The Robert Mueller Investigation

[Enchubben 5,510]

4 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

But he did find evidence of it. It's in the report. You should read it.

Would you say it was a sufficient amount or insufficient amount of evidence? Do we assign guilt based on some evidence?

[TwiceHorn 31,456]

4 hours ago, wildcat09 said:

This is just so dumb. How are people at the Social Security Administration trying to make sure the checks get out on time or people at the EPA trying to make sure the air isn't poison the real problem?

Probably because there are four or five of them for every equivalent in the private sector?  Even a pretty well run agency like the Patent and Trademark Office is full of bloat, inefficiency and flat out ridiculous bureaucracy.

Just because Trump is an assbag doesn't mean the government doesn't suck.

[F250 28,770]

5 hours ago, wildcat09 said:

This is just so dumb. How are people at the Social Security Administration trying to make sure the checks get out on time

They outsource the work to private companies working out of Austin who then make sure the money is transferred from the SSA to banks then to individual recipients. There are also people in Dallas that contribute as well but none of these people are government employees.

 

 

[wildcat09 29,352]

21 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Probably because there are four or five of them for every equivalent in the private sector?  Even a pretty well run agency like the Patent and Trademark Office is full of bloat, inefficiency and flat out ridiculous bureaucracy.

Just because Trump is an assbag doesn't mean the government doesn't suck.

Bloat and inefficiency ≠ "swamp." The "swamp" term has been pretty consistently used by Trump and plenty before him to symbolize corruption by the "elites" that provides them with unique advantages while fucking over everyone else. Three lower-level bureaucrats in the EPA doing an amount of work that two could do isn't remotely like that.

A political appointee leading the EPA and using his authority there to grant special favors in exchange for a nice lucrative job with an O&G company once he leaves, on the other hand, is. But that's got very little to do with the bureaucracy itself (other than the fact that it exists). And to go ahead and head off the dumb point that Onboard will probably make about its existence being the problem, abolishing law enforcement in its entirety is a really stupid answer to the problem of the chief of police accepting bribes.

[retread 2,951]

Quote

The Democratic-led panel authorized subpoenas earlier this month for McGahn and four other White House officials as part of its sweeping investigation into possible obstruction of justice, corruption and abuse of power. But it waited until Monday to issue the subpoena to McGahn, seeking documents and testimony from the former White House counsel.

 

Edited April 22, 2019 by retread

[Foosters 17,855]

17 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Bloat and inefficiency ≠ "swamp." The "swamp" term has been pretty consistently used by Trump and plenty before him to symbolize corruption by the "elites" that provides them with unique advantages while fucking over everyone else. Three lower-level bureaucrats in the EPA doing an amount of work that two could do isn't remotely like that.

A political appointee leading the EPA and using his authority there to grant special favors in exchange for a nice lucrative job with an O&G company once he leaves, on the other hand, is. But that's got very little to do with the bureaucracy itself (other than the fact that it exists). And to go ahead and head off the dumb point that Onboard will probably make about its existence being the problem, abolishing law enforcement in its entirety is a really stupid answer to the problem of the chief of police accepting bribes.

Wish I could rep this more than once.  

[GW Hayduke 1,953]

1 hour ago, TwiceHorn said:

Probably because there are four or five of them for every equivalent in the private sector?  Even a pretty well run agency like the Patent and Trademark Office is full of bloat, inefficiency and flat out ridiculous bureaucracy.

Just because Trump is an assbag doesn't mean the government doesn't suck.

This is a common misconception from folks with minimal or no experience in government or public service and who absorb excessive amounts of right wing media. 

The GOP’s selling point is that the government can’t do anything, so vote for them so they can prove the point

Edited April 22, 2019 by GW Hayduke

[JimmyJames 12,271]

31 minutes ago, GW Hayduke said:

This is a common misconception from folks with minimal or no experience in government or public service and who absorb excessive amounts of right wing media. 

The GOP’s selling point is that the government can’t do anything, so vote for them so they can prove the point

Actually they want you to vote for them so they can outsource government functions to private entities they have an interest in so they can make a shitload of money doing government work even less efficiently but at a much much higher cost. 

[Brisketexan 105,106]

1 hour ago, TwiceHorn said:

Probably because there are four or five of them for every equivalent in the private sector?  Even a pretty well run agency like the Patent and Trademark Office is full of bloat, inefficiency and flat out ridiculous bureaucracy.

