Of Graham Bondage

Since last week's Graphical History Tour memorialized a sitting U.S. Senator who claims not to be dead, this week's episode rustles up my cartoons about one of his Republican colleagues whose passing is less, ah, speculative.

April, 2010

Lindsey Graham himself barely appeared in what I believe was my first cartoon about him, sixteen years ago. An anti-immigrant Tea Partisan then from South Carolina, William Gheen, alleged that Senator Lindsey Graham was being blackmailed over his widely rumored homosexual orientation to support Democrats' version of Immigration Reform.

"Sen. Graham, you need to come forward and tell people about your alternative lifestyle and your homosexuality. Come out of that closet, Lindsey. Come out of that Log Cabin closet," Gheen told a Tea Party Klatch. "Look, I'm a tolerant person. I don't care about your private life, Lindsey. But as our U.S. Senator, I need to figure out why you're trying to sell out your own countrymen, and I need to make sure your being gay isn't it."

Whether in response to Gheen or not, Graham announced that he opposed the immigration bills proposed by the Democratic majority in Congress. As for Gheen, he has since migrated across the border to North Carolina, where he is President of an anti-immigration political action committee.

December, 2012

I drew this cartoon in response to Graham advocating against achieving marriage equality by congressional legislation or litigation in the courts.

Graham knew full well how unlikely getting a pro-marriage equality amendment to the U.S. Constitution approved by Congress and ratified by 34 state legislatures would be. For years, Republicans pushed an amendment to do exactly the opposite, not to mention other amendments for all sorts of their pet peeves, without getting anywhere. 

October, 2014

Did you know that Lindsey Graham ran for the Republicans' 2016 presidential nomination? Even people who were paying close attention at the time may not remember it.

Graham was running for a third term in the Senate in 2014, and told Politico that in the (inevitable) event that he won reelection, he was considering looking into a 2016 presidential run. He made his official campaign announcement on June 1, 2015, but failed to qualify for a Republican presidential debate cattle call on CNN two months later.

The highlight of his presidential campaign was calling Donald Trump "a jackass" in successive interviews on CNN and CBS. Trump responded by telling Fox & Fiends viewers Graham's personal cell phone number.

By Christmas, Graham had suspended his campaign; he then endorsed Florida Governor Jeb Bush in January. Republican voters didn't listen.

October, 2018

Neither did the Electoral College.

As Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Graham played a prominent role in the confirmation of Donald Trump's Supreme Court appointees. Allegations that the second of them, Brett Kavanaugh, was a beer-swilling bro in college suggested the "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" character Brick to me; casting Graham as Maggie followed as a matter of course.

That's Senators Maizie Hirono and Jeff Flake as Mae and Gooper (well, I needed somebody in those roles) and Trump as Big Daddy Pollitt.

March, 2021

Insinuating Lindsey Graham's Kinsey rating couldn't be the point of every cartoon I put him in. Sometimes, he was just a recognizable Senator to populate a cartoon about the Senate Republican Caucus. But as the supposedly closeted gay one, he afforded me the opportunity to draw a cartoon about a non-LGBTQ+ topic for the LGBTQ+ publications that run my cartoons. 

(Openly bi Senator Kyrsten Sinema also figured in this one. A two-fer!)

February, 2021

In the post for this week's cartoon, I included Lindsey Graham's "Count me out" comment on the evening after the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, disassociating himself from Donald Trump. I also included Trump's more recent story of Graham then calling him up to apologize.

You certainly can't take Trump's word for anything, but Graham counting himself out on January 6 did not extend to his voting to convict Trump when the Senate voted on his impeachment trial on February 13.

Graham just couldn't stay mad at his latest infatuation.

September, 2022

Republicans who bothered at all to explain their votes against conviction claimed that since Trump was out of office, his attempt to overthrow the government should be a matter for the courts rather than the impeachment process.

As the prosecution of Trump for offenses starting with January 6, tax fraud, and sexual assault crept ever so slowly forward during Joe Biden's presidency, Lindsey Graham and quite a few other Republicans complained that pursuing justice in the courts was a bad idea, too.

In the fall of 2022, Citizen Trump was refusing to return classified papers included among dozens of bankers boxes of files he had spirited off to Mar-a-Lago, directing underlings to hide them away when the FBI showed up to seize them. Graham warned that if Trump were ever brought to trial for those actions, his hordes of MAGA minions would reprise January 6.

To his dying day, Graham was mute about any possibility of Antifa, DEI, or Woke Inc., getting violent over what now passes for the Justice Department's overtly political, Trumped up prosecutions of anyone who has ever crossed Donald Trump.

