#it could be that our interpretations of op's post are incompatible

[bisexualbaker]

See, here I was reading it as OP is saying that the idea that m/f ships can't be good on the basis of the participants' gender alone is bad, not that anyone has to like them. There's plenty of objectively good media out there that I'm not even remotely interested in. But I haven't read OP's tags, so it's true I might be missing something.

"how can m/f ships be good-" first of all through the power of bisexuality anything is possible so write that down. second of all if we start othering ships based on gender and nothing else we're no better than the opposition. third of all you need to watch more addams family

[twitchywitchybxtch]

Can Witchcraft Be Biblical? A Christian Witch Weighs in:

I have been following this discourse for the last several days and feel led to weigh in. Here are the definitions of certain terms I will be using throughout this piece:

The Law/Mosaic Law: the 613 commandments found in the Torah (the first 5 books of the Old Testament) that Jews abide by in practicing their religion

The New Covenant: the annulment of Mosaic Law for Christians through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ

Yahweh: one of the names of God; used by the Israelites in the Old Testament

Divination: the art of foretelling future events or gaining supernatural insight through the interpretation of symbols, arrangements, patterns, etc.

Witchcraft: an umbrella term that refers to rituals performed to gain insight, influence the physical & spiritual realm, or commune with deities and other supernatural beings

Abrogate: to abolish, do away with, annul

It is also important to define the scope of this discussion, which is solely concerned with ‘Christian witchcraft,’ that is people who utilize witchcraft as an expression of their faith in God. This post will rebut (dropslikerain)’s claim that a Christian faith and the practice of witchcraft are completely incompatible. I recommend reading through the original post explaining their positions before continuing.

A large portion of their argument is based on Deuteronomy 18:10 & Leviticus 20:6, which are part of the Torah (Mosaic Law). However, in doing so, they neglect to mention that:

The Law is no longer binding under the New Covenant. It was abrogated through Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross.

Consider these verses:

Here, Jesus states that the Law is only binding until “all is accomplished.” What is being accomplished? Christian tradition holds that Jesus Christ fulfilled all of the Messianic prophesies in the Old Testament during his lifetime. And so, Jesus says “it is finished” before his death to mark the fulfillment, and thus, abrogates the Law.

On this topic, the Apostle Paul, stated in his letter to the Romans:

Thus, because we are discharged from the Law, verses from the Torah like Deut. 18:10 & Lev. 20:6 are not a valid basis upon which to condemn witchcraft for non-Jews.

Let’s now address the verses OP cited from the early prophetic portion of the Bible, 1 Chronicles 10:13, 1 Samuel 15:23, and 2 Kings 17:17.

The first thing to remember is that these books were written before Jesus abrogated the Law; worshipers of Yahweh were still bound to the Laws of Moses, including its prohibitions on witchcraft.

Saul, being the king of the Jewish people, was held to a particularly high standard of obedience to the Law, for he was the Jewish representative to the nations. However, he failed to uphold this standard, and naturally, the Jews attributed his death to disobedience.

Because the Jews at that time were still bound by (and subsequently disobedient to) prohibitions on divination in Mosaic Law, it is valid to say that the exile could have been linked to divination. However, I would argue that passages such as Jeremiah 14:14 refer to divination performed as a part of worshiping the Near Eastern deities Baal & Asherah who competed for popularity with Yahweh among the the Jews and their neighbors. Divination in this context would undeniably be a sin, for it also constituted idolatry. However, in Isaiah 3:1-3, the prophet Isaiah makes clear that diviners and enchanters were righteous and necessary parts of the Jewish community by putting them on par with judges, prophets, dignitaries, and warriors. 

OP notably failed to address this in their response to previous users who brought it up.

Because Jesus has abrogated the Law, the standards that Saul and the Israelites were held to no longer apply.

This begs the question, however: If we aren’t bound by the Law, what moral code are supposed to live by? Are laws such as the Ten Commandments now invalid?

Of course not! If we as a community determine that parts of the Law are good and righteous, we are free to follow them. However, we are no longer bound specifically to the Mosaic code. Instead, we are called to live out the words of Jesus Christ.

Jesus sets out a simple test in Matthew 7 for us to distinguish between acts of good and evil:

The Ten commandments are generally believed to produce righteous conduct (good fruit), and thus remain a standard that Christians are encouraged to live by.

We are called not to abide specifically by Mosaic Law but  simply to live in a manner which produces “good fruit” in accordance with the Will of God.

Now, what about the verses in Galatians where the Apostle Paul condemns sorcery? Or those in Revelations?

It is no coincidence that ‘idolatry’ and ‘sorcery’ are grouped together in these lists, for in this time, witchcraft was synonymous with the Greco-Roman pagan religions. The influence of pagan religions on Christian thought is evident in the word choice of authors in the New Testament. For instance, 2 Peter 2:4 describes angels being cast into Tartarus and Revelation 20:13 states that “Death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them.” (NRSV) It is clear that New Testament authors had pagan culture (and thus pagan magic) on their mind when writing.

