UPDATED: If You Don't Read Anything Else Today ...

Read Roger Kimball: 

Anti-Trump Fraternity and NeverTrump Sorority Collude in Impeachment Scam

Donald Trump asked President Zelensky to help with the Justice Department’s investigation of efforts to subvert the 2016 election. Donald Trump is the president of the United States. It is part of his responsibility to see that our elections are open and fair. Bottom line: not much to work with there for the anti-Trump fraternity.

I can't summarize just how good it is. But for anyone who appreciates writing with a flair, here's how he starts out. I'm a lifelong Wodehouse addict, so loved that part:

How stupid does the anti-Trump fraternity think the American people are? By “anti-Trump fraternity” I mean not only the increasingly frantic Democrats who, like Belshazzar at that memorable dinner party many years back, can see the writing ever more clearly on the wall for 2020, but also the NeverTrump sorority who just cannot get over the fact that someone was elected president of the United States without their permission, indeed, over their explicit objections. How dare they! 

I ask how stupid they think the American people are because it has long seemed to me that they must have a very low opinion of our intelligence given the preposterous anti-Trump narrative they keep trying to foist off on us. 

At the same time, it must be said that they have a touching trust in our patience. Fans of P.G. Wodehouse may recall that in the preface to Summer Lightning old Plum adduced the “nasty remark” of one critic who complained that a previous novel contained “all the old Wodehouse characters under different names.” Ever looking on the bright side, Wodehouse mused that that critic had probably by then been eaten by bears “like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha.” But if, he noted, said scribe was still among us he would not have been able to make the same objection to Wodehouse’s new novel because this time he put in all the old Wodehouse characters “under the same names. Pretty silly it will make him feel, I rather fancy.” 

So it is with the anti-Trump/NeverTrump confederation. Since the wee hours of November 9, 2016, we have repeatedly, over and over, unremittingly been assured that Donald Trump faced a tipping point, that “the walls were closing in,” that some new revelation was the “bombshell” that at last, finally, would force his resignation and possibly his arrest, incarceration, and (if the winds were just right) his summary execution. Really, take a look if you don’t believe it.

And then he gets down brass tacks. Do yourself a favor--to paraphrase Trump.

UPDATE: Here's a Kimball quote that leads nicely into the quote from Andy McCarthy below:

It used to be that politics involved compromise and accommodation. The Democrats have radicalized the process, declaring illegitimate anyone who is not themselves. It is profoundly anti-American as well as profoundly anti-democratic. We should all hope that they fail again in their effort to effect an anti-Trump coup, not because it is about Trump but because it is about the survival of our republic and “we the people” who are supposed to be sovereign.

In Impeachment Theater: What It's About I reference things like "constitutional standing ... constitutional reality ... defense of the constitutional status of the Executive Branch." Today Andy McCarthy has an excellent explanation of all that. His entire article is devoted to those concepts--If the House Won’t Vote, Impeachment Inquiry Is Just a Democratic Stunt--but here are a few excerpts:

‘The House of Representatives . . . shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.” 

...

Not ... the Speaker of the House. ... the House of Representatives. The institution, not one of its members. 

...

[Pelosi] does not have the power to impeach on her own. 

... 

She is the Speaker. She is not the House. ...

The House acts by voting. It has never voted to conduct an inquiry into whether President Trump should be impeached. Consequently, there is no House impeachment inquiry. ... 

This exhibition includes strident letters from a cabal of committee chairs, all Democrats, falsely claiming that a refusal by Trump-administration officials to comply with their demands for information and testimony “shall constitute evidence of obstruction of the House’s impeachment inquiry.” 

In point of fact, the House has no impeachment inquiry; congressional Democrats have an impeachment political campaign. 

Under federal law, the offense of obstructing Congress applies when “any inquiry or investigation is being had by either House, or any committee of either House.” Again, neither the House nor any of its committees has voted to conduct an impeachment inquiry. There is no formal impeachment proceeding to obstruct. Furthermore, the letters in question are not actually demands carrying the compulsory force of law; technically, they are just informal requests. No one is required to comply with a mere request, and refusing to do so is not evidence of anything, let alone obstruction.