Hegseth is a war criminal, but this is a good outcome. 
I consider this a good outcome but the title is wrong. Democrats failed to show up for the vote.
Formal Investigation Is Better
It is certain that Hegseth will either be impeached, resign, or be fired.
I strongly prefer a formal investigation of war crimes instead of Massie’s fast revenge attack.
What Happened?
Question of the Day
On November 9, I asked Rep. Massie Forces a Vote to Impeach Hegseth. Is this a Mistake?
A vote will be fast because of the Privileged Vote method Massie used.
Mish Assessment
Hegseth is a war criminal who belongs in prison. But Hegseth will never go to prison because Trump would pardon him.
Trying impeachment now is a low-probability path to actual removal and carries the usual risks of a rushed, highly partisan-looking process in a lame-duck period. Massie has a score to settle, and that is how Republicans will portray it.
Assuming impeachment, a trial in the Senate would fail this year, with a decent chance of no vote at all. It might ruin the chances with the incoming Senate. It gives the easy excuse to the next set of Senators to say, we already tried this once.
There could be some Senate Republican votes now (Senator Rand Paul and Thom Tillis immediately come to mind). However, I suspect we would not find out because Majority Leader Thune would not even hold a trial.
The majority leader (Thune) controls the floor schedule. A simple majority can sustain motions to dismiss, table, or otherwise dispose of the articles without a lengthy trial.
All things considered, if the goal is maximizing the chance of a serious impeachment effort that could conceivably pressure for removal or produce a fuller record, waiting for the new Congress is the stronger procedural path.
Next year, there would be a near-certainty of a trial (or at least some process other than outright dismissal), with a much better chance of success. At a minimum, there would be better records and grounds for impeachment with potentially damaging revelations that could force Hegseth to resign.
The clearest advantage to wait (assuming a conventional inquiry instead of a Privileged Vote) is the incoming majority can produce a fuller evidentiary record, public hearings, and potentially damaging revelations that are harder to dismiss and more capable of shifting political costs inside the administration.
Just Following Orders
Trump is not going to like that, increasing the odds Hegseth is fired.
If Only
Challenge Accepted
Blaming Hegseth
Seldom Agree With Cruz, But He’s Right Here
Delayed Impeachment Is a Good Outcome
Precisely My Opinion – Stated In Advance
Investigate everything!
It’s all just a cohencidence…
https://wjla.com/news/local/angela-alsobrooks-maryland-senate-iran-war-powers-resolution-family-matter-49-50-vote-jd-vance-congress
A few of the Ds had prior commitments like Pelosi with Veteran’s Day in CA. You don’t become speaker like Collins if you don’t know when to hold votes to hobble your opposition.
Johnson had enough Rs to counter any Ds that showed up.
Lets remember the impeachment was started by a Republican. The dems just went along.
The media and esp conservative radio would like you to forget yhat point
Im ok with holding people accountable. But imo it will be fuel for the republican political machine. The will feed it to conservative with a helping of far left culture wars. Why because that is all they have. The dems are in power because of the middle voter. Independent moderate etc. if they want to hold or gain seats in the next election they need to address the issues. Corruption/ campaign finance reform. Are at the core of our problems. Get the big money and politicians ability to profit off their job will go a long way to solving our problems.
Pass laws that balance the budget/ actually address immigration, etc. Send a bunch of common sense bills up to the White House. Let the public see the republicans and trump shoot them down. That will win the next election.
Maybe just let nature take its course – Trump will likely be letting Hedgseth go very soon.
Trump is turning on his Iran war advisors – Wiles was the first to go. Adm. Cooper may find himself on desk duty soon.
The Dems want revenge. Or at least they are play-acting that. But that gets too much of their passion and attention. The Midterms were in large part not a team D thing. They were an affordability thing first and foremost. A stop-the-current-lying-idiots thing. If that means stop the War, OK then.
