In a white-clapboard town hall, built circa 1832, voters gathered to conduct their community's business and to call for the impeachment of US President George W. Bush.
"In the US presently there are only a few places where citizens can act in this fashion and have a say in our nation," said select board member Dan DeWalt, who drafted the impeachment article that was placed on the warning -- or official agenda -- for the annual town meeting, a proud tradition in some northeastern US states.
"It absolutely affects us locally," Dewalt said on Tuesday. "It's our sons and daughters, our mothers and fathers, who are dying" in the war in Iraq.
The article, approved 121-29 in balloting by paper, calls on Vermont's lone member of the US House of Representatives, independent Representative Bernie Sanders, to file articles of impeachment against the president, alleging that Bush misled the US into the Iraq war and engaged in illegal domestic spying.
Other cities across the US have taken up resolutions calling for Bush's impeachment, notably San Francisco.
But the sentiment has rarely spread to rural America -- unless you're talking about Vermont, which is known for bucking politics as usual.
At least three other southern Vermont towns, which were spurred by publicity about Newfane's resolution, endorsed similar resolutions during Tuesday's meetings: Dummerston, Marlboro and Putney.
In Newfane, the impeachment item came at the end of a roughly four-hour meeting on Tuesday morning that was devoted mostly to the local affairs of the town of 1,600.
Among the other items discussed was whether the town should fix some of the 100-year-old sidewalks in the village.
RSS