Reports of His Death Are Greatly Appreciated

Graphical History Tour looks forward to remembering Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), reported to be serving out the remainder of his congressional term in a vegetative state.

McConnell was elected to the Senate in 1984, ousting a Democratic incumbent in the Reagan landslide that year. I drew no cartoons about McConnell that early in his career; perhaps Joel Pett can put a retrospective of his Lexington Herald Leader cartoons of the McConnell record. I'll leave it to him.

McConnell has been no stranger to purposeful inactivity.

March, 2019

McConnell's facial features, especially with his eyeglasses, suited him to caricature as an owl or a tortoise; influenced by Jon Stewart's characterization of him on The Daily Show, I drew McConnell as a turtle again and again. 

This cartoon dealt with Democrats' "Equality Act" to extend existing federal anti-discrimination protections in employment, housing, credit, jury selection, and education to include persons on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation. The legislation passed the House, but McConnell kept it off the Senate's agenda.

February, 2016

McConnell's longest lasting legacy is likely to be the Republican supermajority on the U.S. Supreme Court.

The GOP had enjoyed a 5-to-4 majority on the Court when Justice Antonin Scalia died in February of 2016, leaving an evenly split Court and one empty seat for President Barack Obama to fill. McConnell declared that the Senate would refuse to consider Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland, supposedly because there would be a new president eleven months later.

"The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice," McConnell wrote, discounting the voice of the American people in 2008 and 2012. "Therefore this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president."

September, 2020

Four years later, liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, a mere seven weeks before another presidential election. Rather than let the American people weigh in on the selection of the next Supreme Court Justice, McConnell rammed Donald Trump's choice, Amy Coney Barrett, through the Senate faster than any SCOTUS nominee since President Martin Van Buren's nomination of Peter Vivian Daniel one week before leaving office in 1841.

July, 2018

Having declared during President Obama's first term that McConnell's primary goal was to make sure that Obama wouldn't serve a second one, McConnell's primary goal in Trump's first term was to make sure that Trump got everything he wanted.

Trump would name Brett Kavanaugh, not the Dictator of North Korea, to this particular Supreme Court vacancy. McConnell couldn't keep Democrats from asking Kavanaugh about sexual assault allegations; but as long as McConnell kept Republicans in line, Democrats couldn't keep Kavanaugh off the Court.

November, 2018

On the other hand, McConnell and his Republicans had blockaded several of President Obama's lower court nominations from getting through the Senate. While in the minority, Senate Republicans repeatedly filibustered Obama's nominations, and denied cloture votes to end debate; Senate Majority Harry Reid responded by limiting debate on district and circuit court nominations to 30 hours, and lowering the needed vote to confirm to 50% — the so-called "nuclear option."

When Republicans won a Senate majority in 2014, McConnell changed Senate rules so that even a single GOP Senator could block a judicial appointment.

"A large number of vacancies were from states with two Republican senators or one Republican and one Democrat," [Sheldon Goldman, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst] explained. "Until McConnell and the Republicans upended the practice of senatorial courtesy, both senators had to sign off on the recommended judicial nominees. Republican senators did their best to delay the process. As we now know, that tactic of obstruct and delay was successful."

"That Obama left office with so many unfilled vacancies was largely by design — by Mitch McConnell," said the University of Vermont’s Lisa Holmes.

December, 2019

McConnell's ploy left 105 judicial vacancies — not counting that seat on the Supreme Court —waiting for Donald Trump to fill on his first inauguration day. He proceeded to nominate the most right-wing, reactionary ideologues the Heritage Foundation could dredge up, one after another. They included ten nominees in his first term rated "not qualified" by the American Bar Association, seven of whom were confirmed by the Senate anyway.

January, 2022

McConnell (and now John Thune) had the advantage of having Democrats like Kyrsten Sinema, Joe Manchin, and John Fetterman willing, even eager, to reach across the aisle to make deals and pass legislation. For their part, Republicans have been content to let Democrats reach toward them; but the only Republicans who dare to reach across the aisle are the ones who are going home soon because they lost a primary race against someone even more opposed to bipartisan cooperation.

January, 2020

No assessment of McConnell's legacy would be complete without bringing up his role in the two impeachment trials (so far) of Donald Commodus Trump.

When the House voted to impeach Donald Trump in 2019, McConnell denied House managers' request to call four witnesses for the Senate trial, explaining, "The Senate is meant to act as judge and jury. To hear a trial. Not to re-run the entire fact-finding investigation because angry partisans rushed sloppily through it."

