I spent some time this morning reading up in Wikipedia on the lives of the politicians serving on the House Judiciary Committee. If your working theory is that their place in the world owes more to their high ambition than to their high merit, you tend not to find a lot to make you reconsider. Most are lawyers. I guess I vaguely knew, but had forgotten, that US News & World Report ranks institutions of higher learning, including law schools. When you read in Wikipedia that, for example, Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, Republican from Pennsylvania, is a graduate of Dusquesne University School of Law, in Pittsburgh, that information is a hyperlink and, clicking it, you are taken to the article on his alma mater, which includes the information that, according to USNWR, it's the 119th best law school in the United States. I'm picking on Reschenthaler not entirely at random: he made a poor impression on me while boasting yesterday that he could, "in a minute," win an acquittal for Trump in a court of law, and that he'd also have no trouble winning a conviction in an obstruction case against Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the Intelligence Committee.
Sure.
Speaking of people who rub me the wrong way, Jim Jordan's law school is Capital University, in Ohio. Can't tell you exactly where USNWR ranks this school because they simply group 146 through 192 together—I guess maybe there are 192 law schools in the country?—and Capital U's law school is in this undifferentiated bottom group. No wonder Jordan despises "the elites," an imaginary pejorative whose place of honor in the working vocabulary of many Republicans is a whispered admission that the smart and hard working boys and girls aren't buying what they're selling. After all, not everyone can fail to notice that the various defenses of Trump's conduct frequently contradict one another. “Ukraine couldn't have been pressured if it didn't even know the money was being withheld!” And, “Trump was withholding the money until satisfied that the new leader was keeping his promises about fighting corruption!”
But in that case Trump should have announced to Ukraine that the money was being withheld until it displayed satisfactory progress in its anti-corruption campaign. What would be the point of keeping the hold a secret when you are leaning on Ukraine in pursuit of a legitimate end? Not to mention a million other reasons this line of argument is a croc, such as the testimony of Gordon Sondland, Trump's own appointee (and million-dollar donor), who told Schiff's committee that Trump didn't care about an investigation into the alleged corruption of the energy company that Biden's kid worked for: he just wanted an announcement of an investigation televised on CNN—that was enough.
The exasperation displayed by Rep. Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, in the above clip is entirely warranted. According to the Wikipedia article about him, Raskin is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School. The typical Trump voter isn't impressed, but the pathetic and insecure object of their affection cares deeply about this kind of stuff. Had Jim Jordan gone to Harvard, Trump would know and would talk him up more. He’s always yammering about how So-and-So who opposes him is "a low IQ individual," and Michael Cohen, his personal lawyer and fixer who's presently incarcerated, testified to a congressional committee that Trump once directed him to write letters to schools he (Trump) had attended, threatening dire consequences if his grades or SAT scores were ever released. (One such letter may be viewed here.)
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