I think somebody in Team D HQ should be carefully mapping a restrained and focused attack on the R-D team fight thing. More broadly, a Trump method has been classic Mob: get a lot of people in on your unlawful deals. Then maybe they will stick together, if the heat shows up. This applies from the cabinet on down to crony side deals. But Watergate (and ironically, some of Rudy Giuliani’s Mob prosecutions, back when he was that other guy) showed that, done correctly, legal pursuit will isolate players, and they will turn on each other. Trump is the ultimate player who will throw anyone under the bus, maybe even blood family, if it ever came to it. (That would be an interesting test.) But he has all kinds of immunity. I hope the pursuers have their AI running full throttle to figure out ways to circumvent federal pardons.
Then again, this deepens the oscillation that could come back the other way next time, whether impeachments or prosecutions. And it could just make the public more cynical, if too much theater accompanies too little affordability relief. Instead, focus should be kept overwhelmingly on Job One for the voting public, which I believe, is all affordability now, all the time. Everything else is far in the background for a solid chunk of this year’s voters, who will flip away just as quickly.
Trump will point the finger at so many people he will need his friend Elon Musk to start a Tesla bus factory to have enough buses to throw them all under.
Reports are now coming out that not only did Scott Bessent just move out of his Georgetown home to a military base out of abject terror that Iran would get him, but Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller already live on military bases because they also fear for their lives.
And yet they are telling us almost every day that the war with Iran is over, done with, that Iran has practically surrendered!
smells like an empire on the run……….those bases we abandoned in saudi gulf states is really a staggering war indicator……….
Methinks if the onion is peeled back, the discovery would be that Hegseth is making a lot of money for a lot of people – and isn’t that all that matters??????
The MIC loves a guy shooting expensive missiles into the mountains, deserts and little girls’ schools.
The democrats didn’t show and vote.. Democrats tell us Americans we need to go out and vote, but PMC for the democrats don’t. Typical capitalist managerial class, “do i say not as I do”.
I’ve called it for the last year on this blog, the democrats and republicans are wings of the same Levithan. both parties are war mongers, of course the democrats don’t want to actually impeach a secretary of defense.
Next time they get a murderous Hillary or whomever, they don’t want their secretary of defense to be prosecuted for war crimes.
Both parties are engaged in political theater, we americans are the ones suffer. Everything single congress person should be tried for treason, and breaking their to represent the american people.
Our government represents itself, not the american people. We are China in disguise.
I prefer the way another poster put it, that they are two cheeks of the Uniparty ass
Its a plutocracy, where the plebes get to complain once every 2 years. Govt=money. This is America, Inc. Once this is understood, everything makes alot more sense, and you realize its just a big tomato fight between powerful interests, with an audience of citizens, either cheering or crying
“We are China in disguise.”
The Chinese government is far more responsive to popular will. Witness how the Chinese government relaxed COVID restrictions in the face of popular protest.
This is not because the Chinese state is more noble or concerned with popular opinion, but because the nature of an authoritarian state means that it is harder to pass the buck.
In the US, everyone in power claims to derive their authority from someone else, going back to “the people”, who cannot exercise such power directly. Instead we get “Your carefully vetted corporate imperialist muppet voted for this. If you do not like it, you can vote for the other carefully vetted corporate imperialist muppet next time.”
Because popular will knows that any beginnings of radical change in China, such as protesting for democracy, will be met with the most extreme prejudice.
In the end we shall make thoughtcrime lit erally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.
So we’re going to let the war crimes slide, and get him for demoting women and DEI.
Drifting toward constant impeachments and counter-impeachments as tactical political weapons is a bad idea. It’s “so French,” in the sense of the French Revolution, which I always thought was a model of intemperate excess gone off the rails. The Robespierres here are howling for heads.