McConnell reportedly supported the second impeachment of Trump for inciting the January 3, 2021 storming of the Capitol. The Senate calendar prevented the trial from starting until after Trump was out of office, which McConnell used as his excuse for voting with 42 other Republican Senators for acquittal. 

He told the nation, however, "There is no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day."

Thus, Mitch McConnell, and the 42 other Republicans Senators who put party above country and acquitted on a technicality a scoundrel they knew to be guilty, deserve their share of the blame for returning that fascist tyrant to the White House four years later.

The Walton Impeachment's Klimactic KlonKlusion

"Around and Around" by Harold Wahl in Sacramento Bee, Oct. 17, 1923

Today's Graphical History Tour makes one last stop at the impeachment of Oklahoma Governor Jack C. Walton in 1923.

"That Creepy Feeling" by W.K. Patrick in Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Oct. 31, 1923

As you of course recall, progressive Democrat Walton was elected Oklahoma's fifth Governor by a plurality in 1922, a year and a half after the Tulsa massacre, and soon began working to wrest local government and law enforcement from the clutches of the Ku Klux Klan. In September of 1923, he declared martial law in Tulsa and Okmulgee Counties, censoring the press, suspending habeas corpus, and authorizing a military tribunal to investigate and prosecute assaults and intimidation of citizens the Klan deemed less than "100% American."

This upset members of the Oklahoma legislature, some of whom were themselves members of the Klan; and on October 23, the Oklahoma House voted to impeach the Governor.

"When Night-hood Was in Flower" by Butler in Oklahoma Leader, Oklahoma City, Oct. 19, 1923

As I have noted before, it's a shame that Oklahoma's newspapers had no local editorial cartoonists in their regular employ, relying instead on syndicated cartoons from out-of-state. Some of those cartoonists supported Walton at first, but by the time he was impeached, nearly all agreed that he had overreached his authority. Several national editorial cartoonists ignored Oklahoma politics entirely, which probably suited Walton's censors just fine.

So one ends up with trifles such as Butler's "When Night-hood Was in Flower" series in the leftist Oklahoma Leader— a series which disappeared from that weekly newspaper after the issue carrying the above cartoon.

Ad in Jack Walton's Paper, Oklahoma City, Nov. 1, 1923

Responding to his impeachment, Walton and his allies published a newspaper of their own: a four-page broadsheet filled with bold, lurid headlines over accounts of Klan atrocities. This advertisement for a book appeared in some editions of the short-lived Jack Walton's Paper.

The cartoon Klansmen on Walton's book cover (assuming that this is an accurate depiction of it) certainly appears to have been inspired by a "Ding" Darling cartoon.

"Making the Citizens of Oklahoma Over Into 100% Americans" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, Sept. 18, 1923

The beaten woman in the ad also reminds me of another cartoon, but I have not been able to place it. Louis Raemaekers, perhaps?

Back at the impeachment proceedings, Gov. Walton demanded that his accusers in the legislature confess whether they were Klan members or not; but he was ruled out of order. Walton eventually stormed out of the Senate chambers, complaining that the trial was unfair.

"Well, Walton Is Out" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Nov. 26, 1923

On November 19, 1923, Walton was convicted on eleven of the House's 22 charges against him, and removed from office. Lieutenant Governor Martin Trapp, a conservative Democrat serving in that office under Walton and two previous governors, succeeded Walton as Governor for the remainder of his term. (State law limiting governors to a single term prohibited Trapp from running for a term of his own.)

Daniel Fitzpatrick may well have been the last editorial cartoonist paying any attention to Oklahoma politics. His cartoon notes the ouster of Governor Walton without approval or condemnation; but with a great deal of contempt for Oklahomans in general. Right down to their dogs.

There were plenty of issues with the Klan elsewhere, of course.

"The Sinister Hand" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, Nov. 8, 1923

On the same Memphis Commercial Appeal front page with this Alley cartoon about the Atlanta Grand Wizard's potential for influence in Memphis government were two unrelated reports about Klansmen on trial — in Houston, Texas, and Balstrup, Louisiana — and two more about warrants issued against Klan officials in Birmingham, Alabama, and the case in Atlanta of a Klan spokesman arrested for the murder of an attorney working for deposed Klan Wizard William Simmons.

