Impeachment

I've been rather slow to call for Bush's impeachment, for two real reasons. One is that I think the Republicans ruined impeachment in the 1990s. That is, by trying to remove a president for committing perjury in a small civil case about sex, they turned this awesome congressional power into a cheap partisan trick. Now anyone who calls for impeachment can be derided as a similar partisan hack. The second reason I've opposed impeaching Bush is that I thought Democrats would pay a price for it. Republicans lost seats in 1998 in part because of their impeachment fever. I didn't want Democrats to lose control of the Congress because of this.

But now I'm starting to think that the impeachment of Bush wouldn't be such a bad thing. For one thing, there'd be very little blowback over it. Bush is incredibly unpopular, and four in ten Americans support the idea of impeaching him.

The tricky thing would be coming to an agreement on what he should be impeached for. I know a lot of Democrats want him impeached because he lied us into war. I disagree with that approach. I believe that impeachment should be limited to cases involving serious breaches of the law. As repugnant as the adminstration's actions in getting us into the war were, they did not, as far as I can tell, involve breaking the law. Yes, starting unnecessary wars should be grounds for losing the presidency (and maybe even grounds for prosecution by the International Criminal Court), but the place to do that is at the ballot booth, and Democrats blew that shot on 2004.

There seems to be no question, however, that Bush broke the law with his warrantless wiretapping program. Whether the FISA law was obsolete or not, a president does not get to ignore federal law because he finds it inconvenient. Bush's actions violated the 4th amendment to the Constitution and the FISA law. That's more than sufficient grounds to impeach a president.

Now, in reality, even if the House were to impeach Bush, the Senate is very unlikely to remove him from office. I understand that. But impeachment would be a stain on the man that would remain part of his legacy. Clinton will be remembered for hundreds of years as only the second U.S. president to be impeached, and all because he lied about getting blown. Shouldn't Bush at least have such a mark on his permanent record?

Switch

I'm writing this on my new MacBook. It's been a slightly tricky transition - some keystrokes I've been using for over a decade no longer work. But I've been very pleased overall. The Mac just works. When I plug in my external firewire hard drive, it doesn't immediately rummage through the entire drive contents and then beg me to tell it what kind of media it is. It just makes the drive immediately and conveniently appear on my desktop. It also works very nicely with PowerPoint demonstrations in class, flipping seamlessly between my monitor and the overhead projector without needing excessive keystrokes or a restart. I'm very, very happy with this little Apple.

Lobster Roll

I just got back from an extended visit with the in-laws in New Hampshire. One of the greatest things about the New England seacoast in the summer is the lobster roll. It's a bunch of lobster meat mixed with mayo and served on a buttered, toasted hot dog bun. It's bliss.

And it's usually cheap. During recent visits, we've gotten lobster rolls for usually around six or seven bucks apiece, maybe around ten dollars in the nicer restaurants. Not this time. Apparently, the lobster industry had a rough spring, and lobster rolls are now going for around $20 each in many restaurants. It's just not right.

Billy Zane

I have no idea if Billy Zane is an asshole or not. He might be a really nice guy. But I just love the idea that he's an asshole.

(Click the picture for more.)

Fewer Meetings

Faculty at smaller, less research-oriented schools like mine are in a bit of a quandary. We know we need to work on our scholarship. It's what tenure is based on, it's what makes us attractive to other departments, it brings us respects among our peers, etc. But there's never enough time to get good scholarship done.

So where can we get the time from? It could come out of our teaching, but that's unfair to students, and it's not really practical at a smaller school at which students (and their parents) expect more attention that they'd otherwise get at a large research university. The only other place to find time is from that third pillar of academic life: service.

Yes, a university depends upon the service of its faculty. There's faculty governance in the form of an academic senate, there are numerous interdisciplinary committees to be staffed, there are grants to be administered, etc. And this is all fine. But it can easily take over a faculty member's life.

I'm trying to come up with a way to limit either the number of committees that can exist on a campus, the number of committees to which a faculty member may belong, or the maximum size of committees. It's simply too easy to form a committee and it's a logical first response to any emerging problem on campus. But then the committee exists for a year or longer and sucks more time out of several faculty members' lives.

What can be done? I'm open to suggestions. I don't want to put an outright ban on committee formation, because then administrators would just come up with new committees but call them something else, like "forums" or "working groups." It needs to be legal, but somehow costly, to form a committee.

Ideas?

Rocky I - VI

Yeah, this is brilliant.

Graph of the Day

The Monica Effect


The Monica Effect