Implicit in this explanation is the retreat away from the Trump-Zelensky telephone call, which is effectively conceded not to be probative evidence of any impropriety. Instead, Democrats are returning to the justification that impeachment is warranted based upon unspecified, unimaginable, and surely nonexistent evidence of presidential misconduct. The pitiful squeak that is meant to be a clinching argument is Mr. Trump’s refusal to cooperate with an impeachment inquiry based on an illusion.

The Democrats are stuck with this clunker. Maybe Speaker Pelosi wanted to humiliate the young Marxist congresswomen and Mr. Schiff and the porcine Jerry Nadler, who chairs the House judiciary committee. Maybe she wanted to get this out of the way now before it caused the Democrats more embarrassment, and before the long-awaited indictments of a number of prominent members of the previous administration for its unconstitutional confection and promotion of the Trump-Russian collusion fraud.

It is not for me to read Mrs. Pelosi’s mind, but she must have had some reason to let this anemic, spavined cat out of the bag. But this cat can’t purr and has no whiskers, let alone claws. In Monty Pythonese, “It’s a dead Cat!” (and it won’t even bounce).