Vermont Town Votes to Impeach President

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 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 was approved, 121 to 29, in balloting by paper. It calls on Vermont’s lone member of the House, independent Rep. Bernard Sanders, to file articles of impeachment against Bush, alleging that he misled the nation about Iraq and engaged in illegal domestic spying.

Other cities nationwide have taken up resolutions calling for Bush’s impeachment, notably San Francisco. The sentiment has rarely spread to rural America, but Vermont is known for bucking politics as usual.

At least four other Vermont towns -- Brookfield, Dummerston, Marlboro and Putney -- endorsed similar resolutions during Tuesday’s meetings.

Sanders said in a statement that although the Bush administration “has been a disaster for our country, and a number of actions that he has taken may very well not have been legal,” given the reality that the Republicans control the House and the Senate, “it would be impractical to talk about impeachment.”

Jim Barnett, chairman of the Vermont Republican Party, said Sanders should reject the resolution: “We should not be impeaching presidents just because we disagree with them.”