While the Democrats in Congress twiddle their thumbs, people out in the states are taking business into their own hands. And things are getting a little uncomfortable for GOP governors.

When Vermont Governor Jim Douglas, a Republican with reasonably close ties to
President Bush, asked if there was any additional business to be considered at the town meeting he was running in Middlebury, Ellen McKay popped up and proposed the impeachment of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

The governor was not amused. As moderator of the annual meeting, he tried to suggest that the proposal to impeach — along with another proposal to withdraw U.S. troops from
Iraq — could not be voted on.

But McKay, a program coordinator at Middlebury College, pressed her case. And it soon became evident that the crowd at the annual meeting shared her desire to hold the president to account.

So Douglas backed down.

“It became clear that no one was going home until they had the chance to discuss the resolutions and vote on them,” explained David Rosenberg, a political science professor at Middlebury College. “And being a good politician, he allowed the vote to happen.”

By an overwhelming voice vote, Middlebury called for impeachment.

So it has gone this week at town meetings across Vermont, most of which were held Tuesday.

Late Tuesday night, there were confirmed reports that 36 towns had backed impeachment resolutions, and the number was expected to rise.

In one town, Putney, the vote for impeachment was unanimous.

In addition to Governor Douglas’s Middlebury, the town of Hartland, which is home to Congressman Peter Welch (news, bio, voting record), backed impeachment. So, too, did Jericho, the home of Gaye Symington, the speaker of the Vermont House of Representatives.

Organizers of the grassroots drive to get town meetings to back impeachment resolutions hope that the overwhelming support the initiative has received will convince Welch to introduce articles of impeachment against Bush and Cheney. That’s something the Democratic congressman is resisting, even though his predecessor, Bernie Sanders, signed on last year to a proposal by Michigan Congressman John Conyers (news, bio, voting record) to set up a House committee to look into impeachment.

The earth is moving under the feet of Congress. The people want this administration to pay for getting us into Iraq, spying on us without warrants, torturing us, kidnapping us, taking away our rights to counsel, taking away habeas corpus.

I say ‘us’ because Jose Padilla was one of us…a U.S. citizen, falsely accused (or at least never indicted) of conspiring to make a radiological bomb. Instead of providing Padilla with a lawyer and giving him a chance to talk to a judge, he was tortured and held without charge. If we allow this to happen to one U.S. citizen it can happen to more U.S. citizens.

The administration says that they only eavesdropped on conversations between al-Qaeda operatives abroad and people in the United States. That is a lie. The NSA has been sweeping up all internet communications without warrants and without discrimination and without oversight. If we allow this to happen, we will have no privacy left.

The good people of Vermont understand what is at stake and have wisely urged their representatives to introduce a bill to investigate possible impeachment. Their governor now knows what the people think. It’s time for the people all over this country, from Florida to New Mexico, to tell their representatives that we do not allow our leaders to manipulate intelligence to get us into a war of choice that turns into a total fiasco. We don’t allow illegal electronic surveillance. We don’t allow kidnapping. We do not tolerate torture. None of our citizens can be denied habeas corpus, except in times of ‘rebellion or invasion’. None of our citizens can be denied any of their rights that are spelled out in the Bill of Rights or in our treaty obligations.

Good for Vermont.