I understand—given many prior posts in which I have criticized the Mideast (not domestic) policies of the Obama Administration—that some, maybe many readers, of this blog may think my prior post was a call to impeach President Obama. When I intend to be critical, I don’t hide it. The post hardly mentioned Obama and did not criticize at all his current “hot button” executive order regularizing the status of illegal immigrants. In fact, I have never voiced my own opinion anywhere in print about this issue. News flash: my opinion is that it would have been better for the country—and “better for the Jews”—had that issue been resolved way back in 2006 when the prior president suggested a resolution that Congress unwisely rejected. I wrote my latest post—not to criticize Obama (however much he deserves criticism)—but to call out and warn those on the right who detest him. I’m an historian before an ideologue, and I view impeachment from this perspective. Two presidents have been impeached: Andrew Johnson for stretching his powers, arguably beyond the stretching point, to defy Congress and the American people regarding post-Civil War Reconstruction; and Bill Clinton for the Monica Lewinsky Affair. Today, it is holy writ among liberal historians that it was appropriate for the U.S. House to impeach virulently racist Andrew Johnson, and that furthermore he should have been convicted and removed by the Senate. A child of the post-World War II civil rights movement, I happen to agree with this opinion. However, when I was born in 1946—in fact, even a decade later when JFK authored “Profiles in Courage”—liberal (Democratic) historians were virtually unanimous of the opposite opinion that Andy Johnson was a hero and the villains were the “black Republicans” who tried to remove him from office. As to the Clinton impeachment, I considered at the time, and still do, that it was a bad mistake—politically and constitutionally. (Calls for his resignation on moral grounds were another matter.) Yet back then even the most vociferous advocates of impeachment did not vilify Clinton as a “tyrant” or “despot”—words which would have stirred memories of accusations made against Lincoln and JFK! The purpose of my post was to call out or challenge those on the right: If you believe Obama has committed “high crimes and misdemeanors,” then act in the constitutional—and conservative—way: impeach him. But under no circumstances use incendiary—radical—language accusing him of tyranny and raising the specter of violent action by the unhinged or fanatical of a kind that occurred when my teenage hero, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated. Was my post implicit encouragement to those who want to impeach? I didn’t intend it that way—and though I apologize for the confusion among readers—I don’t think it should be read that way. In fact, my post wasn’t much different in substance from statements currently emanating from the White House that have almost taunted the Congressional Republicans: “If you think the President deserves it—go ahead, impeach him. Put up or shut up!” This country has survived two impeachments without suffering traumas anything like the Lincoln and Kennedy assassinations. My purpose was to indicate there are things worse than an impeachment—namely out-of-control rhetoric leading to what we all fear but don’t want to put in words. Admittedly, this isn’t the kind of concern that the Brandeis Center deals with everyday. Yet I consider it a very Brandeisian concern. God forbid that the worst happens, and American Jews find themselves preoccupied with exigent dangers more threatening than the kind we currently face on campus. The time to speak out to try to damp down the rhetoric is now. This is what I tried to do in my small way.