Thank you. Once again, clear, concise, brilliant, even. Shouldn't be, but it is. Like someone thought to turn on a light in a pitch-dark room. Like someone is thinking out there. And of course someone is.

Maybe it could become contagious.

BennyBrooklyn has pointed out that the power to impeach belongs to the legislative branch. True: thus the failure of US citizens has been (as I had not adequately pointed out earlier) that they have NOT forced the legislators they have elected to carry out the impeachment process on GW Bush and Gang, War Criminals who have taken charge of the lives of US citizens today (and of the lives of most people around the globe because the US happens to be the world's sole super-power).

And yes, as Amity claims, the 'liberal failure' has primarily been that they they do not adequately critique themselves. But, as a matter of fact, as a non-US citizen, I've actually seen much less of this needed needed ability 'self-critique' in Republicans than in Democrats as a group. For instance, look at GW Bush as a prime exemplar of 'Republican-hood' - he has indicated he believes that everything he does, day by day (minute by minute and second by second as a matter of fact), is actually based on Jesus Christ's personal directives to him, and therefore all that he does is beyone any critique by any human being including himself! Witness his astonishing ability to see no flaws in all he has done (Since when? Since he ceased being a public drunkard and became a very public Christian?)

However, the 'inability to self-critique' is a actually a failure shared by many: to my mind as a non-US citizen, US Republican are much poorer at doing a 'self-critique' than are US liberals (who do a pretty poor job of it as recent history shows)... but this inability to 'self-critique' is not restricted to US citizens.

In general, we human beings do not adequately critique ourselves - in particular there is this set of beliefs that lead us to feel that because of our 'intelligence' we are the 'Masters of the Universe': which beliefs and attitudes lead to various actions we perform and continue to perform even when we should know beyond any shadow of doubt that they are dangerous. We every day demonstrate the results of this inability to 'self-critique' in the lack of responsibility we display towards ourselves, towards the planet we live on, towards the next generations who must live on the planet we are rapidly making a wasteland of...

There are practical tools available that can help us - as individuals and as groups - actually to develop the needed capacity to do this 'self-critiquing'.

-- GSC

Yes, yes, and yes! Re: my comment to Amity about thinking becoming contagious: keep doing this! You've struck a spark; the fire will spread exponentially.

A) Impeachment is a legal proceeding. I will readily agree that politics have a much greater influence on its outcome than truth does, but many legal proceedings are largely political. The fact that the practice of impeachment is so corrupted doesn't alter the structure of the proceeding.

"Influence" is a bit of an understatement, don't you think?

The goal of impeachment is not a determination of truth or punishment of guilt but the removal from office of the elected chief executive officer of the federal government — an intrinsically political act, not a legal one.

The process is conducted by the legislature, which has virtually no judicial authority whatsoever, aside from compelling testimony, and whose decision during impeachment is subject to no principle of law aside from their own judgment.

The question of what even constitutes an impeachable offense to begin with is also entirely subject to the opinion of the legislature — when else in our system of law is the very applicability of its principles subject to (indirect) popular vote?

The only actual jurist in the entire process — the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court — acts purely in an oversight capacity.

In every respect, then, impeachment is fundamentally and intentionally a political process. There's nothing "corrupt" about that fact.

The Democrats can be faulted for many things (though thinking about impeaching Bush in 2000 would have been a neat trick) but so can all governments and parties.

There were plenty of people who agitated for Bush's impeachment after the 2000 election (smarty pants). The issue is not whether there were enough of us then, or later, or if Democrats are at fault for Republican crimes. (Though that by itself is a discussion worth having.)

The issue is whether, having chosen to regard the "impeachment loonies" as an inconvenient fringe group nearly 8 years ago, recently-fed-up liberals can now expect to be taken seriously in their demand for instant, eleventh-hour impeachment by their elected officials — and their ensuing tantrum when they learn that, sorry, they missed the boat.

The difference between a republic and a democracy is rather similar to the difference between a jury and a lynch mob.

While you're right on in making the distinction of the US as a republic, I'm not sure I entirely agree with your characterization here.

It's an interesting thought experiment to consider how the United States might have evolved as a direct democracy. Above all else, centralized federal power and bureaucracy, and everything that flowed from them including American geopolitical preeminence, would have been impossible. Instead we would live in a country something like like Switzerland writ large, each county keeping to itself or organizing loosely with its neighbors to coordinate policy.

And only in the last generation or so — the information age — would our vast and sprawling polity even be capable of thinking about ways in which our direct democracy could act as a single nation-state with an coordinated, centralized, virtual policymaking system.

Not what we've come to think of as our country, but not a lynch mob either.

Like someone is thinking out there. And of course someone is.

Maybe it could become contagious.

Heavens! Don't they have shots for that yet?