The impeachment of Barack Obama

OK, so LBJ lied thtough his teeth about Vietnam, escalating a war to epic proportions over an incident that may not have even happened. Nixon had Watergate, of course, and then Reagan's team ran an end run around legality with the Iran-Contra scandal. Bill had Monica, and George had Cheney, Yoo and Team Torture, not to mention a war that actually made Vietnam seem sensible in comparison.

Given that less than stellar track record of Oval Office misconduct, it's not surprising that impeachment has been a part of the American political discussion for the last four decades, with one president (Clinton) who actually was impeached and a second (Nixon) who would have been had he not resigned.

So now comes growing support for...the impeachment of Barack Obama.

The evidence comes in a new public opinion survey of more than 2,000 self-identified Republicans (which presumably would not include many Tea Party activists, who increasingly don't identify with the GOP). Some of the findings fall into the surprising-but-not-really-all-that-surprising category: 63 percent of the Republicans think that the president is a socialist, and a majority either don't believe or don't know if Obama was born in the United States. Large numbers continue to think the 2008 election was stolen by ACORN. And so on and so forth. The finding that strikes me the most is this:

Should Barack Obama be impeached, or not?

OK, impeachment then. And so those high crimes and misdemeanors committed by Obama during Year One in office would be?....

Yes?

Still waiting.

Ironically, I was going to blog on this topic (if that's the right word) last night when I stumbled across a link to an "Impeach Obama Campaign" Web site that's run by none other than Floyd Brown, the "Zelig" of modern right-wing American politics, who's best known for the 1988 Willie Horton ad that helped sink Michael Dukakis (the Martha Coakley of his day) but has been involved in other capers including the anti-Hillary Clinton video that led to last month's landmark Supreme Court decision.

What jumps out about Brown's "case" against Obama is this:

Why are we calling for the Impeachment of Barack Hussein Obama?

Radio-personality Tammy Bruce may have said it best:

"... ultimately, it comes down to... the fact that he seems to have, it seems to me, some malevolence toward this country, which is unabated."

Oh... there are many reasons to call for the impeachment of Barack Hussein Obama and there is more than just cause to call for his impeachment.

Oh...you have got to be freakin' kidding me? That's your "best" case for impeaching Obama, that he "seems" -- not once, but twice, the dreaded double-"seems"! -- to have "some" -- some! -- "malevolence towards this country." Coming from a radio host that no one's eevn heard of. And the evidence of even that meager allegation is...nowhere to be found. Indeed, the rambling home page doesn't list a single action or statement by Obama that is a legal cause for impeachment.

Seriously, the best case for impeaching Barack Obama is that you can buy all kinds of cool stuff! The picture at the top of this post comes from ImpeachObamaStuff.org (a site created by, ahem, "Big Woody Productions"...you really cannot make these things up), which is not to be confused with ImpeachObamashirt.net or the Anti-Obama Super Store!

In other words, the impeachment of Barack Obama is nothing more than a massive marketing T-shirt scam, which 39 percent of all Republicans would like to enact as policy. God help the United States of America.