Don’t shut down the impeachment alarm

Like the ill-fated invention of the car alarm, intended to bring help in the event of danger but usually ignored, the call for impeaching a President seems to have gone off too many times in the past to be heeded in the present.

Trump has committed a string of impeachable offenses, including compromising national security through personal business dealings, obstructing justice, advocating illegal violence, reckless endangerment by threatening nuclear war, and undermining freedom of the press.

A new book, “The Constitution Demands It: The Case for the Impeachment of Donald Trump,” by constitutional lawyers Fein, Bonifaz, and Clements, documents these high crimes and misdemeanors, and others. It explains how an impeachment investigation by Congress would differ from the criminal investigation under Mueller, and isn’t dependent upon it.

If we don’t use the constitutional remedy of impeachment now, when it is most warranted and urgent, how are we to cope with the threat to our national security that Trump represents? What we know of his character makes it unlikely that he will resign under duress like Nixon did, and Nixon did so only because the impeachment process had begun.

We can’t shut down the alarm. The crisis is real, and only by letting the call for impeachment resound long and loudly can we hope to save our democracy.