"Is the Ku Klux Question Solving Itself" by Wm. C. Morris for Geo. Matthew Adams Service, ca. Nov. 19, 1923

Alley's cartoon appeared on the Commercial Appeal's front page on the date of municipal elections in Memphis. The Commercial Appeal supported the reelection of the incumbent mayor, Rowlett Payne, over two rivals, one of whom was allied with the Klan. As an Commercial Appeal editorial put it, challenger Joe Wood's ticket "runs on an issue imported from Atlanta, the leaders thereof now being engaged in a bloody feud among themselves."

"Poison" by J.P. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, Oct. 18, 1923

Payne would win reelection, with Wood coming in second.

I checked, and found that the doings of the Klan never piqued the interest of Atlanta Journal editorial cartoonist A.W. Brewerton at any point that November. Here's his cartoon on the same day (a Thursday) as Alley's "Halt, Memphis" cartoon above.

"Here and There in the News" by Alfred W. Brewerton in Atlanta Journal, Nov. 8, 1923

At the same time that the intra-Klan murder in Atlanta gave some like William Morris hope that the Klan was in deKline, the Texas State Fair devoted an entire day to the hate group. Imperial Wizard Hiram W. Evans gave a keynote speech to a crowd numbering upward of 75,000 Dragons, Klaybees and Cyclopses, decked out in their finest gold, purple, and scarlet robes and "100% American" buttons at the fair.

Evans charged that Black Americans were infested with tuberculosis and venereal disease, that Jews were an "unblendable" element in American society, and that "Do you realize, my friends, that the illiteracy of Europe is practically confined to Catholic countries?"

"The Hooded Cobra" by Al Frueh in New York World, ca. Nov. 16, 1923

I wonder if Frueh didn't mean "Klobra."

Q Toon: It's Rom-Complicated

Red, White, and Royal Blue is a movie adaptation of a book by Casey McQuiston streaming this month on amazon Prime. The romantic comedy stars Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galatzine as, respectively, the son of an American President and the second-in-line to the British throne, who initially can't stand each other. But they are thrown together by the protocol / damage control teams of the White House and Buckingham Palace after they accidentally destroy the seven-meter-tall cake at the wedding of Prince Henry's older brother.

And, of course, they end up falling in love with each other.

I haven't read the book, but I've seen the movie, and oodles of social media click-bait about it. LGBTQ media seem to be much more impressed with it than any straight media I've read. The thing LGBTQ media seem most impressed by, however, is that First Son Alex and Prince Henry are shown making out in the missionary position, which I guess straight people didn't know was a thing before. (The scene earned RW&RB an R rating, even though it's much tamer than much of what you'll see in heterosexual rom-coms. No butts or genitalia. Or grunting and groaning, for that matter.)

I'm not giving away the plot with that, by the way. A big difference between this rom-com and the standard heterosexual ones is that it's less about Will They Or Won't They than it is about Wait Till This Gets Out.

As with any rom-com, a certain suspension of belief is required. It's hard to imagine how the two could carry on their intercontinental love affair as long as they do without it showing up in the British tabloids. And a Democratic President —even one from Texas— letting her son convince her reelection team to focus on the Lone Star State to the apparent exclusion of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and several other swing states? Really?

And some things in the film are overly precious. Not only is the American President a woman, so is the British Prime Minister, who is Black and Caribbean to boot. Also, there is always someone with a Pride Flag in the paltry crowds at Alex's campaign appearances, even before he comes out as bisexual to his parents. I suppose that suggests that 10% of voters just have very good gaydar.

Naturally, fans are hoping for a sequel; the entertainment industry being what it is, if the movie is deemed successful, amazon won't leave well enough alone. In that case, a sequel about impeachment proceedings might not be any more far-fetched than anything in the original.

In any case, I would fully expect the sequel to include yet another wedding cake disaster.

Impeaching Kenesaw Mountain Landis

Have you had enough of impeachment proceedings yet? If not, you're in luck! 100 years ago this month, there was a move in Congress to impeach Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis.

Judge Landis was a crusty old fellow who had once told a convicted defendant who protested that he wouldn't live long enough to serve his five-year sentence, "You can try, can't you?" Two years after Teddy Roosevelt appointed him Judge of the U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois, he gained national prominence ruling against Standard Oil of Indiana in an antitrust case, fining the company the equivalent of $800 million in today's money. (His ruling was overturned in higher courts; it was not the only time that happened.) He also oversaw some high-profile draft resistance cases during World War I.

"It Must Be Some Job" by Harry Westerman in Ohio State Journal, Columbus, OH, Feb., 1921

And then there was baseball.

