On Tuesday morning, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, the one-time brogressive avatar of the Don’t-Drone-Me-DudeLeft, took to the floor of the Senate and did something that was despicable even by the recent standards of that august body. He put up a large placard attacking Rep. Adam Schiff and, on that placard, was the name of someone whom Paul believes was the whistleblower who brought the impeachment process down on the head of the president*. Aqua Buddha has been flirting with this stuff for months now. During the Q&A period of the impeachment trial, Chief Justice John Roberts refused to ask a question submitted by Paul because, allegedly, it was an attempt to out the whistleblower. Paul also named the person he believes was the whistleblower at a press conference early last week.

On Tuesday, he did his little dance and then ducked down a weasel hole afterwards. From The Daily Beast:

Following Paul’s 15-minute speech, CNN reporter Manu Raju asked the Republican lawmaker why he singled out the alleged whistleblower. “I would say the Chief Justice did that,” Paul replied. “By not allowing the question—he’s sort of confirming to the public who it is. I have no idea who it is. I don’t have any independent information.”

This was awful enough on its face, and Paul should face punishment from the Senate for what he did. However, it fits into a pattern that has emerged over the past several days. I don’t care whether the president* is “conciliatory” in his State of the Union address Tuesday night, sooner or later, he’s not going to be able to stop himself from revenging himself on his perceived adversaries. (Low bridge, John Bolton.) And what vengeance eludes him, his loyal minions in his party will be happy to provide. From The New Yorker:

[Lindsey] Graham repeated the phrase a number of times, along with intimations that Joe Biden had only himself to blame for letting his “son hook up with the most corrupt company in the Ukraine, and turn the Ukraine into an ATM machine.” Graham noted Trump’s “insistence that somebody look at what happened” and added, “I think he’s right.”

All of which makes the trial balloon of a presidential censure, floated by the perennial nuisance Senator Joe Manchin, look completely impotent and ludicrous. First of all, a presidential censure has to come through regular order, after the impeachment vote is taken, which means it has to come through Mitch McConnell, which makes it probable that the censure won’t ever get to the floor at all. Second, the only precedent, against Andrew Jackson in 1834, was so close to useless that Jackson arranged to have his congressional allies expunge it from the record three years later.

The idea that El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago, who transparently doesn’t take seriously laws passed by the Senate, would be stopped by a paper censure is beyond hilarious. The Senate failed its constitutional and institutional responsibilities by refusing to hold a real trial on the facts of impeachment. Any action it takes now is emptier than its soul.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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