Wednesday, April 24, 2019

The Mueller Report Was My Tipping Point

Let’s start at the end of this story. This weekend, I read Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report twice, and realized that enough was enough—I needed to do something. I’ve worked on every Republican presidential transition team for the past 10 years and recently served as counsel to the Republican-led House Financial Services Committee. My permanent job is as a law professor at the George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School, which is not political, but where my colleagues have held many prime spots in Republican administrations.
If you think calling for the impeachment of a sitting Republican president would constitute career suicide for someone like me, you may end up being right. But I did exactly that this weekend, tweeting that it’s time to begin impeachment proceedings.

5 comments:

  1. Oh, the poor thing. He tipped.

    Yeah, well, my tipping point was when the Supreme Court found a right in the Constitution for men to marry men. Or it was at any of a dozen or more other junctures in the Kulturkampf.

    This is war, bud. Man up and get ready for battle. Your time has come, alright. But the fight doesn't go to the pure legalists and self-proclaimed protectors of the status quo like the author of this drivel in the Atlantic. And well named the Atlantic it is, trying to drown the reader with a sea of crocodile tears over the supposedly sorry state of the union.

    Kiss that Constitution you worship goodbye. Better yet, don't kiss it, Mr. Law-professor-uber-transition-team-member-House-slave. That might constitute something close to an act of idolatry.

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  2. “The Mueller Report Was My Tipping Point” The writer calls for Trump’s impeachment, Heaven forbid. I agree 100% with Joseph Orlow. Allow me to tell here my tipping point for voting United Torah Judaism. See
    http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/262261
    “According to the report, the UTJ party is willing to accept the bill, provided it be modified to include a provision declaring that any individual yeshiva student who wishes to study Torah will be permitted to do so. In exchange for backing the draft bill, UTJ is reportedly demanding support for an amendment to Israel’s Basic Laws, with a bill which would establish Torah study as an officially recognized value. This alteration to the Basic Law would, UTJ lawmakers say, prevent the Supreme Court from striking down the draft law. Since the late 1970s, the Israeli Defense Ministry has offered nearly all full-time yeshiva students open-ended annual draft deferments. By the 1990s, however, the practice came under fire from critics who called the policy de facto discrimination against secular Israeli Jews. While haredi lawmakers pointed to broader blanket exemptions from IDF service enjoyed by some minority groups – like most of Israel’s Arab population and Orthodox Jewish women – the Supreme Court ruled that the draft deferment program was indeed a violation of Israel’s Basic Laws. After striking down the Tal Law – which was intended to encourage haredi enlistment while protecting the deferment program – in 2012, the Supreme Court charged the Knesset with passing new legislation concerning the drafting of yeshiva students.”
    I remember well 1968 during Vietnam war, at Columbia Business School, the professor, Robert Hessen, arguing against the draft, saying it was slavery. A few years later America dropped the draft. Rich and populous America could easily manage without a draft. How? Simply increase benefits, scholarships, loans etc to induce people to sign up for the army. Israel, too, could manage well allowing that any individual yeshiva student who wishes to study Torah will be permitted to do so.
    Luckily Israel has little of America’s horrible support of men to marry men. Also horrible, extreme Left Bernie Sanders calls Netanyahu a racist. According to Ezekiel the main reason we’re alive today in Israel is that God is keeping His end of the covenant. “When I bring you out from the peoples and gather you from the lands in which you are scattered, I will accept you as a pleasing odor; and I will be sanctified through you in the sight of the nations. Then, when I have brought you to the land of Israel, to the country that I swore נשאתי את ידי to give to your fathers, you shall know that I am the Lord. There you will recall your ways and all the acts by which you defiled yourselves; and you will loathe yourselves for all the evils that you committed. Then, O House of Israel, you shall know that I am the Lord, when I deal with you for My name’s sake—not in accordance with your evil ways and corrupt acts—declares the Lord God.” (Ezekiel 20:41-44).

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  3. Passover Torah thought.
    We read today the fifth day of the Omer:
    “But there were some men who were unclean by reason of a corpse and could not offer the Passover sacrifice on that day. Appearing that same day before Moses and Aaron, those men said to them אליו [lit. him], Unclean though we are by reason of a corpse, why must we be debarred למה נגרע לבלתי הקרב from presenting the Lord’s offering at its set time with the rest of the Israelites? Moses said to them, Stand by, and let me hear what instructions the Lord gives about you. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to the Israelite people בני ישראל, saying: When any of you איש איש or of your posterity או לדרתיכם who are defiled by a corpse or are on a long journey או בדרך רחוקה לכם would offer a Passover sacrifice to the Lord ועשה פסח לד', they shall offer it in the second month, on the fourteenth day of the month, at twilight. They shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, and they shall not leave any of it over until morning. They shall not break a bone of it. They shall offer it in strict accord with the law of the Passover sacrifice. But if a man who is clean and not on a journey refrains from offering the Passover sacrifice, that person shall be cut off from his kin, for he did not present the Lord’s offering at its set time; that man shall bear his guilt. And when a stranger who resides with you would offer a Passover sacrifice to the Lord, he must offer it in accordance with the rules and rites of the Passover sacrifice. There shall be one law for you, whether stranger or citizen of the country.” (Numbers 9:6-14).
    Those men that appeared before Moses and Aaron showed that they had a yearning to bring the Passover offering. I like the opinion of R. Jose in Pesachim 93b
    “Mishnah. What is a journey afar off בדרך רחוק? From modi'im and beyond, and the same distance on all sides [of Jerusalem]. This is R. Akiba's opinion. R. Eliezer said: from the threshold of the temple court and without. Said R. Jose to him: for that reason the heh ה is pointed in order to teach: not because it is really afar off, but [when one is] from the threshold of the temple court and without [he is regarded as being afar off].”
    The rare dots above letters in the Torah have meanings our Sages debate. The Jews bring the lamb or goat to Aaron and his sons do the scattering of the blood to the altar. We ask today: who is a Jew? “If a stranger who dwells with you would offer the Passover to the Lord, all his males must be circumcised; then he shall be admitted to offer יקרב לעשותו it; he shall then be as a citizen of the country. But no uncircumcised person may eat of it. There shall be one law for the citizen and for the stranger who dwells among you.” (Exodus 12:48-49)
    “When any of you איש איש or of your posterity או לדרתיכם who are defiled by a corpse or are on a long journey או בדרך רחוקה לכם would offer a Passover sacrifice to the Lord ועשה פסח לד',” Hertz Chumash: “The Second Passover A supplementary Passover on the same day in the second month for persons prevented by uncleanness and absence from participating in the Paschal sacrifice in Nisan.”
    My Theory: “are on a long journey או בדרך רחוקה לכם” is problematic for the Cohanim to permit these persons the Second Passover. Do these Jews have good reason to be absent? With Jerusalem under rule of wicked I, personally as a Cohain, would these persons the Second Passover. Jews in America and Europe are absent from Jerusalem. Maybe they have good reasons.

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