John Daniel Davidson writes for the Federalist about the latest signs that the current occupant of the White House is driving some people toward mental illness.
Harvard professor Laurence Tribe … called on Congress to impeach the president for “high crimes and misdemeanors,” saying that Comey’s ouster amounts to obstruction of justice “vastly more serious than the ‘third-rate burglary’ that Nixon tried to cover up in Watergate.”
Normally, this sort of accusation would be a serious matter. After all, Tribe is one of the most revered legal scholars in America. He has argued before the Supreme Court dozens of times and is widely respected by lawyers and lawmakers across the ideological spectrum.
Yet Tribe’s call for impeachment rings hollow. Instead of a grave warning from a distinguished constitutional scholar, Tribe has become a high-profile example of Trump derangement syndrome—that political malady whereby pretty much everything Trump does, no matter how mundane, is a threat to our democracy and a trampling of the Constitution. …
… Conspiracy theories notwithstanding, now that no less a figure than Tribe has issued the call for impeachment over the Comey firing, we’re going to keep hearing about it from Democrats and commentators far and wide, as if it were a serious idea backed up by solid arguments and historical precedent.
It’s not, and it isn’t, and it’s disconcerting that otherwise sober people are pretending that Trump’s imprudent tweeting about a counterintelligence investigation is grounds for removing him from office.