Via BuzzFeed, some slow-news-day easy pickings courtesy of Rep. Blake Farenthold. He’s blowing smoke, of course; for all the lefty angst about GOP obstructionism over the past two years, there hasn’t been so much as a whisper from anyone in leadership about dropping the I-bomb. And I don’t think that’s because (as Farenthold himself acknowledges) any impeachment attempt would be DOA in a Democratic Senate. The GOP might have a majority there next year and you won’t see any impeachment attempts then either. Public reaction is simply too unpredictable. If they can’t get half the caucus in the Senate to risk shutting down the government for a few days to defund ObamaCare for fear of a public backlash, how likely is it that they’d risk a more momentous backlash by pulling together 218 votes for an impeachment battle? You might get a majority of the House caucus to vote yes, but only because they know the measure would fail and there’d be no political consequences. And even that’s a silly hypothetical because Boehner would never allow a floor vote. The risk of accidental detonation is too frightening when you go fiddling with political nuclear bombs.

But don’t take any of this too seriously. Farenthold’s not floating impeachment, he’s just trying to make a Birther go away. This is his way of appeasing her. Yes, of course we could impeach Obama and he’d richly deserve it, but those darned Democrats in the Senate would foil the whole thing. Sigh. The Great Birth Certificate Hoax will have to remain unpunished. If this feels familiar, it’s because Democratic presidential candidates on the trail in 2007, during the heyday of 9/11 Truth, were occasionally confronted by Truthers asking them to investigate thermite stockpiles in Manhattan or whatever once they assumed office. And as often as not, rather than get indignant with those people, they’d politely promise to “look into it” (as Farenthold does here) in order to extricate themselves from an unpleasant situation. Here’s Farenthold’s version of extrication.