Bush Impeachment Countdown -- 575 days to go

The front door might slam
But the back door it rings

-- "When Smokey Sings," ABC.

Today is January 10, 2005. There are 575 days until the estimated impeachment and removal of George W. Bush (for how this was calculated, read after the jump.) This is another in a daily series chronicling the high crimes and misdemeanors of the Bush administration.

Today's high crime: Torture, in violation of international law. From the Times of London:

Forcing naked Iraqi prisoners to pile themselves in human pyramids was not torture, because American cheerleaders do it every year, a court was told today.

A lawyer defending Specialist Charles Graner, who is accused of being a ringleader in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, argued that piling naked prisoners in pyramids was a valid form of prisoner control.

"Don’t cheerleaders all over America form pyramids six to eight times a year. Is that torture?" said Guy Womack, Sergeant Graner’s lawyer, in opening arguments to the ten-member military jury at the reservist’s court martial.

How the countdown is calculated: Bush's expected removal is based on the date that Richard Nixon was forced from office: Aug. 8, 1974, the 565th day of his second term. It is only an estimate -- Bush could in fact be removed from office earlier than Aug. 8, 2006.