Betsy's right: High crimes and misdemeanors means offenses committed while in high office

It's not the severity of the crime which makes it high, but it damn well better be a crime. Democrats haven't been able to come up with one despite turning themselves and the country into pretzels.

And Trump's tax returns from the past and his dalliances from the past and why he named his son "Barron" are all completely irrelevant, as is everything else he's done while not in office. Those things matter only at election time.

Here's Betsy:

At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, the framers considered grounds for impeachment. On Sept. 8, George Mason suggested that bribery and treason were too narrow, and proposed adding "maladministration." But James Madison objected, explaining that "so vague a term will be equivalent to" saying the president serves at the pleasure of the Congress. The framers did not want to duplicate the British system, which made the executive dependent on Parliament. Mason's idea was dropped, and the framers instead agreed to the more specific term, "high crimes and misdemeanors," where "high" meant offenses committed while in high office, such as embezzling public funds.

The American Revolution: Not an upheaval, but a return, a restoration

From the story here:

First, there were those who admired the English constitution that they had inherited and studied. Believing they had been deprived of their rights under the English constitution, their aim was to regain these rights. Identifying themselves with the tradition of Coke and Selden, they hoped to achieve a victory against royal absolutism comparable to what their English forefathers had achieved in the Petition of Right and Bill of Rights. To individuals of this type, the word revolution still had its older meaning, invoking something that “revolves” and would, through their efforts, return to its rightful place—in effect, a restoration. Alexander Hamilton was probably the best-known exponent of this kind of conservative politics, telling the assembled delegates to the constitutional convention of 1787, for example, that “I believe the British government forms the best model the world ever produced.” Or, as John Dickinson told the convention: “Experience must be our only guide. Reason may mislead us. It was not reason that discovered the singular and admirable mechanism of the English constitution…. Accidents probably produced these discoveries, and experience has given a sanction to them.” And it is evident that they were quietly supported behind the scenes by other adherents of this view, among them the president of the convention, General George Washington.

Mark Levin is a hot-headed radical who doesn't have the temperament to host a radio show let alone lead an Article V convention

"We are rapidly approaching a moment of truth for the life of our nation!"

He goes from ripping #NeverTrump on April 7 here to joining it on April 9 here.

Just think what he might do at a convention. He's proposed only eleven amendments to the constitution. That's not exactly the slow, incremental change usually supported by genuine conservatives. Can you imagine him suddenly changing his mind and proposing twenty-two? forty-four? Well, I exaggerate, but now we see how quickly it could get out of control with someone like him at the helm, or advising it. He reminds me of General Buck Turgidson more and more everyday.

Forget nuking the Russkies, Levin wants to nuke the constitution!

A constitutional convention would be a disaster in the age of Obama. Unfortunately, Mark Levin also has no check upon his appetites, including for vengeance.

Charles Cook embraces the impotence of contemporary conservatism faced with Donald Trump

Where else but in National Review here, the locus of conservatism as ineffectual cult and ideology, which finds it impossible to revolt against anything except for the rebels:

"As it happens, Trump’s critics do grasp the appeal [of revolt]. What they do not do, however, is act upon it in this manner. The temptation to deliver a bloody nose to one’s ideological enemies is a human and comprehensible one, by no means limited in its allure to the disgruntled part of the Republican primary electorate. But temptation and reasonable conduct are two separate things entirely, and they should always be treated as such. Can one understand the instinct that is on display? Sure. Can one look beneath the surface and do anything other than despair? I’m afraid not. Such as they are, the explanations provided by Trump’s discordant choir are entirely risible and easily dismantled. Great, you’re annoyed! But then what?"

He's obviously proud of it. In 1776 he'd be called a royalist.

Was taking up arms against England "reasonable conduct"? Only a Catholic sensibility could fail to grasp the point. "But then what?" Well, a long war of several years, full of privations and without guaranty of success, followed by another long period of several years preparing for and culminating in a constitutional convention, during which local and colonial institutions were strong enough to support the absence of a centralized framework. The same is still true today, if only the locals more frequently told the federal courts to go to hell, as the Kentucky county clerk recently did.

By definition, an ideology ought to have some ideas in it which form a system, and should be, when all is said and done, unrealistic. That pretty much describes American conservatism since forever: unable to roll back anything, including the income tax, direct election of Senators, universal suffrage, the Federal Reserve Act, the Reapportionment Act of 1929, Social Security, Medicare, the minimum wage, Obamacare, and the enormous regulatory code, and unable to permanently refound the country on any constitutional principles, say, of limited government or separation of powers. Conservatism has a massive record of zero achievement while liberalism's untruths keep marching on like tanks in Tiananmen Square.

Trump's camp, meanwhile, thinks three modest things: the way to make America great again is to restore law and order by starting with enforcing its borders and putting an end to illegal immigration, to bring jobs back to Americans by reforming the tax code, developing energy independence, cutting wasteful spending and punishing unpatriotic corporations who profit from exporting jobs, and to rebuild the military to protect freedom at home and for our friends and allies abroad.

It takes near religious nuttery to call the proponent of these measures "a self-interested narcissist and serial heretic whose entirely inchoate political platform bends cynically to the demands of the moment."

To understand Trump, it takes a village . . . of Protestants.

Republicans stopped growth of representation in the 1920s: Why isn't fixing that the Tea Party's job one?

From the Wikipedia article, here:

In 1921, Congress failed to reapportion the House membership as required by the United States Constitution. This failure to reapportion may have been politically motivated, as the newly elected Republican majority may have feared the effect such a reapportionment would have on their future electoral prospects. Then in 1929 Congress (Republican control of both houses of congress and the presidency) passed the Reapportionment Act of 1929 which capped the size of the House at 435 (the then current number). This cap has remained unchanged for more than eight decades. Three states – Wyoming, Vermont, and North Dakota – have populations smaller than the average for a single district.

The "ideal" number of members has been a contentious issue since the country's founding. George Washington agreed that the original representation proposed during the Constitutional Convention (one representative for every 40,000) was inadequate and supported an alteration to reduce that number to 30,000. This was the only time that Washington pronounced an opinion on any of the actual issues debated during the entire convention.

In Federalist No. 55, James Madison argued that the size of the House of Representatives has to balance the ability of the body to legislate with the need for legislators to have a relationship close enough to the people to understand their local circumstances, that such representatives' social class be low enough to sympathize with the feelings of the mass of the people, and that their power be diluted enough to limit their abuse of the public trust and interests.

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All the ancient American debates about this issue argue over ratios of 1 representative for every 15,000 or 30,000 or 40,000 or 50,000 of population. But today because of what the Republicans did in the 1920s, arresting growth of representation and fixing the number at 435, the ratio has soared to 1 for every 728,000!

If you wonder why your representative doesn't represent you today, that is why. He or she doesn't know who you are, or care.

If you want to fix America, fix that. We could start by doubling the size of the House, which means halving all the districts.

That sound you're hearing right now is Congressmen everywhere shitting their pants.