With yesterday’s commutation of Roger Stone, the House of Representatives now has two obvious constitutional grounds to again impeach Mr. Trump. The public communications between both men, and Trump’s own tweets and other statements, demonstrate a quid pro quo between Stone’s loyalty to the president and his lying to Congress and otherwise staying silent, and Trump’s promise to commute or pardon him. This is the crime of bribery, pure and simple.

Trump is guilty of a more heinous crime: genocide. As the daily infection rate of COVID-19 exceeds seventy thousand and the death rate resumes its climb, Trump demonstrates reckless disregard for human life. In the case of an individual victim, this is the common law crime of murder with a depraved heart. On the scale of 135,000 deaths and climbing, this is flat-out genocide.

Speaker Pelosi and others have said that hey will wait for the election, rather than pursue impeachment against Attorney General General Bill Barr, who is continuously engaged in the corruption of his office for the benefit of the president. There is an implication that she relies on the election to solve our problems with the president as well. Were we in ordinary times, I would agree with the speaker, but we are not.

The president will do nothing to stop the climbing death toll. In fact, he is working to make it climb even faster by taking steps to force local school districts across the country to open schools. Meanwhile, the Senate Republicans stall on providing aid to make doing so safely at all possible.

By election day, even assuming the Republicans and their foreign partners have not successfully suppressed enough votes, the death rate will have reached astonishing new levels. If Trump loses, he still will have ten weeks to go off the deep end of cruelty and insanity to punish those he perceives deserve retribution for denying him a second term.

The House of Representatives must bring an impeachment action now and pass it, giving the Senate one more chance to do the right thing. I don’t know that the worsening of our conditions since the acquittal in February will change enough Republican votes to result in a conviction. I do know that allowing Trump to govern until January 20th of next year will literally bring this country to ruin.