The dualistic mind is enjoying the on-going debate between "purity trolls" and "sell-outs."  And most people on both sides of the issue appear to be quite certain of their stance.  Feeling somewhat queasy from the shaky ground under me, I've been looking in vain for the solid ground others seem to have found.  All I see is a Sophie's Choice:  which one do you choose to kill--the Constitution of the United States or any chance of participation in the process?  I don't know.  But I'm here to urge people to accept that we have a tough decision which cries out for meaningful, respectful debate.  And during this debate, may we keep in mind the most important political question we face--what action gives us the best chance of rescuing the constitution from imminent demise.

George Washington said our hope of maintaining our precious freedom lies with making common cause around the constitution.  When Obama focuses on unity, he's not just using a pretty word for effect.  He's talking about what Washington called the Palladium of your political safety and prosperity.

Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true Liberty. The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their Constitutions of Government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish Government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established Government.

If the House voted to refer articles of impeachment to the House Judiciary Committee, what would be the question before the committee?  In a primary sense, the question is simply, is our government functioning properly with George W. Bush as president?  If the answer to that question is no, for any reason criminal or otherwise, that would be grounds for impeachment.  So the first step is to decide if there are enough suspicions that Bush is not taking care that the laws of our nation are followed to suggest further investigation.  The final step, should the process carry on through impeachment, trial and conviction, would be moving toward restoring our government through removing Bush from office.  The entire process, start to finish, is concerned with a single matter, the proper functioning of the government.  If George W. Bush is not taking care that our government function properly, that is a high crime.  In fact, that is the definition of a high crime.

Aside from this introduction, this diary was first published July 30, 2007 under the title Impeachment 101: Perjury is Beside the Point.  It borrows freely from a diary by SilentBob published April 13, 2007, and a yet earlier diary by darrelplant from December 26, 2006.  The most salient aspects of all these diaries stem from the 1974 report of the legal staff of the Congressional Inquiry Committee considering Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment of Richard Nixon.  It was written with Alberto Gonzales in mind, but it could apply to most high-ranking officials in the executive branch today.

We may be jaded, tired, disgusted, bored with repetition and even despairing, but we're not going away.  Not this time.  This is not Nixon.  As long as we are alive, we will remember what they have done and we will seek justice in the names of the literally millions who have suffered injustice.

What are we going to do about those stubborn Republicans who just won't see the facts?  They just won't listen to reason.  Luckily there is another way to affect matters which requires less convincing and more listening and self-awareness.  The listening means learning where people are coming from.  The self-awareness means discovering that our own thought is part of the problem.  Thought is flawed in a fundamental way, and it cannot solve the problems it created.  That's right, anyone with a firm belief that their thoughts are reliable and correct is contributing to the disharmony of our era.

The good news is, we can do better.  Herein I discuss the views of David Bohm on the nature of thought, outline the principles of a Bohm Dialog, and add some of my personal experience of the kinds of habitual thought/feeling impulses which give rise to alienation, prejudice, and even war.

Hat tip to tahoebasha2 and Code Breaker, whose under-read diaries here and here inspired me to run their information through the dKos wringer one more time.

I have come to rely on dailyKos for almost all of my news.  In fact, I'm downright smug about it.  When someone offers up an item from the news, I usually say something along the lines of "I know.  What really happened is . . ."  When someone dismisses something I've read here as propaganda or wild speculation, I just sigh at their ignorance.  I have learned that if I read something here which has gone unchallenged or uncorrected, then it is virtually always accurate.  And I usually learn it somewhere between a day and six months before any non-Kossack.  But yesterday the great orange glow was dimmer than it should have been.

Update:  I changed the title for Media Successfully Created Racial Polarity, as was suggested in the comments.  The diary went in a slightly different direction when I started writing, but I didn't think to change the title.

I don't know how Barack Obama should have reacted to his media-created dilemma concerning Rev. Wright.  And I'm not going to speculate on the affects his speech may have.  FWIW, my impression is that he continues to be presidential, decisive, and compassionate.  Today's events have had no effect on my fervent support of his candidacy.

What I want to point out is that the events of yesterday and today highlight the racial divide in our country.  And the ways in which media coverage has sharpened the divide and created conditions likely to foster bitterness on one side and defensiveness on the other.

Enough with the pointing toward the bleachers and the powerful swing.  The simple fact is that 714 was an insufficient number of home runs for Babe Ruth to maintain the record for all time.  And if you leave out the ones that came in smaller ballparks, and the ones that were assisted by the wind blowing out, the actual number is more like 530, which puts him way down at fifteenth all-time, four behind Jimmie Foxx.  Clearly, Jimmie Foxx is the winner here.

And speaking of The Babe, why didn't the 1927 Yankees win more than one World Series?  Did they think because the were "the best team of all time" and had a "murderers row" that the heavens would magically open up and give them a second World Series?  [Full disclosure:  I'm a Red Sox fan, but credit where credit is due.]  My point?  The 2004 Red Sox are the better team.

Okay, at first I was for Gore, then I was for Edwards.  Then I thought I had a good choice between Clinton and Obama.  Wrong!  It turns out Hillary is awful and Obama rocks.  So, now I'm for Obama.  No, I mean I'm really, really for Obama a lot.

I LOVE BARACK OBAMA!!!

In a unrelated matter, my wife and I have definitely decided to plant a mission fig bush.  At first we thought it wasn't hot enough here, then we found out it is.

Come on, Obama lovers, give me that famous free trip to the rec list.

