Posted on 01/26/2008 7:48:06 AM PST by Abathar
BRATTLEBORO — Brattleboro residents will vote at town meeting on whether President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney should be indicted and arrested for war crimes, perjury or obstruction of justice if they ever step foot in Vermont.
The Brattleboro Select Board voted 3-2 Friday to put the controversial item on the Town Meeting Day warning.
According to Town Clerk Annette Cappy, organizers of the Bush-Cheney issue gathered enough signatures, and it was up to the Select Board whether Brattleboro voters would consider the issue in March.
Cappy said residents will get to vote on the matter by paper balloting March 4.
Kurt Daims, 54, of Brattleboro, the organizer of the petition drive, said Friday the debate to get the issue on the ballot was a good one. Opposition to the vote focused on whether the town had any power to endorse the matter.
"It is an advisory thing," said Daims, a retired prototype machinist and stay-at-home dad of three daughters.
So far, Vermont is the only state Bush hasn't visited since he became president in 2001.
Daims said the most grievous crime committed by Bush and Cheney was perjury — lying to Congress and U.S. citizens about the basis of a war in Iraq.
He said the latest count showed a total of 600,000 people have died in the war.
Daims also said he believed Bush and Cheney were also guilty of espionage for spying on American people and obstruction of justice, for the politically generated firings of U.S. attorneys.
Voting to put the matter on the town ballot were Chairwoman Audrey Garfield and board members Richard Garrant and Dora Boubalis.
Voting against the idea were board members Richard DeGray and Stephen Steidle.
Daims said the names submitted to the town clerk's office were the second wave of signatures the petition drive had to collect, because he had to rewrite the wording of the petition.
He said he gathered nearly 500 signatures in about three weeks, and he said most people he encountered were eager to sign it. He started the petition drive about three months ago.
"Everybody I talked to wanted Bush to go," he said, noting that even members of the local police department supported the drive.
"This is exactly what the charter envisioned as a citizen initiative," Daims said. "People want to express themselves and they want to say how they feel."
He said the idea is spreading: Activists in Louisville, Ky., are spearheading a similar drive, and he said activists were also working in Montague, Mass., a Berkshires town.
The article asked the town attorney to "draft indictments against President Bush and Vice President Cheney for crimes against our Constitution and publish said indictments for consideration by other authorities."
The article goes on to say the indictments would be the "law of the town of Brattleboro that the Brattleboro police ... arrest and detain George Bush and Richard Cheney in Brattleboro, if they are not duly impeached ..."
Daims said people in Brattleboro were willing to "think outside the box" and consider the issue.
Daims had no compunction in comparing Bush and Cheney with one of the most notorious people in history.
"If Hitler were still alive and walked through Brattleboro, I think the local police would arrest him for war crimes," Daims said.
Typical leftist clowns. They think they’re opinions are so important, they’re going to vote on arresting the President and Vice President. The town board probably consists of a lame bunch of old leftist activists.
It’s a shame that a once lovely State like Vermont was overrun by aging counterculture lunkheads.
No, it isn't.
LOL!
Hey morons, arrest bill and hillary first for selling and profiting on sale of sensitive military secrets to the Chinese. What a bunch of idiots!
This is the place where old men and women sit around nekkid in the park in the summer and nobody has a problem with it. Unfortunately, many towns in VT are like that now. Makes Bernie Sanders look like a moderate.
Isn’t that the place where folks were walking around buck nekkid?
You're correct. We have the Massholes here in NH. I'm not sure where all the Vermont wackos came from. Probably New York.
Yeah, someone mentioned it to me and I knew I read that name somewhere before.
(1)Liberals are very big on fatuous gestures that express their hate for someone. This is jsut the latest example.
(2)Says in the article this guy Daims is a “retired prototype machinist”. Anybody got any idea what that is, beyond the fact he is unemployed? It also says he “stay-at-home dad of three daughters”. How I pity those girls.
(3)Why wait until Bush/Cheney visit lovely Brattleboro? The charges are obviously extremely serious, so if the indictments are rendered, issue arrest warrants for Bush and Cheney, and then either demand DC extradite them; or send a couple of Brattleboro police officers to the White House to arrest them and transport them back to VT. I mean, are we serious about this thing or not?
Actually, the term probably means he is a inventor or a free spirit machinist. A person who gets bored with production work and likes to tinker.
He refuses to call himself just a regular machinist because his ego will not allow it.
That's what I see in the term, and I am somewhat familiar with a machine shop. There is always one guy who can't enjoy the work without bitchin about repetitive jobs and he usually is good enough to keep but you have to feed the ego kitty to keep him happy and contented.
Recall what happened to Pinochet. Before it actually happened, how many people would have predicted the arrest of a retired foreign head of state by a European country?
Today, yes. After Bush leaves office and the Secret Service is under the command of somebody else, perhaps. But Clinton ended lifetime Secret Service protection after his administration, so Bush only gets SS protection for 10 years after he leaves office. And the Left has long memories
I see and I understand that the US is headed towards a socialist dictaorship, but I have difficulties actually believing it.
Somewhere inside of me, like many, is the idea, "it will never happen here."
I have to regularly remind myself, "It is happening"
Did you know that, prior to the Gun Control Act of 1968, in just about all of the US you could walk into a gun store and buy a pistol or rifle as easily as buying a pair of shoes? Just pick out what you wanted, lay down some cash, and walk out with it. No waiting period, no "instant check", no paperwork, no record-keeping, no ID.
Consider how radical this would seem to a young person today, or how totalitarian todays rules would seem to a time-traveler from 1960.
I remember my first store bought shotgun. It was purchased by my father over the counter at a Sears in Calif.
I remember buying a AK via private party, just before private party sales were outlawed in CA.
By the time I left California I had become a liberal.
I started reading FR in Oct 2000, and FR showed me how little I knew about freedom and reminded me how much I longed for it.
9 months later, I moved to Montana. I bought my first gun over the counter. I had to fill out paperwork, but otherwise the process took a few minutes. I buy and sell my guns private party, as often as I like. I love freedom and hate what is happening to this state & country.
I have had the good fortune of knowing what socialism is and the better fortune of knowing what liberty is -- which is why I hate liberalism so much.
I suppose it's now OK for folks to drive up to VT for target practice ~ with live targets.
Turn that place into something like "Bleedin' Kansas" in the decade before the Civil War.
We really don't have to put up with those guys.
This is a violation of Article I, Section 9; Clause 3 of the United States Constitution:
"No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed."
The impeachment process is not an exception since the House and Senate sit as, respectively, a grand jury and a trial court with full common-law court procedures and legal protections in force.
Vermont's clothing-optional capital is stripping off its temporary ban on public nudity. A month after passing the temporary ban after an elderly tourist strolled naked through the centre of town, Brattleboro city board members voted 3-2 on Tuesday to reject a proposed ordinance that would have made it permanent. When the emergency temporary ordinance expires next month, public nudity will no longer be illegal.
Vt. Town Says No to Public Nudity Ban
Rantburg has the rest of the naked truth, with additional stories from now dead links.
If Vermont did follow through and arrest Bush and Cheney, I'd just like to see what they'd set bail at. :)
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