Wow..some trial in the Senate that would make..didn't know the geneva convention was a part of our constitution..must have slept thru that part of constitution class..
The Moonbats vote tonight! We Conservatives pretty much took down their phone and e-mail systems this afternoon with opposing calls and e-mails. Just for fun; they won’t listen to us, anyway.
Impeachment & Dane County
An editorial — 8/16/2007 10:19 am
The county of Dane was named for a revolutionary foe of executive privilege, a radical egalitarian who, as a young man, committed his good name and his bright prospects to the anti-colonial cause of those who would depose a king named George.
Nathan Dane was one of the youngest members of the Massachusetts legislature in the final years of the struggle for American independence. He then served in the Continental Congress, where his opposition to the ugliest abuses of an entrenched aristocracy led him to fight to bar slavery in the newly acquired Northwest Territory — an expanse that included the region that would become Wisconsin.
Dane’s theories on the rule of law were incorporated into the Constitution, which was written during the time of his service in the Continental Congress. In his later years, Dane would author an eight-volume series of commentaries on American law, which would be heralded as a definitional text for the new republic.
Because of this history, it is uniquely appropriate that the county named for Nathan Dane would issue a call for application of the Constitution ‘s essential tool for upholding the rule of law: the impeachment of errant members of the executive branch.
Tonight, the Dane County Board will consider such a call. Supervisors have proposed that the county pass a resolution urging Wisconsin’s representatives in Congress to hold President Bush, Vice President Cheney and members of their administration to account for disregarding the Constitution and the rule of law that Nathan Dane held so dear.
Dane County is not the first local or state unit of government to take up the issue of impeachment. Communities across the country, including more than three dozen Vermont town meetings and cities as big as Detroit, have asked their representatives to advance articles of impeachment against Bush, Cheney and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. And state legislative chambers across the country have debated the issue, in keeping with the intention of the founders that discussions of impeachment should engage the whole of the republic and take place at every level of government.
Members of Congress have begun to hear the call. Nineteen members of the House, including Madison’s Tammy Baldwin, are sponsoring articles of impeachment against Cheney. Twenty-eight members of the House, again including Baldwin, are sponsoring a proposal to have the Judiciary Committee open hearings on the impeachment of Gonzales.
Whether Bush, Cheney or Gonzales is impeached, the movement to hold them to account has benefited the republic. There is a lively discussion across America about the need to ensure not merely that members of this administration abide by their oaths to follow the dictates of the Constitution but that members of future administrations will respect the rule of law.
This is a process that would have heartened Nathan Dane. When Dane died at 82, he was so broadly respected as a member of the Continental Congresses, a contributor to the shaping of the Constitution and an author of the essential outline of early American law that James Doty urged the naming of what would become Wisconsin’s capital county for the lawyer and legislator. On Dane’s gravestone, the inscription reads: “His fame belongs to his country; Let the gratitude of future ages cherish it.”
The memory of Nathan Dane will be cherished tonight in appropriate fashion. In the county named for the old revolutionary who challenged a king named George, elected supervisors will entertain a resolution encouraging Congress to challenge a president named George. Those supervisors who value Nathan Dane’s legacy will honor it by endorsing this call for the restoration of the rule of law that Dane County’s namesake championed at the founding of the American experiment.
http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/editorial/205821