Yesterday General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  The questioning which really got my blood flowing and my fist pumping was that of Senator Menendez.  Of the portions I heard, Senator Boxer and Senator Obama stood out, with a nod of the head to Senator Voinovich, a Republican who acknowledged that Senator Obama may well be the next President of the United States.  But Menendez went farthest toward exposing the heart of the manipulations and misplaced focus which would make our illegal and unwise intervention in Iraq seem sensible.  As a tribute to his performance, I took the trouble of transcribing his entire questioning.  For anyone who is interested, the whole transcription is posted at the end of this diary.  You can watch Senator Menendez' questioning on c-span  starting at around 3:23.

This diary is to highlight the pointed questioning of a Senator representing the kind of sanity we hunger for here on dailyKos.  

Yeah, I was nominated by popular demand in 2008, yeah that's the ticket, popular demand from older white Democratic women, yeah who demanded that the caucus states be thrown out and the small states be discounted and the states we couldn't win were made into a new country called uh...Repub...uh...Republic...annnnnia, yeah that's right, Republicania, that's the ticket, yeah, and the Florida and Michigan delegates held a new primary with only my name on the ballot, yeah only my name, that's the ticket and then everyone realized the superdelegates are automatic, so they all had to vote for the inevitable candidate, me, Hillary Clinton, yeah that's right me, who was sworn in as the first ever woman President of the United States.  Yeah, I was President, that's the ticket.

MSNBC has this posted from Janny Scott and the Times:  Obama Chooses Reconciliation over Rancor.  The Times version is here.  This could have been written by a Kool Aid drinker on this site.  I'll admit, I didn't expect to see such full acknowledgment in the media.  

In a speech whose frankness about race many historians said could be likened only to speeches by Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson, John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln, Senator Barack Obama, speaking across the street from where the Constitution was written, traced the country’s race problem back to not simply the country’s "original sin of slavery" but the protections for it embedded in the Constitution.

A central theme of Barack Obama's Presidential bid has been unity.  This is not a recent fad with him, as we learned yesterday in dawnt's diary.  In 2004, Obama stated that the most important thing to him was

Uniting a polarized America. There are those who are preparing to divide us. I say to them, there is not a liberal America, and a conservative America, there is the United States of America.

 March 11, on the occasion of his endorsement by admirals and generals, Obama said

After years of a divisive politics that uses national security as a wedge to drive us apart, how much longer do we have to wait to bring this country together to confront our common enemies?

[Title edited in desperate attempt to attract 1 reader]

Comics all across the country are confessing to growing apprehension as they anticipate the end of the Presidency of George W. Bush.  "I walked into my Joke Manufacturing Caucus yesterday," say jester Sam Goodall, "and I swear it could have been a meeting of the GOP election committee.  Pessimism so thick you could cut it with a ... damn, I can't think of a funny ending."

"We're all out of practice," consoled Jill Gilverson. "Many of us are wondering if we still have the chops.  I mean, I'm not proud of this, but some days I just sent articles in straight out of the paper.  The parody has been writing itself."

"Yeah, and the country has been so desperate that we could throw out almost anything and people would laugh.  I mean when you're being mocked by your own government, and all your most treasured traditions are being trampled, a good laugh, even if it's a trifle hysterical, is about all you can turn to."

A fascinating and factual diary went by last night without the readership it deserved.  I've got nothing to add to it, I'm just hoping to get more Obama supporters to read it.  ScaredHuman reaches his arm out to us progressives and shows the wrist.  If Obama has the sense to take that pulse, he can make hay with the rural dairy farmers of PA.

The diary is long and full of well-supported detail  ScaredHuman was advised by several enthusiastic commenters to cut the diary down into smaller chunks and publish it as a series.  I hope that will happen, but meanwhile, it's time to get to work on PA so I'm hoping to speed things up a bit. I give you a very short summary below the fold and invite you to link-i-port on over there.

I hope this idea is kosher.  If not, please just let me know in the comments and the diary will come down forthwith.  So here goes.

Problem:  Many valued Kossians are frustrated with the ratio of candidate diaries to issue diaries on the rec list.

Solution:  A time is established either every day or some days for those disaffected to agree to be logged on and to rec only diaries with the issues which interest them.

I come not to dis Hillary, but to shift the loci of your rage.  A lot of energy has been expended in attempting to define and prove Hillary's betrayal of our Democratic Party.  Her use of Rove-like innuendo--e.g., is Obama muslim, Canada says Obama is two-faced on NAFTA, and Obama's literature is like the worst of Rove and the GOP--has left us sputtering in rage.  Her imperialistic attempts to manipulate the democratic process--e.g., seating the MI and FL delegates, suing the Texas Democratic Party, changing super delegates to automatic delegates--has left us stunned at her disregard for her own party.  Now she has praised the very man, John McCain, who stands between us and our determination to restore the traditional values of liberalism to government.

We have cursed her for her sense of entitlement, marveled at her incompetence, and scorned her for her selfishness.  Something is starting to seem amiss in these reactions (and it's not that we've gone too far).  It's that a slight shift in perspective can free our energies of outrage from Hillary and focus them back where they belong--on the dishonest, disrespectful, and discredited politics she thoroughly represents.

Fast on the hills of his candidate's threats to sue the Texas Democratic Committee, apparently on the grounds that democracy is getting out of hand in the Lone Star State, James "Stealth Advisor" Carville sent me, or at least signed, this appeal for funds.