Vt. Towns Urged To Pass Impeachment

Dan DeWalt is hoping what he started in his small town a year ago will spread around Vermont this Town Meeting Day and eventually to the halls of Congress.

DeWalt, a member of his town Select Board, got his meeting to vote last year to support a call for Congress to impeach President Bush. He said this year people in 50 Vermont towns are circulating petitions to get the question before voters at Town Meeting, the first Tuesday in March.

"We will be barnstorming the state on this," DeWalt said. "In towns where we do not get it on the warning" — the official agenda for the meeting — "we will try to have it taken up under other business."

DeWalt, a musician and woodworker, saw his effort in Newfane matched by four other towns passing similar resolutions. The vote drew both praise and derision nationwide.

"What we did last year became a clarion call for towns all across the country where people were despairing of the war and the state of the Constitution," DeWalt said. "Now, there's a real possibility Vermont can get the nation's attention focused on impeachment."

DeWalt said the effort is getting support — and expected visits to Vermont — from Cindy Sheehan, the anti-war activist and mother of a soldier who died in Iraq, and former Rep. Elizabeth Holzman, D-N.Y. Holzman was on the House Judiciary Committee that impeached President Nixon and is the author of "The Impeachment of George W. Bush."

Anne McClaughry, interim chairwoman of the Vermont Republican Party, said Bush had done nothing to warrant impeachment.

"These people hate Bush and want to bash him," she said of the impeachment effort's backers. "Hate and contempt are bogus grounds for impeachment, and I trust Vermonters will think it through and ultimately decide for themselves that voting 'yes' on a resolution to impeach the president is unworthy."

According to DeWalt, Bush deserves to face impeachment for having misled the nation about the need to invade Iraq, and for abusing civil liberties in the name of fighting terrorists.

"This actually isn't about Bush and Cheney," he told the Burlington Free Press. "It's about restoring the balance of power under the Constitution. ... If we don't put pressure on Congress to do its duty, we deserve to have a king."