Article snippet: As Mark Twain said, there’s a big difference between “lightning bug” and “lightning.” That is, if you simply chop off the last part of a name or a phrase, you can get something completely different. To put that another way, if one engages in that sort of chopping, one can change not only the wording but also the meaning. Okay, so now to an immediate example of language-chopping, one that’s been happening in real time: Breitbart News’s Joel Pollak caught it on December 3 when he tweeted, “The Schiff #impeachment report quotes George Mason during the [1787] Constitutional Convention–without noting that his proposal for ‘maladministration’ as a basis for impeachment was rejected.” So we can see: By recalling Mason’s definition of impeachment, back in the 18th century, but not recalling that Mason’s definition was rejected at the time, the Democrats are doing some misleading language-chopping. To put the matter politely, in so chopping, they are doing a disservice to the historical record — and therefore to the truth. So let’s take a closer look at this bit of slipperiness. George Mason, of course, was one of the Founders gathered at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, 232 years ago. The Virginia-born Mason was a highly regarded lawyer and scholar, and yet he was also an outlier — and thus his suggestion that impeachment could be made on the basis of “maladministration” was rejected. Instead, in Article Two, Section Four, the Founders stipulated that impea... Link to the full article to read more