Working title: Constitution Summer
Published as "Ex-hometown takes civic responsibilities seriously"
Huntsville Times, July 30, 2006
Huntsville, Alabama
After eight summers in Vermont, I celebrated July 4th in Alabama this year. We
drank muscadine wine, expressing ourselves freely on a wide range of topics. We
collaborated on glittery collages and sang out loud uninhibitedly. As lightning
bugs blinked outside, our host demonstrated his annual science project, a
pickle glowing with electricity.
We also read and signed the Declaration of Independence and the U. S. Constitution, pledging our sacred honor to uphold the principles they contained.
Though we date our nation’s birth from the signing of the Declaration, the Constitution is the “supreme law of the land.” It defines United States government.
From the President on down, public servants take oaths to protect the Constitution.
If those promises are broken, the Constitution tells us what to do about it.
At this freewheeling party, the conversation eventually turned to impeachment-- the remedy outlined in the Constitution when certain government officials abuse their power.
I admit I was surprised to hear this discussion on my first Independence Day
back in Alabama. Alabama is a red state. In my old neighborhood in Vermont, impeachment has been a topic of conversation all year.
In a Vermont town meeting, each citizen functions as a legislator at the town level. People take that responsibility seriously.
When Dan DeWalt, a citizen of Newfane, Vermont studied the Constitution and
applied its rules to current events, it seemed to him that President Bush had
committed impeachable offenses. He talked it over with his friends and
neighbors.
It seemed to Dan that the President had violated the 4th Amendment and the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by spying without warrants on U.S.
citizens. He also seemed to have defied laws against torture, subverted
the Constitution’s separation of powers, and lied to Congress to start a war.
To Dan it appeared that the President had not honored his oath.
These allegations may seem outrageous to you, but the Center for Constitutional
Rights takes them seriously. So do the organizers of “Constitution Summer,” a non-
partisan student-led movement to raise awareness of Constitutional issues. The Constitution would require an investigation to establish the facts.
I lived and worked in Newfane, a village without a stoplight. Historic
buildings painted white are nestled in a pastoral landscape where fields and
farms converge. The people of Newfane are practical, every day folks who make
decisions locally. Safeguarding their constitutional rights is part of minding
their own business.
At town meeting, Dan presented his case to his fellow citizens. Gathered in
the old town hall with a pot bellied woodstove in the corner, the people of
Newfane passed a resolution to recommend impeachment proceedings. The
resolution rang like a condensed version of the colonists’ grievances against
King George.
If someone from Alabama were to explain to a lifelong Vermonter that our whole
state votes on questions that affect just one little town, they might not even
believe us. Vermont has not had to go through what Alabama has endured, having
our state constitution rewritten repeatedly in order to divert power away from
the people. Home rule, so elusive in Alabama, is a normal fact of local
democracy in Vermont.
Citizens of Alabama and Vermont have different relationships to their state
governments because our state constitutions differ. But under the U.S.
Constitution, we all have the same basic rights. The Constitution was
created to preserve those rights.
The citizens of Newfane could not initiate impeachment all by themselves. They
had to ask their delegate to the House of Representatives to do it. Their
Representative declined.
Still, Newfane has raised some questions.
Huntsville’s Janie DeNeefe is a Times community columnist for 2006.
"Let Facts be submitted to a candid World." (Declaration of Independence)