Posted on 08/12/2007 8:08:52 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
The Dane County Board could become one of the first county boards in the country to urge Congress to start impeachment proceedings against President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
The board is to consider its resolution next week and members on both sides predict it will pass. The board's Executive Committee voted Thursday night to endorse impeachment of both Bush and Cheney on the grounds that they violated the Constitution, the Geneva Convention and the courts in the war on terror and the war in Iraq.
The resolution passed on a 5-1 vote, with Supervisors Barbara Vedder, Scott McDonell, John Hendrick, Bob Salov and Mark Opitz voting in favor and Duane Gau against. Supervisors Donna Vogel and Dave Ripp abstained and Supervisors Dennis O 'Loughlin, Dave De Felice and Kyle Richmond were absent.
Vedder was the lead sponsor of the resolution, which was modified slightly by the committee to include support of U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison, who is a sponsor of House Resolution 333. Introduced by U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, the resolution would begin impeachment proceedings against Cheney.
Vedder said it's up to the people to get Congress to start moving toward impeachment.
"This is our democracy," she said. "We need to bring these guys to the table for the illegal and wrong things they've done."
Board Chair McDonell said the resolution will make for good debate at the next full board meeting Aug. 16, but he feels it will pass.
"It was important to include mention of Tammy Baldwin in it, because it'll be easier for supervisors to vote for it if it's in support of legislation already being called for," McDonell said.
O'Loughlin said the board will probably support the resolution but he called it "a waste of time."
"Congress is not biting its nails waiting for the Dane County Board's input on impeachment," O'Loughlin said. "We've got a lot of issues to deal with other than asking Congress to impeach."
If enough communities do it, Vedder said, it might convince Congress to act.
The Madison City Council has a similar resolution that it is scheduled to take up on Sept. 4.
"Communities across the country are doing this and 200 cities already have passed resolutions," Vedder said. "The people are way ahead of the politicians on this one."
The county's resolution says impeachment is called for because the administration deceived the American public on "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq, launched an illegal "war of aggression" against Iraq, used illegal wiretaps on American citizens without court orders and endorsed the torture of prisoners of war.
Vedder said impeachment needs to happen so future administrations don't follow the Bush-Cheney path.
"We need to save and preserve as much of our democracy as we can," she said.
The Aug. 16 County Board meeting begins at 7 p.m. in Room 201 of the City-County Building in downtown Madison.
Do you think President Bush just waived his Magic Wand and that was that? ROFLMAO!
What about the eight years of quotes we have from The Clinton Years, all saying that there WERE WoMD in Iraq and that Saddam HAD to go? Hmmm? Hmmm?
Quit wasting my county TAX DOLLARS with this stupidity and election-year STUNT! Fix the damn roads! Clean up our water supply. Clean up our weed-bogged lakes, which are a HUGE part of our tourist dollars going down the toilet. Fund more cops and firemen.
And then STFU!
You tell em, Diana.
Sheesh. You would think you lived in Cambridge, MA, Ithica, NY or Berkeley, CA.
Bush Derangement Syndrome => Mass Hysteria
Well said! And if the county has a tourist trade business perhaps those Board members should consider the backlash from potential loss of tourist dollars. Telluride, CO didn't consider this before their Council voted to support impeachment.
Same here, I need only to go about 6 miles from my uber-conservative township to Ann Arbor, the land of old Volvos, Kerry-Edwards & rainbow bumper stickers and more 'impeach Bush' signs than you could imagine.
Add Seattle to that list.
Hope their bridges are all in good shape!
I’m amazed at the Moonbat’s restraint.
Usually, when politicians know that their “proposals” or “bills” have no chance of getting enacted, they feel free to propose something really outrageous.
Given the libs in Dane, I’d thing that they’d try to pass a resolution that the entire Bush family be burned at the stake.
If it isn't going to happen in Vermont, it sure as shinola not gonna happen in Wisconsin!
