THE QUESTION THAT SHOULD BE ASKED

But don't expect Bush to answer...

We now have sufficient information to frame the Final Jeopardy! question. This is it:

Is a President, on the eve of his reelection campaign, legally entitled to ward off political embarrassment and conceal past failures in the exercise of his office by unilaterally and informally declassifying selected -- as well as false and misleading -- portions of a classified National Intelligence Estimate that he has previously refused to declassify, in order to cause such information to be secretly disclosed under false pretenses in the name of a "former Hill staffer" to a single reporter, intending that reporter to publish such false and misleading information in a prominent national newspaper?

The answer is obvious: No. Such a misuse of authority is the very essence of a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States. It is also precisely the abuse of executive power that led to the impeachment of Richard M. Nixon.

It's uncanny -- the ordeal of Clinton's absurd impeachment that was thrust upon us by the Republicans has given the nation such a distaste for the whole thing that Dubya just might wiggle out of this relatively unscathed. You'd almost think the whole thing was planned...hey, gimme, that's my tinfoil hat!

Tags: Bush, impeachment