By Shay Totten / Vermont Guardian
WASHINGTON — An effort that began in March culminated Monday when three Vermont communities delivered a message to House Speaker Dennis Hastert: Start the process to impeach Pres. George Bush.
Six Vermont towns passed resolutions on Town Meeting Day calling for Bush’s impeachment. On Monday, Ellen Tenney, a bookstore owner from Rockingham, hand delivered petitions to Hastert, an Illinois Republican.
Neither Hastert nor his chief of staff was there when the office opened, as many members of Congress are not in Washington on Mondays. Tenney described the meeting with Hastert’s staff members who were in the office as “bland and not very friendly.”
She said it should have been no surprise that the petitions would be delivered.
“I had called and told him that we were coming, but I couldn’t get anyone to call me back to set up an actual appointment,” said Tenney, who was joined by representatives from AfterDowningStreet.org and ImpeachPAC.org, two web-based organizations that have been encouraging Bush’s impeachment. She was also joined by Julia DeWalt, daughter of Newfane Selectman Dan DeWalt, and a chief author of that town’s resolution, which sparked interest by other towns in Vermont.
Julia DeWalt handed the first of the petitions, that of Newfane’s, to Hastert’s staff.
“It feels like my child's first steps,” Dan DeWalt told the Guardian, “simultaneously a huge event, and painfully reflective of the enormous distance yet to go.”
After meeting with Hastert’s staff, Tenney delivered copies of the resolutions to Rep. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, and Rep. John Conyers, D-MI, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, where an impeachment probe must originate in Congress.
Tenney said she paid those visits to ensure others in Congress knew of the Vermont towns’ intentions, and to keep them apprised of the process from here.
She hopes to enlist volunteers in the coming weeks to deliver copies of the resolutions to every member of Congress.
Messages left by the Guardian with the offices of Hastert, Conyers and Sanders were not immediately returned.
Tenney said no major media outlets covered the event at Hastert’s office, even though one news organization, Reuters, had said it would send a reporter and photographer.
“In some ways it might have been better to have waited until we had them all in hand, but I think it might be better to have them trickle in from all over the place instead of one big bang, and as the numbers get larger as more resolutions get passed, perhaps the press will start turning their heads,” said Tenney.
She added that she did not expect “wild” or “massive” press coverage. “But, this is the little people, this is the grassroots and going to Conyers office symbolized the coming together of the grassroots with the people on the inside,” she added.
Earlier this year during Town Meeting Day votes, Brookfield, Dummerston, Marlboro, Newfane, Putney and Brattleboro approved measures calling for Congress to begin impeachment proceedings against Bush. Not all were identical, but all were modeled after Newfane’s resolution.
Dan DeWalt said he has hopes of delivering the other Vermont resolutions later this month. Both he and Tenney are working with activists around the country to keep more resolutions coming.
In a separate statement (see below), Dan DeWalt called the petitions “our declaration of independence and battle of Bunker Hill. If the speaker of the House is on the run, let’s give him something to run from and keep a barrage of resolutions and declarations coming his way.”
On Sunday night, Tenney visited the Jefferson Memorial, ceremoniously laying the petitions at the feet of Thomas Jefferson. Many of those calling for Bush’s impeachment are using the Jefferson Manual of rules for the U.S. House of Representatives, which allows state and local governments to initiate impeachment proceedings by submitting charges to Congress.
Aside from these town-level resolutions, measures have been introduced in three state legislatures — California, Illinois and Vermont —calling on Congress to draft articles of impeachment against Pres. Bush.
In Vermont, Rep. Dave Zuckerman, P-Burlington, the lead sponsor of the measure, was joined by 23 of his colleagues, all Progressives and Democrats except for one independent. The bill was introduced on April 25. The bill is currently in the House Judiciary Committee.
Zuckerman’s resolution lays out a broad case for impeachment, ranging from wiretapping U.S. citizens to lying about reasons for going to war in Iraq. It is modeled, in part, after recent resolutions approved by county Democratic committees.
Vermont Democrats earlier this month sidestepped the Legislature in response to a grassroots effort among various county committees to get lawmakers to initiate such proceedings. All 13 county committees voted to support some form of impeachment resolution — eight supported calling on the Legislature to act, four counties voted for an impeachment resolution to go directly to Washington, and one voted to support the censure effort of Sen. Russ Feingold, D-WI.
In addition, a letter written by state Rep. Richard Marek, D-Newfane, which was signed by 56 members of the House and 13 members of the Senate, none of them Republicans, also asks the House Judiciary Committee to begin impeachment proceedings. That letter was sent to Hastert last month.
The members of Vermont’s congressional delegation, who are not enthusiastic about impeachment, support hearings that could lead to possible censure.
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