Posted on 03/07/2007 5:32:56 AM PST by Mr. Brightside
Vermont Votes to Impeach Bush/Cheney
John Nichols
Wed Mar 7, 12:36 AM ET
The Nation -- When Vermont Governor Jim Douglas, a Republican with reasonably close ties to President Bush, asked if there was any additional business to be considered at the town meeting he was running in Middlebury, Ellen McKay popped up and proposed the impeachment of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
The governor was not amused. As moderator of the annual meeting, he tried to suggest that the proposal to impeach -- along with another proposal to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq -- could not be voted on.
But McKay, a program coordinator at Middlebury College, pressed her case. And it soon became evident that the crowd at the annual meeting shared her desire to hold the president to account.
So Douglas backed down.
"It became clear that no one was going home until they had the chance to discuss the resolutions and vote on them," explained David Rosenberg, a political science professor at Middlebury College. "And being a good politician, he allowed the vote to happen."
By an overwhelming voice vote, Middlebury called for impeachment.
So it has gone this week at town meetings across Vermont, most of which were held Tuesday.
Late Tuesday night, there were confirmed reports that 35 towns had backed impeachment resolutions, and the number was expected to rise.
In one town, Putney, the vote for impeachment was unanimous.
In addition to Governor Douglas's Middlebury, the town of Hartland, which is home to Congressman Peter Welch (news, bio, voting record), backed impeachment. So, too, did Jericho, the home of Gaye Symington, the speaker of the Vermont House of Representatives.
Organizers of the grassroots drive to get town meetings to back impeachment resolutions hope that the overwhelming support the initiative has received will convince Welch to introduce articles of impeachment against Bush and Cheney. That's something the Democratic congressman is resisting, even though his predecessor, Bernie Sanders, signed on last year to a proposal by Michigan Congressman John Conyers (news, bio, voting record) to set up a House committee to look into impeachment.
Vermont activists also want their legislature to approve articles of impeachment and forward them to Congress. But Symington, also a Democrat, has discouraged the initiative, despite the fact that more than 20 representatives have cosponsored an impeachment resolution.
"It's going to be hard for Peter Welch and Gaye Symington to say there's no sentiment for impeachment, now that their own towns have voted for it," says Dan DeWalt, a Newfane, Vermont, town selectman who started the impeachment initiative last year in his town, and who now plans to launch a campaign to pressure Welch and Symington to respect and reflect the will of the people.
It is going to be even harder for Governor Douglas, who just this month spent two nights at the Bush White House, to face his president.
After all, Douglas now lives in a town that is on record in support of Bush's impeachment and trial for high crimes and misdemeanors.
For the record, Middlebury says:
We the people have the power -- and the responsibility -- to remove executives who transgress not just the law, but the rule of law.
The oaths that the President and Vice President take binds them to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." The failure to do so forms a sound basis for articles of impeachment.
The President and Vice President have failed to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution" in the following ways:
1. They have manipulated intelligence and misled the country to justify an immoral, unjust, and unnecessary preemptive war in Iraq.
2. They have directed the government to engage in domestic spying without warrants, in direct contravention of U.S. law.
3. They have conspired to commit the torture of prisoners, in violation of the Federal Torture Act and the Geneva Convention.
4. They have ordered the indefinite detention without legal counsel, without charges and without the opportunity to appear before a civil judicial officer to challenge the detention -- all in violation of U.S. law and the Bill of Rights.
When strong evidence exists of the most serious crimes, we must use impeachment -- or lose the ability of the legislative branch to compel the executive branch to obey the law.
George Bush has led our country to a constitutional crisis, and it is our responsibility to remove him from office.
+1
LOL, no he probably was his significant other.
Vermont is suffering from sever BDS!
Awe-inspiring reduction to cultural stereotype. Keep it coming!
Priorities are a little misplaced to say the least.
Let's not short-change him... he was also impeached for the far more serious crime of suborning perjury from other witnesses, specifically Betty Currie.
If only Ethan Allen and Robert Rogers had had this crowd available to weigh them down. There would be no need to sell, cede, or abandon Vermont to Quebec. Vermont and all of the US would still be a european colony and they could have all that great socialist medical care, which is what the bulk of these aging hippie non native "Vermonters" deserve.
One joint too many it seems. Somebody needs to advise them that there has to be legitimate bases for impeachment according to the CONSTITUTION (something liberals don't believe in) called high crimes and misdemeanors. You don't just impeach because you're a terrorist-loving, American-hating, communist-supporting pacifist who happens to hate the sitting president.
You just can seem to keep from being stuck in the past can you?
If this statement is true and no proof exists, then the ones spreading the rumors are guilty of sedition, and it would appear that Howard Dean, John Kerry, Teddy Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi and a host of Democratic leaders and mainstream media should have special prosecutors on their a$$es just like Scooter Libby.
The Brookline Town Council did this last year. I had my Republican City Committee pass a resolution declaring war on them.
Scooter coverup much larger, about forged Niger documents
With what we already know about Joe Wilson's clairvoyancy (and Cannistraro's) concerning those documents, if they want an investigation...I say:
During the 90's my Dad lived in Brookline (near the Harvard Medical Area...lots of "progressives")for a while.I'd visit him and stay with him regularly to help him out and keep him company (he was along in years then). During these visits bumper stickers were regularly removed from my bumper.I consider myself lucky that nothing worse than that happened to my car.
Cold is all relative. It was -25 this morning without the wind. Just imagine what it would be like without global warming!
"Vermont maple"
You can get Canadian real maple syrup.
This is what we get when we interpret freedom of speech and freedom of the press to mean freedom to lie and dishonestly attack others without consequence.
Just exile the morons, don't give up the territory.
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