EDITORIAL: When is an impeachment not an impeachment?

It’s a farce. A joke. A meaningless ceremony with a
predetermined outcome.

This is what passes for impeachment these days.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell laid out the rules on
Tuesday, slanted heavily in favor of the embattled president, as widely
predicted — even, truly, by McConnell himself, who says without shame that he
worked on the plan with the White House.

Without shame.

There will be no subpoenas for documents the White House
refused to provide the House — or, if you will, obstructed Congress in its
Constitutionally mandated endeavor to investigate the president.

Here’s something else that will steer this into the ground:
There are no stipulations on witnesses in the rules, a major point of
contention even for some Republicans such as Sens. Mitt Romney and Susan
Collins. But after the initial arguments, the Senate will cast a simple
majority vote to determine if more evidence will be needed to render judgment. If
it passes, then each piece of proposed evidence, witnesses included, must pass
a majority vote to be admitted. And the Senate gets to hear what each witness
is going to say before the vote. Some people call that prior restraint.

Some people.

Each side gets 24 hours to make a case, spread over three
days. Unlike the Clinton impeachment, which took over the TV airwaves all day
from Jan. 7 to Feb. 8, in 1998, with highlights played each evening on the
nightly news, this one will go late into the night, minimizing exposure to the
news cycle.

It’s no surprise: Everyone knew that Trump’s toadies in the Senate would tilt the field to his advantage. We just didn’t know how.

And so, we get yet another empty gesture, absolutely devoid
of sincerity, from yet another government agency that has abandoned its
purpose. Because even those who think Trump did nothing wrong should be on the
side of transparency here, because there should be some evidence that
exculpates him.

Instead we get this load of crap.

So, everyone knows which way this impeachment will swing.
But with a huge election on the horizon, no one really knows what will happen
after.