My first thought was that it was amazing that Impeach: The Case Against Donald Trump by Neal Katyal with Sam Koppelman was so current. I’d expect a book of this type to be at least a few months out of date but it seems there was a heroic effort by the authors and research assistants to incorporate very recent events.

I like the book very much and agreed with much of it. Where I disagreed I was usually persuaded by the clear arguments presented in the book.

Like Neal Katyal I consider myself a centrist. He actually used the term “extremist centrist” to show how seriously he takes being a centrist. We both believe the law should be the same for everyone, whether or not you agree or disagree with the accused.

He calls this the “Yardstick rule”. I don’t have a name for it but I think it is the correct way to view things. Perhaps the “What’s good for the Goose is good for the Gander” rule. It’s a bit longer but I think it gets the point across better.

In this context, if you are a Republican, you should not excuse a behavior in a fellow Republican that you would condemn in a Democrat. And if you are a Democrat, you should not excuse a behavior in a fellow Democrat that you would condemn in a Republican.

Neal Katyal is a former acting US solicitor general and law professor. As would be expected evidence is clearly presented. In addition there is considerable historic background as to why the actions of President Trump are impeachable offenses.

I read the book on a Kindle and my only complaint about that was that many of documents in the appendices were too small to read comfortably. You could enlarge the page but enlarging each page, closing the enlargement, and going on to the next page and repeating the process was more of a pain than I liked.

The good news in that the testimony in the hearings and various relevant documents are available online. The author have presented these online at https://www.nealkatyal.com/book-references.

Katyal clearly knows how to present evidence clearly and argue persuasively to convince a jury. Which bring us to another problem.

In this case the jury will be US Senators and the majority of them are of the same political party as President Trump. Let us hope that the Senators of both parties use the Yardstick rule in reaching their decisions.

At this point, I think it very useful for the public to understand impeachment (and how extraordinary it is), understand the evidence, read the arguments for and against it, and let their Senators and Representative know what they think.

This book gives the background to impeachment, lays out the evidence, and presents the pro-impeachment side well. I highly recommend Impeach: The Case Against Donald Trump.