It's days like this on which my inner Uncle Joe Cannon comes out. There may be parliamentarians out there that will chime in and tell me I couldn't do it, but, were I Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, I'd have called the committee to order on Wednesday morning, ruled every attempt at amendment out of order, held the vote to hold Attorney General William Barr in (his obvious) contempt of Congress, and then adjourned for the day.

Instead, we got another Open Mic session in which the newly clean-skulled Louie Gohmert got to spout off about deep, deeeeeeeep state stuff, and Hillary Clinton. Jim Jordan, in shirtsleeves, possibly because he can never find a sportcoat that ties in the back, was bellowing about Peter Strzok and Lisa Page and oh-what-scoundrels have beset our guiltless president*, and how we're all going to be sorry when Bill Barr gets to the bottom of the conspiracy to frame the country's leading debtor. The Democratic members of the committee, of course, tried bravely to maintain a thin veneer of sanity over the proceedings. At the end, which came around in the afternoon, the committee did indeed vote to hold Barr in contempt. The vote came after a 24-hour game of rock-'em-sock-'em bureaucrats, and an even sturdier executive stonewall than the one Richard Nixon erected so long ago.

Jerry Nadler contemplates the state of play. Tom Williams Getty Images

The administration and its bootlicking Department of Justice simply have decided not to comply with any demand from the Congress. They are going to push that position as far as possible, even if it pushes the Constitutional order over the cliff. Not merely satisfied with rejecting Congress's right to information on the conduct of the president* and his campaign, the administration is now claiming the right—under a novel, if undeniably Peronist, interpretation of "executive privilege"—to deny Congress any information on any subject at all. That is what the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee were defending all day on Wednesday.

And what's next? The House undoubtedly will find Barr in contempt. Some part of this will end up in court along with pieces of every other case of this administration's extra-constitutional defiance. Suppose Congress wins all these cases and the president* and his people simply don't abide by the rulings of the courts—which I make as no worse than 6-5 at this point. Watching Nadler after the hearing on Wednesday, still tip-toeing around the question of impeachment, makes that prospect even more scarifying.

If you believe, as Nadler said flatly, we are already in a constitutional crisis, which we are, people should be using the word impeachment loudly and proudly. They should beat on that gong until everyone down at Camp Runamuck goes deaf. Even if they never begin an inquiry, let alone fashion articles of impeachment and vote on them, the word should be echoing down the National Mall from now until such time as the government is cleansed of the current mold and rot, if it ever is. We won't know how permanent the damage is until somebody else tries to run a democratic republic in this country again.

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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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