Impeachment Day: A Novel

If you think America's political warfare has sunk to an all-time low, fast forward with novelist Bert Black and see what happens when fed-up voters choose a third party New American Progressive as President. Sally Macalester wins the popular vote, but not a majority in the Electoral College. So under the Twelfth Amendment the House of Representatives gets to choose, and that's when things get really strange.

A clear majority of House members are Republican, but each state gets only one vote for President, and that forces a compromise on Macalester. The Senate, also controlled by Republicans, picks the Vice President, and there it's one vote per Senator. Of course they don't pick the Progressive candidate, and the Tea Party wing of the GOP immediately tries to impeach Macalester to put their guy in the White House.

The impeachment effort goes nowhere until terrorists simultaneously bomb eight major shopping malls. Though they have no evidence, the Tea Party types are certain Iran is responsible and they want to launch an immediate nuclear attack. When Macalester refuses, everyone in the GOP thinks they finally can make her impeachment stick.

She needs to uncover the truth fast, but the director of the CIA is a right wing hack she had to keep as part of the compromise that got her elected. So she reluctantly turns to the Marine Corps Commandant, her one-time college sweetheart. His quest takes him from the remotest parts of the Middle East to the remotest parts of Idaho, then back to Washington for a desperate finale.

With intelligence and keenly honed suspense, Impeachment Day takes dead aim at the Tea Party and the ongoing Republican faith in a bombs-away foreign policy and the tooth-and-claw free-market philosophy of Ayn Rand. A must read for all thinking Americans.