A Town With Gumption

Brattleboro, Vermont - Send an e-mail to Brattleboro, Vermont, the little town that has more guts than all our elected officials in Washington D.C. put together.

A citizen of Brattleboro, VT submitted the following petition: "Shall the Select board instruct the Town Attorney to draft indictments against President Bush and Vice President Cheney for crimes against our Constitution, and publish said indictments for consideration by other authorities and shall it be the law of the Town of Brattleboro that the Brattleboro Police, pursuant to the above-mentioned indictments, arrest and detain George Bush and Richard Cheney in Brattleboro if they are not duly impeached, and prosecute or extradite them to other authorities that may reasonably contend to prosecute them?"

The town's Select board voted 3-2 to allow the petition to go to ballot as the petition had greater than the required 5% of residents' signatures. Voting will be on March 4th. While the measure is purely symbolic and would have no legal force in that the town attorney has no authority to write the indictment and the police have no authority to arrest Bush or Cheney, news on the Internet prompted angry outsiders to e-mail the town. Some of the e-mails suggested the town as a target for terrorism and that elected officials should be harmed, with one e-mailer hoping they be kidnapped and beheaded. Some Brattelboro elected officials are feeling threatened and the local sheriff's office has had to divert time and resources, concerned about the safety of the town.

Let's counterbalance the outsider angriness with some outsider praise. Send an e-mail and say "You go, Brattleboro!"

Written for Assimilated Press by pinko