In the same way that Mosaic Law was given to Israel to promote unity and differentiate their tribe from other Near East cultures so that the Yahwist religion could take hold, Paul advises the early Christian churches against practices associated with pagan worship so that the Christian church could unify and differentiate from the pagan cultures surrounding them.

This advice served its purpose, establishing the Church as a distinct and long-lasting entity. However:

Total separation from mystic practices is no longer necessary to maintain the Christian religion.

Paul disapproved of pagan witchcraft, but numerous passages from the Old Testament indicate that God approves of, (or at the very least, tolerates) practices that fall under the umbrella of witchcraft so long as they are used for discernment and implementation of His will.

Numerous others throughout this discussion have explained the Biblical evidence for this, so I will only restate their points briefly:

Urim and Thummim - a pair of gemstones used as divinatory tools to discern the Will of God

Jacob’s folk ritual to produce more valuable livestock; it doesn’t matter whether the results were produced by the ritual itself or through solely through divine intervention, the importance of this passage is that Jacob performed what he believed to be effective folk magic and was not rebuked by God.

Joseph’s gift of oneiromancy (dream interpretation) and divination through the silver chalice

Priestly rituals utilizing curses, sympathetic magic, and divine invocation to determine guilt or innocence (Numbers 5)

(If you’re interested in learning more, I encourage you to take a look at responses to the original post.)

A close reading of Scripture shows that:

Witchcraft that 1) produces “good fruit;” 2) is used to discern and implement the Will of God; and 3) does not invoke deities other than God, is practiced in accordance with the Scriptures, and thus allows for someone to identify as both a Christian and a witch.

Here are some parting words from the Gospel of John:

We are judged not by adherence to the Law nor by our particular path, but by whether we live our lives according to the teachings of Jesus Christ (who, coincidently says nothing about witchcraft). That means producing “good fruit” --caring for the poor, welcoming the immigrant, living a life of love, joy, and peace. None of those require adherence to a particular creed or church; it is a moral Law written on our hearts simply by virtue of having a conscience (Romans 2:15).

Finally, to the community of witches here on Tumblr, do not be disheartened by those who try to bully you, to put you down in order to raise themselves up. After all, those who spew hateful words in the name of Christ violate His commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself.” 

(Tags for blogs who might be interested in adding on: pastorwitch, christowitch, secretcatholicwitch, sweetcreamcoven, marymagdalaa, stained-glass-sins, alligorical-rodeo-clown, @spell-bound-life, @religiousdifferencesdating @witchesforjesus @witchylutheran @witchforgod @a-magic-floofer @episcopagan @the-witch-and-her-rosary @christian-witchy-business @witchpriest @lilelvenwitch @sagewolfsbos @tinychristianwitch @queerjesuswitch @minimalistchristianwitch @thesouthernmystic @secretcatholicwitch @thefeatherwitch @magickalwitchblog @herbs-and-nerds @witchyjesuswalk @eclectic-christian-witch @smolchristianwitch @spell-bound-life @the-holiest-witch)

[footybromanceastrology]

Gerlonso, Part 5: There Will Be Pain

Part 1    Part 2    Part 3    Part 4

This final part is very, very long. And it will not be happy.

But you already knew that. You knew it back when you read the first words of Part 1. This is Gerlonso. There was never going to be a happy ending.

Gerrard may have his T-square(s), but Xabi Alonso’s horoscope suggests the possibility of its own conundrum. There’s an inherent incompatibility in the chart’s two dominant energies: the powerful, unpredictable, revolutionary energy of the Sun-Uranus conjunction in Sagittarius and the combined energy of buttoned down Venus in Capricorn and attention-avoidant Mars in Virgo, both linked with Moon/Mercury in secretive, suspicious Scorpio. 

However, Alonso appears to be balancing these two impulses rather well. He adeptly uses his considerable financial resources to create an image that harmoniously blends the energies of Capricorn, Virgo, and Scorpio via his focus on a traditional aesthetic, his professed loathing of anything flashy, and his cautious, almost Libra-like interview answers.

He effectively uses that image as a shield to deflect most of the nasty criticism that restless players often come in for. (Let’s be honest, it’s almost unfair how successfully he’s managed all those moves.) He also is able to incorporate gentler manifestations of the Sun-Uranian energy into his image such as a reputation for intelligence, a pronounced eclecticism, and a love of technology.

It was easy to spot the needs present in Gerrard’s horoscope, but Alonso’s horoscope initially makes one ask, What does this man actually need from other human beings? 

