The ejection of Rep. Matt Gaetz from House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff's witness testimony hearings for the Democrats' impeachment inquiry, as J.R. Dunn noted here, was pretty outrageous, given the right Gaetz had to be there as a member of the House Judiciary Committee and do nothing but listen.  He wasn't some Code Pinko type disrupting the closed-door affair by yelling obscenities and hurling bags of urine.  He was ejected because he was a Republican.

It kind of tells you about the "fairness" of this entire inquiry.

Now the Washington Post is reporting that having done that, Democrats have now gotten into a huddle, whispering together behind closed doors like Renaissance plotters, the better to accelerate the impeachment of President Trump.  Presumably, they want to get it out of the way before the next election, which of course would be to serve their own political purposes.  Those, of course, are what this whole lunacy is really about — removing Trump and not having to face the wrath of the American voters.

It's why impeachment for them needs to be done so secretly.  And the whole thing is being done in secret now, meaning it's not just Republicans being shut out; the entire electorate isn't allowed to be in on it, either.  Schiff and his fellow plotters, who apparently ran an intelligence operation of their own against the White House earlier to set the whole thing up, are now setting up a trial with a predetermined outcome, making themselves spy, cop, judge, jury, and executioner, with a pliant mainstream media to give exclusively their cherry-picked propaganda output from it as news.

And they know it's a winner of sorts — now some polls show a public that favors impeachment and removal.  Keeping it all secret and releasing just their version of events, despite the president's transparency about the matter, seems to be the plan in action.  They're convinced it's working.

It's possible it's working, given the disturbing content of at least a few polls.  But a lot of things say it isn't.  There was the brutal Louisiana wipeout of the Democrats just this weekend.  There also was a bad-news focus group for Democrats cited by center-left Axios, noted by J.R. Dunn here, about how Ohio swing voters aren't happy.  Their reaction to impeachment-obsessed Democrats matches what former governor John Kasich (who's not a Trump fan), said earlier that "nobody is talking about this" in Ohio.  Axios also had warnings from political experts a few days ago that the whole thing was bad news for Democrats no matter what.  I wrote about that here. 

Removing a president is a big thing.  The number who've gone through it can be counted on less than one hand. Schiff knows that if the public or the Republicans can so much as be witnesses to the hearings in the minimal spirit of transparency, the case for impeachment is over.  He can't allow that — not with his fanatic extremism.

So now he's doing the opposite of what out-there and no-secrets Trump does, and instead keeping the whole thing very, very secret, presumably until the deal is done and the decision is made.  He likes secrets.  After that, he and his handpicked buddies plan to let Trump and his voters know about it.

This isn't democracy.  This is a star chamber, a kangaroo court, a court where everything that gets out is pre-digested and approved by a secretive party politburo before the public has permission to hear of it and then the show trials can begin.  Stalin would applaud.

If this isn't the opposite of democracy, what is?  Schiff is taking advantage of the vague rules to do this, but these rules he's making up as he goes along, to ensure his complete advantage, are anything but fair.  They ought to be subject to a lawsuit, and one can only hope this clown is tied up in it for the rest of his term, or maybe until he can be forced to start answering questions about his ties to Ed Buck.