Iyow - in your own words

AlterNet has a great story on the recent calls to impeach Bush bubbling up from state legislatures. First Illinois, then California, now Vermont, and Wisconsin, New Mexico, Nevada and North Carolina considering following suit.

All of the resolutions mention deliberately misleading the nation into supporting war with Iraq, torture, and illegal spying. California’s and Illinois’s proposals also cite Plamegate, while Vermont focuses on illegal spying of U.S. citizens.

Do the state legislatures have a better bead on what the American public thinks and wants? The above Alternet article compares two separate polls to say that 32% approve of the job President Bush is doing, while 33% want to impeach him. A recent – and more uniform – Zogby poll puts those numbers at a polarized 43 and 42 percent, respectively, with the latter only supporting impeachment with the caveat “if it is found that President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq.”

From the it-pays-to-do-your-homework category, trailblazing Illinois Assemblywoman Karen Yarbrough had stumbled across a little-known and never-utilized rule in Jefferson’s Manual. Quickly becoming known as “Jefferson’s Revenge,” the rule states that one way of initiating impeachment “is by charges transmitted from the legislature of a State.” The manual was written in 1801 by Thomas Jefferson, and the U.S. House of Reps uses it as a supplementary rulebook.

But AlterNet gives credit for the initiative to the blog-o-sphere: Blogger arbortender of Daily Kos unearthed the rule on Jan. 24 this year, while Yarbrough and California Assemblyman Paul Koretz just last week introduced the proposals to their respective legislatures. Linked here is the impeachment language for the CA Assembly Joint Resolution.