one for the abuse of power and the other for the obstruction of congress 2 crimes than when one set against the backdrop of washington d.c. over the past 60 years leave this particular commentator feeling like congress just spent more than 8 hours arguing arguing with each other yesterday just to ultimately hand out 2 speeding tickets at the indy $500.00 especially in light of all the abuses of power and subversion of congress we've seen from former presidents vice presidents cia officials f.b.i. officials and say directors pentagon officials ice agents homeland security has attorney generals governors senators representatives house of speakers senate majority leader's f.d.a. officials and. i'm right out of breath starting with tobacco smoke or that happens every now and again as common dreams reports the final vote on the 1st article was $230.00 to $197.00 largely along partisan lines the final vote on the 2nd article focused on the obstruction of congress charge was passed by a vote of 229-2198 while no republicans jump ship there were

a smattering of democrats who went against their party with no votes but ultimately it was one congressman woman who has drawn condemnation from both sides of the aisle for her well president the congresswoman out of hawaii and current democratic presidential candidate tells the gathered made up 1st wednesday night in the nation's history of impeachment votes by choosing to vote not yet a or nay but president. cue the thunderous rebuke from capitol hill so the presidential impeachment moving forward and tells the gathered standing president let's start watching the hawks. if you want to deal with. the bank failed in the truth. of. what they like i got. a chance.

well the women watching the hawks i am tyro vinter and joining me today is my unimpeachable impeachable panel of r t america all-stars lynell of lynell media r t correspondent sara month and the host of the big picture holland cook and from toronto you want to only r.t. america correspondent alex mahela bitch thank you all for coming on today. all right so look i know that we all have an opinion or an observation the biggest story in the united states today the impeachment of one bottle from. you know that stain on this presidential jacket what are your initial thoughts let's start with sir well i spent a lot of time yesterday covering the impeachment throughout the day so just to just to kind of reiterate it just seems very much like you said highlighting the fact that there was supposed to be a formal debate of about 6 hours where the vote was supposed to take place by 7 pm eastern time at the latest the but it didn't take place until 8 30 pm eastern time

and even a little after that so it just seemed like there was a lot of time of back and forth where both parties were arguing over the republicans on one side defending the president's actions saying that he did nothing wrong * while the democrats just pointing saying that he violated the constitution that he sees are impeachable offenses it was just a back and forth of complete fighting where what gets to me is these issues that we're trying to really focus on infrastructure what happened to the u.s. being 1st something that president trump has and to kind of for that argument we know what's going to happen here there have been 2 sitting presidents have been impeached in history an 868 andrew johnson and in 1008 bill clinton neither of them were removed from office so it looks like this will be no exception for president from 5 or because the republicans have the majority in the senate so really just a lot of back and forth and over 8 hours just seems

a bit much. to quote a great peggy lee is that all there is. it was like this in congruity like amish porn it was a go back to marilyn that was what was on the other side what are we watching what is happening i we waited we waited here was. it was the most on i didn't feel an even. in america going to the merits of it people called me very astute people i thought who said listen i don't want to get it and they're going to get rid of it is it not what's the rules like rules what is this what happened is the n. well andrew johnson by the way the tenure in office at getting rid of that new area was that was in all of the papers you covered this years ago family all correctly that one was at least probable tenable bill clinton i don't go into detail we least understood the subject matter this is the only impeachment where

you could go to times square or any place dupont circle ask people what happens they don't know i believe don't want to can i say i will circle to you in a minute alan 1st i want to head out to toronto and get alex male a bitch as someone who outside of the country looking in and what have you what or what do you make of these wonderful impeachment proceedings that we had yesterday. but you know what looking from the outside in and i'm sure a lot of americans feel the same way as well the question is what is peach meant we were expecting pitchforks with knives out and you know here get out of the white house are going to be pushing the donald trump out no nothing like that basically it's a dog and pony show that leads to nothing so anticlimactic of the watching the whole thing from the beginning 1st of all and 2nd of all it just shows how this system is . let's not get into the division of all things i don't really care that yours is them it's just doesn't seem to do what it's supposed to do and you're wasting so much money so much time on this pietschmann that leads to nothing and ultimately

