Guest Piece by Perrin Disner

"Yeah, yeah, I know... but we still need to talk, at least FOR A BRIEF SECOND, about IMPEACHMENT!!!!!!"

The Bush administration has broken laws, violated the Constitution. There is no serious debate about this even among conservative (albeit intelligent) constitutional scholars. And the Constitution provides, explicitly, that these violations MUST trigger articles of impeachment.

"But after Bill Clinton..." my Mom begins, and I finish her sentence for her... "after Bill Clinton, America doesn't have the stomach for blah blah blah... nobody wants to go through yadda yadda bullshit..." I sez. And guess what, America? I have THREE REASONS why you need to change your whiny pansy attitude pronto.

(1) Just for the heck of it, I'll start with the political retort: yeah, they impeached Clinton, and as we all remember the country had no patience for it. Everybody abruptly felt bad for the guy, who weathered the thing with huge approval ratings, because it was clearly a witch-hunt by a bunch of the other team's worst adulterers, a compulsive gambler, 2 pedophiles... and Joe f'ing Lieberman.

"We don't want everybody to feel bad for George, make the Democrats look like the hypocrites and bullies this time, etc."...

Except, what happened next? For all Clinton's popularity-in-spite-of, Al Gore LOST that November. Yeah, Gore was robbed... but it really shouldn't have been close, given the relatively outstanding shape Clinton left the country in, domestically and internationally. No, our indignation didn't change the fact that the impeachment ONLY HELPED George M.F.ing W. Bush

So, today, please explain to me: impeaching Bush would be good for McCain how????

(2) Take a step back and realize that the very premise "this country has no patience for..." amounts to: "this country doesn't have the attention span for...", which is code for (sigh): "this country is a bunch of the same idiots who voted for this felonious imbecile twice, and even though TODAY they tell pollsters they disapprove of him, they'll get all butt-hurt and feisty and unpredictable if he actually gets impeached and, *gasp*, convicted...."

Really? You have SO LITTLE FAITH in this country that an 81% DISAPPROVAL RATING (CBS News/NYT Poll) doesn't persuade you that, hey, people aren't f'ing blind, they know we're in big big trouble, and if a genie in a lamp offered, they'd CHANGE THINGS NOW, INSTEAD OF WISTFULLY PUTTING IT OFF UNTIL JANUARY!!!!!!!

Forgive me if I scold you all a little, but this is exactly the kind of underestimation, distrust and indignant animosity for Red America that has worked against Blue America at every turn in the last 4 years. Kind of the difference between (forgive me) the old-guard Hillary Clinton campaign for the gut responses of the lowest common denominator (via 3 a.m. phone calls, Gas Tax holidays, and thinly-veiled race-baiting), versus Obama's campaign for an optimistically new way of looking at our neighbors and the country we comprise. A big enough country for God to not automatically hate gays and the environment. A big enough country for Pat Buchanan to want us out of Iraq.

81% OF US DISAPPROVE OF OUR EMPLOYEE DUB'YER... LET'S JUST FIRE HIM NOW, because, after all...

(3) IT'S THE LAW! REMEMBER THE LAW??? THE CONSTITUTION? HEARD OF IT??? ... BUELLER? BUELLER?

...

At night I hear them. They wail. They howl. The restless souls of our forefathers. They faintly pierce through the ether, if you listen close enough... screeching! BEGGING me! PLEEEEASE! DO IIIIIIIT! PULL THE TRIGGERRRRRRRRR! TRUST THE PROCESSSSSSS!

The U.S. Constitution is the greatest gift any generation of men has ever given to all of mankind. I'll see your Magna Carta, and I'll raise you, oh I don't know... the First Amendment! And the Fourth and Fifth! Ooh, ooh, and the Fourteenth!!!

The law is worth..... loving. Not just because I went to law school, or because I'm a Democrat..... without the Constitution, we might as well be feudal ancient Mongolia, though perhaps with more colorful cotton clothes, which I'm sure we'd all still appreciate to a degree in spite of our otherwise squalid serfdom.

In fact, here's a new spin on the separation of Church and State. Why not come right out and think of the Constitution as actually holy, sacred... hell, how about genuinely divine? It is the scripture, amendable(!!), that has delivered -- and continues to defend -- our misguided species from feral barbarism. It is the world's greatest religion, and the only pure ethos worth going to war for... Thomas Jefferson's own AMERICAN LIBERTY. It is worth praying to, if you're an atheist that nonetheless feels compelled to pray to something.

Pray to the Constitution. Exercise Its will, and beg Its forgiveness for not having done so earlier. Quit underestimating your country, and SPEAK UP AND MAKE IT BETTER RIGHT NOW. Your inertia is not the whole country's, once the tiny snowball starts down the slope.

Love,
Perrin