Closing arguments in the impeachment trial of the president* happened on Monday in the Senate. As background, over the past weekend, a number of the Republican senators who voted against hearing witnesses last Friday, thereby snuffing out even the most drug-induced hopes for convicting El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago, admitted that they thought the president* indeed had shaken down the government of Ukraine in an effort to ratfck the 2020 election, but that they did not consider that to be a serious enough offense to remove the president* from office. (Senators Lamar Alexander and Marco Rubio were particularly weasel-like in their admissions.) All along, this has been the avenue of defense available to the administration* and its allies that was the least insulting to human intelligence. Now that they clearly Have The Votes, they seem to have regained so much of their faith in it that they feel free to let their constitutional freak flags fly, high and proud.

Read the rest of Charlie Pierce’s piece at Esquire