As the U.S. Congress continues to waste its time
focusing on erased football tapes instead of erased
torture tapes, and fighting to maintain the sanctity
of a steroid free home run record, rather than the
sanctity of the Constitution, citizen uprisings are
now emerging across New England.
Betty Hall's H24 impeachment resolution is scheduled
for a floor fight in the New Hampshire House on March
12. On March 4, Brattleboro and Marlboro, Vermont
citizens passed resolutions calling on their towns'
governing bodies to issue indictments for the arrest
of Bush/Cheney for the crimes that Congress refuses to
prosecute. And in Kennebunkport, Maine, Senate
candidate Laurie Dobson has petitioned the board of
selectmen to put the indictment article on their town
meeting warning slated for June 2.
Two weeks ago, New Hampshire citizens made their
first big push to get impeachment back on the table
when close to a hundred overflowed a statehouse
hearing room to testify in favor of Representative
Hall's resolution, calling for the impeachment of the
President and Vice President. This resolution cites
paragraph 603 in the parliamentary rules of
Jefferson's manual, which Congress still adheres to
today. Jefferson recognized that there would be times
when the executive and legislative branches could
become corrupted and unreliable to protect the
Constitution. So he made special provision for the
branch of state government that is most directly
related to the people - the state House of
representatives - to be able to draft impeachment
resolutions and send them to the U.S. Congress as a
privileged motion, going directly to the floor of the
Congress for debate and action. In over four hours of
testimony, citizens representing every part of the
political spectrum, from the John Birch Society to
Code PINK, voiced their agreement that when the
government abandons the Constitution and chooses to
live outside of the law, it is the duty of the people,
in whose hands sovereignty ultimately lies, to force
the Congress to impeach and remove from office the
offending administration.
The minority report which came out of that committee
hearing remarked on the "multi-partisanship" of those
testifying, and committee members said that they had
never seen an issue that had united so many disparate
points of view. Unfortunately, it was the minority
report, because the majority of committee members
chose to hew to the national party line of no
impeachment, no matter how egregious the crimes.
As word of the hearing spread across the region and
nation, thousands of citizens responded with hope and
admiration. Often at a rate of one per minute, emails
poured into Betty's mailbox, voicing encouragement and
offering support. Rep. Hall hopes to turn these well
wishers into a citizens' lobbying effort, asking all
who wrote to contact their House reps. and urge them
to consider the nation, not their party leaders when
the vote comes next week.
In the meantime, concerned citizens in southern
Vermont had drafted a resolution calling for their
towns to issue indictments for the arrest of Bush and
Cheney if they are not impeached. In spite of an
initial firestorm of protest, orchestrated in part by
right wing radio talking heads, the good citizens of
Brattleboro and Marlboro voted decisively in favor of
the resolution, and now it lies in the hands of their
local governments to figure out the next plausible
step in bringing these men to account. There is no
manual that outlines this tactic that the Vermonters
could point to for justification. Instead, they, just
like our nation's founders when faced with repeated
appeals for redress being ignored by their government,
crafted their own approach, trusting in the universal
recognition that war crimes and crimes of a government
against its own Constitution are untenable and must be
remedied by any means available. Again, the general
public, hearing of this initiative, responded
overwhelmingly, flooding the town of Brattleboro's
email box with over 8000 responses, with a strong
majority in support of the citizens' actions. Within
hours of the successful vote, organizers found
themselves answering queries from people in other
localities across the nation, asking how they could
replicate the process in their towns.
Now it's the turn of Kennebunkport. Although
Republicans are the majority of town voters, Senate
candidate Dobson is launching a petition drive get the
indictment resolution on their June town meeting. She
understands that Republicans, Democrats and
Independents alike share a love of the Constitution
and believe that no man, including the President and
Vice President, are above the law.
One year ago, after forty Vermont town meetings had
called for impeachment, Vermonters asked their
legislature to issue a call for impeachment to the
Congress. When the legislature refused to act,
Vermonters responded first by overwhelming the Senate
chamber with their bodies and voices, and the Senate
recognized the validity of their arguments and passed
an impeachment resolution. The Vermont House was more
recalcitrant. Speaker Gaye Symington informed us that
she would in no way take up such a resolution. In
response, over 400 Vermonters flooded the golden domed
House chamber, forcing Symington to reverse her stand
and allow a vote. Unfortunately, she outmaneuvered the
people by keeping House members in the dark about the
vote until the day before, thus limiting informed
debate, and the measure fell short of passage in the
House.
The cowardice and ineptitude of our politicians have
allowed the nation to now reach a point where the
lawless and unconstitutional actions of the
administration are more brazen than ever. The
occupation of Iraq is entering its sixth year. One
million Iraqis have perished, as well as over 4000
Americans, with many tens of thousands injured,
traumatized and facing a bleak future of surviving as
wounded souls, with little or no assistance from the
government that lied to them and used them as fodder.
These citizens' movements that are demanding
impeachment action by our Congress, and, barring that,
taking it upon themselves to instruct their
municipalities to take the necessary actions to hold
our "leaders" accountable are just the tip of the
iceberg. We cannot wait for one more year of
criminality, torture and murder to pass unchecked.
Each time we see that our efforts for redress are
ignored, be they letters to representatives, protest
marches at home and in Washington D. C., or lobbying
at our statehouse, we will escalate our efforts,
devise new approaches, and make such a noise unto the
land that the undeserving and cowardly government
currently in power will have to give way, making room
for a new order that trumpets not American hegemony,
but American principles grounded in universal law and
human rights.