Doug Thompson, the founder and publisher of Capitol Hill Blue, set off a firestorm last week when he reported that George W. Bush called the US Constitution, which he twice took an oath to "preserve, protect and defend," "just a goddamned piece of paper" -- which ought to be the final straw in bringing about his impeachment, conviction and removal from office.

Now Thompson, expressing surprise about the public's anger over Bush's remark, says he doesn't see it as an impeachable offense. Said Thompson, "He's not the first president to consider the Constitution an expendable document and he won't be the last. Most presidents have complained that the Constitution gets in their way."

To bolster his case, Thompson cited President Theodore Roosevelt who wanted to send the Marines to North Africa rescue Ion Perdicaris, who had been kidnapped by a band of Berbers intent on extracting a large ransom from the sultan of Morocco. When informed by his secretary of state that "such an act would be unconstitutional," Thompson said, "Teddy snapped back: 'Why destroy the beauty of the act with legalities?"

Aside from the fact that two wrongs don't make a right, how Teddy Roosevelt's remark equates with calling the constitution "just a goddamned piece of paper" escapes us. Thompson may wish to play apologist in saying he only reported the remark, after verifying it from two additional sources, as another example of Bush's increasing temper tantrums, to lessen the heat he is taking from both sides. How, though, does that serve the country that the Bush regime is turning into a militaristic police state?

Given that Bush is at the center of two stolen elections, the "new Pearl Harbor" of September 11, 2001, the USA PATRIOT Act, illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the torturing of war prisoners and those he has deemed "enemy combatants," the lies he and his cohorts told to launch their wars and the lies they keep telling to keep their wars going, a destroyed US economy, and more scandals and corruption than Carter has little liver pills, and now the slap in the face that the constitution is "just a goddamned piece of paper," what constitutes and impeachable offense? Is only oral sex in the Oval Office and/or lying about it impeachable?

What will Thompson say if between November 4, 2008, and January 20, 2009, Bush totally casts aside that "goddamned piece of paper" and announces he isn't giving up the presidency or perhaps he calls off another rigged election to put a successor clone in office and simply declares himself "president for life?"

Ironically, Thompson has joined with those of us -- the noted psychiatrist, Dr. Justin A. Frank; Mark Crispin Miller, Mike Hersh, Jerry Mazza and yours truly, among others -- who have pointed out that Bush is a paranoid psychopath who isn't playing with a full deck. (See Thompson's Bush's Increasing Mental Lapses and Temper Tantrums Worry White House Aides and Avoiding Detection at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.)

Arianna Huffington took a similar weak-kneed approach in her blog Monday, in which she started off by saying Bush's "fanaticism is a scary prospect for the country."

She noted, "The latest issues of both Time and Newsweek paint a portrait of an isolated president detached from the reality of all that is going on around him. Nothing seems to be penetrating -- not the rising death toll, not his depressed poll numbers, not the continuing revelations about the deceptions his administration used to lead us to war. Not even the growing skepticism about the war being expressed within his own party."

"And today's speech," she wrote in reference to the one he gave in Philadelphia, "showed that it might be even worse than we think. Bush came across as a true believer who refuses to let little things like facts get in the way -- a zealot who has utterly convinced himself that fighting on (and on and on) in Iraq is the right thing for America and the world."

But did the Huff step up to the plate on which Thompson refused to tread? No. Her solution was to tell the gutless Democrats "to stop waiting for Bush to do the political math, and start offering their full-throated support to Jack Murtha."

Her final paragraph started off with a glimmer of hope, when she wrote, "And Republicans, particularly those concerned about getting their clocks cleaned in '06, need to take a page from the Watergate years, and send a delegation of party leaders -- pick those not currently under indictment -- up to the White House to tell the president that the jig is up. In 1974, GOP leaders, including Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott, convinced Nixon that it was time for him to get out of Washington." Then it came crashing down with, "The question is, will anyone be able to convince George Bush that it's time for us to get out of Iraq?"

Say what? She just expended 836 words telling us he ain't gonna get out of Iraq and that knowing what he knows today, he would do it all over again. Yet, she expects the Republican leadership that is growing fat on Bush's illegal wars, criminal tax cuts and economic mess to march into the White House and tell him to get out of Iraq. Talk about delusional.