Well, like any Sun-Uranus (in Sagittarius no less), he’s got a need for constant mental and intellectual stimulation. For me, one of the strongest signs of his strong admiration for Gerrard is the fact that he often looks at Gerrard as though Stevie has sparked his curiosity or has amused him. If you’re into someone who leads with Sagittarius, Gemini, or Uranian energy, you want that person to look at your like Xabi looks at Stevie:

Originally posted by wrotefootballficiregretnothing

Originally posted by duckflyfly

You also want that person to want to talk to you:

originally posted by 30052511

Ah, but this is still skimming the surface. We want to look at needs. Deep ones. And it turns out there is a genuine locus of darkness tucked away in the horoscope of The Man With the Golden Image. And to understand it is to understand the true depth of The Tragedy of Gerlonso.

We’ve spent a lot of time on Gerrard’s Saturn, the beleaguered tension point in his T-square. We’ve talked about how Xabi’s Venus in Capricorn is a lighthouse in the fog to that poor Saturn. However, we’ve ignored Xabi’s Saturn. Of course, one can never truly ignore the Time Lord. Alonso’s sits in Libra and makes a near-perfect square to Venus in Capricorn. The Venus that is asked to do so much work for Xabi when it comes to The Image. It’s tough to place such a burden on a planet so badly afflicted by Saturn, and I’m genuinely impressed that he’s able to use the energy so deftly. Hard Venus-Saturn aspects are wretched things. The simple truth is that most people with these aspects have terrible self-esteem, particularly when it comes to their appearance and image.

Yes, I am asking you to believe that this man looks in the mirror and is unsure about what he sees:

I know this seems insane, but self-doubt is the classic signature of hard Venus-Saturn aspects. Astrologers have noted a tendency for some of these natives to put a lot of calculated effort into looking appealing and sensual, which is certainly one interpretation of Xabi Alonso’s aesthetic. The natives who behave in this way do so in the hope of getting validation from others because they cannot give it to themselves. When Venus is afflicted by Saturn, the native struggles to give themselves appropriate and healthy admiration, leaving them almost totally dependent on others.

Sometimes you just have to tip your hat to the universe. In her infinite wisdom, she brought Xabi Alonso, a man whose horoscope suggests that he has a terribly negative view of himself in certain respects (and thus craves validation from others), into the orbit of Steven Gerrard, a man whose horoscope suggests a need to find someone beautiful, harmonious, and peaceful upon whom he can heap adoration.

We know that first meeting made quite the impression on Gerrard:

originally posted by daisy-cutting (I linked to simplyirenic’s post b/c I don’t have access to the OP’s tumblr)

So what did ‘go wrong’ here? I think it boils down to the effects of Uranus. Back in Part 1, I speculated that Xabi Alonso probably has moments where the “permanently unsettled” quality of his Sun-Uranus aspect makes him want to tear his own hair out. There are moments where he probably really, truly hates that part of himself. 

I want to build on that speculation with even more speculation: despite the fact that Gerrard is the one who makes all the heartbreaking declarations of affection, the horoscopes suggest that the Tragic Separation of Gerlonso is actually more painful for Xabi Alonso. 

I know, how dare I say this when Stevie’s out here telling us all that Xabi leaving has broken his heart and that he’s missed him every day and all that? 

For me, it comes down to issues of self-blame. Like I said in Part 4, I don’t think Gerrard blames anyone except the Liverpool PTB/Benitez for the forced break-up of the Gerlonso partnership. He certainly isn’t mad at his precious Xabi. Plus, since Gerrard is the Old Man Saturn to Xabi’s Venus, even though the loss of their partnership was heartbreaking to him, I think there was a part of him that sort of knew it was inevitable.

Alonso, on the other hand, has the Uranus tension, tons of brooding Scorpio energy, and that horrid Venus-Saturn square. Natives with hard Venus-Saturn are looking for any excuse to tear themselves down or to convince themselves that the world agrees that they are unworthy of admiration. 

Watching someone who is so, so dear to you go on about how sad they were when you left them (and your evil inner voice definitely plays up the YOU LEFT part) is a perfect pretext for reminding yourself of how worthless and faithless you are, no matter what others say. 

It’s not like you go down this path every day--in fact, you may not even go down this path that often at all, but once you start, it gets ugly. You beat yourself up again for that stupid “burn it all to the ground” tendency in yourself that always has its way whether you like it or not. And then, if you’re really in the mood, you can beat yourself up for your stupid inability to be as direct as he is. 

All you can manage is a dumb, embarrassing, fumbling handshake in a TV studio:

originally posted by keepitclasie

Or shyly grabbing his shirt:

originally posted by youllneverwalkalone-stevie

(FTR, there is perhaps no better visual representation of Gerrard and Alonso’s Venus/Saturn synastry than this picture.)

Or that thing you do where you affectionately touch his belly:

[Moment of Levity: Both of them have Mars in Virgo. We generally find it very pleasurable to touch or be touched on the body part ruled by our Mars sign. Virgo rules the abdomen.]

