Iddee
GWW, what Jim and Tom are saying is, the dems did it and it was OK'ed. That opens it up to being done without breaking the law. If it were illegal before, the dems determined it was now legal, so anyone should be able to do it. After all, it was determined that doing it was legal. Jim and Tom are not saying an illegal act is OK because someone else did it. They are saying it was legalized when others done it and were cleared of breaking the law.
I used to use this argument all the time at work. I used to tell management that they could not pick just this one person to enforce a rule on that they had not been enforcing up to that point. I used to tell them that the only way that would be right would have been to notify everyone that they were going to start enforcing the rule aging before actually starting to enforce it. It does not matter that it has already been a standard of conduct cause they had gave that up by not enforcing it.
However, a path of letting things get worse and worse as people get more and more lawless based on what those before have did is not something to reach for. The goal can not be to reach for the bottom and make it ok. The presidents problem is that he will not see that he could ever be wrong. He only demands that he is right. In this case, even putting him on notice would have no effect. I always took the position that any discipline should be corrective. Only do enough to get the point across that the actions are not to be repeated.
So the question becomes, do we want the president or others to use our government to gain advantage on personal stuff? If the answer is that it is worth making a stab at not saying that this is good and acceptable, we have to do something. The something has to be good enough to change a mind of someone who thinks they are not wrong. Tom mentioned genocide. It is a good example of something that was done and was not punished when done but could not be considered good. I am sure the nuremberg trials were an effort to get the point across that even though there are those that have got away with it, society says stop, a good thing.
You all can say that you have not seen enough proof that the president was using the government for personal gain.
You can say it is ok that he did that because others did it.
I say it is a worth while effort to try and keep it from being ok to do and I do believe it would take a blind man to not think that our president was doing just that. My opinion is that there is nothing wrong with trying to do whatever the minimum is to get the point across that this type of stuff needs to be wrong.
You can not clean up the swamp and also be in the race to the bottom where everything bad that has ever been done wrong is ok to do.
I understand kathys point also that is basically innocent until proven guilty. I believe the democrats are correct on putting on an investigation and that there is enough for a prosecution and trial. I will not be convinced of a defense of "well others have did it". I believe the Mueller report and the senate report was notice that informed everyone that asking for foreign involvement was wrong. So if you believe it is wrong and everyone was informed of that, what to do? If you pick that it does not bother you and you are on a jury during a trial, then you really don't have to come up with any type of defense cause you are not bothered by the action.
Everybody has that choice though I doubt the founding fathers would have made that choice.
Cheers
gww