will lead to more nothing and most likely lead to a much stronger donald trump in 2020 and when he times come for reelection this is something that he might be actually using to his benefit instead of to his detriment and holland cook please give us the big picture i watched for hours last night and i was shocked i couldn't believe my eyes there was jim jordan wearing a sport coat and doug collins is apparently being paid by the decimal but being a good news guy i was out by dawn's early light this morning i read the news today oh boy if that wasn't a dated enough reference i've gone old school. and i notice other than the headlines are getting shorter you have the 3 word version and if you go to either of these alleged lefty rags they've got it down do 2 words wow but if you're a real political junkie and one just give it to me hardcore and for anybody who's

watching who has never been to the newseum here in washington you have until the 31st when it closes and quick tonight or 1st thing tomorrow morning if you go to the newseum is web site it's a real shame or gets bored because you can see today's front pages from across the usa and all around the world and it's very interesting to see how this is expressed 6 simply you know this is all we have the attention span for and to lionel's point i bought these from the kid at walgreens and he said so trump's not president anymore this is not been understood it hasn't really been the last of all and so that's why i want to get to this next piece because it really jumped out at me tells the gabber drew fire speaking of being misunderstood for what she was trying to do drew fire from both sides for choosing to vote present when the when they took the impeachment vote yesterday wednesday take a listen to this clip of the congresswoman just a small a small part of her 4 minute speech on why she chose to vote present take

a listen i am standing in the center and decided to vote present i could not in good conscience vote against impeachment because i believe president trump is guilty of wrongdoing i also could not in good conscience vote for impeachment because removal of a sitting president must not be the culmination of a partisan process fueled by tribal animosities that have so gravely divided our country. so what do we make of blood oh you just started laughing what do we make of that what does their argument hold water don't you buy by the way she's cool. don't you love that i couldn't i realize what he did was wrong. but then again i couldn't ask for him to be removed because that would be part of the invoice i'm a politician she is a democrat kind of she should watch her in the future but wasn't that great the president is like the no contest plea i didn't say i did it i didn't do enough if

you look at data which is good though or as a kind i call it no context like let's just forget the whole thing yes smooth move on her part non-committal but she does cement that candidate with a conscience thing low risk no risk way she's not going to be president but she has signed her name to something in a different way than the others have and i think that's also the problem that we live in a very divided society right now and the fact that she's she's calling that out that she's not going to vote one way or the other i think gives her a little bit of credibility in my book at least for that sense because i do believe that the democrats this may be a backfire for them because we almost know what this is going to play out to be whether there's a trial in the senate or not and i do believe that this will help the republicans and president donald trump did you see the lines waiting for his rally in michigan last night i mean that crowd was going big so you know it's i want to throw to you your what do you think is. playing it safe was that good is 'd that going to help

her careers are going to hurt her career moving forward. tulsi gabbard fan but when it comes to this i didn't like it i think she should have done something a little bit different she didn't explain herself i mean going back to the founding fathers and you know this is what this is all about here's trump that did some bad stuff in but look at the founding fathers wanted to it's not about that it's the fact that she should have spoken about the wars that this country has been an illegal wars the illegal funding of terrorist organizations that have killed americans by americans and american governments she should have spoken about that kind of stuff and put that up next to what trump did in comparable and i think toll see gabbert as this as a candidate for president who is really running on this antiwar platform that's the things that we'd like to hear from her that's where i wanted to hear from her and i think that would have made a little bit more sense of that kind of excuse for saying president which i'm

president right now too i wish i could have said that at the beginning that i would have to be saying all this but at the end of the story is like look the bottom line is she just didn't explain herself i think there was no there and i think is actually going to go i could be a big negative for her i don't think this is going to resonate for her has been around by the way tell us as a major league as a random scieno. not to say had just try not to say it's not but remember what arlen specter during the clinton he said not prove. always wants to be he is that asterisk in history but let me tell you something he is got a big future don't run. eliminate her present and also moving aig. what do you think is the adirondack way but watch these is he what was so good about her . that's true she got that everywhere. and it might be one of those odd

