ConcordMonitor.com, SARAH LIEBOWITZ — The first time Rep. Betty Hall had the opportunity to vote in support of a presidential impeachment, she declined.
It was 1973 and Hall, only two years into what would become a lengthy legislative career, found herself surrounded by New Hampshire lawmakers debating a resolution urging the impeachment of then-President Richard Nixon. Opposition was overwhelming: The proposal garnered 11 votes, Hall said.
Thirty-five years after refusing to support the Nixon resolution, Hall, a Brookline Democrat who celebrated her 87th birthday yesterday, is leading the charge for a different impeachment proposal. In a resolution urging Congress to begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney – which is scheduled for a House vote this week – Hall outlines her case, arguing that Bush and Cheney
violated international treaties “by invading Iraq without just cause or provocation” and that they misled Congress to gain authorization for the war.
The resolution, Hall said earlier this week, is “probably the most serious effort I’ve been engaged in in my long period of service.” In addition to condemning Bush and Cheney’s behavior in the run-up to the war, the resolution cites the detentions of “enemy combatants” at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; warrantless wiretapping; and the “pattern and practice of threatening litigation” against those who refuse to install voting machines “that require votes to be counted in trade secrecy.”
“We don’t know the truth,” Hall said. “Impeachment is about finding the truth.”
Just as the Nixon resolution inspired detractors, Hall’s proposal has outspoken opponents.
“I have never seen a document more vitriolic and more inflammatory,” Rep. David Hess, a Hooksett Republican, testified at a public hearing last month. The resolution won minimal support from the legislative committee charged with studying it: A majority of that committee recommended the full House reject the proposal.
But Hall, colleagues and relatives say, has never been one to wither in the face of opposition.
“Betty Hall is the right one to do it because when Betty Hall gets something in her head and wants to do it, she doesn’t back down because maybe it’s unpopular,” said Rep. Liz Hager, a Concord Republican. “She is certainly tenacious.”
In Brookline, where Hall has lived for decades, her support for the resolution likely isn’t turning many heads, said Peter Webb, the town moderator and Hall’s longtime neighbor. “Betty’s always been a freethinker and one who stood up for her principles,” he said.
“She’s an extraordinary mix of determination, independence, intelligence and grace,” said Webb, who recalled Hall welcoming his family to Brookline nearly three decades ago.
Experience with conflict
Hall’s life has been punctuated by military conflicts.
She was born in an American military hospital in Germany, the daughter of a U.S. Army officer who served as the administrator of a military district in that country in the wake of World War I. Although they moved back to the United States when Hall was an infant, her family remained close to friends in Germany.
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