Maine Democrats take aim at Bush

[MaineDem]

AUGUSTA — The Maine Democratic Party is calling for a congressional investigation into allegations that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney committed "high crimes and misdemeanors" and urging Congress "to initiate impeachment proceedings against them" if warranted. The move came Saturday when the biennial Democratic State Convention, at the close of a two-day meeting at the Augusta Civic Center, approved a resolution urging the Legislature and Maine's congressional delegation to demand an investigation of Bush and Cheney by the U.S. House of Representatives.

The vote, which had been awaited since the start of the convention Friday, was somewhat anticlimactic because it came so late in the convention that a few hundred delegates had already left. Workers were removing campaign signs from the hall when the resolution passed on a voice vote.

The discussion preceding the vote focused on how the resolution should be worded, not on the merits of impeachment. The resolution accuses the Bush administration of withholding information during the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, allowing the torture of detainees and illegally "spying on Americans," among other allegations.

...

Shortly before the vote, Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, the convention's keynote speaker, reiterated his push to have Congress censure, rather than impeach, Bush for the warrantless surveillance of Americans. He said Democrats must express bold ideas boldly to win broad public support, and he called for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq by the end of the year.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/state/060604convention.shtml

The call for investigation and possible impeachment were not made part of the platform. Both that issue and also censure were made as resolutions of the convention.

[Davis_X_Machina]

1. Both censure and impeachment...

...were unanimously voted out of the platform committee as platform planks, as well, which surprised me -- there are a lot of party regulars who were dead-set against any impeachment talk, for the ususal pusilanimous reasons.

I am happy both resolutions were passed by the convention -- I was one of the 'ayes' -- but one or the other should have also been passed as a platform plank.

Still, half a loaf.

And Finegold was awesome.