The deeply-considered design places elections front and center as the tool of choice. It staggers government selections over different years for good reasons. This remedy is, as of this moment, apparently working. We need to have an attention span longer than a few microseconds to see the effects. The hasty want to file divorce before the chance for a honeymoon was tested. Some reconsiderations on Iran and the future also need to happen. What are the proposed alternatives, now that this massive stupidity has happened?
But I know, it is so hip and cool and “now” to sound off. Look at the governance farce of Occupy Wall Street and remember. Now to wait for the scathing retorts.
.
I wouldn’t cry if we rolled out the guillotine and had a re-enactment of the French Revolution in Washington DC
Almost happened. “San Diego County man arrested after guillotine found in pickup truck near US Capitol”https://abc7ny.com/post/police-arrest-california-man-philan-tam-duy-le-guillotine-found-pickup-truck-capitol/19741573/
nobody cares for excuses anymore. save your breath
Humans should be howling for heads.
heads on pikes of the amerikan senators and presidents the past 60 years…..would be a wet dream of any humanitarian.
Hopefully, not for long.
Of course, the Democrats will bring this up in the next Congress where they could have 255-260 seats.
This will also serve as a distraction from the other things – like Jeffries being made Speaker and Schumer becoming Senate Majority leader, M4A getting ruled out, no hike in minimum wage etc etc.
It is a good outcome but not for republicans.
Even after the mid term results Republican Congressmen still haven’t learned that they are there to make decisions that are solely for the good of Americans not solely for the good of Donald Trump.
Until they learn that lesson they will continue to lose votes.
Obviously any reasonable person would vote to impeach Hegseth when US lives are at stake and you have a nut job running things. all this and they know his tenure is only going to last another 60-90 days no matter what they do.
It looks like the boys won’t be home for Christmas.
The Republicans could have portrayed themselves as learning a lesson, hearing the American people and got rid of Hegseth. No, they double down on Hegseth. They need to lose more of these Boomers and hardcore idiots.
Jim Jordan will offer nothing to the American people. Just finger pointing and no solutions to problems. Same will be with the current idiots: the Democrats.
There has to be a third party to evolve. The R’s and D’s will do everything to block this party. I just don’t see anything happening unless something radical happens in America.
“They need to lose more of these Boomers and hardcore idiots.”
2-star Mishelin award granted on this comment.
hakeem ain’t no boomer. but he is a uniparty warmonger. if you think the younger generation votes for less warmongering, i see no proof. remember when the squad and friends retracted and blamed their assistants for sending out the anti war missive a few years ago. you are too smart to think the younger amerikans show any real sign of being peaceniks. certainly not the 40 somethings that all happily went off to kill innocents in iraq…….
That is why a false flag operation in the US is inevitable. Young people rushed to enlist in the military by the tens of thousands after 9/11, to defend the homeland. Then they were sent to Iraq, which had nothing to do with that attack.
perhaps again. no doubt. i lost a whole bunch of childhood pals. hell of a way to die. decide to burn to death or leap out of 100 stories……….on the morning of 9.11.01, i told my 18 year nephew who came running over to my house, “merry christmas to the bush crime family and the PROJECT FOR THE NEW AMERIKAN CENTURY”. it was obviously a provoked attack, where the mossad was on board flights and the CIA knew the plans……….just like the 1998 embassy bombings in east africa. anyone with any contacts in the deep state or with men that knew bin laden when he was on our payroll, were NOT surprised. only the nit wits thought it was a big surprise using hijacked planes as missiles………….what a joke. a bad joke. i think we are beyond that at this point. we are crumbling and weak and running from mideast with tails between our legs……..with our ruling class hiding on military bases. by 2029 we will bust up into a 50 state solution. the empire will be dead. for all intents and purposes. nobody fears us anymore. they just hate us and our bitch colony, israel. nobody saw the USSR folding up so fast. nobody.
ps. very true. all those young fools thinking they were protecting the homeland. ones with half a brain figured out they were played within a few years. the dumb ones still believe they did something.
Precisely. Thumbs up. Good on you.
