Ultimately hand out 2 speeding tickets at the indy 500 especially in light of all the abuses of power and subversion of congress weve seen from former president s Vice President s cia officials f. B. I. Officials and i say directors pentagon officials ice agents Homeland Security has attorney generals governors senators representatives house of speakers Senate Majority leaders f. D. A. Officials and. Im right out of breath sorry about tobacco smoke or that happens every now and again as Common Dreams reports the final vote on the 1st article was 230 to 197 largely along partisan lines the final vote on the 2nd article focused on the obstruction of congress charge was passed by a vote of 2292198 while no republicans jumped ship there were a smattering of democrats who went against their party with no boats but ultimately it was one congressman woman who was drawn condemnation from both sides of the aisle for her well presence the congresswoman out of hawaii and current democratic president ial candidate tells me gabbert made a 1st wednesday night in the nations history of Impeachment Vote by choosing to vote not yay or nay but present. Cue the thunderous rebuke from capitol hill so the president ial impeachment moving forward and tells the gathered standing president lets start watching the hawks. Like you that i got. When watching the hawks i am tyro of an attorney joining me today as my unimpeachable teachable panel of r t america allstars 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 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 president ial jacket what are your initial thoughts lets 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 but it didnt 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 were 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 whats going to happen here theyre going to him sitting president s 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 driver 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 ago actually marijuana was on the other side what are we watching what is happening i we waited we waited here it was. It was the most on i didnt feel an even. Imagine going to the merits of it people called me very astute people i thought who said listen i dont want to 50 and theyre going to get rid of it is it no its the rules like rules what is this what happened is the n. When Andrew Johnson by the way the tenure in office at getting rid of that new area was that was and all of the papers you covered this years ago family all correctly that one was at least probable tenable bill clinton i dont 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 i dont know i believe dont 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 abridge as someone who outside of the country looking in and what have you what do you make of these wonderful impeachment proceedings that we had yesterday. But you know what looking from the outside in and im 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 its 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. Lets not get into the division of all things i dont really care that your system is it just doesnt seem to do what its supposed to do and youre 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 couldnt 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 dawns early light this morning i read the news today oh boy if that wasnt a dated enough reference ive 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 theyve got it down do 2 words wow but if youre a real political junkie why dont you just give it to me hardcore and for anybody whos 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 its a real shame or gets bored because you can see todays front pages from across the usa and all around the world and its very interesting to see how this is expressed 6 simply you know this is all we have the Attention Span for and to lionels point i bought these from the kid at walgreens and he said so trumps not present any more this is not been understood it hasnt really been the last of all and so thats 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 just as they take a listen to this clip of the congresswoman just a small a small part of reform 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 the blood oh you just started laughing what do we make of that what does your argument hold water dont you buy by the way shes. Dont you love that i could not be real. What he did was wrong. But then again i couldnt ask for him to be removed because that would be partisan voice im a politician she is a democrat kind of she should watch her in the future but wasnt a great deal president its like a no contest plea i didnt say i did it and in doing that i go. Look at devry which is good though or as a kind i call it no context like lets just forget the whole thing yes smooth move on her part noncommittal but she does cement that candidate with a conscience thing low risk no risk way shes not going to be president but she has signed her name to something in a different way than the others have and i think thats also the problem that we live in a very divided society right now and the fact that shes shes calling that out that shes 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 theres 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 alex i want to throw to you your what do you think is. Playing it safe or is that good is that going to help her career is going to hurt her career moving forward. Big tulsi gathered and but when it comes this like i did like it i think she should have done something a little bit different she didnt explain herself i mean going back to the Founding Fathers and you know this is what this is all about heres trump that did some bad stuff in but you know look at the Founding Fathers one of those its not about that its the fact that she should have spoken about the wars that this country has been illegal wars that 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 its in. Parable and i think tosi gabbert is this as a so candidate for president who is really running on this you know antiwar platform thats the things that wed like to hear from her thats what 