The push to impeach Blago is silly

The Rascal hasn't exactly been shy about expressing his dislike of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, as evidenced here and here and here. But let's not be ridiculous.

The nascent movement to impeach Blagojevich, which even has its own Web site, is jumping the gun, to put it mildly. The grounds for impeachment specified on the site amount to nothing more than relatively petty political grievances. There isn't an alleged crime or misdemeanor in the bunch.

The impeachment petition accuses Blago of showing "disrespect for the people of Illinois in misusing tax dollars." That's hardly an unprecedented offense. As I see it, we've never had a governor who didn't misuse tax dollars. Besides, the term "misuse" is subjective. If it amounts to illegality, we've got ways of dealing with that. But the petition makes no such charge.

The petition says Blago "has shown blatant disregard for members of the Legislative branch and their staffs." Well, I'm sorry, but I can't get too worked up about that. A lot of the jugheads in the Legislature deserved to be disregarded. Their staffs, too.

The lamest of the petition's allegations is that the governor hasn't kept "his vow to perform his Executive officer duties with all diligence and seriousness." Come on. That's pretty vague stuff. So, he doesn't work too hard. Is that an impeachable offense? And what is meant by "seriousness"?

Look, the people pushing for impeachment of Blagojevich without evidence of serious wrongdoing -- you know, something at least bordering on the criminal -- are only showing themselves to be politically naive.

Yes, I recognize that federal investigators have been looking into the hiring practices of the Blagojevich administration and perhaps also into a few other matters that might involve the governor or his people. But nothing has yet surfaced that justifies impeachment proceedings.

I can understand people's frustrations with Blago. I've expressed some of my own. But we can't run around impeaching every politician who somehow displeases us. That's no way to run a state government.

Thank God we don't have available to us the recall process they have in California.