Landis had been the judge asked to rule in a 1915 antitrust lawsuit brought by the Federal Baseball League against the American and National Leagues; the Federal League ultimately withdrew its case and soon went out of business. Baseball fan Landis let it be known their lawsuit would have been "if not destructive, at least injurious to the game of baseball." 

In the shadow of the Black Sox Scandal, still making its way through the courts, the American and National Baseball Leagues turned to Judge Landis to be their commissioner in November, 1920, offering him a $42,500 salary (around $600,000 in 2021 dollars).

Charging that the leagues' hiring of Judge Landis was tantamount to bribery by "this illegal trust,"  Congressman Benjamin Welty (D-OH) urged Congress to impeach Landis and remove him from the bench:

"Judge Landis has a right to yield to the fleshpots of illegal combination, but he should not bring all our judiciary into ill-repute. If the country approves the dual role of Judge Landis, then the House will be called upon to preserve a new standard for our judiciary, because there are others who would be pleased to employ some judge 'for he is worth any price he might wish to ask."

In the Senate, Nathaniel Dial (D-SC) was also agitating for Landis to be tossed from the bench over the case of a bank clerk accused of embezzling $96,000 from the National City Bank of Ottawa, Illinois. Landis had let the clerk off with a light sentence, reasoning that the bank managers were themselves to blame, having paid the man a measly $90 per month. (According to Wikipedia, Landis issued this ruling in April, 1921, but I'm finding Dial citing the ruling as reason to impeach Landis in newspaper reports two months before that.) 

"That Kill the Umpire Spirit" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, Feb. 24, 1921

Landis dismissed both congressmen's allegations, telling a caller, "I'm not worried about this thing. Why, I'm no more interested in this than I am in the appointment of a new bellhop in that hotel across the street."

Welty, a Democrat, had lost his seat in the 1920 Republican landslide, so he would be out of office less than three weeks after moving for Landis's impeachment on February 15, 1921. By the time the 67th Congress adjourned in March, Rep. Welty's impeachment motion had made it no further than a House Judicial Subcommittee, which did refer it favorably to the full committee.

"The Defi" by Harry Murphy for Star Company, ca. March 1, 1921

As far as I can tell, an impeachment trial was never held, although the American Bar Association would eventually vote to censure the judge. Landis resigned from the federal bench in February, 1922, and would remain Commissioner of Baseball for almost a quarter century. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame the year he retired; and his name was on the Most Valuable Player award until last year, when it was removed over his sorry record against integrating the all-White major leagues.

✍

I had considered returning to 1991 for today's blog post, but I found that I have already posted nearly every cartoon from that February in these Saturday retrospectives. I might have instead dug up any cartoons I've drawn about Rush Limbaugh, who shuffled off his fetid coil this week, but in the interest of "De mortuis nil nisi bonum," I just don't feel like it. (Well, if you really must see them, there's a keyword link at the bottom of this post.)

I might have liked to come up with something a propos for African-American History Month, but I just haven't found any cartoons from February, 1921 that aren't cringeworthy. It's not as if there was nothing a cartoonist couldn't have drawn about. The Klan assured the Dallas Express that it wasn't prejudiced against Blacks; White newspapers made sure that if a Black man were accused of a crime, the first word in the headline was "Negro"; and I was starting to think that there winter was a slow season for lynching, until I checked out the Black newspapers.

But, as I said, I found no cartoons about any of that.

So I went back to get a number of cartoons I'd come across about Judge Landis, only to find that quite a few of the websites I rely upon don't seem to be working. This week's weather may be to blame for a couple of them; others I can't explain. Once those sites are up and running again, I may come back and add some  more cartoons here.

Meanwhile, there's still another Saturday this month. Since when did February get to be so long?

Q Toon: Lindsey Explains It All

 

I get annoyed by right-wing editorial cartoonists who do little more than illustrate a Republican Talking Point day after day, so I have to apologize for doing the same with a Democratic one.

My cartoon this week is taken almost verbatim from a comment I made on Facebook last week and subsequently saw made and memed by others. If I didn't find Lindsey Graham's duplicity particularly galling, I probably would have left this cartoon undrawn.

Senator Graham was a House trial manager in the impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton over aforementioned blow job. On January 16, 1999, then-Representative Graham told Senators:

“When a president gets out of bounds, and doesn't do as he or she should do, constitutionally -- and I would argue that every president and every citizen has a constitutional duty not to cheat another citizen, especially the president -- and they get out of bounds, it is up to us to put them back in bounds or declare it illegal.

