Wednesday/Today the New Hampshire House is scheduled to take up a resolution to impeach President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
Supporters insist the move is needed to keep the executive branch in check.
Critics say this is nothing more than hollow political posturing.
New Hampshire Public Radio’s Dan Gorenstein reports.
Several hundred people gathered in Concord Monday night to hear from state and national figures urging the New Hampshire House to pass the impeachment resolution.
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Impeachment song
The event was a celebration of resistance.
There was an actor who impersonated the revolutionary war hero Ethan Allen.
The headliner was a more contemporary hero of civil disobedience, Daniel Ellsberg, the Viet Nam ear whistler blower who leaked the Pentagon Papers.
Resolution sponsor Betty Hall underscored the seriousness of the moment.
She told the crowd that citizens have a duty to prod Congress to do its job and reign in the Bush Administration.
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:02...It is time for the people to raise our voices. HR 24 is a petition...It’s simply a petition asking Congress to begin.
Begin, she said, an investigation into whether the Bush Administration should be removed from office.
Hall and others at the event believe there is ample ground for impeachment.
That case isn’t just being made by people on the left.
Conservative Republican lawyer Bruce Fein- who served in the Regan Justice Department and pushed for President Bill Clinton’s impeachment says there is a long list of impeachable offenses.
2:12...establishing military commissions that combine judge, jury and prosecution of war crimes, without showing any need whatsoever. Holding US citizens as eney combatants on President’s say so alone. Kidnapping, torturing, in secret persons who President says are international terrorists without any judicial or political check.
But while some on the left and the right agree on impeachment, that doesn’t mean there is broad consensus.
Some constitutional scholars point out that an official can only be impeached if they commit treason, take a bribe or- and this is more vague- are guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors.
Georgetown law professor Susan Low Bloch agrees that the Bush Administration has pushed executive power beyond, perhaps, what any previous administration has done, but that still falls short of the threshold to impeach.
1:45 I think one could argue that what Bush and Cheney have done is to have administered the government badly, but that is not grounds for impeachment. That is grounds for not reelecting, for disapproving, for criticizing, but not removing an elected official before the end of the term.
Low Bloch says if someone believes the executive branch has over-reached than the most appropriate place to resolve that is in the courts.
One question that has dogged the New Hampshire House resolution is whether the measure has any practical effect.
Phil Burk, a national organizer supporting impeachment, has come across Section 603 of Jefferson’s Manual, a House rule book.
He says that manual has given people some hope.
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1:46 basically what it says is that impeachment can be initiated by charges from a state Legislature. Doesn’t mean that a state Legislature can force it, but in 1903, Florida passed a resolution and it resulted in the impeachment of a federal judge....so it’s happened before and it can happen again.
This week Democrats and Republicans- have dismissed the resolution saying even if it passed; it’s nothing more than a symbolic gesture.
What Congress will or won’t do, all depends on how New Hampshire House members vote.
Sfx: rally sound
Impeachment advocates invited lawmakers to attend the rally in Concord Monday.
Very few came.
Republican Representative Steve Valincourt, who supports the proposal, says frankly, odds of passage are poor.
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:30 just looking at the numbers....I think you have three Republicans here right now, I think that is the total number of Republicans you will get on this vote. So you need to get 75% of the Democrats.
An unlikely prospect, when no leading Democrats have said they support the resolution.
One Democratic lawmaker asked rhetorically with just a few months left before the Bush Administration leaves office, what’s the point?
Concord resident Warren Davis, who came out to the event, says he used to support the idea of impeachment.
1:38 the country is split enough. And I think we need to come together and coalesce, I think it would add fuel to a split. I think to go in a direction we want to go as a nation, we’ve got to come more together like in the old days when the left and right went out and had drinks after the vote and talked about things.
8:09 I would totally disagree with that.
That’s Vicky Williams, of Greenfield.
Williams says there’s never going to be a convenient time to impeach a president and vice-president.
She says Congress must act, not only to punish President Bush and Vice President Cheney, but to send a clear message to future presidents.
....What the nation needs is accountability. And know that someone is paying attention to what is going on...you are talking about the health of the Republic.
At the heart of the drive for impeachment is a deep concern over the balance of power in government.
Regardless of the appetite for impeachment, there is broad agreement that the Bush administration has raised the question of whether congress needs to curtail presidential power.
What is unclear is whether the people or congress want to tackle that question.
For NHPR News, I’m DG.