positions that at the end of the day when enough time has passed and i think people look back on this for the circus from both sides. both sides are guilty of this trump and the democrats when they look back on this they might be say oh wow here's somebody who actually said i got washed away on this mess i don't know we'll see how this all plays out all right everybody as we go to break our quaters don't forget to let us know what you think of the topic you cover the local media be sure to check out watching all the podcast which is now available on spotify apple music and everywhere you listen to your favorite or favorite podcast coming up our blue ribbon panel weighs in on the latest twist in the world of the edward snowden saga and the school lunch issue that strikes all our bank accounts and heartstrings what you.

dream agreed to prison which old mr remember there was most of the family were working class and it wasn't it was bad you know much worse objectives leeson day but there was an expectation that things were going to get better. and there was a real sense of hope. there isn't today today's america where shape by the 10 principles of concentration of wealth and power. reduced democracy at tax. engineer elections manufacture consent and other principle holds according to. one set of rules for the rich opposite set of rules for. that's what happens when you put power into the hands of a narrow sector will switch will is dedicated to increasing power for chills just as you'd expect one of the most influential intellectuals of our time speaks about

the modern civilization. america. well it finally happened donald trump has been impeached by the house of representatives in complete opposition to what the founders had even vision the articles voted on were along party lines it is highly unlikely the senate will vote to remove the president from office so what is the point of this entire exercise. when n.s.a. whistleblower edward snowden published his memoir permanent record last fall it debuted at number 2 on the new york times bestseller list and went on to be a smashing success. and now it appears that the united states government will be

getting a cut of mr snowden's profits the new york times reports almost immediately upon its release the u.s. justice department sued mr snowden seeking to seize his proceeds from his new memoir because he did not submit the manuscript for review before it was published so officials could make sure it contained no classified information well that lawsuit has come to its conclusion the united states the. judge liam o'grady of alexandria virginia has ruled that in a 14 page opinion that snowden was in breach of his employment contract that requires authors to get approval for material containing any mention of intelligence data or activities or any other information or material which is known to be classified the government will also now be going after proceeds from his speeches as well now this is not the 1st time that the u.s. government has gone after authors in breach of the security clauses back in 2016 a navy seal who wrote about killing bin laden was forced to give up almost 7000000 in royalties to the government so the question is my panel should we allow the

government to essentially profit from former employees turned fiction authors i'll start with you alex. you know one stoughton is just out of the way in russia and you can't epstein the guy well might as well go for his wallet and that's exactly what's happening here so they want to hit snowden on every possible way that they can but edward snowden doesn't really seem to care and i think that's probably bugging them a little bit more than that the whole fact that they can't reach him at this point with snowden he's basically come out and said listen this book was written for the public i want people to know he is a whistleblower and that's what whistleblowers do so you just want to put out a little bit more information there am i going to get the money am i not going to get the money that's secondary to me so should the government be able to do that you do sign contracts when you work for the cia and the n.s.a. as you saw in car. for working for private corporations but on the way out you know

the corporations are going to say well you can't work for our competitors or you can't disclose this information sometimes people do that they win in court so it could be the same type of thing where you look at the government b.b. he could get his bucks maybe he won't but i think either way someone just doesn't care is it the absolutely insane for the government to kind of make this argument against probably one of the most famous whistleblowers in the street to be like hey you should have checked with us before you wrote your book can you imagine going to getting approval at a time that's my thing is this is i want to talk about the stuff i can i think do that what about this is a this is tantamount to the son of sam laws which were found unconstitutional and then really brought back again which says a person cannot quote profit from their own crimes and that's been i hate that it's the most unconstitutional thing because if you think about people who've actually committed crimes and then wrote about it the war there was a martin luther king st paul in jesus mahatma gandhi and hitler bad example but in

