We also give kudos to the House Managers who undertook their task tirelessly, honorably, eloquently and with courage, in the face of relentless and unprecedented billingsgate from the Trumpies and their fearless leader.

No one, of course, expected anything less than an acquittal from the spineless ones, but at least more could have been anticipated than a rigged kangaroo court which heard no testimony or obtained any documentary evidence before rendering its hurried verdict, so that the 52 could return to delivering their daily obeisance to their king. From now on, just address each and all of those 52 Senators who voted to acquit on Article 1 as Judge Bean.

In a reverse context, where there was truly a politically motivated impeachment, regarding alleged illegal discharges of Federal officials, it is worth remembering from Senator John F. Kennedy's 1956 book, Profiles in Courage, a chapter on Senator Edmund G. Ross, who refused to buckle to Republican Party pressure to cast a deciding vote to convict President Andrew Johnson in 1868. Senator Romney is worthy of the same accolade.

It is also worth remembering the words of deceased former Supreme Court Justice Byron White from his concurrence in Walter Nixon v. U.S., decided in 1993, the majority holding that the question of Senate interpretation of the word "try" in the Constitution, and its attendant procedural implications, in the context of the Senate being the sole trier of impeachments, was within the sole province of the Senate to determine and not justiciable by the courts as an interference otherwise with another branch of the Government. Justice White, while concurring in the outcome of the Nixon case on the facts before the Court, where Judge Nixon had contended that the Senate Judiciary Committee, as a fact-finding body which heard evidence and reported its findings to the full Senate, constituted an inadequate trial, violative of due process, for not being a trial by the Senate as a whole, foresaw another scenario where a Senate might arbitrarily decide an impeachment, as by a flip of a coin, for instance, or because the impeached individual was deemed a "bad guy", and found that in such an instance, the courts would have reason to intervene to prescribe minimal due process and fairness. Justice White said, in words joined by Justice Harry Blackmun and echoed in a separate concurrence by Justice David Souter:

"The majority's review of the historical record thus explains why the power to try impeachments properly resides with the Senate. It does not explain, however, the sweeping statement that the Judiciary was 'not chosen to have any role in impeachments.' 1 Ante at 234. Not a single word in the historical materials cited by the majority addresses judicial review of the Impeachment Trial Clause. And a glance at the arguments surrounding the Impeachment Clauses negates the majority's attempt to infer nonjusticiability from the Framers' arguments in support of the Senate's power to try impeachments.

"What the relevant history mainly reveals is deep ambivalence among many of the Framers over the very institution of impeachment, which, by its nature, is not easily reconciled with our system of checks and balances. As they clearly recognized, the branch of the Federal Government which is possessed of the authority to try impeachments, by having final say over the membership of each branch, holds a potentially unanswerable power over the others. In addition, that branch, insofar as it is called upon to try not only members of other branches, but also its own, will have the advantage of being the judge of its own members' causes.

"It is no surprise, then, that the question of impeachment greatly vexed the Framers. The pages of the Convention debates reveal diverse plans for resolving this exceedingly difficult issue. See P. Hoffer & N. Hull, Impeachment in America, 1635-1805, pp. 97-106 (1984) (discussing various proposals). Both before and during the Convention, Madison maintained that the Judiciary ought to try impeachments. Id., at 74, 98, 100. Shortly thereafter, however, he devised a quite complicated scheme that involved the participation of each branch. Id., at 74-75. Jefferson likewise had attempted to develop an interbranch system for impeachment trials in Virginia. Id., at 71-72. Even Hamilton's eloquent defense of the scheme adopted by the Constitution was based on a pragmatic decision to further the cause of ratification, rather than a strong belief in the superiority of a scheme vesting the Senate with the sole power to try impeachments. While at the Convention, Hamilton advocated that impeachment trials be conducted by a court made up of state-court judges. 1 Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, pp. 292-293 (M. Farrand ed. 1966). Four months after publishing the Federalist Nos. 65 and 66, however, he urged the New York Ratifying Convention to amend the Clause he had so ably defended to have the Senate, the Supreme Court, and judges from each State jointly try impeachments. 5 The Papers of Alexander Hamilton 167-168 (H. Syrett ed. 1962).

"The historical evidence reveals above all else that the Framers were deeply concerned about placing in any branch the 'awful discretion, which a court of impeachments must necessarily have.' The Federalist No. 65, p. 441 (J. Cooke ed. 1961). Viewed against this history, the discord between the majority's position and the basic principles of checks and balances underlying the Constitution's separation of powers is clear. In essence, the majority suggests that the Framers conferred upon Congress a potential tool of legislative dominance, yet at the same time rendered Congress' exercise of that power one of the very few areas of legislative authority immune from any judicial review. While the majority rejects petitioner's justiciability argument as espousing a view 'inconsistent with the Framers' insistence that our system be one of checks and balances,' ante, at 234, it is the Court's finding of nonjusticiability that truly upsets the Framers' careful design. In a truly balanced system, impeachments tried by the Senate would serve as a means of controlling the largely unaccountable Judiciary, even as judicial review would ensure that the Senate adhered to a minimal set of procedural standards in conducting impeachment trials...

"...It is clear that the Framers were familiar with English impeachment practice, and with that of the States employing a variant of the English model at the time of the Constitutional Convention. Hence, there is little doubt that the term 'try,' as used in Art. I, 3, cl. 6, meant that the Senate should conduct its proceedings in a manner somewhat resembling a judicial proceeding. Indeed, it is safe to assume that Senate trials were to follow the practice in England and the States, which contemplated a formal hearing on the charges, at which the accused would be represented by counsel, evidence would be presented, and the accused would have the opportunity to be heard." [Emphasis added.]

The same principle ought apply when there was no evidence presented in the trial before the Senate, only a summary allowed of the evidence presented in the House, the charging body under the Constitution, equivalent to a grand jury or preliminary hearing in the criminal law context, wherein is presented normally only the bare bones evidence necessary to establish each element of a charge and that the accused committed the offense, by no means all of the evidence ultimately to be marshaled against the accused at trial. The "acquittal", of course, after such a "trial" as just took place in 2020, is a meaningless exercise in self-fulfilling advocacy through majority vote along partisan lines on rules of procedure, ignoring ordinary due process and fairness to the American people, ultimately the prosecuting authority, in the conduct of the "trial".

Perhaps, it is time to consider amending the Constitution to make impeachment a meaningful check on a despotic President, by at least affording review by the Federal courts of any procedural rules voted by the Senate, to make it an effective deterrent to such behavior in the future. As it sits, no billionaire in the White House, with unlimited financial resources to hire counsel, will be the least deterred by such a broken and emasculate process from acting in any way he deems fit, knowing that the requisite 67 Senators will not convict him of anything, not even solicitation of a bribe to gain advantage in an upcoming election, a specific crime enumerated in the impeachment clause, and that a majority of the same party will vote rules to rig the process to disallow presentation of any evidence in the trial and thereby facilitate White House stonewalling of the earlier House inquiry leading to the vote of impeachment articles.

"Red-Face Dept." indicates that military chieftains had set the record straight the prior week about "Operation Smack" in Korea, after it had become the object of criticism by some in Congress who believed it to have been a show put on by visiting brass and the press. It finds that it had been no different from countless other armed actions during the war, except that some overly ambitious public relations officer had highlighted it for the press by placing the operational plans under a multi-colored cover. It suggests that the carping Congressmen now stood embarrassed.