The Washington Post - 02.11.2019

A18 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2 , 2019

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

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H

OUSE DEMOCRATS face a balancing act in

the impeachment process between the de-

mands of the investigation and those of the

calendar. With the 2020 election looming,

and many voters eager to hear Democrats discuss

something other than President Trump’s misdeeds,

there is an advantage to speeding the process along

— especially as testimony already in hand makes a

powerful case that Mr. Trump abused his office in his

dealings with Ukraine.

At the same time, there are indications that

substantial misconduct by Mr. Trump, his aides and

his personal lawyer remains to be unearthed. It is

now clear to any unbiased observer that Mr. Trump

attempted to coerce Ukrainian President Volodymyr

Zelensky into launching investigations into Joe

Biden and the Democratic National Committee, and

that he used U.S. military aid and the prospect of an

Oval Office meeting as leverage.

Much, however, remains to be learned about

Mr. Trump’s abrupt firing last spring of the U.S. am-

bassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, who ac-

cording to testimony by the State Department’s

deputy secretary was an able professional who had

done nothing wrong. Mr. Trump apparently acted at

the behest of his personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giu-

liani, who had publicly slandered the ambassador.

Mr. Giuliani, in turn, was working with two emigre

businessmen — one of whom had paid him $500,

— who regarded Ms. Yovanovitch as an obstacle to

their scheme to export gas to Ukraine. As Ms. Yo-

vanovitch testified, “contacts of Mr. Giuliani may

well have believed that their personal financial

ambitions were stymied by our anti-corruption pol-

icy in Ukraine.”

The businessmen, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman,

have since been arrested on campaign finance charg-

es, and federal prosecutors are reportedly investigat-

ing Mr. Giuliani’s dealings with them. But House

investigators face questions about Mr. Trump’s role:

Did he order the recall of a U.S. ambassador to

facilitate the shady business dealings of associates of

his private lawyer? That would be another clear

abuse of his office. Neither Mr. Trump nor Secretary

of State Mike Pompeo have offered any other expla-

nation of Ms. Yovanovitch’s recall.

Another outstanding question is whether

Mr. Trump’s coercion of the Ukrainian government

was limited to demands for dirt on Mr. Biden and the

DNC. The Post’s David Ignatius has pointed to a

striking series of events in 2017, when Mr. Trump

granted a White House meeting to Ukraine’s then-

president, Petro Poroshenko, shortly after Mr. Po-

roshenko transferred an investigation of illicit pay-

ments made to Mr. Trump’s former campaign man-

ager from an anti-corruption office known for its

probity to a state prosecutor notorious for burying

sensitive matters.

The switch happened after the prosecutor met

with Mr. Giuliani in Kyiv. Meanwhile, a political ally

of Mr. Poroshenko was quoted by the New York

Times as saying the government had stopped coop-

eration with the investigation of special counsel

Robert S. Mueller III to “avoid irritating the top

American officials.” Did Mr. Trump link the Oval

Office meeting with Mr. Poroshenko to his help in

blocking the Mueller investigation? Given his subse-

quent quid pro quo with Mr. Zelensky, that is more

than plausible.

There are other unanswered questions related to

Ukraine, including why Energy Secretary Rick Perry

was pressing for changes in the management of the

state gas company, and why a recommendation by

U.S. Trade Representative Robert E. Lighthizer that

trade privileges be restored to Ukraine was rejected

by the White House in August. If the House investi-

gation can provide answers, it will be worth the

additional investment of time.

The questions that need answering

If more investigation can get more answers for the impeachment inquiry, it will be worth it.

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C

ONTROL OF Virginia’s General Assembly,

where Republicans hold a paper-thin major-

ity in both chambers, turns on the outcome

of a handful of races next Tuesday for the

state Senate and House of Delegates. Several are in

Northern Virginia, the state’s most diverse and

economically vibrant region. At stake is legislation

on issues that many Northern Virginians cite as

critically important, including gun safety, abortion

rights and funding for transportation. The follow-

ing are our endorsements in three of the most

closely fought races.

