Thursday, 4:30 PM
Vermont state senators call for impeachment of Bush
By Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff
Declaring that the Bush administration's actions in foreign and domestic affairs raise "serious questions of constitutionality," Vermont state senators today voted to call for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney in what is believed the first such vote by state lawmakers in the country.
Without debate, the Democratic-controlled Senate voted 16-9 in favor of the nonbinding resolution, which urges US Representative Peter Welch, a Democrat, to introduce a resolution in the House of Representatives to initiate impeachment proceedings.
Vermont's congressional delegation, which includes Welch and US Senators Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders, promptly rejected the call.
They issued a statement saying that the three shared the anger of many Vermonters with the Bush administration, "one of the worst and most destructive in American history."
But the delegation said that for the first time since Bush took office, Congress is investigating several of the administration's key actions ranging from the decision to invade Iraq to the recent firings of US attorneys.
"Before we talk about impeachment, it is imperative that these investigations be allowed to run their course, and we should then follow wherever the facts lead,'' said the statement.
In the Vermont Senate vote, 16 Democrats supported the resolution, and three Democrats joined six Republicans in opposing the question.
"There is no president and vice president of the United States, in my judgment, who have worked harder to earn impeachment hearings than these two,'' Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin, the architect of the vote, said later. "They lied about the war in Iraq. They lied about the weapons of mass destruction. They lied about Saddam's involvement in 9/11. And the list goes on and on.''
The toll of the war on rural Vermont has been particularly harsh. As of late February, the state had the highest per capita rate of Iraq war deaths, with 18 Vermont residents killed in a state with a population of 624,000.
