As it happens, both Coburn and Axelrod are wrong. Impeachment is not a legal matter; it is a political remedy. But law is how the Left strangles politics. Alexis de Tocqueville foresaw the enervation of democratic society at the hands of the Left’s vast, hyper-regulatory administrative state. In parallel, the political vitality of a once self-determining culture is suffocated by the ubiquity of the litigator’s trick bag.

There was a time, not so long ago, when we understood that antecedent law cannot predict and control every great public question. We relied, instead, on the discretion of political officials, who would calculate America’s vital interests and act accordingly — not because they were good guys, although we hoped they were, but because they were accountable to voters and to other political actors whose duty it was to check their excesses.

Now, we put our faith in law, not judgment, and it becomes a ready-made excuse for inaction while the lawyers temporize. When Egypt implodes, nothing can be done until the definition of “coup” is settled. Whether a closely scrutinized surveillance program survives now hinges not on whether its data mining saves lives but on whether phone records fit the Patriot Act’s definition of “relevant.” We are back to the September 10th practice of issuing subpoenas in response to terrorist atrocities. Can “it depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is” be far behind?