Sir, you said in your diary

And I am conscious of the fact that I would have a specific role to play as a sworn, impartial juror should an impeachment be tried in the Senate.  If charges come to the Senate, I will approach them and the trial with the same seriousness that I had when I participated in the Clinton impeachment trial.  I would not prejudge the case one way or the other should it come to this.

Respectfully, I disagree that you are or were ever supposed to be an impartial juror in the case of impeachment.  While I expect you and your colleagues to treat this with a seriousness and professionalism that the Republicans never did with the Clinton impeachment by no means are you or your colleagues capable of being impartial.  I am also not asking you to approach this issue with the already made up minds of your Republican colleagues.  I do, however, expect you to not ignore the plentiful, indeed, overwhelming evidence and information about the impeachable offences of this administration in some kind of pretense of fairness and impartiality. Please follow me below the fold for my argument against your assumption of impartiality.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/...  

In "Not One Dime" by James Carville and Paul Begala, they say

The very process of raising money distorts the politician's perspective. You try spending six hours a day, six days a week in a cramped room calling people and sucking up to them for money. If the only people you ever talk to are people with the wherewithal to contribute thousands of dollars to your campaign, that is bound to affect the way you see the world. You don't hear much about the minimum wage from folks who can write a check for $2,000. Nor do you spend a lot of time calling people who don't have health insurance or who can't afford their prescription drugs.

Consider that.  The people who are supposed to represent us spend most of their working time begging for money.  How many fundraisers do you suppose they have to go to each week?  How many middle class constituents do they meet at these fundraisers?

I decided to read Thomas Paine's Rights of Man.  I found it's rather like blogs.  Paine's was a reply to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, which in turn was a reply to Dr. Richard Price's
A Discourse on the Love of our Country.  Rather fun to think a tradition is being carried on in blogging.  A tradition which brought us the values we so admire and are fighting for. This is not the whole of the discourse.  I cut from the beginning and the end.  Anyone wanting to read the whole just follow the link.  One thing though, they weren't short and concise in their writing.  Ah well.  The discourse beyond the fold.  Happy reading.