I have to be honest. I haven’t paid a whole lot of attention to the kabuki theater better know as the Trump impeachment proceedings.

Mainly because I don’t care.

And it doesn’t really matter.

I mean seriously, there is virtually zero chance that the Senate will actually remove Donald Trump from office. We all know this. So, the Senate trial is really nothing more than a carefully orchestrated stage show.

And even if by some weird swirl in the political winds Trump gets removed from office, we end up with President Pence. I can’t quite picture this as an upgrade.

Pence is pretty much Trump minus the personality. Or any personality. We’d get the same foreign policy. We’d get the same domestic policy. But we wouldn’t get the amusing tweets.

So, anyway, I haven’t really been plugged into the whole impeachment thing. But I did accidentally catch part of Rep. Adam Schiff’s opening statement. And it was literally an accident. I was doing cardio at the gym and it was on every TV. Avoiding it was like trying to keep from getting the flu in the city health department waiting room. I had headphones on, but I kept getting sucked into the closed captioning. It was like a train wreck. I couldn’t look away.

Schiff’s monologue appeared to mostly consist of your typical political blah, blah, blah. Long on bluster, short on substance. Trump did bad stuff. He’s bad. Legal mumbo-jumbo. Ukraine. Rule of law. Trump’s bad. God bless America!

But one thing grabbed my attention simply because it annoyed the fire out of me. Schiff talked about the Constitution. I even saw him reference the Philadelphia Convention and the “intent of the framers.” He was apparently trying to justify the impeachment on constitutional grounds.

Here’s why this little part of his skit dug deep under my skin.

Adam Schiff doesn’t give two sh!ts about the Constitution.

In fact, he doesn’t even give one sh!t about the Constitution. He committed an atrocious act of constitutional malfeasance. He trotted it out to serve as a prop in his political theater. And when it was over, I’m 100 percent certain he crumpled it up and tossed his copy of America’s founding document in a heap in the back of his closet under his soiled underwear and sweaty socks.

That’s where he keeps it during most workdays. He sure as heck doesn’t drag it out and wave it around when he’s chairing the House Intelligence Committee and authorizing the NSA to peek at all the nudie photos on your computer.

While we’re on the subject, I’ll tell you another dirty little secret about Adam Schiff.

He doesn’t know anything about the Constitution.

I can say this with absolute certainty. How do I know? Because he’s a Harvard-educated lawyer. Lawyers by-and-large don’t know anything about the Constitution. And putting “Harvard-educated” in front of “lawyer” doesn’t change this fact.

But Mike, you ask. How can this be? If he went to law school, he must know a lot about constitutional law!

Well, that may well be. But go back and read what I wrote. I never said he doesn’t know constitutional law. I said he doesn’t know anything about the Constitution. There’s a big difference. Constitutional law is all about what a bunch of politically connected lawyers in black dresses employed by the Supreme Court said about the Constitution. That mostly has little to nothing to do with what the Constitution as ratified means.

Here’s a nickel’s worth of free advice. If you want to understand the Constitution, never talk to a lawyer.

Ever.

Talk to somebody who has actually studied the ratifying debates. (Or you could just read my book.)

Here’s the problem. The Constitution has been bastardized by a bunch of politicians with law degrees who throw some impressive-sounding credentials at you to convince you that they know more than you do. Then they trot out a bunch of dubious legal theories and judicial precedents to justify trampling your liberties and individual autonomy. These megalomaniacs could justify killing puppies and do it with a straight face. Sadder still, the half of the American population that identifies with the party proposing puppycide would enthusiastically cheer it on.

Believe me when I say this; this autocratic brood of sociopaths doesn’t care about “founding principles,” or “constitutional fidelity” or “the rule of law.”

One thing drives them — power.

So how do we stop them?

The first step is to stop gracing them with the mantel of legitimacy. Learn about the Constitution as ratified and when they drag it out on stage, call them on it. Reveal their hypocrisy. Unmask their ignorance.

When people start to realize that these people are no better than the ambulance-chasing lawyers on TV, maybe they’ll stop listening to them.

Schiff caricature by DonkeyHotey.