ANd from TIME mag, discussing the Berkeley resolution:

Posted Friday, Jun. 30, 2006
Many people may scoff at the decision earlier this week by the Berkeley City Council to put a resolution on the Nov. 7 ballot calling for President Bush and Vice President Cheney to be impeached. After all, 74,000 voters of what is often referred to as The People's Republic of Berkeley can't legally oust the President and Vice President. But Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates thinks his city is simply ahead of its time, as it has often proved to be in the past.

"Things happen in Berkeley that are seen as being quirky," Bates tells TIME. "But what we know is, those ideas that percolate in Berkeley today end up being conventional wisdom in the rest of the country tomorrow." Berkeley, after all, was the first city to start curbside recycling, ban Styrofoam and desegregate its public schools without a court order. Berkeley also took the lead in calling for municipalities to divest from South Africa during the Apartheid era.

Indeed, while Berkeley may be the first city to put an impeachment resolution to its people, numerous city and town councils have already passed such resolutions, including San Francisco, Santa Cruz, and Chapel Hill, N.C. State legislatures in Vermont, California and Illinois all have impeachment resolutions pending. To help raise awareness of the issue, there will be a series of teach-ins across the country this summer and fall, and a new film, "How to Impeach a President," will be screened — all part of the burgeoning impeachment effort called "Constitution Summer," led by a non-partisan coalition of students from the country's top law schools and universities.

"The President and Vice President are trampling on the Constitution," Bates says, summing up the city's collective view of the current Administration. "They're spying on people without warrants. They're arresting people and holding them without the opportunity to a trial. They're participating in a war where they basically lied to the Congress."

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