You can’t make honest declarations like he does. You have to talk about him in a way that is all in keeping with Your Precious Image:

originally posted by moon-for-start

originally posted by daisy-cutting; I saw them at liverpoolstolemyheart

Is this good enough for a man, who, for reasons you’ll never understand, is fool enough to adore you? To FORGIVE you for leaving?!

originally posted by moon-for-start

Who was right there with you when you flew to the heights for the first time? 

photo from youllneverwalkalone-stevie

And who has never begrudged you for flying beyond, many times over now, even though he couldn’t follow you because of that damned loyalty (and how could you understand that, you monster)?

Are those affectionate words you use, terms of deepest and most worshipful respect and gratitude--Captain, Skipper--really enough for a person like this?  

Sometimes you slip a little, and the overpowering depth of your gratitude and affection threatens to spill out. But you hold it in because you’re a Scorpio Mercury for reasons you sometimes don’t understand:

from steven-gerrard

originally posted by daisy-cutting; I saw them at liverpoolstolemyheart

Ah, you like that word for him--hero. And so, in the moments when it really fucking matters and you really have it get it right, that’s the word you use. And when you use it, you’re not using it in the well-worn modern sense. You mean it like the poets of old meant it, back when the world was new, back when calling someone your hero was enough to scorch both your souls.

originally posted by booperesque

And then you just hope. 

[inqilabi]

@fall-and-shadows​: I have some questions if you don’t mind. Would you think the same of any other religion/belief? Like christian feminism? So it doesn’t have to be incompatible to you? Even if the roots (speaking for christianity as that is my background) are what they are? And not related to this post but have you written about the ex Muslim vs non identifying ex Muslim (sorry I cannot think of a better way to phrase it) stuff before because I would like to read more

I haven’t examined other religions. Religion is incompatible with women’s liberation. And all of the criticism of religion as an institution applies to Islam as well. With what I have read on Islamic feminism, and since the term is thrown around broadly, when I talk about it, I am talking about some of the authors I mentioned (Fatema Mernissi, Amina Wadud, Aisha Chaudhary, Leila Ahmed, Kecia Ali, Asma Barlas). I find their work interesting. They maintain their faith in that they believe Quran to be the word of God. However, they challenge the classical tradition. The classical tradition consists of hadith, exegesis of Quran using these hadiths, and relying only on the early male scholars’ exegesis as the main authority. That’s the foundation of Islam as is practiced today, this is religion. This is what informs what a muslim is, what Muslim does, and women’s role within Islam, inheritance laws, sexual obligations to their husbands, wife beating, polygamy, child marriage, slavery, etc. It is what establishes women’s status as inferior to men’s. Islamic feminists believe that the classical tradition is patriarchal- a patriarchal reading of the Quran. They challenge/target this very tradition, as they see it as the direct source of misogyny in Islam. They believe that men decided to cover women up and mandated hijab, as well all of the things I mentioned above, they recognize as misogynistic and believe that early male scholars invented hadiths (words attributed to the prophet) to subjugate women and used it to make political and economic gains; ruling as religious elite, with their word/interpretation as the only word etc. They do provide evidence for this. So they essentially challenge the misogyny in Islam, they want a complete rereading of the Quran. Aisha Chaudry wrote an entire book on the verse 4:34 and provided evidence from hadith and exegesis and laid out how early men read the interpretation into the quranic arabic, which without these hadith, could mean a number of things. Sometimes these women are called reformists, some call them progressives. They are seen as fringe, and as many modern Muslims do believe in classical tradition, as I said it is the religion, and will not question it. So even if these women consider themselves Muslim for believing in the Quran, they are not seen as Muslims by Muslims. As for my personal beliefs on the matter, I don’t really have any. I am happy to see the misogyny being addressed. If some people want to find a way to maintain their faith in it all, I don’t see anything wrong with it. I don’t know if that is radical or not. But I do see that these women are addressing the source of misogyny in religion. And this may be a helpful beginning as it is hard to even established this step of questioning the misogyny let alone considering leaving faith all together. I think it is a way of telling Muslim women that hijab is forced, Quran never mandated it, or that 4:34 verse was about xyz, not about men beating you, that it isn’t a religious mandate. You won’t find these women calling Muhammad a pedophile etc obviously, as they maintain that he was just a messenger, and people attributed things to him for their own gains. I think these women would also make similar claims about Jesus and what has been attributed to him.

