From Richard III:

Today shalt thou behold a subject die
For truth, for duty, and for loyalty.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

O, your frothy bully Don had to jab the adults that told facts, “You’re fired!”

From Julius Caesar:

This was the noblest Roman of them all.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Man, Mitt alone shows the fresh ballot.

From Julius Caesar:

And know it now: the senate have concluded
To give this day a crown to mighty Caesar.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Watch democracy’s death: a gang trial with no witness, evidence.

Oh, yank Don out. Vote.

Donald Trump now stands the third impeached president in the history of the United States.

This is not a time for celebration. I supported impeachment because I believed the president’s abuse of power was incompatible with faithful leadership, and for the House to do any less would be a dereliction of duty. But the fact that we as a nation have fallen to the point where we have a president who required impeachment is a disgrace against all of us.

The president’s party continues to vehemently defend him, though there are exceptions. Four prominent Republican pundits published an anti-Trump op-ed in The New York Times. Christianity Today supports removal. Even The National Review has turned on him. But the majority of public-facing Republicans are still in his corner. Mitch McConnell is planning to blow off the trial, while Lindsey Graham won’t even pretend he’s going to be an impartial juror.

When I hear someone defending the president, I want to ask them if they believe the president didn’t do the things he’s accused of, or he did them but was perfectly entitled to do so. Trump was impeached on two very specific charges. He abused the power of his office to pressure Ukraine to announce an embarrassing investigation of his political opponent. He issued a blanket denial of congressional subpoenas for himself, his government branch, and all documents being requested as part of Congressional oversight. So did he not do these things? Are they okay to do? I’m not really sure what the defense is supposed to be here.

Impeachment is a big deal, if for no other reason but that it indelibly records the president’s misdeeds in the history books. But I hope history will also remember the craven Republicans who stood by him when their country needed them to have some integrity and take a stand. Some are saying that Nancy Pelosi should deny sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate. But I’d like to see them take a vote. Let each and every one of them decide what they want the first line of their obituary to be.

From Richard II:

I am disgraced, impeach’d and baffled here

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

An addled chamber hid a spied crime gaffe.

From The Comedy of Errors:

Why, what an intricate impeach is this!

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

I hear a chatty witness.

With him? Panic.

From Measure for Measure:

His unjust unkindness, that in all reason should have quenched her love, hath, like an impediment in the current, made it more violent and unruly.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Our junk-IQ leader raids millions meant to help a veteran charity. Huh.

End hunt. Slam-dunk evidence. Huh.

No red-state tunnel-vision men listen. Huh.

From Measure for Measure:

I love the people,
But do not like to stage me to their eyes.
Though it do well, I do not relish well
Their loud applause and aves vehement,
Nor do I think the man of safe discretion
That does affect it.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Trump was booed, a lot, at the World Series venue.

He thought the likelihood of monumental attendee reception lifted after he took the noted ISIS villain.

The vocal people didn’t satisfy his ego.

This week, Ambassador William Taylor gave testimony that many are calling the smoking gun for proving Trump intended a quid pro quo deal with the Ukraine, making impeachment seem all but inevitable.

What makes this funny to me is that quid pro quo was never really the standard. Just asking the Ukrainian president to announce a baseless investigation in order to affect our elections should have been enough to start impeachment proceedings. It was President Trump who drew the line at quid pro quo by repeatedly denying it had happened at every opportunity, a strategy that has apparently worked for him with “no collusion.” What’s more, the evidence for quid pro quo was already clear in even the White House’s released transcript of the phone call with Zelensky.

Still, Ambassador Taylor’s testimony seems to have shifted the ground somewhat, and Republicans are in full meltdown mode. On Wednesday, a group of GOP congressmen stormed a closed-door meeting where Pentagon official Laura Cooper was testifying. Cooper had been warned by the Trump administration not to testify, but she did anyway, so a protest was staged to disrupt the hearing.

And I do mean staged. Some of the Republican congressmen who were part of the protest were actually members of the committees doing the inquiry, and so they had every right to attend the meetings they were protesting not being allowed to attend. All of the committees are made up of Democrats and Republicans, all of whom are allowed to cross-examine witnesses in the hearings.

What’s more, the protesters violated any number of rules, including those prohibiting electronic devices in the secure room where the inquiry was being held. Maybe they think that rules don’t apply to them any more. Perhaps that’s something they picked up from President Trump himself, who apparently knew about the stunt in advance.

If you’ve reached the point where you need to send in your gang to physically disrupt the investigation of your crimes, it just might be time to resign.

From Henry VI, Part One:

I cry you mercy, ’tis but quid for quo.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Mob rids query to crucify you? Quit!

This week brought in an avalanche of impeachment evidence, and I’m no longer sure what’s supposed to be a distraction from what.

Should I be focused on the emoluments violation of him hosting the G7 conference in Doral? Or should I be keeping my eye on the fact that Trump businesses kept two sets of books so they could commit tax fraud? Is this week’s top story Mick Mulvaney’s “Get over it” press conference? Or is that just cover to keep me away from the newest Giuliani story? Or is all of it to keep our minds off of the Gordon Sondland testimony? I only have one anagram in me; it’s hard to know where to start.

Fortunately, the English teacher in me is not at all conflicted about this week’s most pressing evidence that the Republican president is not fit for office. It recently came out that President Trump sent President Erdogan of Turkey a letter so unhinged that it prompted a near-universal response of “Is This Real?” (click the letter below for a larger image):

Upon receiving this letter, President Erdogan reportedly threw it in the trash.

From Hamlet:

Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

This smugness unto Erdogan came not wanted.