Impeachment: Pro and Con

While impeachment would be an important lesson for America, it would come at a great cost politically for those who have been on the short end of the stick since the Republicans took over in 2000. Impeachment would be largely unpopular. The voters would rather give a "war-time" president more latitude. Yeah, I know all the arguments about that and certainly don't agree. This has been the most dangerous period for our Democracy certainly since WWII and probably well before that. Here is an excerpt from the most cohesive argument against impeachment I've seen.
AlterNet

Impeachment is the magic bullet the conservatives in Congress are hoping for so they cannot only take back Congress, but the Presidency as well. We are at a crucial juncture in having the opportunity to reform the government and to move this country back to a representative democracy that serves the people. There is nothing more certain than this: impeachment proceedings would distract the essential work of our legislators.


[...]The risk to our democracy for Congress to attempt to impeach the President, and lose, is far greater than winning the battle and losing the opportunity to conduct the people's business that has been neglected by the control of the conservative movement over the last 20 years.


We must not fall into this trap, which will be used to view this as a means to use our power, as a vindictive act against a President who many feel was not fairly elected to begin with. Doing the right thing in Iraq at this point requires the full attention of all parties and a trial is not the way out of this quagmire. Nor is it going to help us deal with the other crucial issues that need to be addressed immediately. Perhaps if Democrats did not get control of Congress, I might have argued differently. But now, they have the responsibility to govern, and impeachment prevents that from happening.