As you may recall Schrodinger’s cat is a quantum physics paradox in which hypothetically a cat may be both alive and dead at the same time. My online friend “The Infamous Ignatz” offers up, quite rightly in my opinion, there is “The Universal Quantum Trump-Grabbed Schrodinger’s Pussy Theory. He is not only the cause of all known phenomena in the universe but the cause of all potential phenomena as well.”

Last week the theory was offered up as an explanation for the Iranian shootdown of a Ukrainian passenger plane. This week the Pelosi House sent up a grab bag of ridiculous claims to support their articles of impeachment, and in a tacit recognition that they are weak, kept adding to the charges with claims as dead on arrival as the articles themselves. This ploy served them ill in their effort to block Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation and will not help them now.

Lev Parnas

Parnas, under indictment for federal crimes, has, as my online friend Vic Sapphire notes,” more stories than Scheherazade.” 

Joel Pollak at Breitbart questions whether Parnas has anything to offer to support the Democrats’ case in spite of his interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow who grabbed at this turd (mistaking it yet again for the game ball) ran with it to the end zone, and declared victory. 

The most telling fail of the Parnas claims is that he has no firsthand knowledge to support any of them. What he offers are the opinions of a man indicted for conspiracy, making false statements and falsifying the record.

Among his 10-point argument that Parnas’ credibility is in serious question and “many of his claims about Trump are dubious or contradicted by other evidence” are these:

He claimed he acted at Trump’s direction but shortly after the interview, he said he never spoke to the president. He told Maddow he represented himself to Ukrainian officials as the president’s representative, but, in fact, he represented himself as working for the president’s attorney (Giuliani). He told Maddow he conveyed a threat to the Ukrainians unless they cooperated by investigating Joe Biden, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky flatly denies this. He claims Attorney General William Barr was “on the team,” but concedes he never spoke to Barr and didn’t know whether Barr had ever spoken to Ukrainian officials. Parnas was allegedly CNN’s source for the report that Congressman Devin Nunes had gone to Vienna to meet with the former Ukrainian prosecutor when, in fact, Nunes was in Benghazi, Libya at the time.

The similarity between the parade of new “evidence” for impeachment reminds most of us, including Legal Insurrection, of the never-ending parade of witnesses against Brett Kavanaugh.  

Recall that after the Kavanaugh hearings were done, but before the committee vote, Democrats leaked that they had a surprise witness they had known about for several weeks, Christine Blasey Ford. Her claim that Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in high school fell apart when the four people she said were present in the house that night all said they had no memory of such an event -- not just the sexual assault, but even of being in the house as a group.

So out of the woodwork came multiple other accusers, particularly Julie Swetnick, represented by then-Democrat-presidential hopeful Michael Avenatti.

Swetnick pushed her ludicrous story out on cable news. The story was that Kavanaugh ran gang rape parties in high school in which men lined up in rape trains. The story was absurd on its face, but Democrats and liberal media treated it as more proof that no vote should be held on Kavanaugh until there were full investigations of all allegations. Swetnick’s claim not only was absurd, her background cast serious doubt on her credibility. Her claims fell apart when she was pressed. But she served Democrats’ purposes.

This is what “to Kavanaugh” something is: to drag a hearing out with serial accusations and accusers so that the process becomes interminable. And this is what is happening with the Democrats’ attempt to remove Trump through impeachment and trial.

The impeachment case was rushed through the House without Democrats seeking subpoenas of key witnesses or seeking judicial compulsion of witnesses who objected to testifying. There was a supposed emergency so dire that impeachment could not await a full House record. Then Nancy Pelosi sat on the Articles of Impeachment trying to coerce the Senate into trial procedures that would find new evidence through witnesses and documents subpoenaed for trial that would fill in the weak House record.

And true to form, a new witness is rolled out who supposedly is so important that the trial must turn into an investigative tool not a trial tool. 

The GAO Report

The President briefly held up funds to Ukraine while probing accounts of corruption. In fact, the administration released military aid to Ukraine three weeks early.

Certainly not coincidentally, the GAO issued a report in time to toss it into the impeachment debate, claiming that the president’s several week holdup of aid to Ukraine violated the Impoundment Control Act. As we argue below, it did not violate that Act. The GAO report was a partisan ploy and if the report’s findings were factual, it would violate the Constitution by circumscribing the authority of the chief executive.

James Freeman explains that the GAO is not nonpartisan, it is “a creature of Congress…” “whose bureaucrats are represented by the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers whose PAC in 2016 gave 100% of its donations to Democrats... its opinion was rendered at the request of Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.)..." The relevant section of the law is section 686 which requires GAO report on a deferral of budget authority about which the president has failed to notify Congress. GAO must do this within weeks because the section is designed to give Congress timely information. Congress then has 45 days after notification to veto the deferral. The GAO failed to do what the law requires.

In any event, the GAO is not the finder of fact in impeachment. If it were, Obama should have been impeached seven times in which the GAO found the Obama administration had violated federal law. 

Any ruling that the President has no right to withhold Ukraine Funds (as GAO claims) would, in any event, violate the Constitution. 

• The Constitution allocates to the president sole authority over foreign policy (short of declaring war or signing a treaty). It does not permit Congress to substitute its foreign policy preferences for those of the president.
• To the extent that the statute at issue constrains the power of the president to conduct foreign policy, it is unconstitutional.
• Even if the GAO were correct in its legal conclusion -- which it is not -- the alleged violation would be neither a crime nor an impeachable offense. It would be a civil violation subject to a civil remedy, as were the numerous violations alleged by the GAO with regard to other presidents. 
• If Congress and its GAO truly believe that President Trump violated the law, let them go to court and seek the civil remedy provided by the law.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi seemingly concedes that the articles of impeachment are just a low opening bid to get the game going. 

“It’s not a question of proof, it says what allegations have been made and that has to be subjected to scrutiny as to how we go forward, but it should not be ignored in the context of other events that could substantiate some of that,” said Pelosi.

That’s not how it works. The House is supposed to pass such a serious matter upon proof, not wishful thinking by those followers of the Schrodinger’s pussy theory. 

How will the Senate now handle this? Will it dismiss these deficient articles out of hand or allow this game to continue? Arguing for impeachment will be Congressional “stars” Jerrold Nadler, Adam Schiff, Hakeem Jeffries, and Zoe Lofgren. Arguing against will be White House Counsel Pat Cippalone, Jay Sekulow, Ken Starr, Pam Bondi, Robert Ray, and Alan Dershowitz. (Dershowitz has stated he will confine his role to arguing the constitutional issues involved in proceeding on impeachment under the circumstances presented.)

Zero Hedge reports that Senate Republicans have warned the “moderate Republicans” that if they join the Democrats to demand a trial, they will call Hunter Biden and Alexandra Chalupa, “people central to the core claims behind impeachment” who were studiously ignored by the House Democrats’ investigations. Mitt Romney, a likely aisle crosser, has already seen a substantial dip in his approval ratings in Utah. 

In the meantime, as this distraction gobbled up media coverage (almost 100 times more than economic news) the stock market booms, housing starts are soaring, retail sales are up, unemployment for all including Blacks and Hispanics is at a 50 year low, and two significant trade deals were signed this week, trade deals which promise to add billions of dollars to the U.S. economy.

Maybe Nancy Pelosi is really a Trump confederate willfully destroying her party.