Just because Trump is an assbag doesn't mean the government doesn't suck.

Sigh.

Because of course, we all have GLORIOUSLY efficient experiences with our cell phone carrier, the cable company, our credit card bank, etc. etc. ad infinitum.  If you are dealing with anything outside of a mom and pop business where you are known, odds are that you are getting crappy customer service.  But there are exceptions, and I'll hazard a guess that the percentage of those is similar in both the private and public sector.

I get great customer service from Southwest Airlines.

I also get great customer service from a number of state and city offices around Texas.  Friendly people, willing to put in a little work to make sure my question gets answered, etc.

Wanna know what the common thread is for shitty customer service?  Not spending money on customer service.  If you are a private enterprise that saves money by making me go through a 10 minute long phone tree before I get a real person, and then it's someone in a call center in Timbuktu, OR you are a government agency whose budget allows you to pay $29k a year for your front office folks, the consumer who interacts with those systems is probably going to have a sub-par experience.

We do love our myths, though.

[GW Hayduke 1,953]

 

[bolverk 29,671]

 

[Onboard 2.0 9,083]

4 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

Probably because there are four or five of them for every equivalent in the private sector?  Even a pretty well run agency like the Patent and Trademark Office is full of bloat, inefficiency and flat out ridiculous bureaucracy.

Just because Trump is an assbag doesn't mean the government doesn't suck.

I'm going to give him credit he knew that already, but wants to play a little game of BS.  The wife did a stint with the state of Va. for 6 months and ran screaming from the building 6 months later.  

The culture of doing nothing, and 5 people doing it was everywhere.  It's pretty much the same thing at the federal level.  Certainly not everywhere but in most agencies that's the case.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,367]

I don’t know about Congress but I have a shitload of questions for Rod Rosenstein.  There’s no way he escaped from witnessing or playing an unwitting role in some obstructy behavior.  How many times over the last year did we hear Rosenstein was being fired or leaving?  There has to be more to those stories.

Were you ever asked to limit the scope of the Russia investigation?  Did you ever limit the scope of the investigation? 

Why didn’t Mueller follow the money? 

How many times did the President question you about the Russia investigation?  Did any of the President’s subordinates contact you about the Russia investigation?  

Edited April 23, 2019 by Hugo Stiglitz

[David Dennison 18,856]

25 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

I'm going to give him credit he knew that already, but wants to play a little game of BS.  The wife did a stint with the state of Va. for 6 months and ran screaming from the building 6 months later.  

The culture of doing nothing, and 5 people doing it was everywhere.  It's pretty much the same thing at the federal level.  Certainly not everywhere but in most agencies that's the case.

Commonwealth, bro. You live there. 

[F250 28,770]

2 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Sigh.

Because of course, we all have GLORIOUSLY efficient experiences with our cell phone carrier, the cable company, our credit card bank, etc. etc. ad infinitum.  If you are dealing with anything outside of a mom and pop business where you are known, odds are that you are getting crappy customer service.  But there are exceptions, and I'll hazard a guess that the percentage of those is similar in both the private and public sector.

I get great customer service from Southwest Airlines.

I also get great customer service from a number of state and city offices around Texas.  Friendly people, willing to put in a little work to make sure my question gets answered, etc.

Wanna know what the common thread is for shitty customer service?  Not spending money on customer service.  If you are a private enterprise that saves money by making me go through a 10 minute long phone tree before I get a real person, and then it's someone in a call center in Timbuktu, OR you are a government agency whose budget allows you to pay $29k a year for your front office folks, the consumer who interacts with those systems is probably going to have a sub-par experience.

We do love our myths, though.

I think it's more than a myth. This is a separate topic but there are a number of reasons that government agencies tend to be inefficient. Off the top of my head I think there tends to be a shortage of talent with government agencies.

My observation has been that government agencies lack talent due to several factors; low pay, promotion through seniority, and a lack of exposure to new ideas.

 

[Onboard 2.0 9,083]

2 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

Commonwealth, bro. You live there. 

Yeah it's still a state.

