Impeaching the President

But given that Boehner casts Obama's waiver of the employer mandate as just part of a series of executive infractions, the Constitution offers a more drastic remedy: impeachment. Indeed, presidential abuse of power, of the sort claimed by Boehner and Palin, offers a paradigmatic case for the sorts of abuses the framers consider to be impeachable offenses.

Although the Constitution speaks of impeachment in the case of "treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors," the framers were clear in understanding that an offense need not constitute a violation of criminal law to be impeachable.

Rather, as University of North Carolina law professor Michael Gerhardt, a leading scholar of impeachment, has explained, the framers not only considered such abuses of authority within the scope of impeachable offenses -- they viewed these "political crimes" as the central focus of impeachment. "Impeachable offenses primarily consisted of abuses of power that injured the state," Gerhardt wrote.

For example, when the drafting committee limited impeachment to treason and bribery, George Mason of Virginia complained that this would fail to cover "many great and dangerous offenses." Mason cited the British impeachment of East India Company Governor-General Warren Hastings, "whose trial," Gerhardt wrote, "was based ... upon the dangers presented to the government by the governor's wielding of virtually absolute power within the Indian colony."

Alexander Hamilton, writing in Federalist No. 65, explained of impeachment that "the subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust."

Palin is no Hamilton; her Breitbart.com screed calling for Obama's impeachment is long on rhetoric, short on specific examples of impeachable offenses.

"Enough is enough of the years of abuse from this president," Palin wrote. "His unsecured border crisis is the last straw that makes the battered wife say, 'no mas.'"

But Palin, at least, has the courage to follow her conviction through to its logical conclusion. Boehner doesn't.

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Ruth Marcus' email address is ruthmarcus@washpost.com.