By Scott Wright

Last week in this space, I did the same thing I often do after just a few minutes of watching news clips of the Bush administration's hapless, stumbling attempts to govern the country: I got angry. I flew off the handle. Heck, I just plain snapped.

What I did was, I publicly called for the impeachment of the president of the United States. It caused a lot of headaches for the publisher of The Post, and lots of hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing from a few of the readers out there who are still willing to publicly claim some sort of support for the president. Honestly, you'd think I'd have learned better than to speak my mind by now.

Still, there's no question George W. is as dumb as a paper sack full of roofing nails. He almost died once, you'll recall, from self-asphyxiation by pretzel. And even though a story in the April 7 edition of the Detroit News reporting that Ford Motor CEO Alan Mulally recently prevented the president from blowing himself to kingdom-come turned out to be untrue, it was believable enough that major news outlets across the nation reported it as fact for days before Mulally got out the word that the story he recounted to reporters was only a bad attempt at humor.

But as Mr. Richard Rice pointed out in the letter he sent to me ("A double-dog dare") after reading my April 9 column, even a level of idiocy that might ultimately result in self-immolation by hydrogen explosion is no reason to impeach the president.

In his letter, Mr. Rice also suggested that I read the U.S. Constitution, for the purpose of re-educating myself regarding the rules of impeachment. I thank him for that reminder. I probably had not read my paperback copy in over a year and certainly, if I am going to write an article about impeachment, it is appropriate to quote exactly what parameters the Founding Fathers decided upon when they defined the term. Article II, Section 4 states quite clearly: “The President, or Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes or Misdemeanors.”

That's it. That's all Section 4 says. But it says an awful lot, really. For example, it says President Bush can't be impeached for lying to the American people about a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, or about the non-existent Iraqi WMD's (politicians lie all the time, after all); he can't be impeached for botching the recovery after Hurricane Katrina; for blowing, repeatedly and robustly, the planning of post-war Iraq; for the abuses at Abu Ghraib, or the terrible treatment of wounded American soldiers at Walter Reed (incompetence, sadly, is not listed in the Constitution as an impeachable offense). Nor can the president be impeached for hiring other mentally-deficient goons like Alberto Gonzales and Karl Rove, who have turned the federal government into a private club for GOP operatives, business buddies and butt-kissers.

In a recent Time magazine article, political pundit Joe Klein expertly pointed out that George W. Bush's administration is collapsing on itself because Bush, owing to his “adolescent petulance” and his “aversion to talking to people he doesn't like,” among other shortcomings, is “unfit to lead.” But Klein also asserts that Bush's multiple lapses in leadership do not rise to the level of impeachable offenses.

“There are no 'high crimes' here,” Klein wrote in a follow-up post at Time's Swampland blog the day after his column appeared online. “Just a really bad presidency. In fact, I consider impeachment talk counter-productive and slightly nutso.”

If Klein is correct, then perhaps Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson and I can open a peanut stand somewhere after his term expires, because he and I both disagree with Klein. Last month during a live interview on CNN, Anderson told Wolf Blitzer he thinks the president is indeed guilty of “The violation of … our constitution and our own domestic laws.”

And that's the kicker. Violation of the U.S. Constitution or the laws of the United States would be grounds for that swift kick in the seat of the pants I clamored for a week ago. But where could I possibly look to try and find some evidence of such a "high crime" by President Bush? Where would such dereliction of duty be documented? Where could those facts, if they existed, be found?

Would you believe the bookshelf sitting right beside my desk? Yep. Didn't even have to lean forward in my chair to reach it.

I bought the book a few weeks ago but never got around to reading it until Mr. Rice double-dog dared me to list a crime committed by George W. Bush. Titled “How Would a Patriot Act?” and written by constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald, the little 128-pager pretty much did all the work for me.

In the weeks after the attacks of Sept. 11, Bush requested and Congress passed a bill entitled the Combating Terrorism Act of 2001, which, according to Greenwald "significantly enhanced police wiretap powers and permitted the FBI ... to monitor Internet communications for up to 48 hours without first obtaining a search warrant." Also in the weeks after 9/11, the Bush administration argued that restrictions in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) -- which required that eavesdropping be undertaken only with judicial oversight -- were too restrictive. Congress addressed the president's concerns in the PATRIOT Act, which passed on Oct. 23, 2001.

Bush was so grateful for the expanded powers of interdiction from Congress that he proclaimed the following just before signing the bill: "The new law I sign today will allow surveillance of all communications used by terrorists."

With those words, George W. Bush told the American people he had all the tools he needed to protect them. But as the world learned four years later thanks to an article in the Dec. 15, 2005 issue of the New York Times, "... at virtually the same time George W. Bush was publicly pledging to the nation that he would only engage in eavesdropping sanctioned by the new law, he had secretly ordered that (the) law be violated," Greenwald wrote.

Even though Congress broadened the president's ability to eavesdrop under the FISA law, the newly amended law still made it "a criminal offense to eavesdrop on Americans without judicial oversight and approval," Greenwald wrote. Common sense would dictate, then, that the Times' revelation that "President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on American and others inside the United States ... without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying," exposed a "high crime."

George W. Bush's defenders will claim he is doing what is necessary to protect Americans from terrorism, and that's honorable and commendable, right up to the point where the president of the United States -- the man entrusted by the Founding Fathers with the responsibility and power to enforce the nation's laws -- believes himself to be above those laws. At that point, it's time for Congress, the branch of government charged with overseeing the executive, to begin impeachment proceedings.

And that time, good citizens, is upon us.