, House Democrats will have to take actions to show that they can deliver a government that is more in tune with public interests than what has happened during the last two years of Republican control of both houses of Congress and the presidency.  Because these years were headlined by failed attempts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, and a successful effort at rewriting the income tax codes to favor the wealthiest individuals and powerful corporations, Democrats have plenty of opportunities open to them to appeal to the 99% of the population that was disfavored by the last two years' worth of legislation.

What should Democrats do first?

At the moment, top of the list has to be putting the government back to work. Without the House, the Senate and Trump agreeing on a budget, about a quarter of the Federal departments and workforce are inoperative.  As of this writing, the partial government shutdown has lasted three weeks.  According to Trump, he's willing to let it go on for weeks, months or even years.

What a waste.

"Partial" makes it sound inconsequential.  Some people seem to think that the government saves money by being shut down.

In fact, having a quarter of the Federal government in stasis means that FDA food inspections are not taking place, EPA air and water safety inspections are not being done, 800,000 workers are either being forced to work without pay or are on furlough without pay, national parks are being trashed because they are not staffed, the government is missing out on revenue that is not being collected for visitor entries to national parks, recreation areas and monuments, and the list could go on.  That's hardly inconsequential.

About those unpaid employees:  The various parties in the budget drama all seem to agree that eventually a budget will provide for payment of back wages.  Which means that hundreds of thousands of Federal workers will eventually end up being paid for not working.  (In full disclosure here, the author's daughter is an affected Federal employee, and I'm 100% in favor of her getting paid, even though she's not at the office these days, so they all should receive back pay.) 

It's important to note that these people (all of the Federal workers, not just my daughter) have living expenses and bills to pay, just like everybody else.  The longer this shutdown lasts, the more these workers will be harmed by not having the regular incomes that have been promised.

The government loses money by being shut down; it doesn't save any money.  And some people will  get sick or hurt because of inspections and other services not being done, or harmed by being some kind of collateral damage.

This is all about the politics of Trump wanting money to start building his wall on the southern border.

If the wall was to have been built, he should have gotten the money during the last two years that his party controlled both Houses of Congress.  Those were the easy years of the Trump presidency.

There has never been a solid case for wall-building.  Illegal border crossings have been on a downtrend for the last two decades, according to figures compiled by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.  The great majority of illegal drug trafficking is done through Ports of Entry, not over unwalled-parts of the border (same source).  About one-third of the southern border already has entry barriers; the rest is geographically unfriendly to structures, being very rugged territory or in the middle of the Rio Grande River.

Trump never had a governing mandate to build a wall.  He never had a governing mandate at all,  and it's worse for him now than it was on his inauguration day.  Hillary Clinton bested him in the popular vote of the 2016 election by 2%, or 2.9 million votes.  In last November's election, the Democratic vote total for the House of Representatives exceeded the Republican vote total by almost 10 million votes, or about 9%.

Trump made the 2018 election all about himself and a border wall.  It was Trump who conjured up images of invasion from the south in a xenophobic attempt to stir up votes for Republican candidates, only to have voters wise up to the realities of people who are simply trying to find a better place to live and work because their native countries cannot provide security and opportunities.

Elections deliver governing mandates.  The 2018 election delivered an anti-wall mandate.

How to get past these things and move on?  Well, here's an idea for compromise:  Let's have the Federal budget authorize the billions of dollars that Trump wants for his wall, but that money is to be used not on the border, but instead is to be used to improve security and opportunities in those countries south of the border that have seen their citizens leave to make hazardous journeys to the United States.  The last thing that most people want to do is leave home.  Using the money in this way will help to keep them at home.

With the budget battles settled down, Democrats can move on to other things.  Perhaps this will happen even while there is no agreement on the budget.  There's a long list of areas for possible constructive action (to overcome the destructive actions of the Trump years):  healthcare; infrastructure; international trade; government debt; climate change; immigration (encouraging, not discouraging, it); gun violence; Social Security; Medicare; election security; encouragement for voting; promoting traditional American values of democracy, dependable international alliances and regulated markets. 

And, yes, there should be investigations done by the House of Representatives.  The Constitution has set up the national government as a system of checks-and-balances.  As said earlier, the first two years of Trump's presidency have been the easy ones:  He has had a compliant Congress that has done little to fulfill its duties of oversight of the executive branch. 

That will probably change soon.