This diary started out as my thoughts in response to this post about how John Dean wants to impeach other Administration officials but not the President or Vice President.  I started writing a comment, but it got really long and drifted toward the general issue of whether impeachment should be off the table in the 109th Congress, so I figured I might as well turn it into a full on diary.  

Basically, I disagree with Dean on the level of both practicality and principle.  The latter is more important to me, though, and the specific principle in question is accountability, a concept dangerously close to vanishing from our political culture.