The laundry-list of high crimes and misdemeanors that Mr. Cheney has had leveled against him has its own laundry-list of reportage, and the fact that Mr. Fein has joined the legion of anti-Cheney writers simply adds him to yet another laundry-list, this one of properly-credentialed conservatives who just can't take it anymore.

Aside from making one wonder where the term "laundry-list" comes from (who needs a list to do laundry?), the only consequence of all these lists is to further point out the intractability of the current Administration (I hesitate to call it the "Bush Administration," for reasons detailed in Mr. Fein's piece). How many Nixon, Reagan, and Bush the Elder officials have to write books on the radicalism of this administration? How many Washington Times, New York Post, and Wall Street Journal Editorial Board members need to speak out against the many abuses of power and tragic mistakes of the ideologues in the White House? Can anything make these men change their mind?

Apparently not. With Mr. Bush's popularity in utter shambles, with an opposition congress voted in by a wide margin, one wonders where exactly this steadfastness and certainty comes from. Do they really think they're right, that they're saving freedom by eliminating it? Or is it just a machismo-based inability to admit mistakes, a can't-blink-first mentality?

Whatever the reason, the Administration's incorrigibility makes Mr. Fein's, and most every other conservative naysayer's, protestations entirely moot. The Democratic congress is far too weak-kneed to actually carry out any plan for impeachment (or any plan at all, really), so all that's left to do is keep an eye on our watches and wait for January 2009. Let's just hope Mr. Cheney's disregard of the constitution doesn't extend to the 22nd amendment as well.

Good post. I was in DC lst week while some Vietnamese people were protesting the fact that a delegation from Vietnam was at the White House. So I joined them during the protest.

A group of young people (13-15 on a school trip) showed up and looked disgustingly at the protestors. So I walked over and asked them to read some literature about Vietnam and their human rights violations.

They wanted to know "Why are these people protesting and what good could come out of it?" And it really hit me that change in this country always came via student protests. But they don't protest any longer. I couldn't even get them to look at the literature that these people had put together.

And the really sad thing was that these were supposedly "young presidential hopefuls" (some club I guess).

Consider the "Bong Hits For Heysus" Case in relation to students’ political activity. The government (Red, Blue and in between) would prefer a poorly educated soma popping voter base that cannot think critically. And the priority of funding for education in the USNA emphasizes this so well.

In answer to your rhetorical question, "laundry list" refers back to an earlier time, before women's lib (and when men rarely performed domestic chores, even when unmarried), and before laundry machines were available in most houses and apartment buildings - In other words, when people (usually men with no domestic help) sent their laundry out to be cleaned. The list (x number of shirts, for instance, possibly along with a brief description of each) is an agreed-upon assurance that what went out is what came back, and lives on today in the numbered and itemized slips you receive when entrusting your garments to a dry cleaner.

(The administration of my Canadian graduate college ignored the pleas of the Junior Fellows to install a laundry facility until the early 70's. They only relented after one of the Junior Fellows staged a sock-washing in the quad's reflecting pool, timed to coincide with a scheduled appearance of the Visitor. Up until then, the College's firm view simply had been that "young gentlemen send their laundry out.")

Incidentally, the association of the Chinese with domestic tasks like laundry and cooking originated in the American West and stemmed less from their inherent abilities than from their willingness to perform such "woman's work" in places with virtually no women. (It also beat getting abused and/or killed working on the railroads.)

Actually, the expression "laundry list" is misused in most contexts, since it implies an mutual agreement or contract, and should be replaced with a term used in stamp, book and record collecting, "want list." Or one from the game of 'chicken', a "who flinches first" list.

However, a laundry list approach to government might not be such a bad idea. Perhaps we could agree upon a list of rights and freedoms we are entrusting to our leaders and representatives at the beginning of each administration or session of Congress, and at the end receive an enumeration of what we're getting back, so that by comparing the two we can see just how much was lost in the wash.