Up here in Vermont we like to look down on the slack-jawed yokels who try to kick evolution out of the schools, cram the Ten Commandments down the kids' throats, or otherwise abuse their power by using the public schools for religious indoctrination.

Couldn't happen here, could it?

Well, the news today is that it is. In a story in today's Times Argus we read about Mel Downs, a parent in Irasburg whose daughter's teacher posts the Ten Commandments in his classroom, includes links to religious sites on his official school web page, and sends home materials like “Why Jesus Is Better Than Santa Claus”. 

Downs' daughter attends seventh grade at Irasburg Village School. She received the “Jesus” handout just before Christmas vacation, and Downs says it reflects a pattern of religious-themed material being taught by Wally Rogers, his daughter's language arts teacher.

When Downs' daughter began the school year in September, he said, the Ten Commandments were mounted to the classroom wall, Christian books filled the classroom bookshelf, and a school-funded Web page, used by the teacher, included links to Christian Web sites.

 The school says it's addressing the issue, although apparently it's been going on for years. I think it's important to really understand what's gonig on here. What the teacher does in his job is not just what the teacher is doing, it's what the government is doing. Thus, we shouldn't be talking just about what this teacher is doing, but why the government is indoctrinating children in one religious perspective. It's very clearly unconstitutional, and if it isn't immediately halted they need to be sued.

Montpelier

Margaret Lucenti Shares History of Civil Rights Activism

MONTPELIER, VT ? Margaret Lucenti, social and political activist and early chairperson of the Vermont Human Rights Commission, will share her stories of activism and civil rights in Vermont in a program presented by Vermont Historical Society.

Lucenti, who has continued a multi-generation family tradition of social and political activism, served as an early chairperson of the Vermont Human Rights Commission and strove to keep the commission functioning when it lacked any full-time staff support and had only the most minimal of financial resources. She has been active in the Democratic State Committee and an outspoken advocate of civil rights for all Vermonters.

The evening will begin with a ?meet the speaker? reception at 6:30 pm, after which Lucenti will be interviewed at 7:00 pm by Michael Sherman, Academic Dean at Burlington College. Audience members will hear Lucenti?s first-hand accounts of the challenges and successes of the early years of Vermont?s Human Rights Commission and civil rights activism of that period.

The January 21st program, which honors the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., will be held in the Snelling Room of the Vermont Historical Society Museum in the Pavilion Building at 109 State Street in Montpelier. For more information, contact Tess Taylor at Vermont Historical Society at tess.taylor@state.vt.us or 802.479.8505.

Cross-posted from Rational Resistance: 

 Okay, I know my postings have been a bit light lately. Especially the past few days, ever since I split my head open playing racquetball. (I was going after the ball, ran into the wall, and, like the song says, "I fought the wall and the wall won.") So eight stiches later I've been moving a little slowly lately, but getting back into it.  

Anyway, you probably know the latest from the Huckster. That's right, he's asking you to let him swear to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, but it's just that our Constitution doesn't sit right with him. Not biblical enough for him. So he wants to change it to make it all godly and stuff. Apparently his big problem with the other Republican candidates is that they don't want to "amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards".

I guess he doesn't like the fact that the only mention of religion in the original body of the constitution is the part where it says there can be no religious test for any public office, and the only mention of religion in the amendments is the part where it says we have freedom of religion, so if you think the biggest problem with our Constitution is that there isn't enough God in it, now you know who to vote for.  

But he's not the only religious wack job with these ideas. No sir! Our friend Charity has a page up that she's calling the Carnival of Principled Government. I'm not going to pick a fight with that. It's her page, she gets to call it whatever she wants.  But anyway, I want to mention one of the essays in this carnival, one about the enforcement of morality.

Here is the central passage of this paper: 1) A just government enforces God’s moral rules, including rules regarding personal/consensual abuse and immorality.  2) Individuals have a moral obligation to submit to such a government’s rules. To do otherwise is to go against multiple (and divine) moral obligations, including the obligation to submit to a just government.  3) Individuals are not in supreme control over themselves; they are subject to God and his laws. To this extent, government receives authority from both a Scriptural and natural law perspective to intervene in an individual’s decision if he is abrogating his own (or other consenting individual’s) natural rights, including his own pursuit of happiness.  

I have a couple of comments here, and I have to say that someone who takes a position like this is pretty scary, at least if he gets power in his hands. Lots of conservatives claim that they're in favor of limited government, but here we have someone who says that a just government has complete power over anything that anyone does that conflicts with god's plan for that person.

