Impeachment and Censure

Rich Lowry makes an interesting point: Impeachment is a big, scary-sounding word because of our history, but it has recently been watered down so much that it's not very different from censure.  It sounds worse to our ears - especially those of us who are older and remember the hugeness of even a threatened impeachment of Nixon, a century after the previous one, but this was a low bar and the next turn of the wheel may go even lower.  

I recall in college being the last person in a purportedly-haunted building (another theater ghost named Lucinda.  There are apparently a lot of them scattered about the country) one night and feeling a little nervous, even though I didn't actually believe in ghosts. Then it occurred to me "Even if it exists, what's it going to do to me?  Say 'oooohhh?'" I thought I could handle that. 

So it's all just sound and fury, signifying nothing, and too bad for DJT, who usually has better theater but this time doesn't. If they are going to try and prove he had plans in advance to do this or that bad thing they are going to have an uphill slog. Trump's strength (and weakness) was that a lot of it was made up on the spot based on instinct. Even when he was dead wrong he was unanticipated and his opponents needed to at least figure out how, exactly, they were going to run the sword through him.  By that time he was on to something else.

The NYTimes had opinion columnists who were wishing this could all be over because they are tired of it all.  They expressed this in classic last-word fashion OK, I'll hit you two or three more times and then we'll just stop fighting, right? Still, it's revealing.