House District 40. The district, straddling Fair-

fax and Prince William counties, is represented by

Republican Del. Timothy D. Hugo, a member of the

House of Delegates since 2003. Mr. Hugo, who

chairs the House GOP caucus, has systematically

opposed exactly the sort of gun-safety measures that

have broad support among Virginians, including

requiring background checks for private firearms

purchases. In the past, he also gained notoriety,

including among fellow Republicans, for using

campaign funds (read: special interest cash) to pay

for daily expenses such as groceries, snacks and gas

fill-ups. In addition, he impeded efforts to raise

revenue to pay for road and other transportation

improvements that would ease commutes for many

of his own constituents.

His Democratic challenger, Dan Helmer, a West

Point graduate who had a meteoric career as an

Army officer, serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, would

be a major upgrade. Mr. Helmer, a lieutenant colonel

in the Army Reserve and a former Rhodes Scholar,

has stressed non-extreme gun-control measures

such as universal background checks and red-flag

laws that empower police, with approval from

judges, to confiscate weapons from individuals who

pose an imminent risk to themselves and others.

House District 28. Democrat Joshua Cole, a

thoughtful local pastor who lost a close race two

years ago for this seat centered in Stafford County

and the city of Fredericksburg, would make a fine

lawmaker. He’s focused on boosting transportation

funding, a key concern of area commuters, and has

backed efforts to expand Medicaid in Virginia,

thereby tapping federal funds to insure hundreds of

thousands of low-income people. His Republican

opponent, businessman Paul Milde, a former

Stafford County supervisor, opposes Medicaid ex-

pansion and devoting more revenue to improving

highways. Mr. Milde supported GOP legislators

when they shut down a special legislative session on

gun safety this year without discussing any bills. He

also has a criminal record, with convictions for

cocaine possession and accessory to burglary.

Senate District 13. The district, encompassing

parts of Loudoun and Prince William counties, has

been ill-served by the retiring incumbent, Republi-

can Dick Black, who made it a pet project to pay

obeisance to Bashar al-Assad, the brutal Syrian

dictator.

An excellent replacement would be Democratic

Del. John J. Bell, a two-term member of the House of

Delegates and former Air Force officer respected in

Richmond for his even temper and smarts. He would

reflect the district’s views far better than Geary

Higgins, the Republican candidate, a member of the

Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, who opposed

the mere study of new local gun regulations.

For Virginia General Assembly

Northern Virginia’s contested races could result in flipped chambers.

F

ACEBOOK HAS said it does not want to play

umpire to political advertising. Now, an-

other platform has suggested a solution: Get

out of the game.

Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey announced

Wednesday that his company would prohibit

campaigns, super PACs and anyone else from

paying to promote their causes in both electioneer-

ing ads and issue ads. “It’s not credible for us to say:

‘We’re working hard to stop people from gaming

our systems to spread misleading info, buuut if

someone pays us to target and force people to see

their political ad...well...they can say whatever they

want!’” the leader wrote under his @jack handle.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg probably knew

whom those words were aimed at, but Mr. Dorsey

added a winky face just in case. Twitter’s move is

unquestionably a good one — for Twitter. The firm

brought in less than $3 million in political ad

dollars during the 2018 midterms. Facebook

brought in $350 million. That means Twitter is

earning plenty of positive PR while giving up very

little revenue. But Mr. Dorsey’s arguments should

be judged on their merits.

Mr. Dorsey identifies never-seen challenges to

civic discourse that companies such as his have

brought to the political advertising landscape:

“machine learning-based optimization of messag-

ing and micro-targeting, unchecked misleading

information, and deepfakes,” all of it “at increasing

velocity, sophistication, and overwhelming scale.”

Facebook’s sophistication and scale dwarf Twitter’s,

and the problems posed by its refusal to fact-check

political ads are even more imposing. Congress,

meanwhile, is miles away from putting in place

transparency and accountability mechanisms that

could mitigate the harms.

Facebook isn’t providing only a platform for

campaigns to speak to audiences entirely of their

choosing, as with other technologies such as

robocalling. It’s providing a specific product: the

capability, based on detailed behavioral data, to

target more precise audiences than candidates

could ever dream of doing alone, and then to refine

that targeting based on who engages most with the

often-false content. The company has essentially

monetized the world’s most precise and powerful

disinformation apparatus.