Of course, you would only make a claim like that if you also thought you knew what god's plan for you and other people is, so you can set yourself up to make those decisions. So if you're this guy, maybe you like Huckleberry's idea that we need to shoehorn god into the Constitution somehow. Then, we have god in the Constitution telling the government what to do, the government telling all of us what god wants us to do, and as long as we all do what god wants us to do nobody gets hurt.  

Except it sure doesn't sound like America anymore. I know that conservatives aren't nearly as crazy about the Constitution as they are of the Declaration of Independence, and that really was a revolutionary document for its time, and maybe even for now. Here's what the Declaration says about government authority: That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. So if he's arguing that government is legitimate only if it follows god's plan, regardless of what the people want, then he is explicitly challenging the Founders. I'm afraid I have to side with Thomas Jefferson on this one.

Oh yeah, there is one other thing. Jason, the author of this enforcement of morality essay, presumably thinks he has a pretty good idea of what god wants. After all, he's got this book that tells him what god wants. The problem, though, is that there are a lot of other people who also think they have a pretty good idea of what god wants, because it's in this book they have. Only their book is the Koran, or the Book of Mormon, or Dianetics, and, funnily enough, they don't match.

So there are just a couple of problems here. One, do we want the government of the United States to work the same way that the governments of Saudi Arabia, or Iran, or pre-invasion Afghanistan work? I sure don't. Two, if you take Jason's ideas seriously, and if you believe, as he must, that he and his god are right, then doesn't that lead you to conclude that none of those other governments, religions, and gods are, and that it is not only our right but our duty to overthrow them and impose our (oops, I mean god's) will on them?

And how do you distinguish this from the kind of thinking that got us into a bunch of the problems we're facing right now?

With 59% of precincts reporting, C-SPAN is now calling the Nevada caucuses for Hillary Clinton.

Did Edwards skip Nevada? He's really nowhere. 

(UPDATE: But who really won? Obama got more delegates! Nevada is weird. American elections are weird. I'm going to bed.  -odum, 10:45 PM) 

Part of the story behind Huckabee is the idea he keeps pushing that he's a conservative, but he isn't the mean kind of conservative you may be used to.

Still, if he's the nice, amiable type he wants you to think he is, what's he doing cozying up to the neo-Confederates down in secessionville?

COLUMBIA, S.C. – Mike Huckabee on Thursday dove head-first into the long-running South Carolina controversy over the Confederate flag, saying it should be up to the state to decide how or whether it should be displayed. The comments came at a rally in Florence, S.C., where the Republican presidential candidate attempted to separate himself from other contenders he said were “Washington insiders.” Saturday's South Carolina primary appears to be a two-man race between Huckabee and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. Former Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., also is hoping to make an impact in the first-in-the-South primary. At the rally, Huckabee criticized those who “have been in charge of all the problems of this country and haven't fixed them.” “I'm the one guy running that doesn't have a Washington address, that hasn't been a Washington lobbyist or a Washington insider,” he said. His comments on the Confederate flag came as he bashed opponents in the anti-tax group Club for Growth. The organization has been campaigning against Huckabee, calling the former Arkansas governor a serial tax hiker. Huckabee said Arkansans wouldn't be swayed by out-of-state pressures, nor should South Carolina on the flag issue. “We tell them, you're going to tell us what to do with our flag? We'll tell you what to do with the pole,” Huckabee said. Huckabee would not say whether he thought it was offensive to fly a flag seen as a racist symbol to some and a sign of Southern pride to others. The matter should be left to the state, he said.

You probably know who David Goodman, Amy Goodman's brother, is. You might  not know that he lives in Waterbury, and is married to State Representative Sue Minter.

 Anyway, David Goodman spoke at Vermont's finest public library last week in their “Why I Love . . .” series, and his topic was “Why I Love Dick Cheney”.

I admit that I'm somewhat baffled, too. You can read an interview in which he mentions, among other things, Dick Cheney and his underling, George Bush. 

You can also check out a DVD of the lecture at the Kellogg-Hubbard Library. That's what I think I'll do. 

Most people around here are not that supportive of Obama, and even less supportive of Clinton, but it looks like that's the choice we're faced with.

I'm not happy with the choice, but if we have any contest at all in Vermont by Town Meeting Day, that's my prediction of what it will be. Therefore, maybe we should start thinking not just about our ideal candidate, but about our actual choice.

