Bush - 1. Peoples Republic of Boulder - 0

Hey peeps - can I have a hearty BWA-HA-HA-HA for the Peoples Republic of Boulder? They've been "inundated with calls and emails" since news of their silliness hit the wires - "most of them negative"! Let's see Berkeley. Toledo. And now Boulder. Sweet.

A move to draft a Boulder City Council resolution supporting the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney likely won't get enough support to get off the ground Tuesday.

A canvass of the City Council shows there aren't likely to be the five votes required to draft, debate and eventually hold a vote on the measure as activists have requested.

City Councilman Macon Cowles last week told his colleagues that he plans to ask for a vote Tuesday on whether to move forward with an impeachment resolution. For the past several weeks, supporters of such a move have been speaking at City Council meetings and handing out "Impeach" pins.


Cowles said the activists deserve to know whether the council will act on their resolution. But Cowles said he won't support it, although he agrees with the sentiments it expresses.

"It's a straight-up impeachment resolution, much like Congress can and probably should have begun investigating several years ago," he said. "I am not interested in engaging in purely symbolic acts. ... We obviously lack the power to act on any of the constitutional violations of the current administration."

The activists said they had support from four of the nine members of the City Council to carry the resolution forward, but at least two of the four -- Cowles and Susan Osborne -- expressed reservations Thursday.

And other members have expressed outright opposition.

"This is not something I want us to spend time on," Mayor Shaun McGrath said.
Osborne said she's trying to reach out to the people supporting the impeachment resolution to see if they'd be amenable to re-framing the debate. It would make more sense, she said, to discuss a resolution outlining the impact of the war in Iraq on budgets of state and local governments.

"There's plenty that does bear on local government, and I'd like to focus on that," she said.

But supporters said they want the focus to stay on impeachment.

Bruce Robinson, (he's not afraid to toot his own horn, he's a Macon Cowles booster, he's Green! and he's a believer in Saturnalia) one of the effort's organizers, said the City Council doesn't have to conclude that Bush administration officials should actually be kicked out -- they're just asking local elected officials to endorse holding impeachment hearings.

"If the council wanted to do something to say that the Bush administration has really had a bad effect on our city and we don't like it, that's fine, but it's kind of a separate issue," Robinson said.

Nancy Sullo, (She's an artist! Muy preciosa!) another impeachment backer, agreed.

"It seems like they can choose to do it or they can choose not to do it," she said. "But to replace it with something different doesn't make sense."

Cowles and Osborne said they've been inundated with calls and e-mails from across the country -- many of them negative -- since news accounts of the impeachment proposal were published.

The proposal also reached the Republican National Committee in Washington, D.C. Paul Lindsay, a spokesman for the group, said he thinks the city would be better off staying local.

"Rather than pursue futile and unproductive partisan political measures, officials in Boulder would be better served by addressing the local needs that the city's residents elected them to accomplish," he said.