Blog Post 1.5 "Congress and POTUS"

1. Nancy Pelosi is the Speaker of the House.
2.  President Trump has allegedly attempted to have Ukraine interfere in the 2020 presidential election.
3. Nancy Pelosi's goal is to pass laws that make clear when and how a sitting president could be indicted once Trump is no longer in office.
4. Pelosi said that the thing harming Congress's ability to investigate the Executive Branch is the Justice Department's guidance that says a sitting president cannot be indicted by passing a law that makes the procedure for indictment explicit.
5. The Director of National Intelligence did not relay the whistleblower's complaint to Congress, which is illegal.
6. Adam Schiff is the House Intelligence Committee chair.
7. Moderate Democrats want to avoid impeachment because they are afraid that it will alienate their voters.
8. 70% of Democrat respondents support impeachment proceedings, while only 6% of Republicans said the same.

Blog Post 1.4 "Judicial Impeachment"

1. There has to be majority approval for an indictment to impeach in the House, and "a two-thirds supermajority of the US Senate must convict for the judge or justice to lose their office."
2. The impeachment process for a US Supreme Court Justice has only happened once, but there have been none which have been removed.
3. Article II, Section 4 sets up the impeachment process in the Constitution.
4.  The reasons for impeachment for the five most recent cases: falsifying income tax returns, receiving a $150,000 bribe to reduce the prison sentences for members of the mob and perjury and tampering of evidence, perjury, obstruction of justice for lying about sexual abuse of female employees, and accepting bribes from lawyers and "failing to recuse himself from cases involving people who allegedly bribed him."
5.The men who were impeached before did not have many supporters in the Senate and they had all clearly committed something illegal. Kavanaugh and Thomas both have a good number of supporters in the Senate and it is not clear that Kavanaugh "committed perjury in his statements about the judicial memos."
6. It's hard to tell which are "impeachable offenses" for a judge because not all misbehaviors or misdemeanors are illegal, some are just unforgivably bad, and it's really up to the Senate to decide if something is bad enough to warrant impeachment.

Blog Post 1.3 "Preparing for the Iowa Caucus"

1. The Iowa Democratic Party's plan for changes to this year's Iowa Caucus is to make it a "virtual caucus" over a phone system alongside the regular caucus.
2. The Democratic National Committee decided to recommend rejecting these plans because of internet hackers who could bring down the entire system.
3. The reason why the virtual caucus is even in question is because of "longtime criticism that Iowa's caucus should be accessible to voters who can't show up in person."
4. Because Iowa is the first contest, its caucuses show which candidates have potential. According to David Redlawsk, "Iowa doesn't decide who will be president, but it decides who will not."
5. The reason why caucuses are controversial is because of the complexity and openness involved in letting the "caucus-goers sort themselves into groups based on the candidates they support." The really controversial part is the exclusivity of caucuses because it is difficult for those who have other commitments or disabilities to attend.
6. Because there has been an increase in participation over the years, it is getting harder to control the number of people who show up to the caucuses. In the past, there used to be about 50 to 100 people, so 1,000 is much more difficult to control.
7. When they tested the system, they found that it was very easy to manipulate the system even though "some state party officials said the networks that were hacked weren't the same as the virtual caucus they were building..."
8. Iowa really, really likes its first caucus position, and if turns into a primary state, it would have to hold its primaries after New Hampshire.
9. New Hampshire can ensure that it is the first primary because of an NH state law that allows the New Hampshire governor to move the primary date up a week if some other state tries to hold their primaries first.

Blog Post 1.2 "marijuana Law Issues"

1.  More than a quarter of the US population lives in a state that allows marijuana for nonmedical purposes.
2. Colorado and Washington were the first states to make marijuana fully legal.
3. In states where it is legal, there are variations in how much cannabis someone can legally possess, and visitors from other states typically face stricter limits.  In Vermont and DC, they don't allow sales even though the residents are allowed to grow it.
4. Marijuana legalization takes away all government-enforced penalties for possessing and using marijuana. Marijuana decriminalization eliminates jail or prison time for limited possession of marijuana, but some other penalties remain in place, treating a minor marijuana offense more like a minor traffic violation.
5. ACLU argues that marijuana prohibition is bad for the government because it has failed to notable reduce marijuana use, and it has created a very lucrative black market.
6. Some argue against legalization because they believe that there would be "Big Marijuana" companies, like those of alcohol and tobacco, that would profit of the widespread use and misuse of marijuana.
7. From 2000, public opinion on marijuana leaglization has shifted in favor of legalization with an over twice as much approval in 2018 than in 2000.
8.  The US government classifies marijuana as a schedule 1 drug, which means that it has no medical value and a high potential for abuse.
9. The Obama and Trump adminsitrations both have had a pretty relaxed approach to marijuana laws, pretty much allowing states to choose what they would like to do.
10. Many marijuana businesses in "legal states" are operating in cash and not using banks because it is still illegal in the national level, so they don't want to risk losing their money.