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This morning's email exchange between me and mi amigo Scott...

Scott wrote:

Remember, if you will, the stories about the Democratic insiders who, after Sept. 11, told reporters they were relieved that George Bush was the president and not Al Gore -- not, as it happened, because they thought Bush would do a better job, but because they realized (quite correctly) that Republicans would never have rallied around Gore the way that Democrats were willing to get behind Bush in a time of grave national crisis. That they would, more than likely, have tried to seize political advantage from it by the same kind of absurdist machinations that drove Clinton's impeachment. Strangely enough, many conservative organs touted this news story as "proof" they had done the right thing, and that Bush was the right man for the job.In fact, it has been a longstanding contention of mine that if Sept. 11 had occurred on Al Gore's watch, Congress would have long ago convened impeachment hearings that would have been a classic Fox News show trial. Dan Burton would have been out in his back yard flying model airplanes into watermelons, and Ken Starr would have found reasons to issue a detailed 9,000 page report on Tipper and Al's sex life, which armchair psychiatrists like Charles Krauthammer, William Safire and Andrew Sullivan would have pronounced as the deep psychological root of the Sept. 11 attacks. At the end of the impeachment process, the Scalia Five would have issued a ruling allowing Congress to name a Republican as Gore's replacement.

I wrote:

You are so right. It astounds me, the shameful maneuverings that today's Republicans are willing to go through, and the laughable justifications for such contortionism. I ask Charles often, "Do you really think that a blow job was worth impeachment, but Bush should continue his Presidency?" To which he always replies, "Clinton commited perjury, rule of law, people go to jail for 10 years for perjury, blah blah blah..." Now I still maintain that perjury is a stretch for what Clinton did, and that he was an idiot for doing what he did to begin with, but that notwithstanding you can't make a sheep step back, put DOWN the Kool-aid for a minute (oh that tasty, tasty Kool-Aid) and reason this through. They can't see the bigger issues, the implications for our nation. Bill Clinton's behavior was reckless and destructive, but his circle of destruction was fairly limited in scope, he only really hurt himself, his family, and Monica Lewinsky. It was Ken Starr who took Clinton's behavior and used it as a weapon against our nation, raising the moral outcry and bringing impeachment charges that ultimately divided the nation into two factions: the first being normal, rational people who perhaps, perhaps not, have made a few sexual missteps in their lives, but know that there is a difference between personal and public misdoings, and the second being haughty, self-righteous pinheads who probably and sadly have never made any sexual missteps, in their own eyes anyway, and view personal indescretion as a major character flaw. These people won't be happy until Jesus Christ is President, but are quite pleased that he has sent an ambassador in his absence.