XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.gossip.celebrities, alt.checkmate   
   XPost: alt.rush-limbaugh   
   From: fucktrump@trysno.org   
      
   Trump’s disturbing focus on the whistleblower   
      
   Regarding the Oct. 30 White House Debrief “Want to talk about impeachment? As   
   the inquiry rolls on, Trump certainly does.”:   
      
   The efforts of President Trump and some of his allies to try to identify who   
   blew the whistle on potentially impeachable actions regarding Ukraine are   
   disturbing. Mr. Trump is not being criminally prosecuted, and other officials   
   have openly weighed in with their own testimony. Thus, Mr. Trump has no right   
   nor any need to know who the whistleblower is or to confront the   
   whistleblower.   
      
   More important, the evidence suggests that the whistleblower sought to   
   fulfill the oath of office that government employees take, which includes   
   promising to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States   
   against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”   
      
   Whether Mr. Trump and his allies believe blowing the whistle was necessary to   
   fulfill this oath, the whistleblower deserves the benefit of the doubt. The   
   president and his allies should stop trying to unmask this individual, which   
   feels like an attempt to retaliate and to intimidate other potential   
   whistleblowers and witnesses.   
      
      
   In his Nov. 3 Outlook essay, “When should Republicans jump ship?,” David   
   Greenberg argued that President Trump’s defenders should consider their   
   legacy and used the Nixon impeachment as an example.   
      
   There are, however, significant differences between the Nixon impeachment and   
   that of Mr. Trump. First, as Mr. Greenberg acknowledged, Republicans in the   
   1970s were much more “independent-minded.” That certainly cannot be said   
   about today’s Republicans.   
      
   The more telling difference between then and now is the Nixon tapes.   
   President Richard M. Nixon personally orchestrated an elaborate coverup   
   scheme that became widely known to and accepted by the public because of the   
   testimony of Alexander Butterfield, a low-level Nixon White House official,   
   who knew about and revealed the existence of these highly secret tapes, much   
   to everyone’s surprise. Those tapes doomed Nixon.   
      
      
   Maybe there yet will be a similar bombshell in the Trump proceeding, but thus   
   far the information that has been leaked about White House officials being   
   concerned about the call and wanting to keep it confidential are not in any   
   way analogous to the content and impact of the Nixon tapes. Until such a   
   bombshell is revealed, I don’t think comparisons to the Nixon impeachment   
   make any sense.   
      
   Edward Basile, Washington   
      
   I am shocked by Republicans’ support for the president and by their attention   
   to the process rather than focusing on the gravity of the facts. As a parent,   
   when the school tells you that your child did something wrong, the first   
   thing that comes to mind is worrying about what the kid did and how to   
   address it, not whether the school followed the procedure to implement   
   consequences.   
      
   Rodica Ursu, Chevy Chase   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)