On the whole ex-Muslim vs not identifying as one, I haven’t written much. I have just mentioned here and there that I would never ID as an ex-Muslim or as an atheist. Ex-Muslims believe that they are silenced when they critique Islam by leftists calling them islamophobic or by saying that they are justifying imperialistic politics, and leftists believe that islamophobia is a thing and that yah ex-Muslim narratives are co-opted to justify imperialistic politics. I agree with the OP and last reblog of this post. In between you can find the perspectives of ex-Muslims. Most vocal public ex-Muslims I know of are Maryam Namazie, Ali A Rizvi, Sarah Haider, Asra Nomani, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Personally I find it difficult to articulate on this subject; I find it challenging to the walk the line between criticism of Islam, which is necessary and justified, and it quickly turning racist and being used against you. I find it difficult to talk to Muslims who won’t sympathize with people who have left Islam, and won’t address homophobia and misogyny in our communities. So when I do talk about anything on my blog, it is with the hope that I am speaking to brown women about our own lives. Here I wrote about how i feel when white radfems criticize Islam. This one i wrote when i was angry lmao.  I’ve written about how I feel about ex-Muslim men. I don’t know which authors/academics talk about feminism and colonialism from the perspective I mean, there must be a few, i am just not well versed: 1) 2)

[elodieunderglass]

I certainly do go on dates, but the quote was in response to an ask meme ask (“flannel: have you ever been on a bad date?”) and in my interpretation of the ask I went with the usual interpretation of a “bad date” as :

near-strangers practicing a specific type of social interaction that goes badly due to a) fundamental incompatibility of the people involved, usually discovered in a way that makes it difficult to proceed with the intentions of the meeting; or b) a particularly awkward external situation that makes the entire encounter unpleasant.

If you ask for a “bad date” story, you know what you’re about: you want to hear about the one time someone met a weirdo on the second date who brought their mother with them and the OP cleverly escaped out the bathroom window. Meanwhile, it is bloody hard to have a “bad date” with your best friend. At this point you are mostly compatible, and ideally, any awkward situation you get into - from a dreadful restaurant that catches fire to miscommunicated plans to a transportation breakdown - is mitigated by having your best friend be there with you. Most of the external situations are salvageable with your best friend.

Someone else asked this too, and I reflected on the worst “date” I’ve been on with my spouse, and it was probably the 21-week ultrasound scan for our second child; having sourced childcare and the hospital being located in a pleasant city, we had intended to follow it with the same “date” that we had gone on with our first child. However, having kept the sex of the first child a surprise, we found out the sex of the second and deeply regretted doing so; instead of the exciting post-scan city date we’d planned, we both felt that we’d ruined a delightful surprise due to vague social pressure (and felt guilty for even caring, when we didn’t actually care about the baby’s sex before the waveform collapsed). But there we were, strolling around a gorgeous city on a childfree afternoon date with our healthy wanted planned fetus, feeling indescribably disappointed in ourselves. Instead of enjoying the thrilling looked-forward-to lunch at the same place we ate after our first child’s scans, we stared off into space and wished we could put Schrodinger’s cat back in the box. And how awful and selfish we felt, walking away from the scan feeling weird about it! Gender is supposed to be a fun accessory!!! Everyone else has fun gendering their fetus! We were told that knowing the sex of the fetus ✨helps people bond with it✨ and ✨makes it all feel real✨ and that we’d missed out on all this by having Baby1 be a surprise, but nope! it just turned out to be a guilty regret!! “What’s important is having a healthy baby”, everyone says, so why the hell is it the first and sometimes only thing everyone asks a pregnant person: what are you having, like there’s a chance it might be a raccoon. What the hell lever pings in other people’s brains that helps them “bond” with unseen genitals??? and WHAT THE HELL LEVER PINGED IN MY HEAD that made me sad about knowing the unseen genitals???) (thankfully once we met the baby we were very happy with them.)

But even then would you call that a bad date? A disappointing outing with your spouse of nearly a decade at that point, including a medical appointment for your second child? Or do we find that we actually have a fairly clear consensus on what a bad date is, which in turn clarifies the distinction a bit: a date can be any delineated outing between any set of people with or without romantic intent, but when we talk about “dating” and “second dates” and “nightmare dates,” we generally understand that these are different types of interactions than “getting into a weird accident with your spouse” or “having a single off-putting lunch with your oldest bestie so you actually ghost them forever.”

However, I’m not a published relationship scientist, i just get randomly scraped and quoted by them, so who knows what definitions of “dating” science has already agreed upon. It seems to be in line with what I said here, but it also sounds like they’re a lot of absolute outliers themselves!!! Who knows!

Hey, today I learned that my catalogued lack of dating experience is cited in an academic paper

[thisdaynews]

Hillary Clinton’s Zombie Impeachment Memo That Could Help Fell Trump

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/hillary-clintons-zombie-impeachment-memo-that-could-help-fell-trump/

Hillary Clinton’s Zombie Impeachment Memo That Could Help Fell Trump

A document Hillary Clinton helped write nearly a half century ago has returned from the dead to threaten the man she couldn’t vanquish in 2016.

The bizarre, only-in-D.C. twist centers on a congressional report penned by a bipartisan team of young attorneys that included Hillary before she was a Clinton and written in the throes of Watergate. Then, unlike now, not a single lawmaker had been alive the last time Congress impeached a president. They had little understanding of how to try and remove Richard Nixon from the White House. So they tapped Clinton and a team of ambitious staffers to dive into the history of impeachment, stretching back to the 14th century in England: How has impeachment been used? What were the justifications? Can we apply it to Nixon?