"And how do we do that? How do we regulate presidential misconduct when it's done in a presidential fashion? Through the laws and powers of impeachment. That is why we're here today. ...

What's a high crime? How 'bout if an important person hurt somebody of low means? It's not very scholarly, but I think it's the truth. I think that's what they meant by 'high crimes.' Doesn't even have to be a crime. Just when you start using your office and you're acting in a way that hurts people, you've committed a high crime. ...

You don’t even have to be convicted of a crime to lose your job in this constitutional republic if this body determines that your conduct as a public official is clearly out of bounds in your role. Impeachment is not about punishment. Impeachment is about cleansing the office. Impeachment is about restoring honor and integrity to the office.”

Democratic House trial managers played Graham's argument at last year's impeachment over that perfect phone call to the President of Ukraine. It didn't sway him from his slavish fealty to Donald Berzelius Trump then, and neither did his momentary revulsion against the events of January 6 this time around.

Dismissing last week's House trial managers' presentation out of hand as "offensive and absurd," Graham went on to blame Speaker Nancy Pelosi for somehow having a hand in the insurrection, and he even threatened to impeach Vice President Kamala Harris over last year's Black Lives Matter riots as soon as Republicans win back the House.

Now that would be offensive and absurd.

Ta

Read more here: https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article230483449.html#storylink=cpy

Trump's Legal Team Present Their Opening Arguments

But seriously...

Part of Trump's lawyers' argument yesterday was that although a president doesn't enjoy a "January Exception," once you impeach a president who is out of office, the process becomes inherently political. Any ex-president, they say, could be impeached by any Congress of the opposite party.

The alternative to impeachment, however, would be to charge an ex-president with a criminal offense in court. We've just had a president who regarded the Justice Department as his own personal errand boy; we have seen how someone as mentally and constitutionally unhinged as Donald J. Trump can overcome all the obstacles our Founding Fathers set in his way and get elected to the presidency. It CAN happen here, again.

 

In what way would having the Attorney General file charges against a former president of the opposite party be seen as any less political?

Now, Now, Little Lady

Less than a month after hordes of Trumpanzees stormed the U.S. Capitol, egged on by a defeated President who simply couldn't wrap his mind around the idea that losing an election means you have to leave office, the Republican Party came out firmly in favor of forgetting all about it.

The Arizona GOP has officially censured fellow Republicans Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, former Sen. Jeff Flake, and Cindy McCain (widow of the party's 2008 presidential nominee) for having the temerity to suggest that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. Oregon's GOP issued a letter claiming that the assault on the Capitol was somehow a "false flag" operation perpetrated by liberals. And all but five U.S. Senate Republicans voted to declare the House's January 13, 2021 vote to impeach Trump unconstitutional, because a week later, Trump wasn't president any more.

Since it is settled law that you can't charge a president with a crime and haul him into court, that leaves only impeachment. Republicans were quick to impeach back when they cornered a Democrat into lying about a blow job; their position back then was that censure simply wouldn't do.

For weeks, Democrats in the minority had pushed for a floor vote — censuring Bill Clinton for his behavior and substituting a censure resolution for impeachment articles by sending the latter back to the House Judiciary Committee. The parliamentary tactic was rejected as non-germane; an appeal vote failed and House Democrats briefly exited the chamber in protest.

So we have the problem today of whether and how to hold a president accountable for his actions when he or she is supposed to be handing the office over to someone else.

I have not found any evidence that our Founding Fathers ever considered the possibility of a future President of the United States refusing to accept the results of an election that he lost. Somehow, the very idea was inconceivable; John Adams and his son were none too happy to turn the presidency over to Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, respectively, but they did it without filing spurious lawsuits, firing half the Justice Department, or entertaining pillow salesmen's proposals for martial law.

Likewise Martin Van Buren, Millard Fillmore, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, Herbert Hoover, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush all dutifully handed over the keys to the Oval Office to the men who defeated their bids for reelection.

Woodrow Wilson, whatever his faults, recognized that if he lost his 1916 reelection bid (which appeared to be the case when he and the morning papers went to bed Election Night), that the four months before Charles Evans Hughes would be sworn in to succeed him could leave the U.S. without solid leadership with World War I raging overseas. Wilson reportedly planned to appoint Hughes Secretary of State, then resign along with Vice President Marshall so that Hughes could take over sooner.

Donald Trump's disgraceful behavior may be an outlier now, but there is no guarantee that it won't become standard procedure in the future.

In fact, there is every indication that, at least as far a the ReTrumplican Party is concerned, that is exactly what will happen.

