At the conclusion of his opening statement regarding impeachment before the House Judiciary Committee on December 4th, Professor Jonathan Turley mentioned a famous scene from the 1966 film A Man for All Seasons. In this particular scene, Sir Thomas More -- the venerated English lawyer and statesman who famously opposed the tyranny of King Henry VIII -- is criticized by his son-in-law, William Roper, for putting the law before morality and “God’s law.” In a brilliant retort, More asks Roper if he would “cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?” Roper responds that he would “cut down every law in England to do that!”

Cleta Mitchell is an excellent attorney who has been retained by FreedomWorks organizations for nearly a decade. Commenting on the bias and political philosophies by the bureaucrats testifying in the impeachment hearings, she makes an excellent argument for overturning “the Supreme Court’s 1984 decision in Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. National Resources Defense Council, in which the court articulated a principle that federal agency decisions should receive deference in federal litigation because of the ‘expertise’ of the federal agency in matters involving the agency. Known popularly as Chevron deference, it presupposes that the agency and its employees are not only experts, but are philosophically neutral in the discharge of their duties.”

“From the beginning - that is to say, from November 9, 2016 - impeachment has been a cause in search of a trigger, an occasion,” wrote Michael Anton in the Claremont Review of Books, and then he reviews the time and cost of the Mueller report. “It only took two years, $32 million, 19 lawyers, 40 FBI agents and other staff, 2,800 subpoenas, and 500 witnesses for a special counsel to “not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

Concerning the impeachment of President Trump, James Piereson, a senior fellow of the Manhattan Institute, published in the New Criterion “Break the Wrong Ground.” Piereson writes, “The subject of impeachment has always been accompanied by solemn pronouncements that it must be invoked sparingly, never for narrow partisan or political purposes, and used in extreme cases to preserve the Constitution and the rule of law against a president who has violated his oath of office.” This was also the view of Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz as reported in my FreedomWorks Blog, “The Framers of the Constitution Warned Against a Partisan Impeachment Process” “A partisan impeachment vote is exactly what the Framers feared,” Dershowitz wrote. “Impeachment is an extraordinary tool to be used only when the constitutional criteria are met. These criteria are limited and include only ‘treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Last Friday, the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) within the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) closed the extended public comment period for their proposal to reform broad-based categorical eligibility for food stamps. The proposal would close a loophole that allowed thousands of Americans who did not qualify for food stamps to be eligible for benefits regardless.

On behalf of our activist community, I urge you to contact your representative and ask him or her to cosponsor the Health Coverage Choice Act, H.R. 4811, introduced by Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.). The bill would codify the Trump Administration rulemaking on short-term, limited-duration (STLD) health plans, which expanded these plans to a maximum of 12 months from three months and allowed renewability for up to 36 months.

The Republican Study Committee (RSC), a conservative caucus of which well over half of House Republicans are a member, has just released a memo outlining a bold, free-market plan for improving America’s health care. The plan, A Framework for Personalized, Affordable Care, is leadership in an important policy area that has been missing for some time. It’s extremely encouraging to see Republicans uniting around a plan that focuses on the ability of individuals to afford and keep their own health benefits.