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I forget where I found these links.

Charlie Pierce on impeachment:

This can't be a matter of political calculation any more. It simply can't. It's a fundamental question of what kind of government we want to have.

The Onion in 2001:

Mere days from assuming the presidency and closing the door on eight years of Bill Clinton, president-elect George W. Bush assured the nation in a televised address Tuesday that "our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over."

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From:

randomdreams.livejournal.com

I am fairly sure that the political landscape would be vastly different if we hadn't been through an impeachment debacle 8 years ago. The national mood, while anti-Bush, seems to be even more anti-impeachment -- or if not anti, at least "oh, let's not go THERE again." I'm not a conspiracy nut so I won't suggest that the previous impeachment was groundwork for protecting subsequent prsidents' misdeeds, but I do think this administration has taken every bit of slack offered and then some.

From:

jfb.livejournal.com

I guess it depends on how you read the national mood. Prominent political and media figures, with the occasional exception of Dennis Kucinich and a few others, pretty much scoff at the idea. But a recent poll indicated 39% of Americans favor impeachment (http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Poll_shows_39_of_Americans_support_0508.html) of Bush and Cheney.

That's a minority (55% oppose impeachment), but it's pretty impressive given the near-total lack of support for the idea from politicians or discussion of it (or the reasons for it) in the media.

There aren't any truly comparable numbers, but one poll found 40% in favor (http://www.pollingreport.com/scandal2.htm) of impeaching Clinton, after months of reporting on his offenses and an actual House vote to impeach. (Impeachment support earlier in the Lewinsky era was around 30%.)

And in that case, the impeachable offense was lying about sex. I like to think that if the House of Representatives spent a couple of weeks laying out the charges against this guy on national TV, people would come around.

Pierce's point, of course, is that the House should just ignore the polls and the national mood and do what's right. Not impeaching him sets a precedent that, yes, the president really can do whatever he or she feels like doing to the country (blow jobs excepted), and that's too dangerous a precedent to allow.