11 democrats didn’t vote.
all funded by Aipac.
it shows how big of a threat the democrats really think maga is.
how many more people will Pete get to murder because these 11 couldn’t be bothered to vote against their paymasters? 3 months more of murder in our name, thanks dems!
Team D likes it when Team R does their dirty work for them. It amazes me that so many here still believe in Team D, still lay on the rationalizations just like the Trump cult.
Like how many times will you fall for the bait and switch already? “This time it’s different!”
No, Virginia, it’s not any different. You got played. Again.
They are showing us that revolution is the only way.
i bet so many naive pals of mine over the decade, “the big gulp revolution” ain’t happening. fat dumb and nihilist people. don’t give a fuck how big their gun collections are.
I know several with huge gun collections… love going to the range with them to try out various exotic man-splatters.
To a man, they are all too fat to walk 1/4 mile without resting.
They get pissed when I ask them how they plan to deal with drones. Can’t get them interested in drone building… they’re too offended about their arsenal being made mostly useless.
i told all my gun nut pals over the decades from SC to AZ they lacked two very important attributes to go with their guns. brains and balls. like my amerikan pal who was in caves in afghanistan with bin laden and boys fighting and defeating the USSR…….always said to me. our boys are mostly pussies and won’t do dyssentary. they only do tours. like a vacation. the ww2 men went off and were told they were pussies and the germans and japanese were gonna ass rape their wives and kids if they lost. so they went. until they died or won.
‘the sword comes into the world because of justice delayed and justice denied.’
do you really think the wars are gonna stop with the landslide Blue congress swearing in? that’s precious.
nope. I am not Charlie Brown.
good to know. it’s hard to tell online. not like conversing……….so many fucking stupid amerikans. i just default to that for ease.
Microsoft, META and Oracle sold $75 billion in securities in four days…
Dilution is the solution to pollution of circular finance?
ha ha. nailed it. good rhyme.
And Microsoft laid off 60,000 to do it.
Darn and damn those democrats how can you miss an important vote like that aarg! Thatz why so many of us vote 3rd party or not at all. That hooverian dirtbag can still cause lots of problems even a ceremonial impeachment would have been a big embarrassment
Impeach hegseth again asap
3-star Mishelin award for being the crusader for justice. In 53 days, the dems take over Congress and justice will be served.
Nikki Haley was on CNBC this morning talking about how outraged she was of ICE’s tactics and how her party is the party of fiscal responsibility. Double lol.
They asked her why she didn’t speak up and said some people speak privately. Lol.
Team players are always dishonest. Haley reflects the attitudes of bureaucrats, pols, military lifers. They are suck up artists and inherently dishonest. I’d rather have a beer with a cowboy any day.
If Dems in Congress re-elect Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jefferies as their leaders, it will be business as usual. Hakeem could have impeached Hegseth, but somehow couldn’t get the people he leads to show up for work.
I think that’s a foregone conclusion, different actors, same soap opera or perhaps different crew, same Titanic. “This ship can’t sink!”
“She’s made of iron sir, I assure you she can and she will, it is a mathematical certainty.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP7BWb1ndpA
There’s still a few lifeboats left, who’s going to get on them?
ha ha. imagine being so naive to believe the Blues are NOT a warmongering party. it makes me LOL to know so many are so naive. i think i figured this shit out at about age 16
No it won’t.
Ha! Haley is on the “restore my credibility” tour! Phoney baloney.
Her pillow should be compelled to testify.
Painfully this shows that the Rapeublicans are lockstep in their collusion with the Pedophile in chief.
They do not care about the election results, our nations founding principals of Liberty and Justice For All, or, for that matter, The Geneva Convention.
What does it say about the Democrats, who could have stopped the Republicans but didn’t care enough about the election results, Liberty and Justice, or the Geneva Convention to oppose the Rapeublicans by showing up at work to do their job?
Agree.