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 im 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 look the bottom line is if she just didnt explain herself i think there was no there and i think is actually going to go its could be a big negative for her and i dont think this is going to resonate for has been around by the way telsey as a major league as a ron. And not saying its a strike not saying its not but remember when Arlen Specter during the clinton he said not prove always wants to be the shes that asterisk in history but let me tell you something she has got a big future dont run. Eliminate her present and also beauty gig. He added i dont particularly but watch these but she is she what was so good about her. Every one thats true she got that it would come to life 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 heres somebody who actually said i got to wash my hand in this mess i dont know well see how this all plays out all right everybody as we go to break off watchers dont forget to let us know what you think of a topic to cover the social media be sure to check out watching the ox the podcast which is now available on spotify apple music and everywhere you listen to your favorite or so 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 states watchable. Im going to fulfill the repeated promises possible to the people and promise to be you know with all pots be. Free from. You want to. Know. All. The. Big. Coming i can link up my yacht. In the troubled 19 seventies a group of killers rampage through parts of Northern Ireland that was coordinated loyalists attacks particularly catholic population tens of thousands were forced to flee their homes a mob was striking to put these attacks was a p. R. You see the Police Actually took part in the attacks so instead of preventing it they were active participants and the burning of coal streets in belfast i think more than a 100 innocent civilians were. As the review can seniors and we found out more i was surprised about the extent and the take rates which the solution was involved in some of those cases the killers would later be named glenn and gang i think it went to do very very top i think it. The want. To go with. What 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 snowdens profits as 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 good search judge liam ogrady of alexandria virginia has ruled that 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 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 ill start with you alex. Well you know one stoughton is just out of reach all the way in russia and you cant epstein the guy well might as well go 1st of all that theyre not right and thats exactly whats happening here so yeah they want to hit snowden on every possible way that they can but Edward Snowden doesnt really seem to care and i think thats probably bugging them a little bit more than the whole fact that they cant reach him at this point that with snowden hes basically come on said listen this book was written for the public i want people to know he is a whistleblower and thats what whistleblowers do so he just wanted to push out a little bit more information there am i going to get the money am i not going to get the money thats secondary to me so you know 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 sign contracts for working for private corporations but on the way out you know the corporations are going to say well you cant work for our competitors or you cant disclose this information sometimes people do that and they win in court so it could be the same type of thing where you look at the government maybe he could get his bucks maybe he wont but i think either way someone just doesnt care is it absolutely insane for the government to kind of make this argument against probably one of the most famous whistleblowers in history to be like hey you should have checked with us before you wrote your book. Can you imagine him going to getting approval at a time thats my thing is this 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 shows that a person cannot profit from their own crimes and thats been the i hate its the most unconstitutional thing because if you think about people whove 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 were going to go after we want to stifle speech and thats what this you can say this is merely a contractual penalty but this is about quelling speech and tell the people now one shut up and that is not america and i think thats 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 doesnt care much about the money at this point he struck out in russia and United States officials or said iran with russia by the way he clarified that no clarification there i think you little. Were doing just that hes i mean hes just theres no he can go nowhere and he and hes afraid to go anywhere again because the United States is just trying to hit him wherever it hurts every time we were in one of those aeroflot commercials i want to go i dont know how bad it is. In terms of the 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 theres that but as a practical matter why do you think hes on the lam and how can they get their hands on his money we have transcended. Current c. V. Clane 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 theres enough ways around the system that i think its probably a net win for him because of the stand its true and the more publicity but its interesting because really 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 shes 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 dont 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 wont get a fair trial here in the reasoning free is that is that is a little bit of of our we had to face when it comes to that alex. And he said you know there was a bit of i guess the side looking into we come across into. The law is that yeah i mean that of course i mean theres so many situations where i could point fingers at this late you know basically ive always said you know is one of these calling the kettle black situations ive talked about im a 1000 times on twitter what im talking about the states pointing fingers at other countries what theyre doing with the United States is doing the exact same thing but you know its 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 catch the 69. 