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April 17th, 2008 1:28 am
Impeachment bill taken off the table
Bush, Cheney were blasted in resolution
By Lauren R. Dorgan / Concord Monitor

New Hampshire legislators yesterday debated whether they should petition Congress to impeach President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney before sidelining the bill at the request of leaders of both parties.

The 227-95 vote to table the measure essentially kills it; resurrecting debate would take a two-thirds majority vote.

The petition's sponsor, Rep. Betty Hall, said she's always found impeachment "a scary idea." Back in 1973, Hall said, when the House debated calling for President Richard Nixon to resign and Republicans pushed for a "standing vote" on the matter, "only 22 stood up. I was not one of them. I have regretted that lack of courage ever since."

Although only nine months remain in Bush's term, Hall argued that impeachment proceedings are needed to lay plain the state of the government before a new president takes over. She said misrepresentations made before the Iraq war and the domestic warrantless wiretapping program are cause for impeachment.

"We are at this point because we have seen a constant string of lies and misrepresentation from our government. These lies have fooled our candidates, fooled our congressional leaders and fooled us. The results have been disastrous," said Hall, an 87-year-old Brookline Democrat.. "And it's become clear that Congress . . . is not going to get the truth we so desperately need. The truth about the war. The truth about domestic surveillance. The truth about torture." Dozens of people, many wearing pro-impeachment orange, filled the House gallery and noisily applauded for the impeachment speakers. Many of them had attended a rally keynoted by Daniel Ellsberg, an icon of Nixon impeachment proceedings, Monday night in Concord. The usual press gallery was joined by cameras from two community access stations.

As the proponents of impeachment debated, the Republican half of the hall nearly emptied, with only a couple of dozen lawmakers remaining. They filed back in time to hear Deputy Minority Leader David Hess make a point-by-point criticism of the case for impeachment.

"I submit to you that the body, the text, the allegations in this resolution are far, far, far from the specificity and the detail that you or I or anyone else would ask for in taking such action," said Hess, a Hooksett Republican. "Impeachment is not a tool of accountability. Impeachment is the instrument for removal from office - the most embarrassing, the most humiliating, the most damaging thing that we as a Legislature could do to an elected official."

Hess also questioned petition's power. The resolution's advocates had argued that action in New Hampshire could trigger proceedings, cited a line in the rulebook used by Congress that says impeachment can begin with "charges transmitted from the legislature of a State or territory."

"Is my memory correct that New Hampshire is a bicameral Legislature?" Hess asked. This resolution is only before the House, not the Senate.

In making the case to put aside the measure, Democratic leaders sidestepped questions about Bush's presidency. House Majority Floor Leader Dan Eaton made the motion to table the bill. Majority Leader Mary Jane Wallner of Concord spoke for it, calling the measure futile and citing the opposition of U.S. House leadership to taking up impeachment.

"I am not going to stand up here and argue whether the president was completely honest with the American people," said Kris Roberts, a Keene Democrat who chaired the committee that looked at the resolution. "That would be a total waste of time, because we hear what we want to hear. I would leave that to the cold realities of history."

But Roberts didn't entirely stay away from laying blame. He said that the fault for the unpopular war in Iraq doesn't fall on Bush alone.

"If Congress had done its job, the president would have had to ask for a declaration of war," he said. He cited public opinion polls finding heavy favor for the war before it began and concluded: "Members of Congress, hoping to get re-elected, abdicated their responsibility."

Hall argued that the impeachment isn't partisan, citing support from the Libertarian Party and quoting former congressman Mickey Edwards, an influential conservative who said on NHPR earlier this week that Bush had committed offenses worthy of impeachment. (Edwards added that he would oppose impeachment because it would be divisive.)

Of the 95 people who voted against tabling the measure, only four were Republicans, including Sanbornton's Bill Tobin and Manchester's Steve Vaillancourt.

After the vote, dejected activists filed down the stairs. Barbara Hilton said she planned to go to Portsmouth City Hall this week and change her registration from Democrat to independent.

"I'm very upset that it was tabled and that the person who spoke for it being tabled was the Democratic majority leader here," Hilton said. "We have worked for a year for this."

"Oh, fiddlesticks," interjected Monica Smith of Durham. "We've been working for more than three years."