I took the Canal Zone and let Congress debate; and while the debate goes on, the canal does also.

– President Theodore Roosevelt. (HT: Brainyquote.com)

Bruce Fein has long believed that Democracy in America was going the way of the Roman Republic under the rule of Caesar Augustus. He believes that so strongly that he has been especially critical of Presidents Clinton, Bush II and now Obama. Like a pulp-fiction author under contract, he has authored a series of Impeachment Articles against recent American Presidents that may one day rival Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time Novels for its count of interminable sequals. Sadly, this grandstanding approach to checking executive power does more to denigrate the republic than preserve it.

In sworn testimony before The House Judiciary Committee on 25 July 2008, Fein issued the following salutation to then Commander-In-Chief, George W. Bush.

If President George W. Bush had knocked to enter the constitutional convention in Philadelphia in 1787, presiding convention president George Washington would have denied him admission. Thereby hangs an alarming tale. The executive branch has vandalized the Constitution every bit as much the barbarians vandalized Rome in 410 A.D. The executive branch has destroyed the Constitution’s time-honored checks and balances and raced the nation perilously close to executive despotism.

(Bruce Fein, ObCit).

At the time, Mr. Fein was outraged over President Bush’s use of wiretaps to gain intelligence on terrorist activities. He was particularly incensed that US Citizens were being tapped and recorded without warrants. Today, Mr. Fein feels a similar sense of umbrage at our new President, Mr. Obama. He accuses Barack Obama of having violated the Constitution by ordering American Military personnel into action against Libyan Dictator Khadafy.

Mr. Fein does what he is prone to do anytime he disagrees with how a sitting President is governing the country. He has once more read the mind of the deceased President Washington, and intuited grounds for the Impeachment of President Barack Obama. He quotes James Madison on war below without the slightest lilt of historical irony.

“Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other…. War is the true nurse of executive aggrandizement.”

– President Madison (Bruce Fein, ObCit).

President Madison, who invaded Canada in response to the unproven impressments of American sailors, would have driven the hyper-litigious Mr. Fein to camp out in a ditch near The USSC. President Jefferson’s purchase of France’s claim to most of the American Midwest would certainly have had Mr. Fein surveying the effected Indian Tribes for a pool of potential litigants.

Then we get to President Theodore Roosevelt. His version of a vibrant, living Constitution included his decision to promise Panamanian Rebels aid in evicting Columbia from their land, if they agreed to sell the US the Panama Canal Zone. He did this because Columbia refused to provide him sufficient land to build a canal across the Panamanian Isthmus. He sent the US Navy to intimidate the Columbians and the Panamanian Rebels won.

This purchase was formalized via the Hay Bunau-Varilla Treaty. The treaty was controversial because it was negotiated with US Secretary of State Mr. Hay, by a Panamanian expatriate, Mr. Bunau-Varilla, who never returned to Panama again after negotiating with the United States on Panama’s behalf.

The Panamanians resented this behavior to the point that they were still attempting to kill US Soldiers as late as the 1960’s. They clearly felt that the US had inflicted this treaty upon them by negotiating it with an illegitimate party. Mr. Fein would have foamed at the mouth. Mr. Washington’s poltergeist would have advised him that the Roman Senate had just bestowed the Fasces upon Elagabalus.

Not a one of my five or six constant readers could possibly infer that a write this out of a continued desire for the US Military to remain active in Libya. Nor could they infer that I had a deeply repressed fondness for our cuddly and adorable Boy President.™ I ridicule Bruce Fein because he is an attention harlot who trivializes profoundly important things.

He trivializes the process of impeachment. Impeachment, like deviancy, has been defined down to the point where it no longer retains its original meaning. Impeachment no longer pertains to the removal of a public official for high crimes and misdemeanors. It now entails that a power PAC has decided to attempt a palace coup.

We will remove a future US President, because the NRA, Emily’s List or the AARP doesn’t happen to like that individual’s actions or priorities. Bruce Fein, his bombastic garbage-talk about preserving the republic aside, is bringing that vile day closer nigh. When idiots like Slate Magazine’s execrable Dahlia Lithwick propose a Truth and Reconciliation Commission because she didn’t personally vote for George W. Bush, the Imperial Presidency is not the biggest threat to our democratic republic.

Barack Obama is a terrible, arrogant and destructive President. He did not deserve a first term, he should not be granted a second one. We have a time-honored administrative procedure in our democracy by which we relieve such idiots of important responsibilities. These procedures are known as elections. They serve our national commonweal quite well. Election 2012, not Bruce Fein’s attention-grabbing Articles of Impeachment, is the proper method by which our nation fires a deplorable president for his arrogance, his cupidity, his hubris.