Ogunquit News
Impeachment meeting held in Ogunquit
By Virginia L. Woodwell
Attorney John Kaminski, shown here at center, was one of two keynote speakers advocating the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney at a public forum held at the Dunaway Center on June 7. Kaminski chairs Maine Lawyers for Democracy, whose 70-plus members back a Bush/Cheney impeachment; he was joined by Deborah Gordon, shown here at left, representing the Maine Campaign to Impeach of York County. Also speaking and representing the Maine Campaign to Impeach was Steve Hrehovcik, shown here at right.Photo by Virginia Woodwell
OGUNQUIT - Maine advocates of the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney drew an audience of about 30 to a region-wide public meeting on that subject held at 7 p.m. on Thursday, June 7, at the Dunaway Center.
The event lasted just under three hours and began with two major speeches followed by an extended question-and-answer period that involved the speakers and almost all of the attendants.
First among the speakers was attorney John Kaminski, chairman of Maine Lawyers for Democracy (MLD), a group of 70-plus Maine lawyers who organized in 2005 amid concerns about what they termed "the deterioration in the health of our nation's democracy."
In April of 2006, Kaminski said, MLD issued a detailed position paper calling for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney. That paper led to the formation of an organization called the Maine Campaign to Impeach, whose chief vehicle is a website at http://www.maineimpeach.org/. Those developments led, in turn, to the presentation to the Maine state legislature on May 29 of the signatures of 11,223 Maine voters who are also now calling for impeachment. Since then, Kaminski said, 1,000 more signatures have been collected, and the number continues to grow.
Kaminski cited three "primary areas" in Bush Administration actions in which the MLD found grounds for impeachment as deceit in the lead-up to the war in Iraq, illegal domestic surveillance and illegal detention and torture.
The decision to invade Iraq, Kaminski said, was probably made as early as 2002, which he said is confirmed by information in what has come to be called the Downing Street Memo. As a result, Kaminiski said, "the American public was exposed to a very emotional, high-stakes, sales pitch" that included "politicized intelligence gathering," and "lying to us" as well as "lying to Congress."
Such action he termed "directly threatening to the Constitution, and directly threatening to the rule of law."
In addition, he said the United States' waging war in defiance of the terms of both the United Nations and the Nuremberg Charters, of which the U.S. is a signatory, is also illegal.
On the subject of domestic surveillance, Kaminski termed the scale of that "massive," with revelations about it continuing to unfold despite the fact that the secrecy in which it's enshrouded makes exposure difficult.
The problems with illegal detention and torture, Kaminski said, include suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and the indefinite holding of individuals without charge and without trial, plus the "rendering" of prisoners to other countries to have them face tortures worse than those administered by the U.S.
Answering a rhetorical question he posed himself, Kaminski stressed that it was important to hold Bush and Cheney accountable on these matters to avoid setting a precedent - to imply that, "if they get away with it," others, seeing themselves as "above the law," will, too.
To those who would argue that it's more important that we turn our attention now to ending the Iraq war, Kaminski said that he finds it "difficult to imagine the war ending while Bush is still in office," whereas a call to impeachment would "weaken him substantially politically" and thus serve as a critical first step toward ending the war.
To those who say to just wait the year-and-a-half until Bush leaves office, Kaminski said he responds, "Are we going to get a real election next time? ... When people do the right thing," Kaminski said, terming impeachment "right," "moral" and "just," "things always have a way of working out. ... Otherwise," he added, "they spiral downhill."
Kaminski concluded his talk by summarizing the procedural route to impeachment. A move to impeach may come from within Congress or from a state legislature. Once it's so launched, it goes to the House Judiciary Committee, which may hold hearings on it. Once it's reported out of committee, it goes to the House of Representatives for a decision by simple-majority vote. If that vote is yes, it then goes to the Senate where a two-thirds yes vote removes the accused from office.
"We and the Congress," Kaminski concluded, "have a moral duty to hold officers accountable when they breach our trust."
Deborah Gordon, of Topsham, a community coordinator for maineimpeach.org, then summarized the personal experience she'd had in adopting the impeachment cause and campaigning for it.
"It's not just my story any more," she said, describing the almost universal enthusiasm with which she said she has been met. "It's everybody's story."
Gordon was among those present when the signatures for impeachment were presented at Augusta in May, and she and Kaminski urged their listeners on Thursday to work to generate more, by starting conversations on the subject, penning letters to the editor, pressing the issue on Maine's U.S. Representatives Tom Allen and Mike Michaud, and petitioning Congressman John Conyers, current chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
On the question of fear, Gordon said, "I fear a mutilated constitution."
A first question from the audience concerned why Congressman Dennis Kucinich's bill to impeach - the only one thus far formally presented to Congress - named only Cheney. The answer, delivered by Herb Hoffman of Ogunquit, moderator of Thursday's meeting and a member of the Freedom Rousers of Southern Maine, which co-sponsored the evening along with maineimpeach.org, was that the choice was strategic. If Cheney should be impeached and removed from office, Bush would then be required to appoint a vice president who would then have to be approved by a majority of both houses of Congress. Such an appointee would then be in a position to assume the presidency following the presumed impeachment of Bush himself.
Other observations from the audience included the following points.
"Mutilation of the Constitution is only one part of this," said one observer. "What comes afterward is the loss of democracy" as a result of economic realities, and the speaker cited oil interests as dominating in Iraq and, in this country, "one percent of the extremely wealthy controlling everything."
There is, said another, "a growing roar" of disaffection over the Bush Administration, "but it's not about accountability in any simple way, it's about incompetence ... The movement needs somehow to connect with that."
"There is a climate of fear in which people are afraid to speak out," said a woman who described herself as a teacher whose principal had ordered her not to talk in school about these issues. "It reminds me of the Third Reich."
The "political circus" surrounding the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, said another, "gave impeachment a bad name," making many, including himself, reluctant to "go through it all again. ... As much," he added, "as it needs to be done."
Kaminski responded to this by saying that impeachment was abused as a tool against Clinton but that should not "immunize" Bush.
"Each of us must understand how it effects me," said one attendee who claimed that the deadening societal patterns forecast in George Orwell's novel 1984 are now a reality. "We have lost our desire to be informed."
Responding to such negations, Steve Hrehovcik of Kennebunk, an active member of maineimpeach.org, urged listeners to "Call two or three people, and when you hear, ‘What a great idea!' you'll be encouraged. ... In the American Revolution, only a third of the people wanted it," he continued, "while a third remained loyal to the king and the other third couldn't have cared less."
So, he concluded, "We don't need everybody. We just need enough."
Editor's note: The Freedom Rousers of Southern Maine is a small group of informally-organized private citizens who have been meeting monthly since 2002 to share concerns about the erosion of civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution. Virginia Woodwell is a member of the organization.
