A pointer found at "Ticia's Blog", to Harper's respected liberal editor, Lewis Lapham:

"(...In Harper's Magazine for January, 2007, Lewis Lapham targets Nancy Pelosi's "impeachment is off the table." He also chastens Robert Reich's "it would be far better if Democrats used their newfound power to lay out a new agenda for America. There's no point digging up more dirt." Hear Lapham:...)

"Democracy is born in dirt, nourished by the digging up and turning over of as much of it as can be brought within reach of a television camera or a subpoena. We can't "lay out a new agenda for America" unless we know which America we're talking about, the one that embodies the freedoms of a sovereign people or the one made to fit the requirements of a totalitarian state.... Like it or not, and no matter how unpleasant or impolitic the proceedings, the spirit of the law doesn't allow the luxury of fastidious silence or discreet abstention.... The Constitution doesn't serve at the pleasure of Representative Pelosi any more than it answers to the whim of President Bush, and by taking "off the table" the mess of an impeachment proceeding, the lady from California joins the president in his distaste for such an unclean thing as a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Rightly understood, democracy is an uproar, the argument meant to be blunt, vigilant, and fierce, not, as the purveyors of our respectable opinion would have it, a matter of liveried civil servants passing one another polite synonyms on silver trays. ...

...(Describing the Bush Administration as "a predatory government...stealing from a free but inattentive people their lives, liberties, fortunes, good name, and sacred honor," Lapham considers impeaching Bush to be a form of public education, a civic lesson that might "unearth American democracy.")...

"How much longer do we wish to pretend that nothing really happened, or that nothing really valuable is lost; that the crime is the losing of the Iraq war, not the making of it? That in place of the constitutional questions asking why, to what end, and whose interest, we can afford to substitute the questions of logistics – how many troops to dispatch or withdraw over a period of how many days or months... what deals to cut with Syria and Iran. "

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I have to say I sympathize with both Lapham and the blogger who cites his essay. But you knew that. :)

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