A crowd flocked last evening to Town Hall for a sold-out forum entitled “Is there a case for impeachment?” The panel, sponsored by Harper’s magazine, was composed of those supporting impeachment proceedings and not a discussion among differing viewpoints.

“This is not a political rally nor is it an explicit call to action,” said publisher Rick MacArthur, “Our goal here is to attempt to educate.” He added, to audience laughter, “I didn’t say Harper’s was strictly neutral” on the topic.

The brooding specter of Richard Nixon hung over the evening, whose panelists included a former Nixon White House counsel, John Dean, and a former member of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee during Watergate, Elizabeth Holtzman. Another panelist, Michael Ratner, is president of The Center for Constitutional Rights, which has issued its own articles of impeachment: “warrantless surveillance, lying to Congress about Iraq, torturing prisoners, and subverting the Separation of Powers.”

In the cover story this month in Harper’s, editor Lewis Lapham says that Congressman John Conyers Jr.’s introduction on December 18 of House Resolution 635, calling for a select committee to investigate grounds for possible impeachment, had attracted “little or no attention in the press.” Last evening, Mr. Lapham said Mr. Bush had been acting with “executive tyranny” and asked how, if Congress did not impeach President Bush, it could retain its function and self-respect? Mr. Conyers said, “We must act now” and regarding domestic warrantless surveillance, declared, “No way and not much longer, Mr. President.” Mr. Ratner said, “We’re talking about moving from a republic to a tyranny” and “it’s getting too late.”

Ms. Holtzman, who wrote a cover story in the Nation in January, told the audience that the movement to impeach Nixon began not in Congress but when the American people said “enough is enough.” Mr. Conyers said such a mood is now coming “more and more from the people.”

But Nation magazine correspondent John Nichols has noted online that the “burgeoning movement for impeachment” has drawn wider attention after the San Francisco Board of Supervisors’s 7-3 voted last month in favor of impeachment. Two city councils, Arcata, Calif., and Santa Cruz, Calif., have passed such resolutions, while Newfane, Vt., and Chapel Hill, N.C., have resolutions pending, according to Impeachpac.org, which supports democrats who favor impeachment.

Garrison Keillor’s weighed in this Wednesday with a short piece on Salon.com entitled “Impeach Bush” and actor Richard Dreyfuss’s last month called for impeachment, while speaking before the National Press Club in Washington.

Paul Gigot, in “The Journal Editorial Report” referred to impeachment as “the I word” and said it sounded like Senator Boxer and others thought the issue of impeachment was “a political winner for them.” Mr. Nichols observed that the issue has exposed a “rift between top Democrats and grassroots party activists and elected officials around the country.”

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from California, responded at a public meeting in California, when constituents shouted “Impeach! Impeach!” by urging, “channel your energies into the 2006 elections.” Likewise, a former presidential candidate, George McGovern, declined to call for impeachment while speaking last month in Corte Madera, Calif.

Another former presidential candidate, Albert Gore Jr., said in January that Congress ought to conduct hearings regarding “serious allegations of criminal behavior on the part of the President.” Blogger Arianna Huffington has written that Mr. Bush “deserves” impeachment but calling for it is “a huge – and pointless – distraction.”

There is related activity on this matter closer to home. The Daily Record in New Jersey reported this week that Bush was being tried for “crimes against civilian populations” and “inhumane treatment of prisoners” as a class exercise at Parsippany High School.

There were slight differences of opinion last night at Town Hall: Mr. Dean thought the offences were coming more from the vice president, while Mr. Ratner thought the president thought the president most culpable.