Story Continued Below

The resulting document became a centerpiece of the congressional push to drive the Republican president from office. But then Nixon resigned. The memo was buried.

That was just the report’s first life.

In an ironic twist, the document was resurrected in the late 1990s. Republicans gleefully used it to bolster their unsuccessful bid to oust Clinton’s now-husband, President Bill Clinton. Then it faded from public conscience — again.

Until now, that is. The45-year-old report has become a handbook House Democratic lawmakers and aides say they are using to help determine whether they have the goods to mount a full-scale impeachment effort against President Donald Trump, the same man who three years ago upended Hillary Clinton’s bid for a return trip to the White House.

Essentially, Clinton, albeit indirectly, might get one last shot at accomplishing what she couldn’t in 2016 — defeating Donald Trump.

“I can only say that the impeachment Gods have a great sense of humor,” Alan Baron, an expert on the topic who has staffed four congressional impeachments against federal judges, said of the recurring role Hillary Clinton keeps playing in this story.

It started in early 1974.

The walls were closing in on a beleaguered Richard Nixon. His aides were going down one by one. He had tried — and failed — to halt the investigations into his behavior by cleaning house during the infamous “Saturday Night Massacre.”

On Capitol Hill, Hillary Rodham, a 26-year-old law school graduate, was hired by the House Judiciary Committee to work on a bipartisan staff effort to help determine whether to impeach Nixon. She joined a team of aspiring lawyers that also included Bill Weld, who would go on to his own illustrious career as a top Justice Department prosecutor, Massachusetts governor and most recently as a longshot 2020 GOP primary challenger against Trump.

Over a couple of months just before the climactic end of the Watergate scandal, the team dug deep into constitutional and legal arcana scouring documents that dated to the country’s founding, as well as century-old newspaper clippings in the Library of Congress.

The resulting title of the report, “Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment,” may elicit yawns. But what they produced became a seminal 64-page roadmap with appendices that looks into what counts as an impeachable offense.

At the time, lawmakers needed the guidance. They had not had to think seriously about these issues for more than 100 years, when Congress rebelled against President Andrew Johnson over his handling of reconstruction after the Civil War.

The staffers’ research broke ground by making an accessible argument that a president doesn’t have to commit a straight-up crime for Congress to consider the historic step of impeachment.

“The framers did not write a fixed standard. Instead they adopted from English history a standard sufficiently general and flexible to meet future circumstances and events, the nature and character of which they could not foresee,” the House staffers, including the future first lady, wrote about the ill-defined constitutional working of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Their exhaustive report also included a whirlwind history lesson about how America’s founders had been well-versed in impeachment when they included the language in several clauses of the Constitution —the British Parliament had used the impeachment process as a check on royalty for more than 400 years, dating to the 14th century.

And the process hadn’t just been used to remove alleged criminals from office. In the United States, 83 articles of impeachment had been voted out of the House up to that point against a dozen federal judges, one senator andAndrew Johnson, and fewer than a third actually involved specific criminal acts.Far more common, they wrote, was that the House was dealing with allegations that someone had violated their duties, oath of office or seriously undermined public confidence in their ability to perform their official functions.

“Because impeachment of a President is a grave step for the nation, it is to be predicated only upon conduct seriously incompatible with either the constitutional form and principles of our government or the proper performance of constitutional duties of the presidential office,” the House staffers concluded.

While the document Hillary Rodham and her colleagues produced got marked as a staff report, the Democrat-led House Judiciary Committee still used it to justify their historic votes against Nixon. In fact, two of the three articles of impeachment adopted by the powerful panel — dealing with the Republican president’s abuse of power and contempt of Congress — didn’t cover areas that fall neatly into the category of federal crimes. A final staff report submitted to the House just days after Nixon made history as the first president to resign from office quoted from the staff’s earlier analysis.

More than two decades later, though, Clinton may have wished she had never helped write the document.

It was 1997, eight months before the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke into the news. President Bill Clinton was facing Republican outrage over everything from allegations of campaign finance irregularities to Whitewater, the probe into the Clinton’s Arkansas real estate investments. To legitimize their anger, some Republicans turned to a document that likely hadn’t been discussed for a generation — the 1974 impeachment report Hillary Clinton had worked on.

Georgia GOP Rep. Bob Barr resurfaced the report in a sarcasm-laced op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that opened with the line “Dear Mrs. Clinton.”

The conservative congressman went on to thank the first lady for giving lawmakers a “road map” to consider her husband’s impeachment with a report that “appears objective, fair, well researched and consistent with other materials reflecting and commenting on impeachment.”

“And it is every bit as relevant today as it was 23 years ago,” he added.

