Nixon was in fact impeached. He resigned before he was convicted of the charges, which is the second part of impeachment proceedings.

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RESOLVED, That Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States, is impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that the following articles of impeachment to be exhibited to the Senate:

ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT EXHIBITED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IN THE NAME OF ITSELF AND OF ALL OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AGAINST RICHARD M. NIXON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, IN MAINTENANCE AND SUPPORT OF ITS IMPEACHMENT AGAINST HIM FOR HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANOURS.

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At this point, the issues are too complex for the willfully undereducated American public to comprehend;"

I don't find the public willfully undereducated -- I think that's built into the public education system which exists to weed out a few elites to do the intellectually demanding work while keeping everyone else as smugly ignorant as possible. It keeps the help from getting uppity.

(This is something I came up with a couple of years ago - it is much more true now)

George Orwell intended "1984" as a warning - the Bush administration uses it as an instruction manual.

While George Bush and his mob of sinister clowns have pretty well seized absolute power, they have done remarkably little to consolidate it. Maybe this has something to do with George's being lazy and not very bright.

Failure to consolidate absolute power, once seized, could lead to a danger that nobody has remarked on: that of anarchy in the sense of rule by a weak despot who is mostly on vacation.

This would leave the country prey to the schemes of contending little Hitlers like Gonzalez, who would love to unseat the Leader but couldn't do it without putting themselves out of a job.

What, apart from a level of corruption beyond imagining, would the effects of this be on the rest of us?

I believe the constitutional issues being discussed around warrantless spying are too abstract to generate concern and immediate action. They are important, but at this time, we should focus on concrete examples to really grab everyone's attention. Let me start with two examples:

1) Does warrantless spying permit the spying agency to listen in on conversations between military personnel and their family to find out who are saying negative things about the situation in Irag? Might not these soldiers or officers who communicate unfavorable accounts possibly be punished by being placed in more dangerous or difficult assignments? Can we allow this to happen?

2) Can the government listen in on the conversation of journalists with their sources even when they have no grounds to suspect any terrorist on the other side of the line? Would the administration not be tempted to harass sources that are giving an unfavorable account of the war? If we allow this to happen, are we not allowing the government to censor legitimate news accounts?

Getting some legislation to compel the administration to submit the names of the people being wiretapped into an official secret record and submitted to an oversight panel of judges, but subject to audit at their discretion, will not take too much time, and is the type of bipartisan action that can result from speaking in concrete terms. It will leave the larger issues still unanswered, but it will address real and immediate concerns.

Unlike most conventional wars, it is hard to imagine ever arriving at an armistice in the "war on terror." That would suggest that the President has nearly unlimited, open-ended executive power, *perhaps* checked only by the election process. Lord Acton's warning about the corrupting effects of unchecked power seem once again to be validated. As a teen my faith in civil society was grounded in watching the painful and difficult process of bringing Nixon to justice for Watergate. Now a parent, I wonder how we can instill that faith in civil society in our children when cynicism is repeatedly reinforced by the Bush Administration. Is the American republic reduced to the serial selection of emperors a la Rome?

Inclusion of this phrase in the article was due to an editing error; it's been fixed and a correction posted.

T. J. Cassidy never said anything about being a professor anywhere. You must have falsely assumed that anyone writing a letter responding to you was David Cole. Get your facts straight Mr. Thinskin. What callous indifference to detail must reside within you.

It pisses me off when the people who I want to agree with have such a casual connection with truth.

Or do you need to be more pedantic? Is truth among liberals truly relative as the conservatives charge?

Is he talking about Nixon? Because the way I remember it, he resigned before he was impeached.

That Richard Nixon was not impeached is far from pedantic. You made a rather serious factual error, and your response is to attack me for being 'pedantic.'

Interesting view of the meaning of facts, especially coming from a person who claims to be a professor at Georgetown University Law Center.

You wrote something false. When it was pointed out that it was false you attacked the messenger.

What callous indifference to truth must reside within you.

It pisses me off when the people who I want to agree with have such a casual connection with truth.

Or as that just being pedantic? Is truth among liberals truly relative as the conservatives charge?

That Richard Nixon wasn't actually impeached is pedantic. He resigned because he was well on his way to impeachment.

..now run the show. Watching the exercise in fascist hegemony the Gonzalez testimony was, I can't help think back to sitting in college classes in the late '60's. There, when some "conservative" student expressed his views on Vietnam, welfare, minority rights, "Trickey Dick" Nixon or any of the other burning issues of the day, these disciples of William F. Buckley and his ilk were met with howls of outrage and derision from most students, virtually all faculty and eventually enough of the American public to put this country roughly back on a democratic track.

To watch the "grilling" this sycophant and minor league corporate lawyer received at the hands of the Senate committee and hear the same smug non-answers repeated (not that we should have expected anything different) and not challenged, or stand a good chance of being challenged in any meaningful way, makes me believe the "dumb kids" now think they can get away with absolutely anything in the name of "national security."

Someday, when the average American understands the inter-relationship of rights, security and the law and that no man, not even a president, let alone this dangerous incompetent, is above the law, there may be an outcry to restore Constitutional guarantees. Whether this will take a new, miraculously independent media, a messianic anti-leader or, (perish the thought) widespread civil disobedience, I wish I knew...