Opinion

Memory is physical as well as mental. If my memory serves me correctly, in a drawer somewhere in our house, perhaps in the bookshelf in our living room, we used to have (and perhaps still do) a fading yellowed copy of something headed “Bill of Impeachment.” I’m pretty sure it was from 1967 or thereabouts, and I’m pretty sure that John Conyers, the smart, dapper young congressman from Detroit, and Robert Drinan, the only Jesuit ever elected to Congress from Massachusetts or any other state, joined about 10 House colleagues in proposing impeaching Lyndon Johnson over his pursuit of the Vietnam War. That impeachment action came to naught, unless you count Johnson’s eventual decision not to run again. There have been other occasions in the intervening years when impeachment has been started, but only Bill Clinton ever faced an actual trial. -more-

On Monday morning I made a mistake that I don’t often make. I listened to the radio broadcast of a press conference held by and for the current president of the United States. It was a profoundly depressing experience. Not only is the man a dolt, he’s a vicious, systematic dolt. -more-