[Onboard 2.0 9,083]

1 minute ago, F250 said:

I think it's more than a myth. This is a separate topic but there are a number of reasons that government agencies tend to be inefficient. Off the top of my head I think there tends to be a shortage of talent with government agencies.

My observation has been that government agencies lack talent due to several factors; low pay, promotion through seniority, and a lack of exposure to new ideas.

 

Lack of competition.

[David Dennison 18,856]

7 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

Yeah it's still a state.

It's the commonwealth to Virginians. You know exactly what I'm talking about.

[Hornius Emeritus 12,460]

8 hours ago, Zavala said:

500+ pages

Did I miss the impeachment?

 

Still to be determined. 

[Onboard 2.0 9,083]

3 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

It's the commonwealth to Virginians. You know exactly what I'm talking about.

It's just the state of Va. to us most of the time.  Of course I know what it is, there are only 3 others in the country.  City incorporation isn't that big a deal to me as a differentiator. 

[Poolflood 845]

3 hours ago, JimmyJames said:

Actually they want you to vote for them so they can outsource government functions to private entities they have an interest in so they can make a shitload of money doing government work even less efficiently but at a much much higher cost. 

There is nothing more inefficient than government work.  

[DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt 12,301]

41 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

Lack of competition.

Walk me through that. If we had several EPA-like agencies overseeing environmental regulations, enforcement, etc. we would have more efficient EPAs?

Not everything should be viewed within a for-profit/capitalistic lens.

[Onboard 2.0 9,083]

3 minutes ago, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

Walk me through that. If we had several EPA-like agencies overseeing environmental regulations, enforcement, etc. we would have more efficient EPAs?

Not everything should be viewed within a for-profit/capitalistic lens.

Did you spend hours thinking up this brain teaser ?

[hobbes2702 13,032]

Doesn’t take much time to understand that the government isn’t a business and shouldn’t be run like one.

[David Dennison 18,856]

24 minutes ago, hobbes2702 said:

Doesn’t take much time to understand that the government isn’t a business and shouldn’t be run like one.

Sadly, much of the brain trust on this board thinks it should be run like a Trump organization business. 

[WhatTheBuck 28,777]

17 minutes ago, hobbes2702 said:

Doesn’t take much time to understand that the government isn’t a business and shouldn’t be run like one.

Businesses have to grow in order to survive and prosper. If you think government should be run like a business then you shouldn't be against big government. 

[WhatTheBuck 28,777]

Just now, David Dennison said:

Sadly, much of the brain trust on this board thinks it should be run like a Trump organization business. 

Unfortunately, it is. 

[DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt 12,301]

1 hour ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

Did you spend hours thinking up this brain teaser ?

Explain what you meant. Governmental agencies don’t have competition...go on.

[Poolflood 845]

1 hour ago, WhatTheBuck said:

Businesses have to grow in order to survive and prosper. If you think government should be run like a business then you shouldn't be against big government. 

Your avatar looks like a regarded straw man so I guess this is acceptable

[notre dame joe 187]

3 hours ago, F250 said:

I think it's more than a myth. This is a separate topic but there are a number of reasons that government agencies tend to be inefficient. Off the top of my head I think there tends to be a shortage of talent with government agencies.

My observation has been that government agencies lack talent due to several factors; low pay, promotion through seniority, and a lack of exposure to new ideas.

 

Not always a nice/good thing.  Corporations fire their older guys and bring in cheaper 20-somethings a lot more ruthlessly.  I presume the DMV doesn't do that.

[F250 28,770]

5 hours ago, JimmyJames said:

Actually they want you to vote for them so they can outsource government functions to private entities they have an interest in so they can make a shitload of money doing government work even less efficiently but at a much much higher cost. 

Government contracting is a bipartisan problem. No side has clean hands when it comes to this issue. Mainly because it is a necessary evil and often Congressmen will support outsourcing a project if it generates jobs in their district.

Beto was on the Armed Services Committee and Fort Bliss employees were his constituents, I bet he received money from the defense industry as a member of Congress. This isn't a criticism of Beto, it is just how things work. Shit, Old Henry B. Gonzalez kept military dollars pumping into the San Antonio economy for decades despite the gross abuse by government contractors.

Anyways, it is disingenuous to claim one party favors government outsourcing over the other. While I believe it is necessary there really needs to be a hell of a lot more oversight with government contracting. There is just way too much money on the table to keep unethical actors away. And it just really pisses me off to see Billion dollar companies suck on the government teat.

