Okay, so, like....

I'm sorry I didn't get to any of the writing I planned to do this weekend (seriously sorry), but we're at $6,500 worth of orders now, and I'm stuffing these damn envelopes all by lonesome. I also somehow managed to buy 1,000 envelopes that don't actually seal when you lick `em. So I'm basically, like, fucked.

And I'm fucked in the head: I didn't figure on having to pay for envelopes and postage and tax and PayPall's percentage when I worked all this out, so I'm losing money on smaller orders—but, hey, that's a small price to pay to spread ITMFA far and wide. (And maybe it's my small way of doing penance, Atrios. And more on just what I need to do penance for tomorrow, I swear.) Thankfully most of the orders are for more than one button or one lapel pin, so I'm still going to be able to send the ACLU a nice big check when I get out of the button and lapel pin business.

The good news? Thousands of button and lapel pins are going out in the mail tomorrow, so folks all around the country—Georgia, New York, North Carolina, California, Idaho, Massachusetts, Washington D.C., Texas—will be sporting ITMFA wear by mid-week. I'm even filling orders in Canada and the U.K. (How about one or two for you, Jack Straw?)

The bad news? Besides losing money on smaller orders and not having any time to write this weekend, I ran out of buttons. More on order, but it may be a week before I can get more buttons in the mail. And the way things are going I may run out of lapel pins by the middle of the week. But have no fear: more orders have been placed, and more buttons and lapel pins are on their way.

Quickly, a couple reader's questions...

Hey I just followed your link to the ITMFA website, very cool. I was looking through the pictures people sent in and a couple of the shots were of hot chicks proudly displaying the ITMFA. Any chance you can encourage your readers to send in naked pictures of themselves with the ITMFA placed somewhere on their body? Then you can post the best. This way I can combine my two favorite time wasters... hating Bush and loving bush. Just a suggestion. Naked People For ITMFA

I'm open to posting pictures of people representin' ITMFA, as the kids like to say. What form that representin' takes is pretty much up to the folks who send in pictures. If folks want to paint ITMFA on their bodies and send in pics, I would be happy to create a gallery dedicated to ITMFA-promoting exhibitionists.

What I'm most excited about, though, is getting some pics in this week from people wearing official ITMFA buttons and lapel pins. Unless someone's got some seriously pieced nipples or genitals, they're going to have to be clothed to wear the official ITMFA merch.

I heard a term used recently that I'd never heard of before, and I can't find a definition or description of it anywhere on the internet. I have no idea what it means, but it just sounds so odd that I have to ask: What the hell is poodle-balling? Thanks!

I'm a longtime reader and fan, and for what it's worth, I'd like to urge you NOT to push the ITMFA thing. The thing with Santorum was great, and worked as a combination of humor and political commentary. By associating his name with the substance, you have probably injured him politically more than any other person in the country.

The problem is that ITMFA is so obviously doomed to failure (the GOP-controlled congress just won't do it), that you are diminishing your political capital greatly. I hate Bush's policies with a passion, but I am afraid you are making a mistake by pushing this. Bush won't be hurt at all, and you just look ineffectual.

Nonetheless, I am sure that you've heard lots of people's opinions on this, so you'll probably continue. Good luck with it, and keep up the great writing.

GVG

I'm flattered by your note, GVC, but I can think of one man that has done a hell of a lot more damage to Rick Santorum than I have: Rick Santorum. His creepy obsession with other people's sex lives, his ethical lapses, his record... I kinda, sorta think that Santorum would be trailing his opponent even if that frothy mix had never come along.

But, hey, thanks.

As for ITMFA's success or failure, let me get this on the record: I don't expect that this little campaign is going to lead to President Bush being removed from office. It would be nice, of course, but unlikely.

So what's this all about then? Well, a Savage Love reader suggested it, and who am I to stand in the way of my readers? But the reason I'm pouring my weekend and my money into this campaign is because... well, let me quote at length from Lewis Lapham's essay, The Case for Impeachment. Lapham leads with U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D., Mich). Last year Conyer's introduced a resolution calling on Congress to impeach the president. No one noticed.

The nearly complete silence raised the question as to what it was the congressman had in mind, and to whom did he think he was speaking? In time of war few propositions would seem as futile as the attempt to impeach a president whose political party controls the Congress; as the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee stationed on Capitol Hill for the last forty years, Representative Conyers presumably knew that to expect the Republican caucus in the House to take note of his invitation, much less arm it with the power of subpoena, was to expect a miracle of democratic transformation and rebirth not unlike the one looked for by President Bush under the prayer rugs in Baghdad. Unless the congressman intended some sort of symbolic gesture, self-serving and harmless, what did he hope to prove or to gain? He answered the question in early January, on the phone from Detroit during the congressional winter recess.

“To take away the excuse,� he said, “that we didn't know.� So that two or four or ten years from now, if somebody should ask, “Where were you, Conyers, and where was the United States Congress?� when the Bush Administration declared the Constitution inoperative and revoked the license of parliamentary government, none of the company now present can plead ignorance or temporary insanity, can say that “somehow it escaped our notice� that the President was setting himself up as a supreme leader exempt from the rule of law.

Okay, so this ain't congress, and, unlike Conyers', there's nothing soaring or grand about my rhetoric. “Impeach the motherfucker already� ain't no “high crimes and misdemeanors.� But wearing an ITMFA button or a lapel pin or a t-shirt allows folks who aren't members of Congress to answer Conyers' question: Where were we when the Bush administration declared the constitution inoperative and revoked the license of parliamentary government? Well, we were wondering why the assholes in the U.S. Congress hadn't IMPEACHED THE MOTHERFUCKER ALREADY, and we were wearing these buttons and lapel pins.

Beyond that, ITMFA is fun. It's like a secret club. Unlike most anti-Bush merch, unless someone knows what ITMFA means, they don't, uh, know what it means. (Sorry, it's late.) Most anti-Bush stickers, buttons, or t-shirts aren't conversation starters, they're conversations stoppers. Not ITMFA. I've been wearing my button all week, and everyone I go people ask me what it means. And when I tell them, they laugh and become members of the club.

Will the laughs result in Bush being removed from office? No, they won't. But we're going to need to have a few laughs to get us through the next 1000+ days of the Bush administration.