Impeachment is a function of constitutional law – NOT politics – and the discipline is to consider whether the standards for impeachment have been breached.

The discipline necessary is to put partisanship aside and consider as Republicans did with Nixon, whether a chief executive has breached those standards, committed treason, bribery or high crimes and misdemeanors.

In the case at hand, we have the principals including Mr. Trump admitting the offense, while lying about the material facts confirmed by an array of witnesses.

Worse, the specific offense we are examining is a combination of extortion and bribery in order to distort a 2nd presidential election.

The earlier charges (by Mueller, including obstruction about the 2016 election) and the latest confirmed offenses (concerned with the Ukraine and the 2020 election) are about having full and fair elections – without interference and without distortion and corruption – an objective presumably at the heart of our nation’s resolve to work for a more perfect union. We had this discussion when Nixon was president, what he did to interfere, distort and corrupt the 1972 presidential election.

We now know this misconduct by Trump was not one phone call imperfectly preserved, and purposefully altered after the fact, but a long criminal conspiracy, all hands on deck, with bad actors in and out of our government.

We have not only the oath of office that must be served by the House and by the Senate by proceeding with impeachment and a trial, but also the concern that slipping past the obligation of oath leaves unsolved the fact that another election may have already been corrupted by our corrupt chief executive, Mr. Trump.

Republicans are the ones playing politics in this very serious business, repeating lies about the facts, including the admissions of wrong doing that we the people have read and heard from the mouths of the offenders including our Chief Executive. The obstructive tactic, spread like a pathogen through the Republican Caucus, and everywhere you look, is the Kelly Ann Conway school of “alternative facts.”

What Trump has otherwise said that’s wrong and brutish has never been as serious as what he has done wrong, taking the North Korea dictator too lightly, bashing our NATO allies, ducking enviro and trade treaties, fighting a tariff war with China, and the ne plus ultra, the perfect intolerable example of presidential misconduct, betraying the Kurds and clearing a path for Erdogan and Putin to kill and seize and dominate the region, perplexing allies and nation states throughout the world.

Failing to act now on impeachment, to talk truth, to consider the consequences, to remove Trump from office, risks another tragic historic public act by this corrupt and incompetent despot Trump, leaving him free to do something worse, perhaps as unimaginable as the offense against the Kurds, that we may not be able to contain or ever correct.

The Republicans lie too much and the Dems fiddle too much.

That’s our dilemma as citizens.

For therein lies the room for further treachery by this corrupt administration.

Only the people can guard against the failure of our elected officials to tell the truth and to act to preserve and protect our nation.

In my experience, in the end, it has required that we the people voice our objections loud and clear in public, in calls, in emails, and conversations and protest and hearings to force our elected officials to do their jobs, to preserve and protect our nation, and to stop running from their obligations under the oaths they swore when taking office.