Brattleboro & Marlboro Town Meetings Call For
Arrest of U.S. President Bush & Vice President Cheney

CT News Staff Writer

Catamount Tavern News Service, Brattleboro, Vermont, March 4th, 2008 –On Town Meeting Day the people of Brattleboro & Marlboro voted to issue an arrest order for US President George W. Bush, and Vice President Dick Cheney for crimes against the Constitution. Brattleboro, a town of 13,000 populated by blue color workers, hippies, and hard drinkers (imagine Montpelier & Barre smashed together in a particle accelerator), voted 2017 for & 1795 against the resolution. In Marlboro, itself a small, wooded, left-leaning town in the hills of southern Vermont, the resolution was carried by an overwhelming vote on the floor of the Town Hall.

This historic resolution calls for the immediate arrest of these persons if an when they step foot of town soil, as well as requests other states or municipalities to honor this order and apprehend & extradite these persons to Vermont to face justice. According to state and government officials, there is no legal precedent for towns to order arrest warrants without a judge’s approval. Therefore, these same officials contend that the carrying out of the resolutions are unlikely. However, many Brattleboro residents point out that there was also no pre-established legal precedent for the Republic of Vermont to declaring independence from the Royal New York Colony, nor for the actions taken by Americans during The Revolution. The only justification for these extra-legal upheavals were the democratic will of the people, yet both of these historical events have come to be recognized as necessary political facts. And again, on what accepted legal code did Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys act upon when, in 1770, they tarred and feathered the appointed Yorker sheriff in Bennington? What official precedent did they follow when they proceeded to run this sheriff up the flagpole outside the Catamount Tavern?

One possible means for the resolution to be carried out, however unlikely, would be for Bush or Cheney to enter Vermont territory, and for them to be apprehended by one of the elected Town Constables. Vermont Constables, unlike State Troopers, Sheriffs, or organized town police departments, are answerable directly to the people, and, according to Vermont law, posses the authority to arrest persons for “treason.” However, before Vermonters break out the old tar and feathers, it must be recognized that it is very unlikely that either Bush or Cheney will come to Vermont. Vermont, a state which is overwhelmingly opposed to the war in Iraq & where the current rightist administration in Washington is extremely unpopular, is the only state in the union which has not been visited by Bush during his two terms as President.

The passage of the resolutions have been met with popular support across the Green Mountains, with only a minority of Vermonters arguing that resolutions of this nature are not directly related to town business, and therefore have no place on a Town Meeting agenda. With this being said, the fact remains that our town residents, and therefore our towns, are directly impacted by the failed right-wing policies of the Federal Government. As long as the Bush administration spearheads the attempts to roll back our liberties as defined in the Bill of Rights, the US Constitution, the Vermont Constitution, and elsewhere; as long as Vermonters are dying in an unjust war we oppose at 6 times the national average; as long as the federal government acts as an obstruction to the further expansion of our democratic-social system, then it is not only the right of our Town Meetings to express our opposition, but it is also our moral obligation to see that they do so. Any less would imply that Vermonters would rather live quietly on their knees, than on our feet, and we are not those kind of people.

CT