It seems inexplicable that so many of the American people can be so dazed and confused, while moral degenerates ransack our nation, piss and defecate upon the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, and brazenly loot the public domain, making a mockery of the rule of law and societal norms.

Incredible lies are routinely passed as truth and the world as we know it is unraveling, as we prepare to invade and occupy yet another country, perhaps igniting World War III. We go on with the insipid routine of our dull lives: we go shopping, and bombard our senses with mind numbing entertainment, telling ourselves that it -- fascism -- can't happen here, even as its poisoned blossoms unfold before our astonished eyes and fill our lungs with their noxious fumes.

The presidency of George W. Bush has now devolved into a criminal conspiracy to cover the ass of George W. Bush.

How convenient, this forgetting — this respected ignorance — that the only nation to have ever used the deadliest of all weapons of mass destruction, the only nation to have terrorized a country by means of those weapons, the only nation to have nuked civilians, twice, with questionable necessity, obliterating 340,000 lives (by the time all the deaths related to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings were tallied five years out), is us, the United States.

Evidence of a Democratic majority in Congress keeps fading away. The party rode antiwar sentiment back into leadership of the House and Senate a year ago, but we are no closer to withdrawal. And now we have the nomination of Michael Mukasey for attorney general.

With every rationalization that lets the Bush administration off the hook, the Democrats render themselves meaningless.

I am urging my colleagues to recognize that impeachment will not create a crisis by briefly disrupting their schedules on Capitol Hill. The crisis, as Americans outside the Beltway know, is upon us. Congress, the first branch of our government, to which the first half of the Constitution is devoted, has been reduced to almost a bystander as the policies of the wealthiest nation and the largest military ever known are set in secret by the Vice President's office. Under Bush/Cheney, we have become a nation that illegally threatens and launches aggressive wars for political – not national security -- reasons. For this crisis of confidence, this denial of our Constitutional beliefs and rights, impeachment is the only cure available.