Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell spent much of the holiday season being dragged over the coals. His comment about not being an “impartial juror” in the upcoming Senate trial of Donald J. Trump produced howls of outrage from those who are certain the president is guilty.

They claim their concerns have to do with McConnell and others not fulfilling their Constitutional duty to judge impartially. Except there’s no requirement in the Constitution that senators be impartial. I suppose we presume they should be, based on what we understand about the American system of jurisprudence. The right to a fair and speedy trial is one of those basic constitutional protections well known to those who learned their law from Perry Mason, Matlock, Law & Order, and Boston Legal. But McConnell is only one of one hundred who will sit in judgment once the trial begins. If an impartiality standard exists for him, then it exists for the others too, right? Yet there is no guarantee any of the others will rise to what anti-Trump partisans now demand of Kentucky’s senior senator.