Cojones? What Cojones? I have found myself slightly torn over Peter May’s and Eric Buddington’s proposed City Council resolution calling on our Congressional delegation to impeach and remove President Bush from office. May and Buddington have a point – the President has admittedly broken the law regarding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act with impunity and continues to do so. One might think that Congress would have the courage to live up to their Constitutional duty to check and balance the executive branch. But no. The GOP congress is cowardly. And for that matter, so are the city councilors who have wavered about introducing May and Buddington’s resolution.

I do not agree with the wording of the resolution, nor do I find that it achieves anything more than tilting at windmills. However, it is a sincere attempt by residents of North Adams to access the levers of government from the ground up. Those councilors who say it is not the purview of a City Council to vote on such matters should simply abstain or vote against the resolution. But these citizens deserve to be heard by their elected officials. Sadly, that will not be the case.

So why have all the councilors shied away from introducing the resolution? Easy. They don’t want to make waves. The city and the mayor in particular hate bad publicity and anything that gums up the “friendly” nature of the current council. The mayor has gone out of his way to mention that when compared to councils of old, the current council sees things through the same prism as he does. Chris Tremblay actually was elected to the council last year because he challenged the sitting councilors as “bobble heads” who simply rubberstamp the mayor’s policies. Strangely Chris has not found much to argue about for the past year and seems quite chummy with those whom he used to oppose.

Sigh.

I guess that we can expect more of the same for the predictable future.

Billings will continue to be the blowhard pseudo intellectual dean of the council who likes to pretend that he is rough and rugged when in actuality he just lobs gratuitous and vile insults. Gail Ann Cariddi will remain a pleasant and affable president who smiles for the cameras. Tremblay will complain about traffic (actually the only real issue that he has done anything about). Alcombright will stick his fingers to the wind to figure how forcefully he should speak out. The others will remain virtually silent.

And North Adams government will do what it does best- maintain. (It does that fairly well) But it will not do anything dynamic or controversial. God forbid…..  ¶ 10:38 PM