"Sneering contempt" and "overweening power" are not impeachable offenses. Though I sympathize wholeheartedly with the author's sentiment, if we impeach Cheney, it should be for engineering and directing specific violations of the law. There are a number of examples.

As to the issue of his unprecedented role in this administration, well, the author actually unintentionally makes clear who must be held accountable for that:

"In contrast, Article II enumerates the powers and responsibilities of the president, including the obligation to take care that the laws be faithfully executed."

It W's responsibility ultimately to see that his administration behaves lawfully and appropriately. Everything Cheney has done has been with the President's explicit or tacit consent. If anyone should be held responsible for the breathtaking surrender of authority to vice presidency that we have seen, it should be the President who has failed to perform his elected duties. It seems silly to blame Cheney (much as you might dislike the man, and suspect that he runs intellectual circles around W) for accepting the authority delegated to him by the President. "The buck stops there," to adapt a phrase.

Of course, the issue is that a Presidential impeachment (or even vice-presidential) is pure fantasy. It won't happen. And if it did, guess who gets to be President? Seems like we're stuck for another 2 years.

Maybe we could dock their pay or something...

either he has broken the law, or he hasn't. and the remedy for that is clear. everything else is just a running campaign commercial.

I agree that the article was written more like a long name-calling episode than a legal argument, but there are impeachable offenses within it, the most obvious one to me the violation of American citizen's rights.

Bush has committed his own crimes against the United States, and may be considered for impeachment by them, but simply because Cheney accepted authority does not mean he was honor-bound to do ill with it. Once he had that authority, he could have championed human rights laws (not that he would, I'm just saying). Instead he used it to champion torture and abuse international laws.

Blaming Bush for Cheney's crimes is giving Cheney too little credit. Compare the White House to a major corporation. If the vice president of a corporation is found to be corrupt, you fire him - not his immediate superior. You fire his superior for his own crimes. We should do the same in this instance.

It becomes more obvious every day that these two shouldn't be in office, but it is far too late in the game to begin an impeachment. What we should do is prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law after they leave office.