The idea that the president, who is the subject of this impeachment proceeding, can dictate its terms,

would be very much like a defendant in a criminal case telling the prosecution,

here's how you have to run things, and hear the rules, otherwise I won't show up.

The text is so very clear here that if you take two people who do exactly the same thing, one of them's a man, one of them's a woman,

and you fire one of them and not the other, that's sex discrimination.

Hi, and welcome back to amicus.

This is Slate's podcast about the law and the rule of law and the courts and the Supreme

Court.

I'm Dahlia Lithwick, and I cover those things for Slate.

And in the event, you had not yet noticed there's been something of a run on law and lawyering this week.

As the Supreme Court ushered in what I think may be the most important term in decades,

and as the White House, by way of a letter to Democrats and the House of Representatives,

has simply refused the authority of Congress to investigate impeachable offenses.

In so doing, they may well have brought us to the

precipice of a constitutional crisis. So I hope you have your pocket lawyer nearby. There's a lot to

talk about. Later on in this show, we're going to take you inside the Supreme Court for arguments

and the biggest LGBT case in years, a challenge to federal laws that protect

employees from dismissal for sexual orientation or transgender status. We're going to talk to

Pam Carlin, who argued monster monster case on Tuesday at the court. But first, we want to talk

about impeachment. This past week has marked a turning point in the Donald Trump presidency.

It may not quite have registered in the hurricane of events, including Donald Trump abandoning Kurdish allies, the arrest of two clients of Rudy Giuliani as they attempted to flee the country with one-way tickets.

But another benchmark was passed this week when White House counsel sent a letter to. Rudy Giuliani as they attempted to flee the country with one-way tickets.

...