 

 

 

[workswithseed 2,103]

1 hour ago, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

Explain what you meant. Governmental agencies don’t have competition...go on.

I mean the post office is dying, what ithe things could be privatized off?

[David Dennison 18,856]

13 minutes ago, F250 said:

Government contracting is a bipartisan problem. No side has clean hands when it comes to this issue. Mainly because it is a necessary evil and often Congressmen will support outsourcing a project if it generates jobs in their district.

Beto was on the Armed Services Committee and Fort Bliss employees were his constituents, I bet he received money from the defense industry as a member of Congress. This isn't a criticism of Beto, it is just how things work. Shit, Old Henry B. Gonzalez kept military dollars pumping into the San Antonio economy for decades despite the gross abuse by government contractors.

Anyways, it is disingenuous to claim one party favors government outsourcing over the other. While I believe it is necessary there really needs to be a hell of a lot more oversight with government contracting. There is just way too much money on the table to keep unethical actors away. And it just really pisses me off to see Billion dollar companies suck on the government teat.

The defense budget is this nation's largest jobs program.

[F250 28,770]

 

2 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

The defense budget is this nation's largest jobs program.

Well if war is business and business is good then we as a nation are doing something wrong.

 

[troph 24,787]

 
Well if war is business and business is good then we as a nation are doing something wrong.
 

Bomb Inventory is high need to clear the shelves ... who’s next?

[Anastasis 23,469]

5 minutes ago, troph said:

Bomb Inventory is high need to clear the shelves ... who’s next?

Doesn't really matter.  The shelf will quickly fill again. 

[SuingToGetAMessageBoard? 3,861]

UT Law folks.  Philip Bobbitt says we should be moving toward impeachment in WaPo today. 

 

After botching their initial responseto the Mueller report, top Democrats are now seriously engaging the debate over whether the shocking scale of corruption, wrongdoing, contempt for our democracy, endless official deception and skirting of criminality that it documented merits — or indeed obligates — an impeachment inquiry.

In multiple TV appearances, the chairmen of three House committees suggested Mueller’s findings are “serious and damning” and normally would fall “within the realm of impeachable offenses," and that doing nothing could leave Trump “emboldened” and signal that “future presidents can engage in this kind of corruption without consequence.”

As Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.) indicated, the “consequential decision” Democrats now face is whether to confine themselves to “oversight hearings by the various committees," or to launch a “formal impeachment inquiry." Failure to do the latter could validate the idea that presidents are above accountability, no matter how corrupt or lawless.

Philip Bobbitt, the constitutional scholar at Columbia University, is among those who have wrestled most deeply with the complex questions raised by impeachment. He is the co-author of “Impeachment: A Handbook,” which republishes the famous commentary on impeachment by Yale law scholar Charles L. Black Jr. and concludes with Bobbitt’s own discourse on the topic.

I spoke to Bobbitt at length about the latest revelations. The upshot: Bobbitt now believes it’s “plausible” that Trump committed impeachable offenses and that the House of Representatives is obligated to proceed from this premise.

This does not necessarily mean launching a formal impeachment inquiry right this moment. But it does mean that the next phase of the House’s response must functionally embody an acknowledgment that Trump’s now-known conduct very well may constitute “high crimes and misdemeanors," ultimately rendering an impeachment inquiry obligatory.

Coming from Bobbitt, this is notable, because he has long maintained that impeachment must be reserved only for the most extraordinary cases and (as his book argues) that we must approach the question of whetherconduct is impeachable with extreme caution.

Bobbitt’s book engages deeply on what constitutes “high crimes and misdemeanors.” It concludes that “careful, patient inquiry” must denote a pattern of “wanton constitutional dereliction” and establish acts of misconduct that badly undermine the very “legitimacy” of the government and “seriously threaten the order of political society."

In our conversation, Bobbitt elaborated. He noted that the Constitution reserves impeachment for “treason” and “bribery” or “other high crimes and misdemeanors," and added that we can understand the latter from that juxtaposition:

We’re aided immensely by Alexander Hamilton’s discussion of these matters in The Federalist Papers. He writes that what treason and bribery have in common in the impeachment context is that they are political crimes. They strike at the functioning and legitimacy of the government itself. They are not common crimes. They are “high” crimes.