Here's a good diavlog between Joshua Cohen and Glenn Loury on this very question: should people who support progressive change support Clinton or Obama?

I'm not going to even try telling you the answer, or what I think the answer is, yet. They do get into some of the important questions, though, including whether there are any policy differences between the two, who has the better chance of winning, and what will happen if each of them gets elected. I do encourage you to watch, listen, and think about it, though. 

UPDATE–JANUARY 18, 2008: Ways and Means voted yesterday to take Sec 10 of the fee bill, the section on co-pays in corrections, out of the bill. Reps Hube and Condon were not there but the other 9 voted unanimously to strip this section from the bill 

You know that Douglas likes to talk about Vermont's affordability crisis, and how hard people who don't have a lot of extra money have it to afford their basic necessities of life. And it must be really hard if your job pays you a very low salary, like $.25 an hour, right?

That's right, $.25 an hour. You could get paid that little if you're employed by Correctional Industries of Vermont. I'm not sure about license plates, but if you spend any time in state office buildings you've probably sat on furniture made by prisoners.

Well, you say, what expenses do prisoners have? Aren't all their needs taken care of? They get housing, they get three hots and a cot, they probably have doctors and dentists and people like that come in to take care of them, right? How about this: the Douglas administration wants to make prisoners pay a $5.00 co-pay whenever they go to the doctor. If you're only getting paid $.25 an hour, even $5.00, which is a pretty low co-pay in the private insurance world, starts to look like a lot of money.

It's part of the Fee Bill, and here's the legislative language:

Sec. 10 28 V.S.A.§ 801 is amended to read
§ 801. MEDICAL CARE OF INMATES

They're doing it because, in their words, “[T]he costs of medical care could be defrayed, personal responsibility enhanced, and unnecessary usage reduced) (sic) by a modest inmate co-pay per visit.” They also think they'll save $50,000. Out of $130 million.

So in their view, doing this will have the beneficial effect of keeping prisoners from seeing doctors. On the other hand, a study on corrections policy across the country a couple of years ago argues that if we are going to provide decent health care to prisoners, who are, after all, people in the custody of the taxpayers' government, one thing we have to do is get rid of co-pays. 

In a study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to evaluate the cause of outbreaks of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in correctional facilities in Georgia, California, and Texas between 2001 and 2003, co-payments were singled out as a significant contributor to the spread of these serious and aggressive skin infections because they discouraged prisoners from seeking care (CDC 2003). . . . [I]t is impossible to devise a co-payment
program that does not erect barriers to care that could put the health of individuals n jeopardy, lead to the spread of disease, and cost correctional systems and communities much more in the long run when treatment is delayed.

 This is an area, one of many, in which Vermont is ahead of the rest of the country. While 33 states have adopted co-pays for prisoners, Vermont doesn't have them, and now the Douglas administration is once again racing to the bottom, trying to abandon one positive, progressive aspect of corrections policy, And it's also self-defeating. You may remember this fall when the Springfield prison was locked down because of an outbreak of MRSA. How much worse would it have been if the prisoners were avoiding the doctor because they didn't have the five bucks to get into the office?

 House Ways and Means is taking its first look at this proposal Friday morning at 9:30. Let's hope that they say no to this ridiculous and short-sighted proposal.

It's probably too early for this, but I do think it's something worth thinking about. Among the leading candidates, I think the majority of us around here probably favor Edwards. Still, especially if Obama is able to win on Tuesday (and espceially if, as seems quite likely Edwards is a poor third), his chances are looking worse and Obama's are looking really good.

So if it's Obama, what do we think about that?

I believe strongly that we have to do whatever it takes to defeat the Republican nominee, even if our nominee is Hillary Clinton. It's important for a lot of reasons, including the fact that economic royalism will continue under any conceivable Republican nominee, the fact that any Republican president will appoint clones of Scalia, Roberts, and Alito to the Supreme Court, and that any Republican president will be in favor of staying in Iraq, essentially forever.

Those facts are not true of any of the Democratic candidates.

Here's a link to a diavlog about the Democratic race that makes the point that Obama will absolutely be better than Clinton, and will be able to accomplish some important things we want (like universal health care) better than any real alternative. You don't have to agree with everything in it, but it's worth a listen. 

(Host) Progressive Anthony Pollina says he will be a candidate for governor this year. Pollina says he's planning a campaign that will present a clear alternative to the policies of Republican incumbent governor Jim Douglas.

No surprise, eh?