The "Impeachment". Where are we at?

If rumors and partial news accounts are correct then the impeachment that's not an impeachment becomes clearer.

First, there was no House vote to begin impeachment because not all Democrats would have voted for it. It's one thing to have a party-line vote. It's much harder to justify if there is bipartisan opposition and only partisan support for it.

Pelosi and the Democrats are trying to have it both ways. They haven't had a formal vote to begin impeachment but they are acting as if they had.

In some ways this is a continuation of the Russian investigation. The Democrats waited for the Mueller Report only to have it come up empty. Yes, there were instances of obstruction of justice identified but many of those were nothing more than the President complaining to the press. The Democrats were sure that Mueller must have uncovered SOMETHING but the grand jury proceedings are sealed and the only way to get them unsealed is to begin a formal impeachment. The Democrats have filed a motion to have the grand jury records opened but the judge resisted since there was no formal impeachment vote.

Everything about the whistle-blower is suspicious. It now appears that he approached the Democrats first and they helped him write up his report. They even managed to get the Inspector General for the Intelligence Community to change the requirements and eliminate the need for 1st hand knowledge. The Democrats are making every effort to conceal the whistle-blower's identity but it has leaked out that he is a registered Democrat and he has a connection with one of the presidential candidates. Now it's being reported that the candidate in question is none other than Joe Biden. That would explain why his identity is being kept so secret. A close connection to Biden means that instead of being a civil servant who was outraged at the abuse of power he had heard about, he might well be a Biden supporter who wants to shield the Bidens from an investigation.

This would sound a little paranoid if they hadn't done the same thing last year with Judge Kavanaugh. If they had forwarded Christine Ford's original assertion to the full Senate Judiciary Committee before the hearings, the FBI would have interviewed the people named and reported back that everyone named denied it and that Kavanaugh's diary gave him an alibi. Nothing further would have been heard about the accusation.

Instead the Democrats referred Ford to an attorney who coached her. The original story, "Kavanaugh groped me over my clothes at a party but I pulled away" was too mild. So details were added in lurid detail, "He put his hand over my mouth and I thought he was going to kill me!" and "It gave me a life-long fear of being enclosed." This last part was an outright lie. Ford claimed that she was so afraid of being enclosed that she couldn't stand to fly but her history showed that she flew often and seemed to enjoy it.

So the Democrats have a recent history of coaching a witness and stage-managing their allegations. They also learned last year that once an accuser's identity is known it becomes easy to discredit the accuser. So they are suggesting going to extraordinary lengths. It's been suggested that the whistle-blower will be at a remote location with his face blurred and his voice altered. Is this really to protect his identity or to cover it up?

But none of this amounts to more than a fishing expedition and an attempt to stop the investigation into the beginning of the Russian conspiracy hoax.