this is what I wrote in response to Michelle Goldberg's Dec 22nd

"Bush's impeachable offense"

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/12/22/impeach/index.html

"There is little question in my mind that the president should not be allowed to be above the law, and George Bush,jr pretty clearly feels that he is. The problem, as I see it, is that the last impeachment has effectively rendered it a joke, an empty gesture that no longer has moral weight.

Clinton was impeached. He was caught in a lie, he apologized, and went on about his business, governing for 2 more years. In the unlikely event Bush,jr is impeached, I imagine he will also go on about his business and stay in office. Only instead of apologizing, he'll be indignant.

What's needed is the political will to impeach him and either remove him from office and imprison him, or remove him from office and offer him a deal to rat out puppetmasters Cheney and Rumsfeld, so that they may be put in prison. He is a coward and he would do it."

*****

Of course, there are a lot of other rats: Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, and undoubtedly many others, who should have known better but decided to beat the war drums. The generally compliant US press can't be impeached, but what are you gonna do...

But as far as this op-ed goes: Ms. Goldberg got here 1st, and probably doesn't make as much per word as Keillor. If you want to be congratualated for your boldness Garrison, I'd say get over yourself.

Is this a remake of Eastwood's The Gauntlet? The ads on tv certainly suggest this.

Actually, fool that I may be, I don't think most Americans are all that out of touch with what needs to be done, but the combination of post-reagan crazy republicanism, democratic fearfulness and a corporate-whore media make change all the less likely.

In 2001 when Bush lost the Senate majority, the polls said more Americans favored debt reduction than a tax break, but the taxcut rabid GOP held firm and the democratic senate buckled and gave junior what he wanted, and we started on the road to squandering the surplus he inherited. Democratic timorousness hasn't even paid off; in the case of Iraq, for example, the only senate democrats who've lost their reelection bids have been those that supported the Iraq resolution.

And I have to wonder, frankly, if Americans would've been so eager to support the war in March of '03 if the news outlets had been more critical and done their jobs correctly instead of rallying unthinkingly around Bush. I seem to recall that the Niger yellow-cake scandal was already beginning to be discussed in early '03 in the UK press. (Besides, US support for the war in 3.2003 was never that high. If we needed 2/3 of the public to support a war the way we're supposed to have 2/3 of both houses of congress vote for a formal declaration of war, I don't think we ever had that level of public support.)

But the bottom line, for me, is the gutlessness of the opposition party. I felt sad and angry at the same time in 2004, for all those voters who waited for hours to vote in democratic wards in Ohio when the controlling part deliberately shortchanged them on machines. I thought of the poor people in Cleveland, standing in line for hours, to vote for a man who hemmed and hawed about his support for the war, about whether or not he was a liberal, and couldn't be bothered to defend himself when he was attacked by the Swift Boaters.

Normally Cary Tennis's columns one of the more interesting items in Salon. But this time he is utterly disengaged.

I would ask the young 30 something lady whether or not she still felt as if she were held captive by her early experiences, whether staving off the insecurities she felt when young still ruled her. And to imagine the lives of her parents today if they had been childless. Would she imagine them happier with more goodies and nicer cars?

Naturally I don't know the answer-- but I sense that the letter writer wants to choose a child but feels held back by how accustomed she has grown to not having to think of the difficulties she grew up with. Also, perhaps she wants some assurance that her husband would be supportive, and assurance that they are in fact ready to again deal with the occasional hardships they may face.

Anyway, I wish her luck, and would encourage her to talk to women friends she has who do have a child, and ask them how they've felt about these issues, and how they've dealt with them.

Finally, and I hope this is not too forward, but I wonder if Mr Tennis has given a disengaged answer because the question stirs discomfort within over the road not taken.