mine company so this is an extension of that this is the idea that we're going to go after we want to stifle speech and that's what this you can say this is merely a contractual penalty but this is about quelling speech and tell the woman i want shut up and that is not america and i think that's something that i think has become very blurry nowadays with with intelligence where like you said i mean these are our tax dollars sometimes going to these intelligence officers but i do agree much of what alec said that snowden wrote this to tell the story and the u.s. government is trying to go for anything they can at this point for him and much like alex said snowden probably doesn't care much about the money at this point he struck out in russia and united states officials or said iran with russia by and i just want to clarify that no clarification there thank you little on the credibility for the just that he's i mean he's just there's no he can go nowhere. and he's afraid to go anywhere again because the united states is just trying to

hit him wherever it hurts him every time we were on one of those aeroflot commercials i want to go i don't know how bad it is. in terms of that controversy p.t. barnum would love this you know this is the bad boy that you want to date because your father disapproves and so there's that but as a practical matter why do you think he's on the lam and how can they get their hands on his money we have transcended. currency via that coin etc they going to attach his proceeds from amazon he can sell the darn thing as a p.d.f. and click back if he wants you know there's enough ways around the system that i think it's probably a net win for him because of the stink it's true and the more publicity but it's interesting because you when you guys brought up that idea of going after him you know going after his money right now was a chelsea manning just celebrated i think or 32nd 33rd birthday because she's standing up for principles and they have her in jail again despite you know releasing her last year is that hard can we keep

a straight face now when we kind of condemn other countries for going after you know political folks they don't like or dissidents in their country when at the same time here we are forcing upward snowden to live in exile because you know we will get a fair trial here in the reasoning free is that is there's a little bit of a are we had to face when it comes to that alex. and you can't you get your ideas are you going to guess what it's like watching him do we come across into. the law is that you know that i mean that of course i mean there's so many situations where i could point fingers at those you know basically i've always said you know is one of these calling the kettle black situations i've talked about him a 1000 times on twitter what i'm talking about the states pointing fingers at other countries what they're doing with the united states is doing the exact same thing but you know it's at home also you know what this reminded b. and i know this is kind of off a little bit but about this whole to kashi 69 the rise. for the case where he's making $10000000.00 while he's sitting in jail and getting his contract

a $10000000.00 contract. gang member has committed crimes of the united states of america in jail and everybody's ok with that that's ok but this whistleblower comes out who's basically helped your country help the world recognized and knows the information that was much needed for the whole entire public to know this guy is being treated like a criminal by the u.s. justice system while the other guy when i'm out 10000000 bucks and i'm a bad boy this is the use of is a shot of this country we have the whistleblower now the democrat whistleblower this wasn't i wasn't going to be but he was a hero sending the ball is a rat. we time legislation where people whistleblower legislation where people have basically exposed on the government money they're heralded ellsberg was a hero i mean just doing the sun is. this to me is exactly the this is newsworthy and what i thought was the court's always said if it's

newsworthy that that trumps sorry about the pun everything but apparently not in some. not in virginia courts apparently especially them from records i want to jump to this last story so we have time finally to have to bring up the story of caitlin hardy a kindergartner who recently set up a lemonade stand of sorts selling cider hot cocoa and cookies and or to help raise money for fellow students who couldn't afford or had negative balances on their school lunch accounts she ultimately raised about $80.00 and was able to pay off the negative balances of a $123.00 students with that $80.00 and she's going to pay off more as she goes for about well this is a beautiful act by a young girl in her family to help her community to me this raises a very serious problem why in the united states of america do 123 students and 3 fill a mentor school in vista california or for that matter any kid across the country have to pay to eat at public schools in the 1st place i ask you that x. does this make any sense to outside looking in. no look i mean trillions of dollars

