Douglas Whaley

The leading atheist magazine in this country is Free Inquiry , put out by the Center for Inquiry in association with the Council for Secular Humanism.   I have been a subscriber for many years and when I published my atheist thriller “Imaginary Friend” I became friends with the editor, Thomas W. Flynn (a great character, fun to know).   When I first sent him the column below he asked that I expand it and when I sent him the newer version he liked it a lot.  He told me one of my changes made him laugh so hard a coworker stuck his head in Tom's office to ask if he was all right.  What author wouldn't want to hear that? Tom Flynn I have written three short comic pieces (all of which had their first appearance in this blog and then were rewritten for the magazine), and the most recent of these just hit the stands.   Here is what “What Did the Lions Eat on Noah’s Ark?” looks like in the February/March 2019 issue of Free Inquiry, Vol. 39 #2 (click to enlarge):

Actually most people don’t understand the meaning of the word “impeachment” as used in the United States Constitution.   They think it means throwing the president out of office.   It doesn’t. An impeachment is the same thing as an indictment in normal criminal proceedings.   Under the Constitution a majority of the House of Representatives can impeach the president for “high crimes or misdemeanors” (an ambiguous phrase), but the process can include any civil officer of the United States, including the president, vice president, judges, etc.   There have been two successful impeachments of our presidents: Andrew Johnson (Lincoln’s successor) in 1867 and Bill Clinton in 1999.   Both were acquitted in their subsequent trials.   Thus, technically, the title of this post is wrong: there might be an “impeachment” of Trump, but I was using the word there the way most people use it: removal from office.   It was too awkward to phrase it accurately in a title of a blog post.   Back