Digital campaigning at its best can be democra-

tizing. A total restriction on online political ads

would favor those with enough cash to appear on

Americans’ television screens — as well as those

keen enough to game companies’ rules. But the

Internet more generally is democratizing at its best,

too, and recent years have shown that when the

harmful is allowed to run rampant, the helpful is

crowded out. Facebook believes society will be

better off if it stays on the political advertising field.

Now it needs to step up to the plate and call lies out

when it sees them.

Twitter cancels

campaigning

Its shutdown of political advertising

is a challenge to Facebook.

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FREDERICK J. RYAN JR., Publisher and Chief Executive Officer

News pages: Editorial and opinion pages:

MARTIN BARON FRED HIATT

Executive Editor Editorial Page Editor

CAMERON BARR JACKSON DIEHL

Managing Editor Deputy Editorial Page Editor

EMILIO GARCIA-RUIZ RUTH MARCUS

Managing Editor Deputy Editorial Page Editor

TRACY GRANT JO-ANN ARMAO

Managing Editor Associate Editorial Page Editor

SCOTT VANCE

Deputy Managing Editor

BARBARA VOBEJDA

Deputy Managing Editor

Vice Presidents:

JAMES W. COLEY JR. ..................................................................................... Production

L. WAYNE CONNELL..........................................................................Human Resources

KATE M. DAVEY .................................................................................. Revenue Strategy

ELIZABETH H. DIAZ ................................................. Audience Development & Insights

GREGG J. FERNANDES........................................................Customer Care & Logistics

STEPHEN P. GIBSON...................................................................Finance & Operations

SCOT GILLESPIE .......................................................................................... Engineering

KRISTINE CORATTI KELLY...................................................Communications & Events

JOHN B. KENNEDY.................................................................General Counsel & Labor

MIKI TOLIVER KING........................................................................................Marketing

KAT DOWNS MULDER........................................................................Product & Design

SHAILESH PRAKASH...............................Digital Product Development & Engineering

JOY ROBINS ........................................................................................... Client Solutions

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Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey testifies before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in 2018.

Regarding the Oct. 31 front-page article “At last,

Nats are champs”:

Anyone who quit on this team is a fool.

Mea culpa: That includes me.

I’ve always kept the faith through previous slow

starts by the Nationals. But this year, after that ugly,

ugly late-May sweep by the Mets — when they were

booting the ball around like Little Leaguers, run-

ning the bases as if the object of the game was not to

score runs and floundering with a bullpen that

couldn’t hold a lead against a beer-league softball

team — I conceded the season as lost.

I prepared myself for a mode of fandom I assumed

while rooting for some bad Orioles teams in the late

1980s. I would appreciate individual performances

when they came from Max Scherzer, Stephen Stras-

burg, Anthony Rendon, Juan Soto, Howie Kendrick

or Sean Doolittle. I would simply be happy it was

baseball season and there were games to watch, even

if my team wasn’t likely to win.

These guys sure proved me wrong. I don’t know if

there has ever been a more tenacious team. Best of

all, they got good. Better than good. Since May,

they’ve been great.

They deserve this. And while a four-game sweep

with the Nats handily on top might have saved me a

few gray hairs, this seven-game brawl was fitting,

with fighters fighting to the end and coming out on

top.

Mark Briscoe, Alexandria

Congratulations to the Nationals for their

World Series victory. The Nats outplayed our Astros

when it counted, particularly in the last two games

here in Houston. We also noted that they have some

fine, enthusiastic and courteous fans, unlike some

others who will go unnamed. Let’s do it again next

year.

Chuck and Kathy McSpadden, Bellaire, Tex.

Washington had a hole in its baseball heart

that was filled by the Montreal Expos. And now, the

victorious Washington Nationals have filled a hole

in Montreal’s heart. A grateful city tips its Expos cap

to you.