 

Thus, Bobbitt argued, in evaluating what we’ve learned of Trump’s conduct:

The initial inquiry is whether the acts of the president have struck at the processes underlying government itself.

 

In attempting to answer that question, Bobbitt pointed out, both Trump’s obstructive efforts and his response to Russian sabotage of our democracy should raise serious concerns.

On the first, it’s key to understand the situation as a kind of three-legged stool. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III did not indict, due to Justice Department policy against indicting a sitting president. At the same time, he also declared that presidents are not immune to obstruction statutes if they interfere with law enforcement processes with “corrupt intent.” Finally, Mueller amassed extensive evidence suggesting that Trump did in fact violate those statutes corruptly, while conspicuously declining to exonerate him of those violations — something he could have done if he believed Trump did not commit them.

Taken all together, then, what Mueller told us is that Trump can and very likely did break the law extensively and that he cannot be held legally accountable for it while in office.

In our interview, Bobbitt described the implications of all this for impeachment this way:

Mueller depicts an executive branch that is using the levers of his constitutional power in a corrupt way. It’s not that a president can’t determine whom to prosecute or investigate, or give advice to members of the executive to shape their testimony at legislative hearings. It’s that he can’t do so with the intent to frustrate the investigation of his own culpability. We certainly have ample evidence that suggests this what he was trying to do.

 

What’s more, this obstructive conduct can be directly tied to the other element of the case against Trump: his response to Russian electoral sabotage. Importantly, Trump did not merely seek to derail an investigation into his campaign’s conspiracy with that Russian sabotage — that is, into his own conduct.

Rather, Trump also sought to derail a full accounting of the Russian attack on our political system, separate and apart from whether his own campaign conspired with it. He did this because acknowledging the sabotage would detract from the greatness of his victory, which also led him to fail to marshal a serious response to the next round of interference.

Bobbitt explained the relevance of those facts to the impeachment question this way:

The real problem isn’t just cooperating with the Russians, or just impeding an investigation into that cooperation. It’s impeding an investigation to stop a determination of what Russia did, why, and how they did it. Because this is not over. It’s going to happen again, not just in our country. In many countries.

The exposure of the country to very damaging political intelligence techniques, for the venal reason of not diminishing the status of your victory — would that be a high crime and misdemeanor? It certainly would.

 

When I asked Bobbitt directly whether it’s plausible that Trump committed impeachable offenses, he replied:

It’s plausible. Because there seems to be such a pattern of widely reported events. The resignations of so many of his own appointed Cabinet officials and White House staff are troubling. They seem to have taken themselves out, or have been taken out, because they would not do what they regard as unlawful things.

 

Bobbitt, however, is not arguing for a formal impeachment inquiry right at this moment. He told me he’s arguing for “pre-impeachment hearings” that flesh out as much additional information as possible within the framework of what Mueller has now told us:

You can take the Mueller report as an invitation to impeachment. It certainly does not count the other way: It’s not a report that closes the book on impeachment. But I think it would be wise to proceed along several investigative fronts rather than to begin with the bludgeon of an impeachment hearing.

A broad-based series of hearings is the next step. But you can’t appear to have made up your mind that we should go forward with impeachment. You have to give the country a chance to come together.

 

We can debate endlessly whether anything could get the country to come together on any of this, but that approach — both aggressive and sober, as E.J. Dionne Jr. puts it— appears to be the one Democrats are now taking.

That’s a step in the right direction away from their previous posture, which appeared premised on the idea that the pressure to initiate an impeachment inquiry would somehow dissipate. One thing is clear: Democrats now appear to recognize the profound complexity and momentousness of the dilemma they face

[Hornius Emeritus 12,460]

16 hours ago, wildcat09 said:

Bloat and inefficiency ≠ "swamp." The "swamp" term has been pretty consistently used by Trump and plenty before him to symbolize corruption by the "elites" that provides them with unique advantages while fucking over everyone else.

 

Would the swamp include taking 99 million dollars worth of golf outings at golf clubs that you own during the first 26 months in office, all at public expense?

https://trumpgolfcount.com/

[BrickHorn 18,221]

I took a 1-hour seminar from Prof. Bobbitt in law school.  Dude had us read, and write a 5-page response paper to, a different book each week.  We also had to read an additional book on top of all that and write a 30-page paper on a constitutional law topic related to that additional book.  For one hour of credit.  

