Thanks for your additional commentary.  It is food for thought.  As I said I was beginning to say - why not impeach since nothing else seems to be happening?  I will think on this some more.

I don't know how influential Dkos really is.  But your point about the netroots retaining or growing credibility is a good one.  Yet one of the features of the blogs that I have come to appreciate are the unheard points of view being heard.  So for me there is a conundrum.  How do you develop a coherent rational opposing voice of influence and at the same time allow for the dissonant voices to be heard?  I suppose that is what you mean by the difference between the FP and the diaries.

The troops are not coming home under Bush & Cheney's watch. No matter what the Dems manage to pass to help bring the troops home (and no matter how much hullabaloo we make on blogs), they just won't be coming home. Especially since the Pentagon is already in the process of building another dozen bases in Iraq and this has been documented!

I care about the Constitution and the health of our democracy and the damage done IS SO BLATANT that everyone can see!

I think purusing investigations into impeachment would help the Dems NOT hurt them. Consider this:

*The GOP impeached Andrew Johnson over an illegal appointment. What happend next? Ulysses Grant (a GOP) became president.

*An attempt to impeach Herbert Hoover came when he ordered the "mowing down" of Pittsbugh steel workers after they went on strike. Who became president next? F.D.R.

*An attempt was made to impeach Harry Truman by the GOP (see Nichols book for more info). Who came next? Dwight Eisenhower.

*Richard Nixon was brough up on impeachment charges. Who became president in '76? Jimmy Carter, a Dem

*In 1999 Clinton was impeached but not removed. Who won the 2000 election. George W. Bush. Well, he stole it.

For more info on this, read John Nichols, "The Genius of Impeachment

Think what could happen if the Dems pursue impeachment?

I oftentimes hear we don't have the votes to do it. Well according to John Nichols and former Congresswoman Elizabeth Hotlzman, it was the same scenario. People said, no way, forget it, you don't have the votes. THen the evidence came out in the hearings along with some good reporting in the WaPost. And the rest is history.

Who's to say that can't happen again? That's why we want "investigations" into impeachment, NOT impeachment. There's a difference.

I think it would be a harder battle now than it was back in '73-'74. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't just throw up our hands and give up. The health of our democracy is at stake and now more than ever, is it so important that to pursue it, whether we win or lose!

Elections can wait. The health of our democracy can't!

BUT diminishing, ironically, because it has been to chummy with the Dem Establishment, particularly on Iraq.

That's why this impeachment business is just nuts. It is out of Left Field.

Of course not.

what will you do a year from now when Congress has done nothing to impeach. Will you still be arguing for impeachment?

I had a chance to sit down with The Nation's John Nichols for MyDD and here's what he had to say re: the war in Iraq and why we need to focus more on impeachment rather than legislative issues.

Brattlerouser: This is one of the common things I hear people say, "There's more important things that needs to get done first, pass minimum wage laws, protect the environment, universal health care, tax cuts for the middle class, etc., etc.

Nichols: Of course [that's all] important but frankly if I had to choose between ending the war in Iraq and impeaching Bush, I'd end the war in Iraq! If I had to choose between a national health care plan that showed every child in this country had top line health care and every elderly person could get all the prescription medications they needed to get by, I might have to make that practical choice. But that's not the choice we face and I would hope that I wouldn't have to make those choices because in the end, if we don't maintain the basic infrastructure of the Republic we don't maintain the rule of law than the likelihood that this American experiment will survive in any kind of functional form is narrow or slim. So I think that our first duty is to defend the Republic. It's much like if you have a home and you say, "You know I think I want to paint my house blue and I want to put some really cool decorations in front of it." But your wife says, "Yeah, but the furnace is broken down and a lot of windows are cracked." So while painting is a nice idea and putting nice Christmas decorations is a nice idea, the basic infrastructure of the house is falling apart. We should do something about that first. I think we got a point where the basic infrastructure of our Republic is really threatened and if we don't address the core issues, the lack of the checks & balances at the federal level, the excessive power in the Executive Branch, all of the other things we do, the minor other progressive actions we do, are likely to be undermined and very hard to enact in the long term and even if we do get them enacted it will be very hard to. So I have very little patience with the suggestion that impeachment is a barrier to political or practical progress for the country. I think it's the exact opposite. I think impeachment is the door we step through to a much more vibrant and engaged democracy. If we remove this President, if we even get close to remove this President, the energy that would go into that, the excitement that would be associated with that, the vibrant public discourse that will rise from that is very likely to have a much broader and much healthier impact on the whole of democracy than anything else we do. Look at how young people respond to impeachment. It polls much better among young people and people of color and low-income folks. I think for logical reasons these are people who often have the rule of law applied to them rather unfairly and they ask, "Well why shouldn't it apply to the President fairly and appropriately?" So one of the things I think we re-engage a lot of people with politics is by saying, "Yes. The rules are real and they apply even to the President and you as a citizen have the right to challenge the most powerful man in the world." When you get that idea planted in their head, then the idea of going out and working for a national health care plan seems not nearly as daunting.

To read the rest of the interview click here.

Hope this helps.

More like respect "your" facts?

Whatever.