Democracy for Vancouver

Common Dreams has an article about the meeting in Olympia last week attended by 850 or so Washingtonians clamoring for the initiation of impeachment proceedings against Bush and Cheney.

Here are the highlights:

The biggest laugh came when I pointed out that failing to impeach Bush over the signing statements issue would mean that the next president’¹perhaps Hillary’¹would be able to cite Bush as a precedent and also ignore Congress. ³That,² I said, ³should put the fear of god into Republicans.

De la Vega, a veteran federal prosecutor…laid out the case that the Bush administration has in essence been a criminal syndicate defrauding the American public on a scale far worse than Enron.

It seems likely that if Washington passed Oemig¹s bill (it currently has eight co-sponsors), or if one of the ones moving through the legislatures of Vermont or New Mexico were to pass, the other states might follow suit. As well, representatives in Congress could feel emboldened to submit their own bills of impeachment.

In other words, the dam will burst, and impeachment will be underway.

In addition, Rachel Corrie’s parents, Lt. Ehren Watada and James Yee were in attendence.

A Senate Committee hearing is scheduled for March 1st, 3:30 p.m., in hearing room 2 of the Cherberg Bldg. There will be a peaceful rally for impeachment and investigations on the Capitol steps at 1:00 p.m. Please come to the rally and the hearing to support Senator Oemig’s resolution. Washblog has more info on this.

YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!

Please contact your WA State Senators to ask them to support SJM 8016. It is imperative that you continue to write to your Representatives to ask for a sponsor for a companion bill in the WA State House. Find contact information for Washington Legislators here: http://hdc.leg.wa.gov/rosters.asp

Please contact your legislators right away and ask them to cosponsor the resolution: http://apps.leg.wa.gov/DistrictFinder/Default.aspx