At the end of the second and final day of “cue card” questioning nothing new was learned about the case of impeachment proponents or the Constitution’s defenders. Some things were reinforced such as the mendaciousness of Democrats. Much of the media heard yesterday and this morning was about presiding judge John Roberts. His refusal to read Senator Rand Paul’s legitimate question about leaks which did not name anyone as a whistleblower was a cowardly if not dimwitted if not crooked umpire call. It should have been read and should have served to open up a related line of questioning that might have been more seriously informative then the rest of the two days of questioning.
Yesterday Senator Elizabeth Warren sent a question up that Roberts felt compelled to read. It knocked his integrity. Some conservative outlets portrayed his look as showing disgust or disdain, something of that nature. We did not interpret his look that way. He looked soulful — with a resemblance to Kevin Bacon :
It now looks that McConnell has the votes to end the charade today. Although we think it could have been turned into a disaster for Democrats, witnesses are not necessary for justice on a constitutional matter and it looks like none will be called (more after the days developments).
Impeachment analogies can be problematic but we note that the House had many witnesses paraded before the Judiciary and Intelligence committees, the often heard number 17. But there were 18, the 18th’s testimony unreleased by the House managers. Strange. We also note that the Supreme Court does not hear witnesses on constitutional matters. The jurists hear arguments from opposing lawyers, but do not entertain “witnesses.” We also note the duplicity of Democrats on the matter:
In a secret 1999 memo to Democrat senators, Biden argued that the Senate had no obligation to call witnesses or hear live testimony before rendering an impeachment verdict.
And so it goes.
