New England — and the rest of the country — speaks out

A recent Washington Post article refers to parts of New England as the "impeachment belt":

HOLYOKE, Mass. — To drive through the mill towns and curling country roads here is to journey into New England's impeachment belt. Three of this state's 10 House members have called for the investigation and possible impeachment of President Bush. Thirty miles north, residents in four Vermont villages voted earlier this month at annual town meetings to buy more rock salt, approve school budgets, and impeach the president for lying about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction and for sanctioning torture.

Anyone who's read this blog much will know that I think that's just wonderful!

And it doesn't stop in New England; the article continues:

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted last month to urge Congress to impeach Bush, as have state Democratic parties, including those of New Mexico, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin. A Zogby International poll showed that 51 percent of respondents agreed that Bush should be impeached if he lied about Iraq, a far greater percentage than believed President Bill Clinton should be impeached during the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal.

Republicans are using the call for impeachment with their own spin, of course, saying that it's inappropriate — with the implication of its being impatriotic, or even treasonous — to want to impeach the president "with our nation at war". But they have set this war up in an odd way: the "War On Terror" is vague, a sound-bite, much as the "War On Drugs" and the "War On Crime" have been. Worse, by declaring us in a perpetual state of unwinnable war, the president has given himself free rein in many ways, and his supporters can always claim that we are at war, and that the president must be untouchable.

We must not allow this abuse, and, increasingly it seems, we are not. Statistics such as are in the WaPo article give me hope. We need actions, now, to back up the statistics. We need to show this administration, and the world, that we are not a dictatorship, and that we hold our leaders accountable for their actions and their excesses.

As Colleen Kucinski is quoted as saying in the article:

Would she support impeachment? Kucinski wags her head "yes" before the question is finished. "Without a doubt. This is far more serious than Clinton and Monica. This is about life and death. We're fighting a war on his say-so and it was all wrong."