In a recent Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed titled "Impeach Cheney now," House Judiciary Committee members U.S. Reps. Robert Wexler (D., Fla.), Luis Gutierrez (D., Ill.) and Tammy Baldwin (D., Wis.) state that a large number of Americans believe Dick Cheney should be impeached:

The charges against Cheney are not personal. They go to the core of the actions of this administration, and deserve consideration in a way the Clinton scandal never did. The American people understand this, and a majority supports hearings, according to a Nov. 13 poll by the American Research Group. In fact, 70 percent of voters say the vice president has abused his powers, and 43 percent say he should be removed from office right now. The American people understand the magnitude of what has been done and what is at stake if we fail to act. It is time for Congress to catch up.

43 percent of the American public want Cheney impeached?

Sorry, but I don't think that reflects reality. It just doesn't pass my common sense smell test.

What or who in the hell is the American Research Group?

The poll is here and it claims to be based on a representative sample, but I just wonder....

The indispensible A Jacksonian did some digging into the mystery man behind ARG, and while the guy doesn't seem to rise to the level of Norman Hsu, there certainly seems to be a suspicious aroma. A Jacksonian also cites a Washington Post article which consigned ARG to the graveyard back in 2004. (Hmmm.... Maybe it should be called the "American Zombie Research Group"....)

Commenters in various places are saying things like this:

ARG is a fraud. They have no boiler room and don't actually make calls. Dick Bennett is basically a pay-for-play extortionist. If you slide him some money, he puffs up your numbers.

He also did "work" for Charlie Bass. Bass was the GOP congressman who got bounced out of office by Rep. Paul Hodes, Obama's national co-chair. Bennett has an axe to grind with the Obama camp, and he's cooking up bogus numbers as a way of getting even.

Dick Bennett is a sleazy second tier pollster with a pay-for-play reputation.

Consider this. He's based in Manchester, NH. But the only candidates who have hired him (former US Rep. Charlie Bass, Manchester Mayor Frank Guinta, and former US Senator John Durkin) also hired other firms to conduct their "real" polling. Campaigns occasionally throw money at Bennett because they know that he will leak puffed up numbers to the Union Leade and Telegraph.

It's also telling that the major media putlets in NH never utilize ARG. WMUR-TV is located about a quarter mile from ARG's two room headquarters, but they generally hire UNH to conduct their polls. The Concord Monitor and Boston Globe also use other Mass/NH firms, but don't want their name associated with the con man Bennett.

I've worked in the trenches in NH politics for twenty years. I've run for office myself and run campaigns for others. I know all about Dick Bennett's act. I know the campaign operatives who paid him off the books to get a nice story in the local papers. I know about his two room office with a grand total of two phone lines. I know that nobody ever seems to receive an actual call from ARG. I know about Bennett's releasing cooked polling data while failing to reveal that he had been paid by a particular cmpaign to come up with a pre-ordained result.

ARG is a joke, and the national media are fools for giving him any credibility.

I'm chiming in on ARG because they are literally down the street from me. I know that they play some ethically shady games here at home, so I have to presume that they do the same thing in Iowa. I also leave open the possibility that ARG doesn't actually poll anyone at all.

Yet Lieberman won over Lamont handily -- with a healthy double digit lead Quinnipiac poll had reflected.

How many times is a pollster allowed to be wrong before he loses credibility?

Interestingly, from what I can see, ARG gets more criticism from the left than from the right.

I'd never heard of this outfit before, and had it not been for the Inquirer piece, my curiosity would never have been aroused.

But isn't there something odd about polls being cited uncritically when a pollster has a well-established track record of being wrong?

MORE: Don't miss A Jacksonian's post, or the comments like this one:

Thanks so much for this post. I actually came across your blog trying to get information on American Research Group myself. I follow Real Clear Politics, which captures all the various polling and noticed that ARG always has poll results way off the mark compared to other polls conducted at the same time. Something is definitely fishy. I would love to see the MSM break this story...my suspicions indicate some relation to the Clinton camp.

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link, and welcome all!

I also agree with Glenn that it would be fun to see Cheney preside over his own impeachment, but I doubt it will ever happen.