MAY GOD FORGIVE THEM…

Yeah, we knew it was coming. Despite the videos, the creepy calling after Nancy, the threats and racist catcalls that began years ago. Despite the ridicule of a disabled reporter, the ridicule of a Gold Star family, the infidelity during three marriages, the threats and bullying, we had every right to expect Congress, the Republicans in Congress to do the right thing. Gary likes to say: Didn’t they ever go to Sunday School?

Apparently all they learned was they were chosen.

Against the courage of Officer Goodman are the doors and windows broken, the officers who were broken, the oaths of office broken, the trust broken. The news has reported from the beginning that Republicans in Congress would never vote to convict. And those national media outlets were correct. Republicans in Congress chose party and power over people, party and power over the Constitution they swore to defend, party and power over morality and justice. It is unconscionable. The next time someone complains about partisan politics, look right.

To paraphrase Fiddler on the Roof:
"Rabbi, if there's a blessing for everything, is there a blessing for Trump?"
"Of course. May the good Lord bless and keep Trump . . . far away from us."

Or to quote Jesus Christ Superstar: "Could we start again, please?"

Some deep housecleaning is called for. As The New York Times reports:

“Forty-three Republicans voted to acquit Mr. Trump of inciting an insurrection against the United States—more than enough to prevent the two-thirds majority needed for conviction. Mr. Trump was found not guilty, a verdict he immediately celebrated.

“And yet seven Republicans voted to convict him, making this by far the most bipartisan impeachment effort in American history. It is worth remembering that until a year ago, when Mr. Romney cast the lone Republican ‘guilty’ vote in Mr. Trump’s first impeachment trial, no senators had ever voted to convict a president from their own party.”

“Representative Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania, an impeachment manager, put it bluntly: ‘If we don’t set this right and call it what it was, the highest of constitutional crimes by the president of the United States, the past will not be past. The past will become our future,’ she said in closing arguments. ‘Senators, we are in a dialogue with history.’ ”

“ ‘The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president,’ Mr. McConnell said, ‘and having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories and reckless hyperbole, which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet earth.’ ”

Mitch McConnell voted to acquit. History will judge their failure.