What a bunch of idiots.
Impeach Bush, says Vermont SenateBy Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff | April 21, 2007
Declaring that the Bush administration's actions in foreign and domestic affairs raise "serious questions of constitutionality," Vermont state senators voted yesterday to call for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney in what officials say was the first such vote by state lawmakers in the country.
Without debate, the Democratic-controlled Senate voted 16 to 9 in favor of the nonbinding resolution, which urges US Representative Peter Welch, a Democrat, to introduce a resolution in the House of Representatives to initiate impeachment proceedings.
Vermont's congressional delegation, which includes Welch and Senators Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders, promptly rejected the call.
They issued a statement saying that the three shared the anger of many Vermonters with the Bush administration, "one of the worst and most destructive in American history."
But, they said that, for the first time since Bush took office, Congress is investigating several of the administration's key actions, ranging from the decision to invade Iraq to the recent firings of eight US attorneys.
"Before we talk about impeachment, it is imperative that these investigations be allowed to run their course, and we should then follow wherever the facts lead," the delegation said.
In the Vermont Senate vote, 16 Democrats supported the resolution and three Democrats joined six Republicans in opposing the question.
"There is no president and vice president of the United States, in my judgment, who have worked harder to earn impeachment hearings than these two," Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin, who orchestrated the vote, said later.
"They lied about the war in Iraq. They lied about the weapons of mass destruction. They lied about Saddam's involvement in 9/11. And the list goes on and on."
The toll of the war on rural Vermont has been particularly harsh. By late February, the state had the highest per capita rate of Iraq war deaths, with 18 residents killed in a state with a population of 624,000.
"Everybody knows somebody who has either died or lost a family member or whose mother or father has been gone for too long" fighting in Iraq, said Ian Carleton, chairman of the state Democratic Party.
Leaders of the party voted last year and last month for similar symbolic measures, Carleton said.
Also, similar nonbinding resolutions favoring impeachment passed in more than three dozen communities at town meetings last month.
Bush's impeachable offenses go beyond the decision to invade Iraq, Carleton said, and include the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, unauthorized domestic wiretapping, and the treatment of prisoners in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The resolution was voted on in haste partly because the legislative session is going to end in two weeks, Shumlin said.
A similar impeachment resolution has been introduced in the House but remains bottled up in a committee.
In addition, Lieutenant Governor Brian Dubie, a Republican who presides over the Senate and probably would have prevented a vote, was with his 18-year-old son visiting Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif.
"This was nothing I knew about before I left," Dubie said from California.
He said he was not angry, but as with any controversial measure, he would have referred the resolution to a committee for study, which would have almost certainly thwarted a vote this session. He also said he supports the president's policy in Iraq.
Dubie is a pilot for American Airlines and was friends with John Ogonowski of Dracut, the pilot of American Airlines Flight 11, which crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Dubie, a colonel in the Air Force Reserve, visited ground zero three days later when Bush toured the site.
"I looked into his eyes then," he said. "I know where our president is coming from, and I support our president. It's really that simple for me."
Summer Johnson, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, said in a statement that the Vermont Senate has the wrong priorities and instead should urge the Democratic-controlled Congress "to stop treating our troops in harm's way like a political football" and pass the president's budget bill for the war.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/04/21/impeach_bush_says_vermont_senate/