Vermont town votes to impeach Bush

March 9, 2006

NEWFANE, Vt. - In a white-clapboard town hall, built circa 1832, voters gathered Tuesday to conduct their community's business and to call for the impeachment of President Bush.
"In the U.S. presently there are only a few places where citizens can act in this fashion and have a say in our nation," said select board member Dan DeWalt, who drafted the impeachment article that was placed on the warning - or official agenda - for the annual town meeting, a proud Yankee tradition in New England.
"It absolutely affects us locally," Dewalt said. "It's our sons and daughters, our mothers and fathers, who are dying" in the war in Iraq.
The article, approved 121-29 in balloting by paper, calls on Vermont's lone member of the House, Independent Rep. Bernie Sanders, to file articles of impeachment against the president, alleging that Bush misled the nation into the Iraq war and engaged in illegal domestic spying.
Other cities nationwide have taken up resolutions calling for Bush's impeachment, notably San Francisco. But the sentiment has rarely spread to rural America - unless you're talking about Vermont, known for bucking politics as usual.
At least three other southern Vermont towns, spurred by publicity about Newfane's resolution, endorsed similar resolutions during Tuesday's meetings: Dummerston, Marlboro and Putney.
In Newfane, the impeachment item came at the end of a roughly four-hour meeting Tuesday morning that was devoted mostly to the local affairs of the town of 1,600.
Among the other items discussed was whether the town should fix some of the 100-year-old sidewalks in the village.
The impeachment discussion took up more than half an hour, reflecting the intense interest in the topic and something of a division over whether the town meeting was the appropriate place to debate it.
Ann Landenberger argued that it was appropriate. "As a teacher I can't say to my kids that what happens on the national level doesn't affect us at the local level," she said. "Would that we could all be in a cocoon, but that is not the case."