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Just when it seems John Kerry has finally found the wherewithal to say something and then actually stand by it, he goes into his Emily Litella impersonation — Never mind.

Speaking to about 100 former Kerry campaign workers yesterday, Kerry said:

If we take back the House [in 2006], there a solid case to bring articles of impeachment against this president.

But after Republicans and even a few timid Democrats (a redundancy, I know) claimed to be offended by Kerry's remarks, a Kerry aide did the flip-flopping for him — apparently, Kerry was only joking:

Impeachment jokes in Washington are as old as Don Rumsfeld and as funny as Dick Cheney is gruff.

I'm surprised the Republicans' funnybone wasn't tickled by Kerry's remarks. Possibly all the Republican scandals and all the horror stories about torture and rendition over the last year have dampened their sense of humor. Why, just last year, the Republicans giggled like schoolgirls over the president's tasteless skit at the Radio and Television Correspondents annual dinner. You remember — that's when the eternal fratboy showed slides of himself in the Oval Office looking under desks and behind curtains for the missing WMDs, after it had become painfully clear that WMDs were not going to be found in Iraq.

It was a more obscene act than Bill Clinton ever committed in the Oval Office, but the good Christian soldiers of the Republican party and their media shills thought it just delightful.

Manipulating intelligence about WMDs to justify an unprovoked invasion of Iraq, resulting in thousands of American and Iraqi casualties, and then callously joking about the deception — don't these offenses rise to the same level of "high crimes and misdemeanors" that Bill Clinton reached when parsing the word "is" before a grand jury?

Of course they do, and then some. But don't expect John Kerry to say so, at least not with a straight face.