![]() ![]() Debates have come to take place before an empty chamber and speeches, whatever their purpose, are never designed to convince colleagues. Any grade-school class that meets as a group during circle time to decide what the students want for a snack does more genuine deliberation than does the Senate. Senate flatter itself that it remains the world’s greatest deliberative body? Certainly not by the quality of the deliberation that takes place there. ![]() ![]() Whom exactly do these people think they’re kidding? By what possible metric can the U.S. Republican senators were furious at Schiff’s accurate diagnosis of their cowardice. Schiff, at the very least, correctly reflected the implication of those reports: This is a group of people who have time and again set aside principles in fear of an angry tweet and who are openly toying with doing so again. Senator Susan Collins declared that reports of the warning were “not true,” even while Schiff was still speaking on the Senate floor. Senator Lisa Murkowski said Schiff had “lost her” with the comment. Senator James Lankford described the Republican side of the aisle as “visibly upset” by Schiff’s reference to the reports. How else should we interpret Republican senators’ response to last week’s implied criticism from the lead impeachment manager, Representative Adam Schiff, who closed the House’s opening arguments by pointing to reports that senators were warned their heads would be “ on a pike” if they voted against the president? Republicans were outraged, and they wanted reporters to know it. Early in the 19th century, Percy Bysshe Shelley quipped in a sonnet, referring to Parliament, that “a Senate Time’s worst statute, unrepealed.” The U.S. And even those who managed to anticipate the Senate’s willingness to mindlessly ignore reality in order to acquit the president of charges of which he is plainly guilty could be surprised at the degree to which senators seem to want plaudits for doing so. Even those cynical about the institution in this hyper-partisan age might have expected more, if only a little bit more, than for a Senate majority to line up to deny the plain reality of the presidential conduct at issue. Kim Wehle: The Democrats are letting Roberts off too easilyīut even onlookers tuning in with appropriately low expectations have reason to be disappointed by how the members of this once-august body have gone out of their way not to hear evidence essential to the decision before them. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s early announcement that he would work “in total coordination with the White House” made that clear enough. The Senate was never destined to shroud itself in glory during the president’s impeachment trial. The world’s greatest deliberative body? Really? But given the Senate’s conduct over the past weeks, the only reasonable way to interpret his description of the chamber is as the bleakest of jests. Roberts then weighed in: “I think it is appropriate at this point for me to admonish both the House managers and the president’s counsel in equal terms,” he said, “to remember that they are addressing the world’s greatest deliberative body.” ![]() Presiding over the trial, the chief justice saw the House impeachment manager Representative Jerry Nadler snipe at the president’s defense team over the falsehoods the president’s defense lawyers had put forward, and Roberts then watched as the White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, sniped right back. On the second day of President Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial, Chief Justice John Roberts told a joke-though not intentionally. ![]()
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