Blogger Jack Hassard posted Rep. Adam Schiff’s brilliant closing speech.

it is only four minutes.

Please watch.

And weep.

Categories Character

16 Comments Post your own or leave a trackback: Trackback URL

Joe Nathan says:

February 5, 2020 at 12:03 pm

Brilliant.

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dienne77 says:

February 5, 2020 at 12:12 pm

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/01/adam-schiff-warmonger-impeachment-ukraine-russia-syria

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- Roy Turrentine says:
  
  February 5, 2020 at 12:57 pm
  
  I am reminded of the statement made by the defense team when they suggested that Obama had sold out American interests when he was president. This is the constant guilty response: everybody does it. All my life, Nixon supporters have told me that Nixon was just the one who got caught. Roger Ailes started Fox news essentially for the same reason. When I have to discipline a child, his response is normally to point out other parties guilty of other crimes.
  
  None of this matters. The operant question is simple. Did He do it, and is this grounds for removal? Lamar Alexander answered yes to 1 and no to 2. Others have answered double yes or double no.
  
  The real questions do not address the corruption of any of the participants except the president. Jurors are only challenged in a trial in the preliminary arguments about seating a jury. This is not applicable since the jury is defined constitutionally.
  
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- dianeravitch says:
  
  February 5, 2020 at 1:33 pm
  
  I hope Adam Schiff is elected to the Senate when Diane Feinstein retires.
  
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Bob Shepherd says:

February 5, 2020 at 1:01 pm

You said it all, Diane.

Republican Integrity. R.I.P. Gone but not forgotten.

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- dianeravitch says:
  
  February 5, 2020 at 1:31 pm
  
  By the standards of Trump’s party, Ike was a Communist.
  
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  - retiredbutmissthekids says:
    
    February 6, 2020 at 2:36 am
    
    Yes, wow, Diane! & Ike was the one who started the beginning of the end for Joe McCarthy (we just finished watching the excellent PBS doc “American Experience: McCarthy”). Especially in these dark times, it is a MUST see. Do many parallels…so many people in Congress absolutely enslaved in fear of this “man.”
    Not a man…a monster, just like the guy in the WH.
- Ed Johnson says:
  
  February 5, 2020 at 10:42 pm
  
  Here’s Mitt Romney…
  
  Reply
  - Ed Johnson says:
    
    February 5, 2020 at 10:46 pm
    
    Never mind. Just now saw it in a later post by Diane.
retired teacher says:

February 5, 2020 at 1:10 pm

Schiff’s speech was excellent and thoughtful. It pointed out that we cannot assume that anyone running for the presidency is honorable. We need to take another look at check and balances, and write some new legislation that will make specific changes. Let’s start with requiring a presidential candidate to show five years of tax returns.

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- dianeravitch says:
  
  February 5, 2020 at 1:30 pm
  
  If you read Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist Paper explaining the reason for the electoral college (I think it is #68, but am sitting in an airport so doublecheck), you will learn that the Founding Fathers feared that the people might be tricked into electing a charlatan. The electoral college was supposed to be the wisest men from each state, who would prevent a demagogue from being elected. They foresaw the danger of someone like Trump and tried to think of a check against his ascension. That didn’t work.
  
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  - Mamie Krupczak Allegretti says:
    
    February 5, 2020 at 2:36 pm
    
    Unfortunately, I don’t think the Republicans have been tricked. They KNOW what they are doing, and they know it’s WRONG. I often think that maybe we need to know real tyranny so that we can know and work for liberty. It’s frightening because it’s the stuff revolutions are made of. And it won’t be pretty.
Lloyd Lofthouse says:

February 5, 2020 at 5:48 pm

Shiff spoke truth to corruption and tyranny.

But he was wrong about the Senators he was talking to when he said they were all good and decent and not like Trump.

He was wrong, because every Senator that voted to find Trump, innocent, was evil and corrupt beyond reason. Every vote that favored Trump came from a traitor.

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GregB says:

February 5, 2020 at 11:22 pm

“Decency matters” resonates on so many levels. But what generates affronts to our public decency? Is there a sense of public decency at all? Personal decency is relatively easy to figure out. Recall Joseph Walsh’s immortal words to Joe McCarthy: “Have you no sense of decency?” What most of us forget was that these specific words were not targeted at the terror of McCarthyism was afflicting on the governance of the nation—although there is no denying the words fit. They were triggered by McCarthy’s violation of a gentleman’s agreement that he would keep the name of a young associate of Walsh’s who was briefly in the Communist Party. It was easier to extrapolate his private rage into a greater public truth, especially in retrospect. But what kind of public actions violate our senses of personal decency to our cores and, more importantly, to act. I think that’s what Schiff was talking about. Although I have not yet read “Slaying Goliath” but intend to soon, it seems to me from what I’ve seen that this might be a subtext of the book.

Julia Boyd’s fascinating history, “Travelers in the Third Reich,” highlights the complex reactions of tourists, mostly British, to Germany in the 20s and 30s. She cites a knighted historian “whose benign view of the Nazis lasted longer than was decent.” In comparing this to our situation, it is obvious that we can’t even agree on what is decent in the public sphere anymore. Bringing it home, as a society, we can’t even agree on the basic value and importance of public education, which seems to me as basic an example of public decency I can imagine.

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ponderosa says:

February 6, 2020 at 12:11 am

Adam Schiff is the model citizen. How was he educated? That should guide any civics education schemes henceforth.

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Mamie Krupczak Allegretti says:

February 6, 2020 at 11:43 am

I watched this again.This is a brilliant speech. It really does hit you, doesn’t it?

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