Two columns on different things the former Veep has done in the past two weeks. Even good men can be wrong, but not always.
Pence deserves credit for standing with Ukraine (Feb. 26):
Former Vice President Mike Pence deserves credit for forthrightly explaining the United States’s interest in Ukraine when some in his Republican Party are singing an isolationist (or even demagogic) tune.
“This is not America’s war,” Pence said at the University of Texas. “But if we falter in our commitment to providing the support to the people of Ukraine to defend their freedom, our sons and daughters may soon be called upon to defend ours. If we surrender to the siren song of those in this country who argue that America has no interest in freedom’s cause, history teaches we may soon send our own into harm’s way to defend our freedom and the freedom of nations in our alliance.”… [The full column is here.]
Pence’s subpoena dodge looks even worse than before (Feb. 20):
Former Vice President Mike Pence’s claim to be immune from testifying to a grand jury investigating former President Donald Trump took another well-merited blow over the weekend.
Pence reportedly is citing the clause of the Constitution that says members of Congress “shall not be questioned” outside of Congress regarding legislative “speech or debate.” Because the vice president serves as president of the Senate, meaning he can cast a tiebreaking vote, although he has no other legislative duties, Pence reportedly is claiming his discussions about the counting of presidential electoral votes makes him off limits to grand juries looking into the controversy over the 2020 election…. Pence’s assertion suffered a comeuppance of a sort last weekend from one of his own favorite constitutional scholars. Conservative former federal Judge J. Michael Luttig was the very constitutional expert to whom Pence turned when ascertaining that he did not have the power to overturn electoral votes that Trump bizarrely claimed he did. Well, last Friday, Luttig issued a series of tweets that threw cold water on Pence’s novel legal gambit…. [The full column is at this link.]
