Yesterday, December 9, was full of breaking news. First thing in the morning, the Washington Post published an expose of the way government officials have lied about the situation in Afghanistan for the past fifteen years. After 9/11, we invaded that nation in order to topple the Taliban that was supporting Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. That was the easy part. Then our government decided to engage in some nation-building, attempting to turn a society of warring tribes into a Westphalian-style nation. That has not worked out so well. Unfortunately, our presence in Afghanistan has become the norm, and anyone suggesting we withdraw faces an uphill battle. The current leadership of the Pentagon, Congress, and our intelligence agencies are all true believers whose default position is to maintain the status quo. They don’t call Afghanistan the “Graveyard of Empires” for nothing – great civilizations from Alexander’s Greeks to the British to the Soviet Union have all been confronted with their own hubris in that region, and the United States is no different.

A few hours later, the Office of the Inspector General released its much-anticipated report about the initial FISA applications the FBI filed to spy on the Trump campaign in 2016. As expected, both sides claimed victory, but the report is quite damning of the way the FBI omitted information and even outright lied as they sought the authority to investigate the Trump team. Now that we know the NSA spies on American citizens and then lies about it, the CIA is engaged in coups all across the world, and the FBI is telling lies in order to spy on the President of the United States, is there any reason to keep these agencies around? At this point we need to have a serious discussion about whether these organizations do more harm to the American people than good.

Finally, the Democrats’ impeachment process has moved into its endgame. They announced that they will hold a vote to impeach President Trump on two articles – “abuse of office” and “obstruction of Congress”. I have no idea what these two accusations even mean. They are both so vague as to be meaningless. As I explained in this week’s podcast, the Democrats are searching for a crime to fit their desired punishment. Impeachment is just their latest attempt to undo the election of 2016. Earlier this week, the esteemed Victor Davis Hanson wrote an article for American Greatness comparing this impeachment attempt with those of the past. As usual, he does a much better job saying what I was trying to say.

News is moving fast these days. Unfortunately, that means that the lies of our government will soon be overshadowed by some other breaking story. In the end, I doubt anyone will be held to account. Government agencies have become behemoths that are not beholden to American citizens, despite the fact that it is the citizens who are supposed to be the source of governmental authority. Reform seems impossible. A complete collapse might be necessary in order to rebuild.

This morning, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced that the Democratic House of Representatives would draft articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump. While the Democrats and their friends in the media are presenting this as the solemn conclusion to an objective hearing of the facts, the truth is that they have been trying to remove the president since the moment he was elected. From the Access Hollywood tapes that were leaked before the election, to the recounts, to the pressure put upon the electors, to the Steele dossier and the Russia hoax, and finally to the Ukraine phone call hullabaloo, the left has never accepted the results of the 2016 election and have been trying to pull off a coup ever since.

The bigger issue here, however, is how this process has hastened the decline and fall of our society. Whereas impeachment was intended to be a remedy for what the Constitution calls “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the Democratic Party is now setting the precedent that impeachment is simply another political tool to be deployed against the opposing party. President Trump himself recognizes this, tweeting this morning:

On the other hand, the first presidential impeachment was entirely political as well. In the election of 1864, President Abraham Lincoln selected Democratic Senator Andrew Johnson of Tennessee as his running mate in a national unity ticket. Back then, (and even as late as the 1980s) the office of Vice President was a position of prestige without any real responsibility. The assassination of President Lincoln in 1865 changed everything. Suddenly, a Southern Democrat was president just a few weeks into the aftermath of the Civil War. The Radical Republicans led by Congressman Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania were stymied in their efforts to thoroughly crush the defeated Confederacy, and so sought to remove President Johnson by any means necessary. They passed a bogus and unconstitutional law that ostensibly prevented Johnson from managing his own cabinet. Johnson tested the law by dismissing Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, and impeachment was on. In 1868 the House advanced articles of impeachment but President Johnson was acquitted in the Senate by a single vote.

It is ironic that one of the accusations by the Democrats against President Trump is that he abused his office by firing the Ambassador to Ukraine – exactly the trap set by the Republicans against President Johnson in 1867. History repeats, first as tragedy, then as farce. This entire impeachment process has been nothing but farce, but it portends tragedy for the American Republic.