It says the same thing as when D players FBO and FJB kept those uncharged, unprosecuted Muslim hostages in Gitmo for another 4-8 years each.
Yes, it’s so blatant.
you are only half way home. stuck on second base. the uniparty voters have their representatives doing exactly what they want. uniparty warmongering cunts, living coast to coast.
“They do not care about… our nations founding principals of Liberty and Justice For All, or, for that matter, The Geneva Convention.”
Nobody cares. As far as the Uniparty and its members are concerned, such things are strictly marketing slogans, to be used to snare chumps and fools.
Hegseth’s Pathetic Defense
https://daniellarison.substack.com/p/hegseths-pathetic-defense
What a shame, I was looking forward to an appropriate punishment, maybe a public hanging live streamed on the net. I’m very disappointed in all this.
I strongly disagree that this is a good outcome. What kind of extensive investigation needs to be done to figure out whether or not Hegseth went to war without Congress’s approval? Meanwhile we leave a psychopath in charge of a Department of War, who continues to unapologetically kill people for ‘crimes’ with no evidence.
Obviously the Democrat politicians don’t care what their voters want, they don’t care enough about the voters to make the effort to actually go to their workplace and vote to remove the one leading the Department of War.
I am absolutely disappointed and disgusted.
you my friend nailed it. but alas we live in a violent warmongering imperial worldwide arrogant and nihilist country of cunts. so that is who we all elect as our representatives of the people. alas, as i repeat and only my intellectually honest friends and family understand. democracy works. always has. always will. look at an old school yearbook and count the assholes. will be north of 95%. just like their grandmas and great great grandpas. long live the empire.
I generally agree with you on this view, but in this case the American people don’t want this war and want it ended now. A Reuters poll just published yesterday says 71% of Americans (including 93% of Democrats and 51% of Republicans) want Congress to pass legislation ending the Iran war. Congress just doesn’t care. Especially galling when team Blue gets a massive mandate and they shrug and say “I’m too busy”.
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2026/11/10/most-americans-want-new-democratic-congress-to-end-trumps-iran-war-poll-finds/
if that was the case, why did the people’s representatives not impeach. it’s really not complicated. the only poll that matters is the mechanism called democracy. philosophy drives politics which drives policy. the people’s philosophy is vastly majority warmongering cunts. you just need to face this reality. or not. make believe democracy does NOT work. and make excuses. over 2000 years of history says that is what the greeks called, “idiotes”. look up what that originally meant.
I have to agree that ultimately you are right. If people actually cared, all of those who voted to table this bill or who didn’t show up to oppose it would be primaried before the next election. That won’t happen because voters just don’t care enough.
…or because the War Party has two factions, D & R
To quote Ron Paul,
George W. Bush was elected promising a “more humble” foreign policy…eight years of Middle East wars.
Obama was elected as the “new” peace candidate….Assad must go” and “Gaddafi must go”
Trump was elected after Biden took us to the brink of war with Russia over Ukraine. He promised that this time he would be the real peace candidate. We got war on Iran instead.
Fool me once…fool me twice…
the amerikan people do love their warmongering.
correct. uniparty war mongering nihilist cunt imperialists. the people and their reps.
Humans are stupid and easily manipulated herd animals, more mindless than sheep, dogs or lemmings.
So unlike Cats!
You can’t blame the voters. they have 1 bit of information in their information bandwidth. they can succesfully vote Kang or Kronos. So you want us to all vote republican next time since the dems won’t do it? We can primary them again, for… other dems?
This system is too slow for representative democracy.
let a 4th branch, the people vote to impeach hegseth then. if we don’t, then it’s our fault, but you can’t blame the voters
in a first past the post 2 party system.
It’s like blaming some made up game, that people are playing it badly, when it’s the rules of the game.
It’s a systemic issue, not a voter issue.
It doesn’t matter what the people wants. What matters is what Israel wants, as the politicians crave Zionist carrot and fear Zionist stick.
