Chapel Hill Group to Take on President Bush
By Philip Jones

Chapel Hill is known for political activism, and now a grass-roots group of citizens is taking aim at the president.

More than a hundred Triangle residents packed into Chapel Hill's Town Hall Tuesday night and listened as the “Raging Grannies” sang songs poking fun at the Bush administration.

But it soon became clear the issue at hand was no laughing matter.

"The only playbook the White House knows is the Rove counter-attack playbook,” said Chapel Hill lawyer Alan McSurely. “They don't know truth. This is a grim situation, and we need to organize to fight back."

McSurely heads the Grass Roots Impeachment Movement, or GRIM. The organization's goal is getting President Bush out of office.

GRIM's not alone. Eighteen Democratic Congress members, including North Carolina's David Price, sent a letter to the president Monday, asking him to appoint a special counsel to investigate the charges against him.

“I think it's a forceful letter,” Price said. “I think it is the most solid course, both in terms of the legal precedence, in terms of policy and in terms of the politics of the matter.”

McSurely said the president broke the law when he authorized a domestic wiretapping program and lied to Congress to get authority to invade Iraq. He said citizens have to act now.

"The torture issue is coming wide open. Certainly, the illegal wiretap is coming wide open,” McSurely said. “But nothing will happen unless the people begin organizing and doing something about it."