THE IMPEACHMENT TRIAL WINDS DOWN – OVERNIGHT:   It's almost over.  The Washington farce, the second impeachment of Donald J. Trump, is nearing its end.  The former president's representatives did rather well in the closing hours of the formal statements.  From Powerline: 

The defense of Donald Trump at his impeachment trial got off to a rocky start earlier this week.

There’s no denying that.

Today, however, the defense team came back strong in its closing argument. Trump’s lawyers used only about two and half hours of their allotted 16 to respond to the House managers’ case. That was enough to demolish it and to show the dishonesty of the managers’ presentation...

...As I’ve said before, I think there is a decent, although ultimately unpersuasive, case for impeachment. But the House was in too big a rush to have made that case. The Article of Impeachment is an embarrassment, so it’s not surprising that the managers relied on emotion and distortion, rather than reason, in presenting it.

I doubt that more than five Republican Senators — the hard core anti-Trumpers — will vote to convict the former president. A sixth Republican, Sen. Cassidy, voted with the five on the question of whether a former president can be tried. Cassidy said that this vote, defensible on the merits, resulted from the weakness of the defense team’s argument on a close constitutional question.

Today, the defense team’s arguments were strong, so that any inclination Cassidy might have had to vote to convict has probably vanished.

The defense team took plenty of heat for arguing the constitutional question so poorly, and rightly so. But it should be commended for the substance and brevity of today’s effort.

COMMENT:  Agreed.  The Democrats act as if we have a student government, not a real government.  Or, they're getting practice for running a co-op board in a retirement community. 

It'll be over soon, but the Dems will find a way to punish Donald Trump.  It's good for CNN's ratings.

February 12, 2021