Over a century ago, Sen. Carl Schurz said (my emphasis):

“I confidently trust that the American people will prove themselves … too wise not to detect the false pride or the dangerous ambitions or the selfish schemes which so often hide themselves under that deceptive cry of mock patriotism: ‘Our country, right or wrong!’ They will not fail to recognize that our dignity, our free institutions and the peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: ‘Our country—when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right.’”

In the current situation, the wrong to be put right is the Constitutional contempt of the Bush Administration. Thinking back to the Nixon resignation, as I listened to Ford being sworn in, I mused on the irony that I was driving past the Watergate.

Just after swearing in the new President, some microphones caught Chief Justice Burger muttering, "It worked. The system worked." Regardless of the views of activists on both extremes, it is my belief that a great number of Americans do trust the system to put things right.

On Friday, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform took testimony related to the violations, centered around White House and OVP activity, of national security in the matter of the CIA employment of Valerie Plame Wilson. As Chairman Waxman put it, the job of the committee is not to determine criminality, but to identify what went wrong and how to correct it. A first step in determining criminality already took place with Scooter Libby. It may well be that the eventual findings of these hearings may well recognize that, especially, the Vice President committed impeachable activities.

Impeachment is the thermonuclear weapon of American politics. It is far more drastic than a Vote of Confidence in a parliamentary democracy. IMHO, it should be reserved for offenses uniquely made possible by the nature of the office, which was not the case with the Clinton impeachment -- which failed to convict. That Articles of Impeachment were about to be voted out of the Judiciary Committee was enough to have Richard Nixon resign.

In the Watergate affair, it took multiple hearings, as well as criminal proceedings, to build the ironclad case for impeachment. Those hearings, those investigations, were unquestionably within the system. They built a consensus in the Congress and with the electorate, brick by brick. It was never possible, in any of the impeachment hearings going back to 1789, to "impeach now". The process, sometimes more and sometimes less, involved procedural safeguards.

In the hearing and afterwards, I have seen at least three examples of how the process was trivialized. While the Washington Post did report the facts, I am disgusted with Mary Ann Akers' blog:

Forget about her testimony. Let's talk about the fashion statement Valerie Plame made today when she went before Congress.

Most responders to the blog, appropriately, blasted the inappropriate sexism and general trivialization of the CIA operations officer. Yes, she is an attractive, well-dressed woman. What does that have to do with the substance of the matter?

Next, I am disgusted with Midge Potts of Code Pink, who constantly moved, at the back of the hearing room, so that her pink T-shirt emblazoned "Impeach Bush Now", was in virtually every frame of other than tightly focused video of Valerie Plame Wilson. The hearing was about the national security implications of actions taking place in the White House, that may well be key bricks of a foundation of impeachment, or Nixonian resignation.

Did Potts and her cohorts believe that Waxman would suddenly order the committee, regardless of its authority, to report out Articles of Impeachment? Did Potts and her cohorts think that a T-shirted slogan would better help build consensus than a serious inquiry?

Yet another aspect of trivialization came with the kiss of death of being taken seriously by CNN: Jeannie Moss did a feature on Code Pink activists' intruding into hearings to get coverage of their impeachment message. Jeannie Moss' reporting tends to label its subject as material for humor and the appeal of geek shows, not serious reporting and discussion.

It's been hard enough to get the Republican majority voted out, and a Democratic effort to, to try, as Schurz put it, to put our country right. Administration political operatives will take every opportunity to trivialize those attempts, when those attempts reveal Constitutional and ethical failings of Bush, Cheney, and those they appointed and supervised.

The nation does not need trivialization in healing a wound. It does not need trivialization whether from Karl Rove, Code Pink, Dick Cheney, Glenn Beck, Jeannie Moss, Ann Coulter, or Mary Ann Akers. Code Pink may reinforce the view of activists that want what they want now, rather than the large number of Americans that will want due process and full disclosure.