Reasons I like Vermont #32
From the Huffington Post:
The events of the past week in the Vermont legislature mark the beginning of a sea change in American political power. This may sound a bit grandiose coming on the heels of a defeat of an impeachment resolution in the Vermont House, but is true nonetheless.
Less than two weeks ago, in spite of the votes of 40 Vermont towns, despite months of lobbying by many Vermonters, Vermont Speaker Gaye Symington and Senate President pro-temp Peter Shumlin declared in the most absolute of terms that any chance of action on impeachment this year was irretrievably gone.
The funny thing is that more and more Vermonters were seeing it the other way. Four days after the great final NO verdict, one hundred and thirty Vermonters welcomed themselves into the Senate Chamber, presented a cogent and urgent case to the leadership, and most certainly, knocked some serious political sense into them with our turnout of just plain folks.
Three days later, an impeachment resolution was drafted and passed by the Senate. Gaye Symington nevertheless refused to entertain any notion of a debate in the House.
Buoyed by the Senate action, almost 400 Vermonters came back to the state House just days after the Senate vote. The Speaker was obliged to give them the entire House chamber, where they filled the members’ seats and packed the galleries with many left standing. Ms Symington, who was not going to waste the peoples’ valuable time on impeachment, was about to spend most of a day on the subject.
She was treated to a question and answer period like that of the British Parliament when the opposition has at it with the Prime Minister. She heard passionate arguments from citizens who had never visited the statehouse before. Her reasons for opposition were exposed as political calculations that place the Democratic Party above the Constitution and that misread the threat of the Bush administration.
Read the whole article here.