2020 in Masochistic Review

As is my wont on Circumcision of Our Lord Day, I pause to reflect on the headlines and cartoons of the year gone by.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?

Sounds like an attractive plan of action this time around.

Ruffles and Churlishness

Did you listen to Donald Joffrey Trump venting his spleen all over the National Prayer Breakfast and White House East Room?

If so, you have my condolences. I had been listening to NPR yesterday and had to turn it off lest I fall violently ill.

I'll let Chris Cillizza pick through the sea of bile:

Trump spent the bulk of his stream-of-consciousness "speech" savaging his various enemies, which included, well, almost everyone not in the room.
"It was evil, it was corrupt," Trump said of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, which concluded that the Russians sought to actively interfere to help Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton.
"We caught 'em in the act ... dirty cops, bad people," Trump said of, well, something.
"We went through Russia, Russia, Russia ... and it was all bullshit," Trump said.
"Little did we know we were running against some bad and evil people," Trump said.
"A man who got James Comey to choke -- and he was just talking in his regular voice," Trump said of Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley. (Trump went on to call Comey, the former FBI director, a "sleazebag.")
"There were some that used religion as a crutch. ... A failed presidential candidate so things can happen when you fail so badly running for president," Trump said of Sen. Mitt Romney, who voted to convict Trump on abuse of power.
"A guy who can't stand the fact that he ran one of the worst campaign in the history of the country," Trump added on Romney.
"Two low-lifes," Trump said of former FBI officials Lisa Page and Peter Strzok.
"Adam Schiff is a vicious horrible person," Trump said of the California Democrat.
"Nancy Pelosi is a horrible person. ... I doubt she prays at all," Trump said of the Speaker of the House.
"They want to destroy our country," Trump said of Democrats.
"Top scum," Trump said of the FBI leadership.

Hoarseness indicating that he must have been screaming late into the night and bellowing at the White House staff all morning, Trump singled out Senator Mitt Romney, the sole Republican to vote his conscience, for special abuse.

"I don't like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong," Trump said Thursday at the National Prayer Breakfast, a typically apolitical event.
That statement was a not-so-veiled reference to Romney, who said on the Senate floor ahead of his vote: "As a Senate juror, I swore an oath before God to exercise impartial justice."
Trump doubled down on his castigation of Romney during an East Room speech in which he declared victory.
"And then you had some that used religion as a crutch. They never used it before," Trump said. "But you know, it's a failed presidential candidate, so things can happen when you fail so badly running for president."
Trump later added, when addressing Utah's other Republican senator, Mike Lee, at the victory ceremony, "Say hello to the people of Utah. And tell them I'm sorry about Mitt Romney."

The two events were disgusting, petulant, churlish performances that whoever the Democratic nominee is this fall should probably force us to listen to again and again.

But as Cillizza points out, what is even worse is that all the Republicans in the East Room clapped and cheered all of this.

Well, that's not terribly surprising. We've seen the antics of Jim Jordan and Devin Nunes and Rand Paul and the rest throughout this impeachment process. We've seen Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham swear an oath to be impartial in the Senate trial after they publicly announced that they would not.

But what astonishes me is that, by all accounts that I've read, not one person walked out of that heretofore non-political National Prayer Breakfast.

We all know that Trump wouldn't know Two Corinthians from Article Two of the Constitution. But nobody was offended by his self-righteous tantrum at the podium?

None of the clergymen and women who told reporters how disappointed they were? Not even the featured speaker whose talk was all about going beyond mere civility and tolerance to love one's enemies and reject contempt?

Nobody?

Q Toon: Acquittal Now...

It's been one hell of a week in U.S. politics, and it ain't even over.

Iowa Democrats couldn't figure out their state-of-the-art caucus results app on Monday. Tuesday on live TV, Trump gave a Presidential Medal of Freedom to a guy about whom the nicest thing you can say about him is that he's got stage IV cancer; and Nancy Pelosi tore up the speech.

The U.S. Senate, as expected, voted Wednesday to exonerate Donald Berzelius Trump of both impeachment charges against him. The votes were largely along party lines; Mitt Romney was the lone Republican to vote with the Democrats on Article One — so I have to apologize for 25% of this meme the other day.

Heck, I almost regret all those cartoons I drew critical of him in 2012. We could have done a lot worse than Romney for president. And eventually did.

With all that has transpired this week, you might be forgiven if you've forgotten all those Superbowl commercials companies spent $435 million upon (roughly the Gross National Product of Tonga) in the hopes of dazzling football and Latin music fans on Sunday night. Tide shelled out a good portion of that total on a series of ads starring It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's Charlie Day wandering hither and yon with a stain setting on his shirt.