In time, both parties would cite from the Judiciary Committee’s 1974 staff report as they fought over whether the conduct associated with President Clinton’s sexual relationship with Lewinsky merited impeachment.

Calling the Watergate document “historic,” then-Virginia GOP Rep. Bob Goodlatte argued in the fall of 1998 that Clinton’s offenses, like those of Nixon, had extended beyond questions of obstruction of justice to whether the president betrayed the public trust. Then-Rep. Charles Canady, a Florida Republican chairing a House subcommittee on the Constitution, referred repeatedly to the Watergate panel’s work during the House debate and later in Clinton’s Senate trial, which ultimately concluded with his acquittal.

Democrats, meanwhile, had a different read on the group’s findings.

California Rep. Zoe Lofgren, who had worked for a member of the Judiciary Committee during Watergate, shared copies of the more than 20-year old report with colleagues from both parties and posted a link to it online — she had an offer from law school students to type it out so it could be searchable by word but internal ethics rules prevented that move. Her primary argument was that Clinton’s lies about his relationship with Lewinsky, while immoral, didn’t match the historical precedents outlined as qualifying for impeachment in the 1974 staff analysis.

“The interesting thing is they cited it for purposes it didn’t support. I wonder whether they read it or whether they had index cards prepared by their staff,” Lofgren said in a recent interview when asked about the Republicans who were using the report to justify removing Clinton from office.

Ted Kalo, a former top Democratic aide on the Judiciary panel, said there was widespread bipartisan agreement that the Watergate staff report mattered — even amid the differing interpretations.

“Great books have been written and eloquent testimony was given in the 1998 hearing on the topic, but even in 1998, the 1974 staff report was considered to be state of the art,” he said.

“It’s the most concise, easily understood document on the history of the impeachment clause and the intent of the framers, including the issue of what constitutes an impeachable offense that I’ve come across. And it faithfully and logically describes what was intended to be the appropriate scope of the House’s impeachment power,” he added.

Now it’s 2019. President Donald Trump is an unindicted criminal co-conspirator who has fended off myriad congressional probes and watched his aides go to prison over an investigation into the Trump campaign. Most Democrats — not to mention their fervent progressive base — are clamoring for impeachment. And yet again, the 1974 impeachment report is getting a rereading on Capitol Hill.

Just as the Watergate staff suggested, the current House Democrat-led impeachment inquiry has grown beyond the criminal allegations that special counsel Robert Mueller investigated — conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and obstruction of justice — into to a wider list of grievances, covering everything from campaign finance violations, to self-dealing, abuse of power and undermining the judiciary and media.

Senior members have dusted the document off for their newer colleagues. Lofgren, for one, asked her staff to post a fresh link to the Watergate document back in mid-May 2017, not long after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey and Mueller’s appointment.

“I just thought, as people were throwing suggestions around, it’s a very tightly crafted and I think excellent piece of scholarship and it’d be helpful to have that be available to the public,” Lofgren said.

Others have pointed back to the 1974 document as reason for Democrats to move faster.

Michael Conway, a former Judiciary Committee staffer in 1974 and longtime friend of both Bill and Hillary Clinton, cited the report in an op-ed for NBC published in March that took issue with House Democratic leadership’s reluctance to embrace impeachment proceedings against Trump.

He slammed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for a “cramped formulation” that impeachment can only proceed if investigative developments emerge that are “overwhelming, compelling and bipartisan.” That didn’t square with what the 1974 researchers showed, he wrote.

“The myths about impeachment they skewered then remain relevant to Democrats considering any exercise of that power today,” Conway said.

Michael Gerhardt, a University of North Carolina law professor who has written books on impeachment and testified before Congress on the topic, said the Watergate committee report “has easily withstood the test of time” into 2019.

“It still is as good as any other document yet prepared on the origins and scope of the federal impeachment process. It is appropriately authoritative. And so it is as relevant to President Trump as it has been to every other president since Nixon,” he said.

While Gerhardt said Republicans who embraced the report during Bill Clinton’s impeachment should for consistency sake be open to what it tells them now in Trump’s case, he said he also recognized there are new political limitations. For starters, Democrats and Republican aides wrote the Watergate report together.

“It seems impossible that a joint staff would be conceivable on a hugely important matter,” he said in an email. “It shows how far we have come (down) since 1974.”

Read More

[shaledirectory]

Delaware Riverkeeper and PennFuture Win Battle, But Lose War

Tom Shepstone Shepstone Management Company, Inc.

  The Delaware Riverkeeper and PennFuture invested in a Lycoming County case they thought would advance fractivism. They won the battle but lost the war.

The Delaware Riverkeeper a/k/a Povertykeeper, which is about anything but the Delaware River (or it wouldn’t be operating in Lycoming County) just won a court battle in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. It had to do with Maya van Rossum’s attempt to extend the reach of Pennsylvania’s Environmental Rights Amendment and turn it into a fracking ban. They won the legal battle at the end off the day, but clearly lost the war.