00 the rapper the case where hes making 10000000. 00 while hes sitting in jail and hes getting this contract a 10000000. 00 contract hes a hes a gang member thats committed crimes in the United States of america in jail and everybody is ok with that thats ok but this whistleblower comes out whos basically helped your country help the world recognize and knows the information that was much needed for the entire public to know and this guy is being treated like a criminal by. The u. S. Justice system while the other guy when im out 10000000 bucks and im a bad boy this is the use of is a shit of this country we have the whistleblower now the democrat whistleblower whoever it was it was in the basement he was a hero sammy the bull is a rat. We time legislation where people whistleblower legislation where people have basically exposed on the governments money. Ellsberg was a hero. This to me is exactly the this is newsworthy and what i thought was the courts always said if its newsworthy that that trumps sorry about the pun everything but apparently not in some. Not in virginia courts apparently especially the fred records i want to jump to the story so we have time finally to have to bring up the story of Caitlin Hardy a kindergartner recently set up a Lemonade Stand sort selling site or hot cocoa and cookies and or to help raise money for fellow students who couldnt 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 123. 00 students with that 80. 00 and shes 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 refill 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 cant feed kids you cant educate them properly you have a little girl here whos doing something good and heres the scary part i actually you know one on a couple articles about this today theyre reading from different sources the comments coming from americans about this 5 year old are unbelievable shes a liberal shes a socialist that shes i dont know right. Seriously like ive become this girl and you know what that of course somebody can say well you know republicans actually donate more money than the 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 cant afford food their parents cant 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 shes a whistleblower and she said. Because now shes exposing. This draconian lunchroom. Shylock its horrible day jess shes probably already got a book deal with this and i dont know why because its not just these kids and cover this is a problem across the country where you see these kids going into even the high school is going into serious debt to their school just a bunch of they get yet because they cannot the 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 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 im looking at what the United States is doing with that funding where we can allocate that funding from a little bit here a little bit there it will add up. Its not social i dont think its a it should be a partisan issue giving kids food at school i dont mind my tax dollars going to pay for little johnny little susie dos and whatever is down the street being able to eat you know and for many its the only square meal of the day my dad was an Elementary School principal i was a high school teacher. You dont know what their whole nutritional life is like outside of their i think this is an important story for that reason and its a sweet christmas kind of 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 hoop which you know im addicted to and i happened to look at things School Lunch Programs around the world japan and it was i want to just go there for the luncheon and theyre worried about not only you know the their well being of the child in the Spiritual Health and here we are saying i cant im going to walk you all for that 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 lets be honest were not feeding our School Children you know it seems like we have a bunch of schoolchildren on capitol hill who cant 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 were coming on line all of line all media that always wonderful ceremonious they all car to correspondent the big picture him 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 well yeah 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. I keep on watching all those arcs out there and i would rate. During the Great Depression which are old enough to remember there was most of my family were unemployed working class there wasnt it was bed you know much worse objectively today but there was an expectation that things were going to get better. There was a real sense of hopefulness there isnt today todays america where shape by the turn principles of concentration of wealth and power. Reduced democracy attack solo down engineer elections manufacture consent and other principles according to know on. One set of rules for the rich offices. Thats what happens when you put her into the. Narrow sector of will switch rule is dedicated to increasing power for chills just as youd expect one of the most influential intellectuals of our time speaks about the modern civilization of america. All of us will hopes that have been absolutely true of babies but says about their peers even in deaf and blind babies even if youve never heard of seen love to you will love if you tickles bio parents. And then we learn how to use this in a more complex way im one of the things that we learn is to has joined in with love to contagiously to love and somebody else loves even if you dont know why theyre laughing. One person is killed in a shooting at a federal Security Service building in central moscow witnesses have described a attack. At 5 or 10 minutes past. Gunfire began. Taking cover behind the car. Allegedly shows the shooter at the moment of the attack police say the gunman acted as identity is still not. Earlier in moscow the russian president was giving a press conference covering a multitude