So Trump was right when he said, "there was no Quid Pro Quo". So we have Quid Pro Quo, extortion, bribery, campaign contriutions, speach (money is now speach), threats of being fired. promise of promotion, etc. Different variations of the same thing. It's rampant. and nothing will stick. Eeryone is guilty to some degree.

So your phone screener dumped me before I explained what I wanted to say: We should use all of the words: Bribery, Extortion, Obstruction . . . and Quid pro Quo. LAWYERS know what Quid pro Quo means so we should keep it on the tool rack with all our other hammers. In this season of Impeachment it helps to have an issue with legal implications to use. If you really don't need me, don't come around asking for money.

Perhaps the Democrats, the media, and everyone else not hopelessly infected with Republican brain-rot should quit defining impeachment merely as a legal concept in the traditional sense and think of it more as an imperative to counter an existential abuse of power that threatens the core of our democracy, whether or not the abuse fits easily into established case law.

Not only has this illegitimate president and criminally minded punk committed verifiable felonies both before and after his inauguration (and allegedly during), more importantly, Trump's entire pattern of behavior is also that of a megalomaniacal malignant narcissist drunk on money and power. Using the highest position of the public trust primarily to serve himself rather than the People, while deliberately failing to protect basic constitutional principles -- e.g., no foreign interference in our elections! -- is a naked abuse of power such that impelled the framers to include an impeachment clause as an acceptable political remedy to remove a dangerous degenerate who, though duly elected (or installed by the Electoral College), is clearly unfit to serve.

The disposition of Trump's many other legal transgressions may continue in great earnest (hopefully) within the regular court system once he's removed from office, negating whatever questionably protected legal status is supposedly afforded the presidency nowadays. Of course, since the general election is just 12 months away, notwithstanding any further damage to America's credibility and to Mother Earth's survivability easily imagined to happen by then, removal from office by losing reelection would accomplish the same goal in a much cleaner way than would an improbable impeachment conviction in the Senate, an inherently undemocratic institution anyway -- if indeed he is not destined to win reelection, which certainly can't be a foregone conclusion.

Since Nixon was pardoned, look how fuzzy the lines have become in the neverending battle for supremacy between the so-called co-equal branches of government, a self-destructive battle antithetical to the constitutionally mandated framework that separates power for a reason. How many times must our bedrock principles be reaffirmed, flowers to cultivate, or will they simply become lost and forgotten by future generations tangled up in the stubborn plutocratic and authoritarian weeds that our apathetic generation allowed to take root?

Still, an impeachment inquiry and any resulting articles passed in the House, as well as a public trial in the Senate, albeit shat upon by Republicans, should loudly inform the electorate -- and the future beyond -- of the clear choice next November: Bring this wanted felon to justice and reaffirm the principle under our system of government that no one, especially a president, is above the law.