Glenn, you are a genius and a leader, an intellectual who can both elucidate and make plain at the same time. It's part of your charm.

Assuming that lots of people are reading you these days, including maybe even some staff people who brief the Serious Folk about what the "potentially troublesome, actually smart and convincing left wingers" are on about now, how about throwing in at least the occasional mention that Bush ought to be impeached? Sure, that's both a given and it's very mention increases the risk that Serious Folk will dismiss you because, of course, "impeachment is off the table" -- but impeachment proceedings (even if not actually resulting in a Senate vote) are the best, the most efficacious, and the actual constitutional remedy for what ails us here. Isn't that true?

There is nothing I would rather see than a congressional committee holding hearings on impeachment resolutions in the next six damn weeks. Bring Jonathan Turley to a microphone to debunk the "unitary executive" theory, you can tie it in to all the abuses we have seen from the Bush administration, let's hear John Yoo explain that torturing a battlefield captive (or a cab driver) at Guantanamo, using the Red Chinese playbook, is "self defense".

The November election is a referendum on whether the voters of this country affirmatively want to live under a dictatorship or under the rule of law. I'm quite certain that neither party's TV ads will convey this and that whatever "debates" are held won't find time to discuss this because some New Yorker cover will dominate the airtime. How can this be brought to the attention of the American people, or at least the American people who somehow don't read Glenn Greenwald's analyses, other than by actual progress toward conducting actual hearings about actually impeaching the President of the United States over things that make Nixon look like a saint in comparison?

If I had any input, I'd suggest that using whatever immediate leverage this campaign could apply directly to Nancy Pelosi -- who is singularly responsible for the "off the table" soundbite that virtually everyone somehow affords logically inexplicable "immutability" status -- is what should be done. From recent reports, she may actually even be wavering on this and possibly willing to bend. Well, make the wind blow harder!

A lttle bit of Democratic leadership is what is needed. And getting to a place where "Serious" people are forced to listen to meaningful critiques of the incredible malevolence and unconstituional strategies of the Bush Administration in the context of an impeachment discussion at the congressional level is something the Constitution not only demands, but the country sorely needs. It will never be provided by TV news, it will never come from a court proceeding some years hence. It is needed now.

Anyway, another brilliant column. Thank you for all you do.

I have to disagree with Chris Sinnard's suggestion to "always remember, Pelosi is perceived as "Antiwar Enough" by her constituents."

Doubtless that has been true before, but (1) Pelosi didn't make her "impeachment off the table" good feelings comment until the 2006 election results were in hand and (2) when she said this, she tried to justify it by suggesting that, with only two years before the next election, there wasn't "enough time" to impeach. Under a Constitution that provides for two year election cycles, Pelosi's comment was ludicrously unjustifiable when made -- but is certainly even more absurd given Congress' track record of the past two years.

Assuming that Pelosi's prior elections should be treated as satisfactory to her constituency now doesn't seem quite right. What Pelosi does have, to be sure, is "longevity" and "clout", but the whole point of challenging her would be to show how she has abused that trust, wouldn't it? What was an "antiwar enough" record in 2004 is an "abysmal dereliction of constitutional responsibility" today.

Thanks and oops. The clever subtlety of the apparent and puckish sarcasm of your comment that I took issue with finally has sunk in. At least I didn't respond before with my first reaction, which would have been to note that "'conventional wisdom' is too often neither." Good one.

So reading this, it kind of seems to me like maybe, oh, NANCY PELOSI could be considered someone who might be targeted for an electoral challenge by a group interested in restoring accountability among congressional Democrats.

"But where would I find such a group? [Into camera] Why am I talking to you?" (With apologies to Mel Brooks and the late, great Harvey Corman, Blazing Saddles; it's such a great line, over the top though it may be).

Let's give these Democrats one last chance to try to invoke a "good faith" argument to the effect that they gave the President the benefit of a doubt at the time and did not independently commission their own review of the legality of these programs, but let's at least try to move them off a CYA dime and into a mode of doing what's right for America and the Constitution by addressing and putting a stop to the unconstitutional evil that is the Bush Administration. We definitely don't have time to impeach all the schmucks, but the Schmuck in Chief still could be called out.