County or not towns, sorry but you people in WI ain't got nothing on VT when it comes to moonbattery!
Simply amazing. Obviously the Moonbats in ‘The People’s Republik of Madistan’ are Vermonter-wanna-bees. ;)
It a travesty more conservatives and those of us who care about truth remain silent in the public forum.
Good. The more local governments spend on fruitless and pointless things like this, the less time they have to come up with new taxes and new spending.
“If enough communities do it, Vedder said, it might convince Congress to act.”
Wasn’t that the theory behind the Nuclear Free zone idea circa 1985?
Yup,that’ll work....
Wow..some trial in the Senate that would make..didn't know the geneva convention was a part of our constitution..must have slept thru that part of constitution class..
The Moonbats vote tonight! We Conservatives pretty much took down their phone and e-mail systems this afternoon with opposing calls and e-mails. Just for fun; they won’t listen to us, anyway.
Impeachment & Dane County
An editorial — 8/16/2007 10:19 am
The county of Dane was named for a revolutionary foe of executive privilege, a radical egalitarian who, as a young man, committed his good name and his bright prospects to the anti-colonial cause of those who would depose a king named George.
Nathan Dane was one of the youngest members of the Massachusetts legislature in the final years of the struggle for American independence. He then served in the Continental Congress, where his opposition to the ugliest abuses of an entrenched aristocracy led him to fight to bar slavery in the newly acquired Northwest Territory — an expanse that included the region that would become Wisconsin.
Dane’s theories on the rule of law were incorporated into the Constitution, which was written during the time of his service in the Continental Congress. In his later years, Dane would author an eight-volume series of commentaries on American law, which would be heralded as a definitional text for the new republic.
Because of this history, it is uniquely appropriate that the county named for Nathan Dane would issue a call for application of the Constitution ‘s essential tool for upholding the rule of law: the impeachment of errant members of the executive branch.
Tonight, the Dane County Board will consider such a call. Supervisors have proposed that the county pass a resolution urging Wisconsin’s representatives in Congress to hold President Bush, Vice President Cheney and members of their administration to account for disregarding the Constitution and the rule of law that Nathan Dane held so dear.
Dane County is not the first local or state unit of government to take up the issue of impeachment. Communities across the country, including more than three dozen Vermont town meetings and cities as big as Detroit, have asked their representatives to advance articles of impeachment against Bush, Cheney and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. And state legislative chambers across the country have debated the issue, in keeping with the intention of the founders that discussions of impeachment should engage the whole of the republic and take place at every level of government.
Members of Congress have begun to hear the call. Nineteen members of the House, including Madison’s Tammy Baldwin, are sponsoring articles of impeachment against Cheney. Twenty-eight members of the House, again including Baldwin, are sponsoring a proposal to have the Judiciary Committee open hearings on the impeachment of Gonzales.
Whether Bush, Cheney or Gonzales is impeached, the movement to hold them to account has benefited the republic. There is a lively discussion across America about the need to ensure not merely that members of this administration abide by their oaths to follow the dictates of the Constitution but that members of future administrations will respect the rule of law.
This is a process that would have heartened Nathan Dane. When Dane died at 82, he was so broadly respected as a member of the Continental Congresses, a contributor to the shaping of the Constitution and an author of the essential outline of early American law that James Doty urged the naming of what would become Wisconsin’s capital county for the lawyer and legislator. On Dane’s gravestone, the inscription reads: “His fame belongs to his country; Let the gratitude of future ages cherish it.”
The memory of Nathan Dane will be cherished tonight in appropriate fashion. In the county named for the old revolutionary who challenged a king named George, elected supervisors will entertain a resolution encouraging Congress to challenge a president named George. Those supervisors who value Nathan Dane’s legacy will honor it by endorsing this call for the restoration of the rule of law that Dane County’s namesake championed at the founding of the American experiment.
http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/editorial/205821
Simply delusional!
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