Maine Campaign to Impeach Bush Presses Case
In the genteel quarters of the Woodfords Club in Portland, where scenes of a quaint fishing village adorn the wallpaper, a grass-roots effort to impeach President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney was picking up steam.
“The real work begins today, and it has to hit absolute high gear in the next 40 days,” Gary Higgenbottom told nearly 200 people Saturday.
Higgenbottom is a founding member of maineimpeach.org, a five-month-old statewide organization also known as Maine Campaign to Impeach. Led by anti-war activists and the Maine Lawyers for Democracy, the group has been holding town hall-style meetings and circulating a petition calling on the state’s legislators and congressmen to act on impeachment.
With the state legislative session expected to wind to a close in the next month, the group plans to present the petition’s 11,000-plus signatures to State House leaders on May 29. They urged people at Saturday’s meeting to contact their legislators in anticipation of that event, and to turn out by the hundreds.
“I guess we recognize that this is probably going to go nowhere in this state if we don’t make it happen in the Legislature soon,” said Dud Hendrick, another founding member of maineimpeach.org. “I’m fearful and recognize that with every passing day, they are going to be less likely to do anything.”
Pessimism mingles freely with idealism in Maine’s impeachment movement. Activists acknowledge that others may find their efforts quixotic, what with 20 months left in the Bush administration and the fact that U.S. House leaders have said impeachment is off the table.
Neither of Maine’s U.S. representatives, Democrats Tom Allen and Mike Michaud, has spoken in favor of impeachment, and state legislators say it is a federal matter.
Unlike Vermont, where the state Senate and dozens of towns have voted in favor of impeachment, just one town in Maine — Deer Isle — has taken up the issue, to Hendrick’s knowledge. The measure failed, 359-336, he said.
Hendrick and other activists say say the White House’s offenses — warrantless wiretapping, manipulating information to lead the country into war, allowing torture of prisoners and detaining them for years without formal charges — are too egregious to ignore.
“It’s a moral issue, and I can’t keep quiet,” Ursula Slavick, a 69-year-old retired teacher from Portland, said Saturday.
The activists’ goal is to oust Bush and Cheney, but if forced to pick one, they’d rather see the vice president go. That’s why they are backing the articles of impeachment filed against Cheney by U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, the Ohio Democrat running for president.
Kucinich spoke Saturday, galvanizing the crowd by holding up a copy of the Constitution. “This is about reasserting the primacy of public control of governance,” he said.
By last week, however, just three co-sponsors had signed on to Kucinich’s bill. Allen said impeachment proceedings would distract from changing Bush’s policy in Iraq and restoring congressional oversight of the White House, a role he said was destroyed when the GOP controlled Congress. He disagreed with activists’ claims that the war would end only if Bush were out of office.
“By the fall, there will be many Republicans who today are opposed to a deadline for our combat role in Iraq who will become converts,” Allen said.
There are signs that impeachment efforts are having a ripple effect. Last week, the Detroit City Council passed a resolution calling for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney, identical to one passed in San Francisco.
David Swanson of impeachment group AfterDowning Street.org, said nearly 65 cities and towns nationwide have passed impeachment resolutions, and bills have been introduced in 10 state legislatures.
Such a resolution from the Maine Legislature is unlikely, said House Speaker Glenn Cummings, because it would strain relations between Democrats and Republicans. Cummings, who attended Saturday’s gathering, said he will be meeting today in Concord, N.H., with the Democratic House speakers from Vermont and New Hampshire to discuss how they as individuals can express their disapproval of Bush.
Peter Herrick, who at 36 was among the younger people in an overwhelmingly middle-aged crowd Saturday, said he hoped the numbers of people calling for Bush’s ouster will reach a critical mass.
“Whether this can happen realistically or not, it can drive discourse,” he said.
Staff Writer Josie Huang can be contacted at 791-6364 or at:
jhuang@pressherald.com
Copyright © 2007, Blethen Maine Newspapers, Inc.
Go Maine! IMPEACH NOW!!
To everybody else…..
Call your members of Congress now toll free at 800-828-0498, 800-459-1887 or 800-614-2803 to tell them it’s time to IMPEACH CHENEY. Demand they support/co-sponsor HR 333, the Articles of Impeachment of Cheney introduced by Kucinich in April. This is not a partisan issue. This a moral and Constitutional issue about accountability and lawlessness. Call both the Dem’s and Repub’s in your state. Repeatedly!!
