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Rep. Louie Gohmert, known for his colorfully erroneous perceptions of basically everything in politics, over the weekend suggested that if the government defaults on its debts, it could lead to the impeachment of President Obama. He's sort of got a point — but it may be the case that preventing default would guarantee that Obama commits a high crime or misdemeanor.

One of pundits' favorite parlor games of the past few weeks has been speculating about how Obama might use non-Congressional means to either raise the debt ceiling or render it moot. After all, the potential fallout of not raising the debt ceiling is generally understood to be devastating. Gohmert's point, incompletely articulated in the video at right, is that allowing the government to default would be so damaging that the president should be held accountable. In one of her Facebook philippics, Sarah Palin fleshed out that point, such as it is.

There is no way we can default if we follow the Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment, Section 4, requires that we service our debt first. We currently collect more than enough tax revenue to service our debt if we do that first.

As we noted on Monday, this is largely wrong. We don't have enough tax revenue to pay all of our bills on a day-to-day basis, and the critical qualifier there — "if we do that first" — suggests that the Treasury Department can prioritize its payment system. In other words, it gets some cash in, and pays the bills that most put the government at risk first. We've noted previously that the system of payments and in receipts is so complex that it would be almost impossible to implement such prioritization in any feasible way — even if the government weren't shut down and Treasury were fully staffed. But, then, this is Palin and Gohmert, so you should have consumed any and all nearby grains of salt prior to reading their arguments.