[jimmyjazz 45,909]

3 minutes ago, BrickHorn said:

I took a 1-hour seminar from Prof. Bobbitt in law school.  Dude had us read, and write a 5-page response paper to, a different book each week.  We also had to read an additional book on top of all that and write a 30-page paper on a constitutional law topic related to that additional book.  For one hour of credit.  

That sounds horrible.  You know what sounds even more horrible?  Having to grade all that crap.  (I assume an assistant did a lot of that work.)

[SuingToGetAMessageBoard? 3,861]

1 minute ago, jimmyjazz said:

That sounds horrible.  You know what sounds even more horrible?  Having to grade all that crap.  (I assume an assistant did a lot of that work.)

I suspect grading in his class went something like

T? B.

A? B.

T+A? A.

[GW Hayduke 1,953]

Impeachment is a political question. If the GOP wants to hold potus accountable, then impeachment should be done. If the GOP doesn’t want to hold potus accountable, then the public should indicate their displeasure at the ballot box.

If the Dems move to impeach without the gop, it will fire up potus’s base and decrease the odds that potus and the GOP will be held accountable at the ballot box.

The proper position at this time for the Dems is to hold hearings, disclose information to the public, and investigate trump’s finances.

Moving to impeach without the gop is a dumb move  

Edited April 23, 2019 by GW Hayduke

[BrickHorn 18,221]

3 minutes ago, SuingToGetAMessageBoard? said:

I suspect grading in his class went something like

T? B.

A? B.

T+A? A.

Haha.  Yeah, he’s a pimp.  I actually overheard him say, in reference to a request by an attractive woman in our class that he reduce the page requirement for our paper from his initial proposal of 40 or 50 pages: “I can’t say ‘no’ to a woman.”  

[Biff Tannen 45,678]

10 minutes ago, GW Hayduke said:

If the Dems move to impeach without the gop, it will fire up potus’s base and decrease the odds that potus and the GOP will be held accountable at the ballot box.

I believe you are correct and this statement shows that the base does not care about this country or the rule of law in any way.

[Onboard 2.0 9,083]

Just now, Biff Tannen said:

I believe you are correct and this statement shows that the base does not care about this country or the rule of law in any way.

I think what it also illustrates is the bases mistrust of many in gov't, and the media, and a percetion of a double standard.

Whose fault is that ?

[Biff Tannen 45,678]

Just now, Onboard 2.0 said:

I think what it also illustrates is the bases mistrust of many in gov't, and the media, and a percetion of a double standard.

Whose fault is that ?

#bothsides?

[Onboard 2.0 9,083]

Just now, Biff Tannen said:

#bothsides?

Oy, willfull ignorance is alive and well...

[SuingToGetAMessageBoard? 3,861]

17 minutes ago, GW Hayduke said:

Impeachment is a political question. If the GOP wants to hold potus accountable, then impeachment should be done. If the GOP doesn’t want to hold potus accountable, then the public should indicate their displeasure at the ballot box.

If the Dems move to impeach without the gop, it will fire up potus’s base and decrease the odds that potus and the GOP will be held accountable at the ballot box.

The proper position at this time for the Dems is to hold hearings, disclose information to the public, and investigate trump’s finances.

Moving to impeach without the gop is a dumb move  

It's not only a political question.  It is a Constitutional question.   You can't refuse to do what the Constitution requires you to do just because it is scary. We are 'a nation of laws.'  And the Constitution is big law.

[Biff Tannen 45,678]

2 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

Oy, willfull ignorance is alive and well...

[SuingToGetAMessageBoard? 3,861]

Just now, SuingToGetAMessageBoard? said:

It's not only a political question.  It is a Constitutional question.   You can't refuse to do what the Constitution requires you to do just because it is scary. We are 'a nation of laws.'  And the Constitution is big law.

But it is the politics that has people hiding.  They see this:

https://morningconsult.com/2019/04/22/trumps-popularity-hits-record-low-as-support-for-impeachment-wanes/

and are only thinking about the next election.  Figure Trump is toast, let's make sure a D gets elected.  They've decided it is a political question only.  It's not.