The Gorsline case is a somewhat complicated one in which I was peripherally involved and wrote about here. The Commonwealth Court had overruled the Lycoming County Court of Common Pleas, which had overturned a Fairfield Township decision to grant a conditional use permit to Inflection Energy to develop a gas well pad in the middle of nowhere. The location was far removed from any residences in a catch-all Residential-Agriculture zoning district of the type that is common in rural zoned communities.

The proposed gas well pad was a use not anticipated at the time the Fairfield Township zoning was enacted and so the Inflection Energy proposal was acted upon under a provision also common to rural zoning ordinances that allowed the Township to classify unlisted (previously not thought of) uses based on their similarity to other uses that are permitted. Fairfield Township, in this case, concluded a gas well pad was similar to a “public service facility” and allowed it.

This began a series of appeals finally resolved by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in favor of the appellants (see highlighted decision here) but not in a way the Delaware Riverkeeper could possibly have wanted. Indeed, here is the concluding language of the court opinion (emphasis added):

Applying our standard of review, we hold that the Board’s conclusion that Inflection satisfied its burden of proving that its proposed use was similar to a permitted use in an R-A district is not supported by the record. In so ruling, this decision should not be misconstrued as an indication that oil and gas development is never permitted in residential/agricultural districts, or that it is fundamentally incompatible with residential or agricultural uses. As the Dissent fairly acknowledges, in Robinson I a plurality of this Court recognized that the protection of environmental values is a “quintessential local issue that must be tailored to local conditions.” Dissenting Op. at 10 n.6 (quoting Robinson I, 83 A.3d at 979). To this end, the Municipalities Planning Code permits the governing body of a municipality to amend its zoning ordinances to permit oil and gas development in any or all of its zoning districts. 53 P.S. § 10601. The governing body must, however, actually amend its zoning ordinances to permit drilling in designated areas, setting forth whatever limitations and conditions it decides are appropriate for the protection of its citizenry. What a governing body may not do, however, and what the Fairfield Township Board of Supervisors did in this case, is to permit oil and gas development in residential/agricultural districts without first enacting the necessary amendments, based upon a clearly inadequate evidentiary record and no meaningful interpretative analysis of the language of its existing zoning laws.

That this Supreme Court is a now a very political entity is not in doubt. It’s clear from this decision and others. The court ignored many of the extremely valid points made by the Commonwealth Court regarding the speculation of harm involved in this case.

It didn’t address the fact supposed “industrial” impacts of gas well pad development are limited to construction impacts that are never considered in other cases (e.g., building of a Way-Mart, hospital or even a home), while developed gas pads have almost no impacts.

It pretended homes a quarter mile or more away would somehow be impacted. It required not evidence of impacts from the appellants and ignored the extensive evidence to the contrary from Inflection. It faulted the Commonwealth Court for substituting its findings for those of the Township and then did the same thing itself.

It ignored the fact the vast bulk of Fairfield Township is zoned R-A Residential-Agricultural and, therefore, not allowing natural gas development there is the equivalent of denying it altogether. The following map illustrates (R-A District in yellow):

The Supreme Court went out of its way, in fact, to find for its Delaware Riverkeeper and PennFuture political constituency. Yet, in the end, it gave them a very narrow victory saying only that Fairfield Township’s process was wrong. The Supreme Court has actually affirmed the Township gets to make the call. It has unambiguously stated the Township is the authority that gets to decide whether oil and gas wells are compatible with residential-agricultural districts, that is to say where oil and gas is allowable.

Moreover, the Environmental Rights Amendment doesn’t prevent any township from allowing oil and gas development where it wishes. If Fairfield Township wants this gas well pad, all it has to do is amend its ordinance to list that use for the R-A District. It’s planning documents, in fact, already give support to the idea. That’s a loss for the Delaware Riverkeeper by any definition.

Inflection Energy can even jumpstart the process by filing what is known in Pennsylvania as a curative amendment (an idea suggested early in this saga as a possibility). It would be nice, though, for Fairfield Township itself to pick up the ball and amend its ordinance on its own initiative. Perhaps it could simultaneously do a comprehensive plan update (supplement) to ensure the case is well documented for the zoning amendment. The township has everything to gain from allowing the natural gas development and it would, therefore, be in its interest to do so.

Now, that would be real justice and deliver a strong message to the Delaware Riverkeeper to be very careful what you wish for. In the meantime, while this decision was disappointing in so many ways, it may well turn out to be the case that clears the way for the industry to do business where it’s wanted without continuing harassment from phony Delaware Riverkeeper types who are funded by special interests such as the William Penn Foundation to do so.

The post Delaware Riverkeeper and PennFuture Win Battle, But Lose War appeared first on Natural Gas Now.

https://www.shaledirectories.com/blog/delaware-riverkeeper-and-pennfuture-win-battle-but-lose-war/