Last Sunday and Monday a collective of activists, journalists, retired government officials and theater makers gathered at The Culture Project to begin mock impeachment proceedings against President Bush. The “trial by theater” arose in part out of frustration with Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi’s pledge to leave impeachment “off the table” when her party seized the House majority. The month long series, called A Question of Impeachment, is intended to spark debate and, participants hope, inspire more robust calls for impeachment from the grassroots.

Monday night’s event, which was videotaped and posted online here, featured New Yorker writer Hendrick Hertzberg, former Harper’s editor Lewis Lapham, theater artist Rinde Ekert and others. Go check out the segment with Ray McGovern, a retired CA analyst and Soviet expert, who “testifies” against the administration. McGovern chaired the National Intelligence Estimate for many years and produced the President’s Daily Brief under Nixon, Ford and Reagan. The morning PDB is a one-page breakdown of the most urgent recent intelligence gathered by the C.I.A.; one such PDB was famously shrugged off by Bush in August 2001 – it was titled "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the U.S."



A Question of Impeachment continues Monday night at 7pm; on Sunday December 9th Vanessa, Lynn, and Corin Redgrave will participate in a reading of Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak, a collection of poems written by detainees at Guantanamo Bay. See the full schedule here. And the official guest blog for the event, Parabasis, is a great place to continue the debate.

