The Watch, Douglas McDaniel — Forget whether the administration of President George W. Bush is spinning, reading, interpreting or not interpreting the intelligence on whether Iran is developing nuclear arms as the nation debates the possibility of expanding military operations in the Middle East.
There is a more local opportunity to consider and debate: Are the San Miguel County Commissioners drifting toward another controversy by way of adopting a resolution calling for the impeachment of Bush, considering what occurred when the Telluride Town Council passed a similar resolution this past summer? Perhaps mindful of the last contretemps, San Miguel County Commissioner Art Goodtimes is calling for a series of discussions in Telluride and Norwood before the elected consider any action.
He said during Wednesday’s commissioners meeting that he would like to pursue the impeachment resolution due to the apparent lack of effective “protest to blunt this administrations push toward war” with Iran.
“I know it’s not our purview, but I would like us to take a solid look at what’s being claimed or alleged,” Goodtimes said. “With the impeachment process as a countervailing process, I don’t know of any other way to engage” in the national debate about the Bush administration or going to war with Iran.
“We need to bring this to light, to be open and talk about it “¦ to make the community aware.”
It wasn’t as if the county commissioners weren’t also attending the county business, too, this week. In typical rapid-fire discussions, commissioners Goodtimes, Elaine Fischer and Joan May had already adopted the 2008 budget for the county, a total of more than $21 million, but a 6.3 percent decrease from the current year; approved advanced life support permits and ambulance support items for fire protection districts for both Telluride and Norwood; and cleared the way for a locally based airline pilot to try his hand at ranching near Norwood.
But it was also save the world day in the commissioners’ chambers in the Miramonte building, with the board voting unanimously to support a United Nations declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples of the planet; another resolution concerning the “remembrance of the Armenian genocide,” which occurred from 1915 to 1918 at the direction Turkish Ottoman Empire (which no longer exists); and sent letters of support for the “International Day of Action to Shut Down” the Guantanamo prison on Jan. 11, 2008; and approved a letter of “strongly” opposing S.B. 1959, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, which states: “The Act would establish a congressional commission to decide if any individual, even one advocating “˜social change,’ is a “˜homegrown terrorist.’
“If this bill is passed,” the letter to U.S. Rep. John T. Salazar, D-Colo., states, “it empowers this new commission to declare someone who writes and or speaks on behalf of an “˜extremist belief system’ a terrorist, resulting in the stripping of U.S. citizenship, making them subject to torture, and/or execution, with no habeas corpus rights, no ability to challenge even in the U.S. Supreme Court.”
It ends, pleading, “Please help defeat this next step in turning our once-free land into a police state. Thomas Jefferson would have been deemed a terrorist, under this act, for writing these words: What country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.’ “
Regarding the commissioners’ thought to impeach Bush, there was nothing actually written down or official to vote on, just yet. But Telluride Town Councilman Thom Carnevale, who wrote last summer’s impeachment petition, passed by the Telluride Town Council to great fanfare and national hubbub ““ both for and against, by e-mail, by blogland, and elsewhere, with threats to either cancel their plans to visit Telluride or make new plans to visit ““ also popped into the commissioners’ meeting to lend his support.
“It’s the right thing to do,” he said. “But don’t delay too long.”
This was because of the “war fervor” building toward war with Iran, he said.
But all three commissioners were in favor of having a county-wide debate beforehand.
“A discussion locally should occur,” Goodtimes said.
Said Fischer, in consideration of the criticism the town received when it supported its own impeach Bush/Cheney resolution, “One of the problems was that people didn’t understand what” the town’s position was, she said. That referred to the fact that the town council had no choice but to approve the impeachment resolution, or, if it did not, send it to a vote in the upcoming November elections in Telluride.
Regarding the county’s position on the idea, County Attorney Steve Zwick said, “Let the people who want us to consider this make their case, and the people who don’t want to consider this to make their case.”
Goodtimes said meetings, which so far haven’t been scheduled, should take place on both ends of the county. And, in consideration of a recent rancorous event about a proposed Wilderness Area Plan for Naturita Canyon, part of a larger proposal to add 58,000 acres of wilderness in San Miguel County to be part of a bill being prepared for introduction in Congress this month, Goodtimes recommended the meeting in Norwood take place during the day.
“Having a meeting like that after the cocktail hour is not a good idea,” he said.
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