Letters to the Editor
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One thing to bear in mind regarding this on/off the table discussion
One thing we should always bear in mind as we listen to or participate in discussions about what is on and off some table -- i.e., impeachment of Fourth Branch Cheney or of Bush Jr., or US military actions against Iran -- is that there really is no table on or off of which things are actually placed.
Other than representing an important insight into an individual's or institution's likely future action, nothing real is changed by a declaration that something "is" or "is not" on "the table."
It's a metaphor, but one with a purpose. As always, the vocabulary and phraseology of politics first works to try to make us regular people believe that there are objectively real, existing norms and limits even when in fact those limits are not based on some measurable reality of the external world, but on the fact that powerful political forces are merely trying to assert, create, or hold politically set limits which they desire.
In the real world, politicians know that, say, Nancy Pelosi or anyone else can decide at any moment whether or not to impeach one or more Executive Branch (maybe even the Vice President's Branch) officials, just as politicians who declare that US military actions are "off the table" with regard to Iran could just as immediately decide to attack with whatever real military forces exist and lend themselves to such actions.
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casual_observer
Kovie, as alluded to earlier, The Speaker of the House has taken impeachment off the table. This information was not gained from assumption. It came from her mouth, and was reported widely in the press. Many are taking her at her word, that she indeed will not consider impeachment and will not allow impeachment. This is nothing less than blatant disregard for the constitution, and was a mistake on her part, based on political considerations being made at the time. As you urge others to THINK, you might include this bit in your own cogitating.
If you take politicians' public statements at face value and this simplemindedly, then I don't know what to say. "Many" might be doing this as well, but it doesn't make them right.
Politics is not about 100% face value honesty. It is about accomplishing the possible. Right now impeachment is not possible (and impeachment means conviction, not a show trial), and Pelosi is smart enough to know that calling for or endorsing it NOW is pointless, stupid and dangerous. And if being cryptic about impeachment is how she decides to deflect potential accusations of partisan witch hunts while at the same time reserving it for future use, so much the smarter. If she really opposed impeachment, she would have made a Shermanesque statement. She did not, and I believe that it was intentional. If you choose to read more into these words than is there, then that's your prerogative, but that doesn't make it so.
You are looking at a chess match and thinking that you're seeing a game of checkers. I would respectfully suggest that you look again. There's a lot more going on here than meets the eye.
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Uniformitarian v catastrophist
It's something of coventional wisdom that slow and steady wins the race, the ship of state cannot be turned on a dime, incremental progress may be agonizingly drawn out, but progress it is just the same, and as Glenn put it yesterday:
slow and incremental progress of this sort is the only kind that is viable, and ultimately, the only kind that really matters.
And thus is the Uniformitarian case for political evolution made. Everything happens in slow motion, as if in aspic, everything worthwhile occurs by barely perceptible nudges, and eventually the accumulated changes result in... a new political "species" and the Bright New Future is assured, thanks, of course, to the hard slogging of generations of ancestors who made it so.
Nothing apparently can upset the slow but steady march of progress...
Being as that this is Bastille Day and I've been singing -- or rather croaking -- La Marseillaise at everyone who calls today, "Allons enfants de la Patrie, le jour du gloire est arrivé..." liberté, fraternité, equalité!, I would beg to take issue with the notion that only the Uniformitarian slow and incremental change is possible or has value.
Now and then a sudden change occurs, driven by forces well beyond those that Uniformitarian incrementalists honor, and those changes (which are sometimes catastrophic) can also be of immense value.
For example, although it's still too soon to be sure (as the saying goes), the Revolution that overthrew the creaking Bourbon absolute monarchy in France in 1789 and led eventually to a complete upheaval of law and custom and geography in Europe in the 19th century, may well have been of more positive value than not. Our own relatively sudden Revolution likewise, though we are still working out the kinks. From time to time, sudden changes have been forced upon the population, sometimes for good, sometimes for ill, but hardly ever without any value at all.
Uniformitarian plodding is periodically punctuated with sudden (and sometimes catastrophic) events from out of the blue. The trick is to be able to appreciate and make the most of all of these experiences, not to discount some of them out of an ideological or philosophical distaste.
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The Kove
These people are in a fight to the death, and will defy congress until they are put down. Firing off impeachment before a solid enough legal and political case is made will NOT accomplish that. Only methodically building a case using the constitutional and traditional process, under the cover of performing its constitutionally mandated oversight role--which the public has shown its approval for in the polls--is ever likely to accomplish that. They WANT the Dems to go off all half-cocked, and it appears that they are smarter than that. And while Nancy keeps impeachment "off the table", these Dems are slowly and systematically building a legal and political case for it, without which it would be futile and dangerous.
You convince enough Republicans in Congress to go for it, Nancy Pelosi won't stop them, she'll help them along with a thinly veiled smile on her face.
Start by writing those obstructionist politicking cobags some nasty letters. Bashing Dems won't get you anywhere but four more years of Republican rule. There ain't no ponies and their ain't no white knights riding them even if there were ponies.