I had hoped to come up with something based on any of the LGBTQ-friendly commercials. There were several of them, I assume, because San Francisco's team was in the game. Amazon featured Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi heading out for the evening. One Million Crabby Moms complained about a pair of drag queens in a garish commercial for Sabra hummus. Lil Nas X had cooler dance moves than CGI Sam Elliot for Doritos.

For my money, the ads were neither inspired nor inspiring. I almost had a different cartoon drawn until I discovered that at least two nationally distributed editorial cartoonists had already published the exact same idea. I ended up drawing McConnell's Crew and the Oobleck into the wee hours of the morning.

And I have waited all week without seeing Tide's #LaundryLater commercial on TV ever since. They must have blown their whole annual ad budget on Sunday.

Impeach Bill, Volume 2

Last week, Starrcrossedback Saturday thrilled and delighted dozens of you with a handful of my cartoons leading up to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

September, 1998

Just to summarize, certain Republicans eager to overturn the popular election results had been looking for grounds to impeach Clinton from the very day he was sworn into office. When his denial under oath of having had "sexual relations" with a White House intern was proven false by what the mainstream media delicately called "DNA evidence" on her dress, Republicans had their fumus boni iuris.

Q Syndicate, October, 1998

In the U.S., there's always an election coming up; the Republican Congress launched their impeachment proceedings on October 8, with just one month left until midterms.

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, November 10, 1998

Midterms in the sixth year of any presidency tend to go very poorly for the incumbent president's party, but 1998 turned out to be an exception to the rule. Republicans didn't lose enough seats to forfeit their majority in either chamber of Congress, but Democrats gained five seats in the House and held even in both the Senate and gubernatorial races.

in UW-M Post, December 15, 1998

Thus Democrats could complain loudly about Republicans' push to impeach, but they couldn't stop it, even though some Republicans hoped to find some lesser punishment the Congress might agree upon. Members of both parties offered bills to censure Clinton instead, a statement of formal reprimand carrying no enforcement or penalty, but none ever came to the floor for a vote.

Q Syndicate, December, 1998

Instead, the House voted to impeach Clinton on December 19, 1998, so Chief Justice of the Supreme Court William Rehnquist went right out and got some celebratory gold stripes stitched onto the sleeves of his judicial robe. (Yeah, Jerry Springer wasn't available.)  The Senate trial lasted from January 7 to February 12, forcing Clinton to deliver his State of the Union address while the impeachment trial was underway. But in the end, not only did Republicans fall short of the two-thirds majority vote to remove Clinton from office, they came up six votes short of even a simple majority.

in UW-M Post, February 2, 1999

The problem Republicans faced was that the electorate knew that Bill Clinton was a philandering, slick-tongued good ol' boy when we elected him, and we didn't care.

Much the same as the Democrats' problem now: a well-distributed minority of the electorate knew that Donald Trump was a corrupt, self-absorbed, lying bully when they elected him. And they're never going to care.

in UW-M Post, February 2, 1999

In presenting Trump's case this week, attorney Jay Sekulow played remarks Chuck Schumer, Zoe Lofgren, Jerry Nadler and other congressional Democrats made last time around, making much the same arguments that Republicans are making this time around. That impeachment Clinton would negate the previous election. That going ahead would mean that every president with a Congressional majority of the other party will be impeached. That the process is political.

Well, yes. The process is political. The founding fathers envisioned it that way; that's why impeachment isn't decided by the courts. (The founding fathers envisioned that senators would be representatives of their respective state legislatures, not of their political party; but we're stuck with what the system has become, and I don't think repealing the 17th Amendment would be much of a help anyway.)

And maybe. The Republicans' defense team has already started their preemptive impeachment trial of possible President-to-Be Joe Biden, prosecuted by the former Florida Attorney General bought off by President Trump, Pam Bondi. If they retake a majority in the House in 2020 or 2022, they're all set to go. Just like they were in 2016 if the election had gone the other way.

But no. Removing a president does not negate the previous election. Bob Dole would not have been inaugurated president in 1999, and Hillary Clinton won't get to move back into the White House this year no matter what. Al Gore might even have been a stronger candidate in 2000 running as the incumbent. By the Trump lawyers' logic, the only U.S. President in history that any Congress was constitutionally allowed to impeach and remove from office was the unelected Gerald Ford — which, ironically, would have elevated a Democrat to the presidency.