Michael Leo Donovan, Montreal

In his Oct. 29 Sports column, “Game 5 proved

it’s just a matter of time till robot umps arrive, for

better or worse,” Adam Kilgore said the introduction

of robot umpires would mean balls in the dirt that

bounce up into the strike zone would have to be

called strikes. That doesn’t have to be so. The

National Hockey League uses goal cameras to

determine whether a puck has entirely crossed the

goal line. The officials have the responsibility of

washing out goals when there’s goalie interference

or a player’s skate kicks the puck in or, for that

matter, when the play is offside.

All an automated pitch track can do is show

whether a ball that crosses the plate is in the strike

zone when it does. It can’t tell whether time has been

called, whether a batter is hit by the pitch or, for that

matter, whether a ball hits the dirt before it gets to

the strike zone.

Baseball has always been concerned with giving

credit where credit is due. There have been records

of hits, runs and putouts for a long time. Now,

technology is developing that can tell us every detail

of when the ball leaves the batter’s bat and every

detail of every pitch, and interested fans can follow it

in real time. Why should it be that the only person

who doesn’t have the benefit of the live stream is the

home-plate umpire?

Janet Wamsley, Arlington

In his Oct. 31 op-ed, “The norms that make

baseball great,” George F. Will addressed the celebra-

tions of Alex Bregman and Juan Soto in Game 6 of

the World Series between the Astros and Nationals.

Both players carried their bats all the way to first

base while admiring their home runs on baseball’s

biggest stage, a practice that is frowned upon by

baseball traditionalists.

If these celebrations are killing baseball, then I

hate to break it to him: Baseball is doomed. People

who wonder why young sports fans don’t watch

baseball need not look further than dated “unwrit-

ten rules” that suck the fun out of the game. Young

players should be encouraged to express their

passion. Superstars such as Mr. Bregman and Mr.

Soto should not have to apologize for their exuber-

ance in the most stressful moments of their young

careers.

Considering Major League Baseball’s “We Play

Loud” campaign, a national columnist should not be

trying to pull the game back to what it used to be.

Baseball is often dismissed as boring and unwatch-

able, but more moments such as those on Tuesday

night might just change that.

George Lewis, Falls Church

I attended the Nationals game on Oct. 26,

traveling by Metro to and from the game. There were

close to 44,000 people there, many of whom took

Metro because parking is limited and very expensive

near the stadium. After the game, I expected to wait

forever among the crowds at the train for the trip

home. This was not the case. By the time I reached

the Navy Yard entrance, there was no line and there

were multiple trains with many empty cars and

Metro personnel on hand to help and keep the

process safe. I was impressed.

Also, kudos to the D.C. police on hand at the

stadium. There was a strong police presence, but

they were cordial, wearing Nats baseball caps and

conveying a safe but friendly atmosphere. D.C. did it

right.

Donna Mrozek, Vienna

Our Nationals treasure

EDITORIALS

LOCAL OPINIONS

Join the debate at washingtonpost.com/local-opinions

Regarding the Oct. 27 Metro article “Majority in

Md. favor Bay Bridge expansion”:

The recent traffic backups seem to warrant some

change. But are more lanes, toll or free, the change

we need? A new bridge for cars? Or, dare I say it,

rapid transit? Maryland is a small state. We can keep

paving over it until there is nothing left for people,

and there will still be a lot of traffic backups. We’ll

have a few years of smoother traffic after traffic

highway expansion, but then the backups and

construction will start again.

Can we try something new? How about high-

speed rapid transit from downtown Washington

across the Chesapeake Bay to Ocean City, Md.? Okay,

we can include a Baltimore extension. Building on

this, could we connect Frederick to the District and

Baltimore? And then Frederick to Morgantown,

W.Va.? All of a sudden, we have a system that

connects the region with high-speed rail. The Euro-

peans have done it for forever; Taiwan, Japan and

China are all doing it now. Are our skills so limited?

Come on, Maryland. Think outside the box. Do

something into the future instead of preserving the

ills of the past. How do we pay for all of this? With

toll highways (on all lanes), of course, on the

interstates now serving these corridors.

Bob Bailey, Silver Spring

Think outside the box, Maryland

KATHERINE FREY/THE WASHINGTON POST

Nationals fans celebrate during a Game 7 watch

party at Nationals Park on Wednesday.

Are more lanes, toll or free,

the change we need?