"And while I'm at it, I'd like a pony."

It's easy and understandable how the usually hardboiled realist would make some heartfelt wishes right now.

The New New Democrats need to study the calendar. Two years from now, they may well end up back in the minority, reading passionate speeches no one will ever hear to an empty chamber for the benefit of C-SPAN. Rather than triangulate or moderate their views, Democrats should take that two-year time limit seriously and go gangbusters, emulating Cheney and Bush's balls-to-the-wall style to pass as much legislation as they can before 2008. That means unraveling as many GOP accomplishments as possible. Cancel the tax cuts, close the torture camps, restore habeas corpus, get the NSA out of our email, yank our troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq.

It's high time for vengeance. Impeachment is essential, to cleanse our national soul, as a downpayment of good will toward the rest of the world, and because they did it to Clinton for far, far less. And we need investigations — lots of them. Special prosecutors ought to track down everyone, up to and including Bush, who lied about WMDs in Iraq, chose not to pursue Osama in Pakistan after 9/11, deliberately withheld help that could have saved lives during the Hurricane Katrina, and signed off on warrantless wiretapping of American citizens. Law and order starts at the top.

At the same time, Dems ought to ram through such long overdue (and popular) liberal agenda items as national health insurance, pulling out of the failed NAFTA accord and a big hike in the minimum wage. If any Republicans object, do what they'd do: call them terrorists or traitors or some other smear that forces them to sit down, shut up, and vote yes.

But, really, high hopes only create a longer let-down.

Then we have the about-face from Representatives Pelosi and Conyers, taking impeachment "off the table"...
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...we can certainly adduce the Clinton impeachment proceedings as not rising to the level of offense that we witness from the present administration. The apparent contradiction may be explained by an about-face of another kind — it can be argued that it is precisely the egregiousness of the present crimes that insulates them from official scrutiny.

The Nixon and Clinton cases had a "housecleaning" aspect to them. Both were guilty of inside jobs, Clinton's being the coarser. As with any housecleaning it was possible to go on feeling good about yourself afterwards. Using the jargon of the banal commercial, "what happens here stays here."

This is not the case if the Bush/Cheney administration is thoroughly investigated. Planning, preparing, initiating, or waging of a war of aggression reaches the Nuremberg standard. It is a Crime against Peace, the supreme international crime "differing from other war crimes only in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole". That would be torture. Humiliation. Terror. This would most certainly not "stay here".

Instead, such an admission of guilt would sully not just the guilty parties but the abstraction known as the United States of America, its cloak stained for all time. There is immense pressure, much of it self-felt, not to let this happen. Politicians are around to the next election cycle [sic] and merely inherit the structure of establishment policy set firmly in place. There will be little collective energy for an upheaval that will shake this establishment. Sadly, for those seeking justice, it was all done in our name.