I’m not convinced that any of the recent scandals roiling the Obama administration constitutes an “impeachable moment,” but, as I argue today in the Washington Examiner, there’s something wrong with a (post-?) constitutional culture where opinion leaders treat the very invocation of the “I-word” as akin to screaming obscenities in a church.

Impeachment talk is “industrial strength insane” says the Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky; “serial madness,” per Richard Brodsky at the Huffington Post; Rachel Maddow compares it to incontinence; and for the Atlantic’s Philip Bump, it’s like the inevitable idiot in the comments thread invoking Hitler. True, Salon’s recent listicle of 14 “crazy times” right-wingers have called for Obama’s impeachment consists mostly of frivolous, even loopy proposals; but it also includes Bruce Fein’s 2011 call to impeach Obama “over the military intervention in Libya, alleging that it violated the Constitution’s mandate that only Congress can declare war.” Crazy talk!

Also in the Atlantic, “communitarian” godfather Amitai Etzioni moans “I see no way to protect the president and all of us from the second term curse” in a piece titled, “Why It Should Be Harder to Impeach a President.“ 

“Harder”? A “reality-based” communitarian Etzioni ain’t. In our 224-year constitutional history, we’ve only managed the feat twice—three times if you count Nixon, who resigned before the full House got to vote. How much harder can it get?

And when did calling for—even musing about—a president’s impeachment become a form of secular blasphemy—the American version of Lèse-majesté? 

Given what the mid-’70s Church Committee hearings revealed about presidential abuses of power, at a minimum, all three presidents of the ’60s deserved to be impeached and removed from office. Of the seven presidents since Nixon, I can make a case for impeaching at least four.

As Ben Franklin put it at the Philadelphia Convention, the impeachment power is “the best way… to provide in the Constitution for the regular punishment of the Executive when his misconduct should deserve it, and for his honorable acquittal when he should be unjustly accused.”

Our problem isn’t too many impeachments, but too few.   

The Christian Science Monitor suggests this lesson be drawn from the Obama administration’s recent scandalpalooza:

Congress should use this IRS scandal to beef up civics education for federal workers as well as for public school students. Lesson No. 1: Government cannot restrict or discriminate against political causes that it disagrees with.

I think the scandals teach a different lesson: Government will misbehave because it, like Soylent Green, is made from people. Fallible, foible-ridden people. Therefore, government’s unique powers must be strictly limited to avoid miscarriages of justice.

One of these days, someone should build a nation on that lesson….

Last night, the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart said of reports the IRS singled out tea-party groups for extra scrutiny, “This seems like a genuine scandal.” Then he turned on the funny: “In their defense, there is a good reason why people using the IRS to crack down on political enemies would not want Americans educated about the Constitution.” Best line: “Wait a minute. I didn’t realize apologies were sufficient in IRS-related issues.” Video below. (Beware: some racy language.)

In the very next segment, Stewart portrays HHS’s release of (wildly divergent) hospital chargemaster prices as an example of government doing things right, gives kudos to HHS, and laments that government doesn’t do more of that sort of thing. There’s only one problem. Outrageously high and divergent hospital prices are due to government policies that encourage patients to pay for more items through health insurance and that thereby destroy the cash market and any hope of competitive and transparent prices. So that episode is also an example of government failure. 

The show’s Moment of Zen was this priceless clip of former IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman denying that his agency was on a tea-party witch hunt: