Rs and Ds flip flop over having witnesses

The flip flops of leading Senators over whether or not to have witnesses when the Senate tries Trump is a sham and a shame. In 1999, when talking about Clinton't trial, Senator Schumer called witnesses “political theater” and Senator Graham said, "In every trial that there has ever been in the Senate regarding impeachment, witnesses were called. When you have a witness telling you about what they were doing and why, it's the difference between the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth." Now Schumer wants to have witnesses and Graham does not. The difference is that Clinton and Schumer are Ds and and Trump and Graham are Rs.

Facts not in evidence

The argument put forward by Democrats (Ds) that they cannot wait for Courts to decide whether Congress can compel testimony from members of the Executive Branch is a sham and a shame.  “The argument ‘why don’t you just wait?’ amounts to this: Why don’t you just let [Mr. Trump] cheat in one more election? Why not let him cheat just one more time?,” Mr. Schiff told the press as the articles were unveiled. But "cheat just one more time" presumes a fact not in evidence. Mueller found no evidence that Mr. Trump cheated in 2016. Therefore, he cannot cheat AGAIN. 

I agree with the perspective of the WSJ's Editorial Board

The impeachment inquiry is a sham and a shame. I agree with the Editorial Board of the WSJ that, "what strikes us is the pre-cooked nature of the exercise. This isn’t a search for truth. It’s a set-piece production to promote a foregone conclusion." No one is seeking evidence to determine a verdict; both Ds and Rs are trying to use the current hearings as a platform for presenting their narratives and advancing the prospects for increasing their power in the 2020 elections. Impeachment is a serious job and requires honest and through investigation, not biased presentations and show trials.

A serious effort to determine whether or not Trump is guilty of "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors" would look very different than what is occurring in DC. A serious effort would attempt to find out what happened and when.

1. Who did Trump tell to withhold assistance to Ukraine?
2. When did he tell this person or persons and what rational, if any, did he give?
3. When did assistance to Ukraine stop?
4. Who told Ukraine that it stopped and when?
5. Who told Ukraine that resumption of assistance was contingent on their meeting certain conditions?
6. What were the conditions?
7. When did this person or persons tell Ukraine?
8. Who initiated the order for this person or persons to describe the conditions to Ukraine and when? That is, who instructed this person or persons to rely the message to Ukraine? Who instructed that person, etc? 
9. When did assistance resume?
10. Who initiated the order for assistance to resume? That is, who instructed someone to release the assistance? Who instructed that person, etc? 
11. When did the initiator give the order and what rational, if any, did the initiator give?

The answers to these questions provide the evidence that people would need to make a serious determination of whether or not Trump's recent activities regarding Ukraine constitute impeachable offenses. 

Many questions currently being answered are irrelevant to the determination of whether or not Trump's recent activities regarding Ukraine constitute impeachable offenses. Two examples follow.

1. Did Giuliani work behind the scenes to oust an ambassador? I suppose if this ambassador was a roadblock to stopping the assistance it could be relevant.
2. Is cutting off assistance to Ukraine bad policy and contrary to the interest of the USA? Being a terrible President is not an impeachable offense. The Constitution limits a President's term to four years to reduce the damage a terrible President can wreak.

I agree with the WSJ Editorial Board that the current inquiry is setting a bad precedent. 

"In a healthier political culture, Democrats would be using the Ukraine episode as an argument against Mr. Trump’s re-election. How can you trust his foreign-policy judgment in a second term when he won’t have the check of another re-election?

"Instead Democrats have pulled out the constitutional bazooka of impeachment. They are doing so in partisan fashion, contrary to their earlier pledges, and in a political rush to beat the 2020 political calendar. On the evidence and the process to date, they are turning impeachment into a routine political weapon, and future Presidents of both parties will regret it."

Rs and Ds switch positions re Russian Interference

The difference in how Rs and Ds treat Trump's interactions with Russia in the 2016 election and H. Clinton's interactions is a sham and a shame. My understanding is that

1. Russia engaged in a misinformation campaign, Trump praised Putin, Trump asked Russia in a press conference to look for H. Clinton's email, and Mueller found no collusion.
2. H. Clinton's campaign and the DNC funneled money to a lawyers, who paid Steele for a dossier, and Steele paid Russians for dirt on Trump.

How do Rs and Ds respond?

The Ds state that Trump has committed something terrible and that nothing is wrong with what Clinton did.

The Rs state that nothing is wrong with what Trump did and that Clinton has committed something terrible 

The flip flop illustrates how expediency determines which position each side takes.