Then, vote in the National Cheney Impeachment Poll http://www.usalone.com/blogvoices.php?Cheney%20Impeachment%3F
Then vote in poll to impeach Bush at MoveOn.Org
http://impeachbush.tv/index.html
Then, e-mail Pelosi (AmericanVoices@mail.house.gov ) to put impeachment BACK ON THE TABLE!!! Better yet, call her office at one of the above toll free numbers.
And make those calls EVERY week. If we ALL keep up the pressure, our raised voices will eventually be heard even by the deaf ears.
The only real American patriots are those working for impeachment of the criminals Bu$h and Cheney.
YES - please call your politicians - ONCE A WEEK telling them to IMPEACH the war criminals in the white house NOW. We really need to bug them on this til they do it.
Here’s another petition - that has more than 800,000 on it:
http://www.impeachbush.org
NANCY PELOSI
(202) 225-4965
Ask every politician who says Impeachment is “off the table” just what sort of Blackmail evidence Karl Rove has on them!
Although I recognize the necessity to ‘preach to the choir’ also, in addition to letting people know you are in favor of impeachment (on liberal/Democrat/progressive blog sites), doesn’t it make more sense to post your feelings (and links) on right wing sites? Many of the people on those sites are brain dead, brainwashed, propagandized by a complicit MSM, or just fearful lemmings following the herd. What they need to see is that the concept of a Cheney/Bush impeachment is not really that radical and conforms with the wishes of the majority of Americans.
From dozens/hundreds/perhaps even thousands of posts I’ve read on this site it looks like we are pretty much in agreement this administration must go. Now let’s take the fight to the places Neo-cons & Republicans feel safe, and through our ‘values & facts’ bring them (or some anyway) toward a paridigm shift toward getting their minds straight. This might seem like a mission impossible, but it seems definitively more proactive than pissing & moaning among ourselves. Make sense?
Don’t expect it to be easy because Republicans (and especially Neo-Cons) have brought lewd & vile defensive measures, and sliming the messenger, to a high/low art form. Use your head and don’t fall into the trap regardless how vulgar they might get. Also try to remember something I heard many years ago and have found very truthful (paraphrased), “Those who use profanity the least are those who’s opinions are respected the most.”
I don’t see how an impeachment could be sucessful, all the two have to do is plead insanity; case closed.
It is important to be sure that Cheney is convicted before Bush since he would be even worse as president than Bush. At this point, I see impeachment as merely a method of distracting them from doing more harm, e.g., attacking Iran.
However, practically speaking, even if they are convicted, they will justleave office, free to enjoy the economic benefits from their administration. I think a class action suit should be brought against them, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz to repay the government for the cost of the war and to be subject to damages for the personal injuries to the dead U.S. and Iraqi citizens and their families.
Furthermore, criminal action should also be considered.
PaulMagillSmith: Going to the right-wing sites is going to be so nearly fruitless as to not be worth it. However, going to NEUTRAL sites, like technical sites (slashdot, digg, whatever), myspace pages, and (my personal favorite) IRC (that’s live chat for you http only folk)
Try to keep what you’re talking about relevant to the topic being discussed on the board and DON’T BACK DOWN. If you come up against someone who can talk a good game, come here and ask for help. There are many regular readers here who I am sure would be willing to help sway the opinion of the yet-unopinionated amongst the people watching your debate.
Heh, I betcha some of regulars here would be more than happy to stuff so many facts down a right wingers throat that they leave the board for redder pastures. And really, we are not at all short on facts for ammunition, but we all know that.
tonkatsu, as a pessimist myself I think you are right. Its hard for and politician to point a finger unless he muds his own face in this.
Impeachment is a great idea folks but the real problem is the government is not for the people anymore, it only for the big businesses. They control all the wobble heads in office. What biz is for impeachment of these clowns?
Impeach then who if not them all. I argue. By the people for the people…what people? Congressional sleepover/hearing?
If only one by one, we need to bring this country to its senses, the corrupt must go.
Impeach them all, I say. Trial will let the innocent shine to leadership. But, can we outsource the trials to the Hague? The GOP would get its NWO. Then can we protect ourselves, you might ask? Would we need to?
To win as people, we must revolt, we must change their laws, they are not ours.
We must beware, the military can be used against us. Private contractors only work for money and Big Business has lots, yours.