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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023

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https://apple.news/APEuOPHP2TWqeUTR_h8QypA

So the Republican speaker of the house has decided to open an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden’s business dealings with hunter. I have serious doubts that this will go very far as democrats still control the senate. This looks like an attempt to stir up the base for re-election season.

I personally see this as a big distraction as we have a lot of very serious problems that need to be addressed. BRICs, Taiwan, Ukraine, inflation, and

A few news articles I've read have mentioned that McCarthy announced the inquiry without a vote of the House because he thinks he wouldn't have the votes to get it to pass. The article you linked even quotes a Republican who says they'd vote against it. If McCarthy doesn't have the votes to even open an inquiry I'm skeptical he would have the votes to actually pass any articles they had drafted. It would be a pretty amusing end to this that Republicans spend all this time investigating Biden and aren't united enough to actually pass the articles that are the result of that investigation.

Somewhat amusingly Politico reports there's a Trump era Office of Legal Counsel memo that claims federal executive agencies can ignore subpoenas in impeachment inquiries unless those inquiries are opened in response to a vote of the House.

I think Republicans are making a category error. They think Ukraine and Lewinsky impeachments hurt the impeaching party because Americans don’t like impeachments.

The alternative explanation is Americans don’t like bullshit impeachments. Watergate helped democrats. Indeed, once the evidence mounted if the democrats didn’t do something it would’ve hurt them.

I imagine if the inquiry is able to put together a very strong case (there already is a very large amount of evidence — the inquiry will need to find a bit more hard evidence and put it together) republicans and even some democrats will be forced to vote to impeach.

I imagine if the inquiry is able to put together a very strong case (there already is a very large amount of evidence — the inquiry will need to find a bit more hard evidence and put it together) republicans and even some democrats will be forced to vote to impeach.

Color me skeptical. What is the evidence, not currently known, that this inquiry will find that will convince the currently skeptical Republicans and Democrats to vote for articles of impeachment?

Bank records