{"id":1046,"date":"2019-06-06T05:52:01","date_gmt":"2019-06-06T12:52:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/?p=1046"},"modified":"2019-06-06T05:52:01","modified_gmt":"2019-06-06T12:52:01","slug":"summer-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/?p=1046","title":{"rendered":"Summer Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re short of the solstice, but with school getting out\nsoon it\u2019s time to start talking about summer reading. I\u2019ve started early.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With all the furor about the two-year-long Mueller\ninvestigation and his recent public statement where he said, \u201cRead the report!\u201d\nI decided to. It\u2019s available online<\/a>. Don\u2019t let the 448\npages scare you. I\u2019ve only spent a couple hours and I\u2019m up to page 175. The\nfirst part is about the \u201cRussian Interference campaign\u201d in the 2016\npresidential election. I figure I\u2019ll get to the exciting volume two (about the\n\u201ccover up\u201d) before we\u2019re picking raspberries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a good read; well- written and direct. So far, I\u2019ve\nbasically learned the Logan\nAct is dead<\/a>, even though it still occupies space in the Federal Code. (18\nUSC Sect. 953). The Logan Act was passed back in 1799 in response to a US\ncitizen lobbying France to soften up its stance to the new United States.\nCongress and President Adams didn\u2019t like that a private citizen could act on\nbehalf of the US government without clear authority, so they made it illegal.\nThere have only been two indictments under the act in its 220-year history. The\nsection I\u2019m working through in the Mueller report shows multiple clear\nviolations of this law. But all the folks who have plead guilty in the Trump\ncircle copped to lying to the FBI, not violating the Logan Act. Mr. Mueller must\nnot think the law is prosecutable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To me, if you have a law on the books and don\u2019t want to\nenforce it, get rid of it. I don\u2019t like ignoring laws. I thought we were a\nnation of laws. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second reading I\u2019m into now is the Federalist Papers.\nThey aren\u2019t in clear language, but after a few minutes you get a sense of the\ncolonial dialect. They were written as \u201cletters to the editor\u201d to convince New Yorkers\nto support the new Constitution that needed state ratification. They too are online<\/a>.\nThey are each about as long as this column, but there are 87 of them. It\u2019s OK\nto skip around; there aren\u2019t any plot twists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I was jumping back and forth between Mueller and Hamilton\n(the main author of the Federalist Papers, with Madison and Jay) I skipped\nforward to number 66, on why the US Constitution\u2019s structure for impeachment\nproceedings was such a nifty solution. Hamilton didn\u2019t mention all the\nnegotiations<\/a> that took place to define an impeachable offense, he just\nargued that The Senate was the best place for such a trial of impeachment to\ntake place. He argues the Supreme Court had too few brains to properly\ncontemplate the issue, though they are by definition the \u201cJudicial\u201d branch of\ngovernment. He defended having Senators acting as judge and jury by saying we\nall have to wear different hats at times:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis\npartial intermixture is even, in some cases, not only proper but necessary to\nthe mutual defense of the several members of the government against each other.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By splitting the duties, giving the role of investigating\nand indicting a Federal Official to the House of Representatives (The Popular\nBody, Hamilton called it), then having the trial and judgement in the Senate,\nhe figured it was a Goldilocks solution. The balance of power is the guiding\nprinciple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s wonderful that we can read such\ndocuments right there at our fingertips. I would hope you can find time; at\nleast before the pumpkins are ripe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re short of the solstice, but with school getting out soon it\u2019s time to start talking about summer reading. I\u2019ve started early. With all the furor about the two-year-long Mueller investigation and his recent public statement where he said, \u201cRead … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[20,21],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1046"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1046"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1048,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1046\/revisions\/1048"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}