I have to agree with you, Quatloo. Although, I hope Mish is right, and the Dems refile. His track record lately is near flawless with predictions.
But reason tells me that what the Democrats did last night was no accident. When Pelosi was speaker, if you missed a vote on a critical issue you would lose committee assignments. Those 11 should have been told, show up or you have no future in the Democratic party. A couple of absences would have been OK – there was one who genuinely had a medical situation. Eleven is absolutely unacceptable and shows weak leadership.
I would not be so sure Jeffries is going to reintroduce impeachment on Jan 3rd. He may be hoping that the whole thing blows over so he can go back to doing Israel’s bidding.
Committee assignments are yet to come
Pelosi was one the members that missed the vote.
I am not surprised in the slightest. DNC opposition to the War On Iran is strictly performative.
As I have said many times – expect a reprise of 2006.
Hopefully the new crop of democrat Congress critters – less beholden to Israel – will push the issue. Unfortunately they seem likely to tolerate Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker.
Don’t kid yourself.
Once they learn the ropes, they’ll move the old guard out of the way.
Like in 2006. Or 2008. Or 2018.
Please.
Massie should wait until after Thanksgiving, and re-file his impeachment articles when the Dems are back to full strength. However, why do I suspect that a mysterious illness would break out in the Dem Caucus on the day of the next vote?
AIPAC will just hold another cocktail party.
I’m an optimist and was hoping we would see real change in the country as a result of the election. But I’m now convinced I was wrong. That didn’t take long.
“We didnt have the votes.” Blah blah.
Sunday after Sunday, football teams have to play teams they have little to no hope of beating. But you show up and play hard. Especially when the stakes are high and people are starting to actually root for you to beat the dynasty team.
The majority of fans want dethkeg fired. Anyone standing in the way will piss off fans more. D’s should make hay of this.
> how Republicans will portray it.
Let them try. Right now, the election shows fans are sick of Team R. Fans won’t care how the R’s try to portray it.
Amusing that Nancy Pelosi was one of those who was too busy to be there for the vote
Ha. Yeah, she had to stay home between 9am and 12:30pm to wait for the cable guy. 🙂
Probably deliberate – she’s bitter and may want Hakeem to fail. She’s also taken a lot of AIPAC money from Hegseth’s masters.
She will retire from the House in ‘27. Her grift continues till the last possible moment.
Her and Trump in a just nation would be serving time in prison.
Wouldn’t it be great if they could share a cell!
People pay a lot to see the Elizabeth Holmes documentary. Imagine what they would pay for a 24/7 live streaming channel in that prison cell!
>> … Pete Hegseth ordered military members to an area in Kuwait with an ACTIVE WARNING they had ZERO defense against drone attacks and he IGNORED IT. … Six were then KILLED.
I think it’s hard to prosecute and remove dethkeg for sending soldiers into risky combat situations. (Even small arms sometimes work against drones.). Going after him for this would be lower than going after Capone for tax evasion. I hope that’s the least of the charges.
Double-tap attack on the boat off of Venezuela seems like the most airtight case to me. Also the March 4th sinking of the unarmed Iranian ship off the coast of India that was returning from a multi-nation exercise. The sailors were left to the sharks. Wicked.
Two Mark48s from an LA class nuke sub. The Sri Lanka Navy rescued 32 Iranian sailors and recovered 84 bodies? The logistics and vulnerability of surfacing an LA and milling about the wreckage are a no-go. Still…really cold.
The Democrats already decided not to show up? Literally, figuratively, or both?
apparently the 11 democrats couldn’t make it on time due to a car accident.
it seems a large pallet of aipac cash fell on their car causing a delay.
Ohhh snap! 🙂
I bet they have insurance for accidents like that. Double indemnity!
An impeachment is not a pardon and does not preclude subsequent investigation and prosecution for crimes.
I prefer removing bad actors immediately from power. As he stays in office, he will either cause more damage or will destroy evidence.