Remember that whole impeachment thing last quarter? Yeah, well, we’re back.

Bush is still breaking the law. His approval ratings are still falling. His war is still dragging on. His Republican cronies in Congress are still refusing to hold him accountable. Gas prices are soaring. The national debt is out of control. The environment continues to suffer. Our reputation as a country is at an all-time low.

Yet I’m still proud to be an American. You know why? Because we are going to impeach that rat bastard of a president.

Three months ago, I helped start the group Students for Impeachment. I picked up this cause because I thought it was the right thing to do, regardless of whether we could succeed or not. The idea was to show that we oppose what Bush was doing, even if we can’t stop him. My thinking was simple: Thirty years from now when my grandson looks up at me and says, “Grandpa, why the fuck wasn’t Bush impeached even after all that horrible shit he did to America?” I’ll be able to reply, “Oh, well, we tried to stop him, but those goddamned corrupt Republican bastards in Congress weren’t interested in upholding the law. Now be a good boy and fetch Grandpa his vodka.” That’s why I got involved three months ago.

But now I’m in this fight because I think we have a real chance of victory.

Let me explain.

In my view, the key to winning this battle is to show active popular support for Bush’s removal from office. The good news is that the support is already there; Bush’s approval rating is at an incredibly low 31 percent and the number of people who strongly disapprove is over twice the number of those who strongly approve.

The bad news is that many people are so jaded from watching the political system fail time and time again that they don’t have the will to stand up for themselves anymore.

What drives me crazy is that I know that if we can just get American citizens active, we can knock Bush out of office right now. If people started demonstrating en masse, the Republicans would have no choice but to run for cover and save themselves by throwing their incompetent leader under the bus – and they would throw him under the bus, partly out of necessity, but also partly because even some of the Republicans are slowly realizing that Bush is running the country into the ground.

Simply put, Bush is a liability to Republicans who are worried about getting reelected in the fall.

The more people learn about Bush’s dangerous habit of violating the Constitution, the more heat we place on his Republican cronies in Congress who don’t want you to think about it and the more active we are as citizens, the harder it gets for the Republicans to justify their refusal to hold him accountable.

After all, Bush really did break the law. He lied about the reasons for invading Iraq. He was responsible for blowing the cover of a CIA agent, Valerie Plame, who was helping us monitor Iran’s nuclear weapons program. His domestic spying program is so blatantly illegal that a 10-year-old would be rightly skeptical of his bafflingly weak legal defense.

In a parade of crimes and scandals, it’s hard to focus on just one float.

But now we have a chance to strike back at the Shrub.

The trick is mobilizing those jaded-but-still-anti-Bush souls for one last-ditch attempt to help democracy succeed.

Popular support for impeachment would give our elected leaders the mandate and incentive they need to push forward with real investigations and actual accountability. The Democrats would be given the chance to attack and the Republicans would be forced to actually do their jobs.

And with that, I implore you to get involved. I know politics suck. But we really can do something about it. This time, at least.

So, stand up, be heard, and let’s impeach this lying, incompetent, irresponsible, corrupt, dimwitted, insensitive, warmongering, ruthless, conniving, stubborn son of a bitch we now call “president,” but – with any luck – will someday call “inmate.”

Jake Thorn is a senior political science major.