Making Our Own Way

At the very moment that citizens' calls for impeachment are growing in number and in volume, our elected representatives are shrinking into their holes, plugging their ears and repeating out loud "I will not listen I will not listen".

The latest entrant into this hall of shame is Vermont Senate President pro-temp, Peter Shumlin. He grabbed the headlines last week by declaring himself to be in favor of impeachment as an obvious remedy to a lying and dangerous administration. However, he left himself an easy out by declaring that he would not interfere with the Vermont Democratic Speaker of the House, Gaye Symington who has squarely thrown herself in the protect Bush camp by denying Vermonters the right to have a debate on an impeachment resolution that is now in the House Judiciary committee. Now a Senate impeachment resolution has been introduced but Shumlin won't let it move forward. saying that there is not enough support for it in the statehouse and it wouldn't have any impact on the Congress. Here is a politician who shows every sign of thinking himself gubernatorial material, but he doesn't even have a fundamental sense of history.

There is no instant gratification when it comes to restoring democracy. Across the nation today, hundreds of efforts are being made to bring about impeachment. An impeachment resolution from a state legislature, or even a state Senate, would be an important catalyst that would draw attention to these diverse efforts, and it would lay the focus where it belongs, in the lap of the Congress.

In the meantime, impeachment fever has now spread down to the southern tip of New England. In Fairfield County Connecticut, an area represented in Congress by Republican Christopher Shays, several towns have organized impeachment committees. Citizens there, without the same town meeting forums that we have in northern New England, have to figure out how to best make their voices heard. It helps that in dozens of other towns organizing from the edge of Long Island Sound to the Canadian border, other voices are also calling for impeachment.

We look at each other in disbelief when our politicians act like cowards or fools. But we must return to the task of harmonizing and coordinating the voices for impeachment until they are so loud that they can no longer be ignored. The extreme urgency of our nation's position regarding Iraq and Iran had led many more Americans to volunteer to help impeach this regime. Unfortunately, it also indicates that we have a very short amount of time left to act. Will we be reduced to reacting with protests to Bush's next war, or will we have risen up in numbers large enough to have changed the direction of the government away from more war and folly?