Madame Speaker, Impeach Now!

Today's New York Times

I'm fed up with Speaker Nancy Pelosi's unwillingness to begin impeachment proceedings against the fool trying--but not trying very hard--to act as the 45th President of the United States.

Should he go down in history as a president who was not impeached?  

It's not about whether the Senate will remove him from office.  It's about doing the right thing.

If the House does not impeach Donald Trump, it ignores the 10 instances of possible obstruction of justice in the Mueller report. 

It also ignores Articles I and II of the Constitution that set impeachment as our only recourse for "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."

If Trump is not impeached, the House is essentially rendering the impeachment clauses null and void.

People care a lot about Amendments 1 and 2 to the Constitution.  Doesn't anyone care about Articles 1 and 2?

Today the NY Times placed "Fanning the Flames, Trump Unleashes a Taunt: 'Go Back" as a large, 3-line head over a news report by Katie Rogers and Nicholas Fandos and a News Analysis by Peter Baker.

Today the LA Times published a front-page report "Trump's tweets criticized as racist" by Laura King at the bottom of the front page, 

Newspapers spend a lot of time deciding what goes on the front page, and where.  The upper-right corner is reserved for the absolute top news, and "below the fold" is where lesser articles belong if they are still worthy of the front page.

I'm grateful that the NY Times played this story as an important milestone in the continuing decline of dt's presidency.  But I understand the LA Times decision to withhold attention from him and his outrageous, give-me-another-headline tweets. 

At this point it's not about whether the Senate will remove him from office.  He must head the list of impeached presidents that now includes Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton.  It's unlikely that his own party will force him out, as occurred with Richard Nixon, John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and Chester Arthur.  

When the Mueller report came out, I stopped pushing for impeachment and posting about Trump in this blog.  I figured it was a done deal.  Wrong.

Come on, Nancy, let's get the impeachment show on the road.  Otherwise the reality-tv president will continue to write the script.

I appreciate your call for a motion to reject his tweets.  But the American people demand impeachment.

Ms. Pelosi said on Monday that the House would move to officially reject President Trump’s xenophobic tweets about members of Congress just hours after the president had warned Democrats against uniting “around the foul language & racist hatred spewed” from the American women whom he recently told to “go back” to their own countries.  [See today's NYT update.]

Yay--representatives are writing this motion as I sit here typing, reports the LA Times: 

As Trump doubles down on racist comments, House to vote on condemning them

See also this great list and analysis of obstruction in the Mueller report done by Quinta Jurecic for the website Lawfare.

And see this interview on Salon with David Priess, author of History's Guide to Removing Unable, Unfit, or Unpopular Chief Executives.