A quick thought on the impeachment delay. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is refusing to pass the articles of impeachment along to the Senate so the Senate can begin a trial of the President. She states that she will not send the articles to the Senate until she's assured that the trial will be fair.
A lot of commentators have pointed out the hypocrisy in this. The House Democrats told us repeatedly that they had to rush the hearings through and draft the articles of impeachment because this president was such a threat to the nation and the world that there was no time to waste.
They couldn't even wait for the courts to decide if the witnesses they wanted to call were required to appear before Adam Schiff's committee.
But now that the House has voted to impeach Mr. Trump Ms. Pelosi feels comfortable in taking her good old time advancing the articles of impeachment along to the Senate. Why?
She has stated that she will not send the articles over to the other branch until she's convinced that the trial will be "fair," whatever that means.
But suppose Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell doesn't give her the assurances she's seeking. Does that mean that she'll never send the articles of impeachment to the Senate? If so, what does that do to the Democrats' argument that this is a matter of the gravest urgency? And if she will eventually send the articles, even without those assurances, then why wait?
None of what she's doing makes sense, at least not on the surface. Perhaps she's gambling that delaying the trial will somehow persuade a few Republican senators to agree to her insistence that witnesses - witnesses that the House refused to call or refused to wait until the courts ordered them to appear - be called by the Senate.
Maybe, but the longer she waits the more likely it is that impeachment gets overtaken by other events, like the Iran business, and the American public loses interest in it altogether.