A Poll Worth Considering

By a margin of 52% to 43%, Americans want Congress to consider impeaching President Bush if he wiretapped American citizens without a judge's approval,

Now that is polarization. To consider impeaching is not to impeach, but Americans seem to be fairly evenly divided between supporting warrantless wiretaps and considering them grounds for impeachment.

Recall

CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll. Jan. 6-8, 2006. N=1,003 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.

[snip]

"Do you think the Bush Administration was right or wrong in wiretapping these conversations without obtaining a court order?"


Right 50
Wrong 46
unsure 4


Ignoring sampling error would lead one to imagine that 2 percent of Americans think that congress should consider impeaching Bush for doing the right thing.

I find myself oddly other than completely estranged from the non existent people in this purely sampling error based illusory subset.

I certainly believe that, sometimes, it is morally necessary to break the law. I also think that, in these cases, people should be punished for doing the right thing. This is because I don't seem punishment as revenge but as incapacitation and deterent. Punishment deters acts which people considering crimes see as similar to the punished act not acts which are identical. Punishing people for doing the right thing is a way to avoid slipping down slippery slopes.

In this case, I have no idea what could possibly have justified just tapping without complying with the apparently extremely unburdensome FISA requirements or, at most, asking for a change in the law, but I can imagine that it would be right to impeach a President for doing the right thing which is plenty eccentric enough for now.