missing from your government trillions of dollars spent on war you can't feed kids you can't educate them properly you have a little girl here who's doing something good and here's the scary part i actually you know one on a couple articles about this today they're reading from different sources the comments coming from americans about this 5 year old are unbelievable she's a liberal she's a socialist she's i don't know right. seriously like i mean come on this group and you know what then of course somebody can say well you know republicans actually donate more money than their liberals to charity you know who care who cares if the whole fact of the matter is the bottom line is that there is 5 year olds i can't afford food their parents can't afford food and the united states has the money for it but is using it for all the wrong things in the worst part alec is that we just found out that the government is seizing this now because she's a whistleblower and she's done the right thing is now she's exposing. this

draconian lunchroom. shylock it's horrible day jess she's probably already got a book deal with this mess and i don't know why because it's not just these kids and cover this is a problem across the country where you see these kids going into even the high schools going into serious debt to their school just not going to get yet because they can't not that what school lunches were that great to begin with but now imagine like this is our we have to look at the education system across the board in the united states and kind of bring it back to kind of off topic but still the teacher strike thing been going on in the past for the past 2 years some of the largest since the early or mid 1905 looking back at that these are the people who are educating the children of the future the adults of the future and for them not to be able to have a meal is just plain sad so yes looking at what the united states is doing without funding where we can allocate that funding from a little bit here

a little bit there it will add up. it's not social 'd i don't think it's a it should be a partisan issue giving kids food at school i don't mind my tax dollars going to paper little johnny little susie dawson whatever it is down the street being able to eat you know and for many it's the only square meal of the day my dad was an elementary school principal i was a high school teacher. you don't know what their whole nutritional life is like outside of their i think this is an important story for that reason and it's a sweet christmas kind of a story one of the network newscasts was doing the piece the other night on a civics class in high school and they were talking about impeachment and they made a lot more sense than what we saw on t.v. from the house the other night this may just be another case of the kids are smarter than the grownups you know this inspired me to they do go through a huge hubel when you know i'm addicted to and i happen to look at things school lunch programs around the world japan and it was i want to just go there for the

launch and they're worried about not only you know the the wellbeing of the child in the spiritual health and here we are saying i can't i'm going to walk you all up for the you know for the for the snickerdoodle i mean what how do pray even darwin i know less as mr canada over here on the outside looking in but it is embarrassing it is truly embarrassing and especially the fact that look look let's be honest we're not feeding our school children you know it seems like we have a bunch of schoolchildren on capitol hill who can't get anything done so but they get fed well every day by lobbyist dollars more than likely i want to thank my blue ribbon panel as always for coming on line all of lynell media that always wonderful ceremonious they all car to correspondent the big picture i'm self mr holland cook and alex mahela bitch from our awesome studios up north in toronto thank you all so much for coming on with a pleasure to have you all here and that ladies and gentlemen is our show for you remember everyone in this world we are told we are loved up so i tell you all i

love you i wrote for. keep on watching all those forces out there and have a great life. and we're going to fulfill the repeated promises apologise to the people and promise to be you know we've all but. you are a pretty rough. pretty rare bird. now you want to 1st correct that. no.

fault be cut cut cut cut. cut cut cut cut cut coming. most people think to stand out in this business you need to be the 1st one on top of the story or the person with the loudest voice of the biggest raid in truth to stand down lose business is just the dance the right questions demand the right answer. questions there. brothers see the right to the light of themselves. my name is drawn more than i was for this to die in prison by the expression love

my life. take a stick grab some media attention i mean it's a shooting in a 16 year old's 16 birthday party. so i think the police just held a lot of pressure to. close the case. for he is. just. it's like i couldn't believe those. you know so far they are all more than the sure don't want peace be with us that's all of the issues because i was standing right next to. me for is the son you got to keep in mind i wanted you 1617 years old so. you could lose money and i used one to disappear literally. pull through. normal is close to drool. still know the truth.

one person is killed and 5 others injured in a shooting near the federal security service building in central moscow witnesses describe the attack. vegetate 5 or 10 minutes past 6 the gunfire began and it was not just a few shots that came in bursts we saw officers taking cover behind the cars. also this hour and a last minute attempt to disrupt russian gas supplies to europe u.s. senators warner a swiss company about crippling sanctions will put it out of business if it doesn't stop work on the almost completed nordstrom top.