I don’t know all the details, but it appears that the Republican holdouts on the torture issue, McCain, Graham, and Warner, have folded on Bush’s proposals regarding detention, treatment, and trial of alleged terrorists.

The Post has a summary of the so-called compromise, but it’s hard to see what Bush gave up.

Here are what look like the key points:

1. Bush gets an agreement to provide a specific definition of the acts defined as violating the Geneva Convention. This is something that human rights activists were opposing because it gives the interrogators the ability to go right up to the line, and tailor any techniques to evade the protections of the law. This is not possible under the Geneva Convention’s prohibition of outrages against personal dignity.

2. Bush gets a total pass on any past violations of the Geneva Conventions.

3. Detainees don’t get to see the evidence against them, although they may get to see redacted “summaries”. As a trial lawyer for more than twenty-five years, I can tell you that summaries are no substitute for the actual evidence that is introduced against you.

4. There appears to be no protection for illegal detention. I can’t tell what the compromise does to habeas corpus, but from what I can tell it seems to be out the window.

5. A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said in an interview that Bush essentially got what he asked for in a different formulation that allows both sides to maintain that their concerns were addressed. “We kind of take the scenic route, but we get there,” the official said.
This doesn’t necessarily prove it, since the Administration is obviously interested in coming out looking like a winner, but given the vehemence of Bush’s opposition earlier in the week it certainly suggests that they think they won.

And here’s the kicker: Democrats sounded a cautious note about the Republican accord, calling attention to the past Republican division rather than taking a position on the compromise.

We have to fight this hard. Where is the outrage?

Call your Senators today!

The war and national defense are the biggest issue this year, right?

And Martha Rainville has the most experience in national defense, right?

So maybe, when she goes to speak, people should ask her about this:

  * Fully two-thirds of the active U.S. Army is officially classified as “not ready for combat.”

  * Thousands of white supremacists may have been able to infiltrate the military due to pressure from recruitment shortfalls.

Here’s her latest response to the situation at the DoD:

While Rainville has conceded that Rumsfeld has made mistakes, she said there needs to be a bipartisan effort to set a new course, and firing Rumsfeld will not help that effort.

“Secretary Rumsfeld has made many mistakes in the planning and implementation of military operations in Iraq. There have been serious failures that have hindered progress from the beginning,” said Rainville in a statement. “Now is not the time for partisan gamesmanship; it is time to exercise true leadership by working together to forge a rational policy that will allow us to finish our mission in Iraq and bring our troops home with honor.”

How is this going to help anything?

And, in contrast to what the R’s keep saying, how is continuing to do what isn’t working a plan?

(I know, if you’re a Republican reality is a bad thing, but sometimes it can’t be helped.)

The truth is in, even the Pentagon is now starting to look at Iraq the way it really is.

They have a new report on how things are going over there, three plus years after his little “Mission Accomplished” dance on the aircraft carrier, and they finally seem to be willing to look at reality. And it isn’t pretty.

Since the last report, the core conflict in Iraq changed into a struggle between Sunni and Shi’a extremists seeking to control key areas in Baghdad, create or protect sectarian enclaves, divert economic resources, and impose their own
respective political and religious agendas.

They still won’t call it what it is, but we know the answer: civil war. Sure, it’s a civil war that we started, but it’s a civil war. And we’re not winning.

Cross posted from Rational Resistance

It’s not just Iraq. Sure, Bush has been a massive failure in foreign policy, with his adventure in Iraq making things more dangerous for the people we were supposedly trying to help in Iraq, and the people he was supposedly trying to protect in the United States. Still, take a look at the economy and what Bush has done there. Here’s what he says: “The foundation of our economy is solid, and it’s strong. Because of the tax cuts we passed, American workers and families and small businesses are keeping more of the money they earn. And they’re using that money to drive this economy of ours forward.” And here’s what his sycophant Larry Kudlow says about it: Bush has the story right. Low tax rates, strong economic growth and shrinking budget deficits — it’s still the greatest story never told.

On the other hand, here’s a quote from E.J. Dionne’s op-ed piece in toda’s Post: Worse is that the proportion of the poor who are very poor has risen. People are considered in deep poverty if they have half or less of the yearly income of those at the poverty line. In 2005 half the poverty line for a family of three was $7,788; for a family of four it was $9,985. (Try living on that.) According to the new report, 43.1 percent of poor people lived in that sort of deep poverty — a record since 1975, when the government started assembling such statistics.

What’s the difference? The difference is that what Dionne says is based on the facts.

And what this means is that in the next two months we need to do everything we can to elect Democrats to Congress, so we can stop Bush’s war on the poor.

( – promoted by Jack McCullough)

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit released its decision yesterday on a case involving a challenge to the enforcement of the Williamstown Middle School dress code. The case was brought by the Vermont chapter of the ACLU on behalf of Zachary Guiles.

Zachary was a seventh grader who started wearing an anti-war, anti-Bush, and anti-drug T-shirt to school in early 2004. Although he wore the shirt to school once a week for about two months, when he tried to wear it on a field trip chaperoned by a parent who disagreed with the message, school officials gave him the choice of covering up images of cocaine and martinis, that were intended to suggest George Bush’s hypocrisy and prior history of drug abuse, or going home. He served two days of suspension and finally was allowed to return to school when he agreed to cover the images with tape.

He sued in federal court, and the court agreed in part, but supported the school’s decision to make him cover up the cocaine and alcohol images.

Now, the Second Circuit has released a decision that support’s the student’s rights on every point. They make it clear that students continue to have speech rights, and that the disciplinary action that the school took was directed to the anti-war message that Zach was promoting.

Big ups to Zach Guiles and the ACLU for doing this.

Free speech didn’t fare so well in the friendly skies, this week, though

On August 12 an Iraqi-American architect was trying to board a Jet Blue flight wearing a t-shirt that bore the message “We will not be silent” written in both Arabic and English.

Well, this was obviously too much for the sensibilities of the fragile souls who fly Jet Blue. apparently a number of the passengers complained so security came and told him if he didn’t take the shirt off he couldn’t fly. After an extended confrontation he finally was allowed to fly when he consented to wear another shirt the security people provided for him.

Now I know that some people get worried when they fly, especially nowadays, but come on. From what we know of terrorists in general, and hijackers in particular, don’t they pretty much try to blend in? Since people here in the United States seem to  think that any message written on a t-shirt in Arabic might as well say “I’m a terrorist”, wouldn’t it be smart not to wear that shirt if you actually are one? Maybe it’s just me, but that seems obvious.

I remember a story from when I was a kid. Probably in Boys’ Life. Anyway, a group of kids are out camping and one of them comes staggering into the camp site, clothes torn, bleeding, all craped up and covered with dirt. The other campers ask him what happened and he says, “garter snake.” “Arger snake? They can’t do anything to you.” “If they can make you run off a fifteen foot cliff, they don’t have to!”

Despite what Rumsfeld or any of those guys say, these are the times when we really need to protect our liberties. If we don’t (you guessed it) the terrorists have won. Only this time it’s really true.

( – promoted by Jack McCullough)

Once again we’re on the impeachment trail.

Craig Hill, who’s running for the Democratic nomination for Senate, and who lives in Montpelier, was before the Montpelier City Council tonight to talk about the impeachment petition he is planning to circulate for the November ballot.

As he described it, it’s in line with the Jefferson’s Rules impeachment proposal that people have been working on since early his year.

Here’s the language:

Shall the voters of the City of Montpelier request the Legislature of the State of Vermont to formally adopt a joint resolution to require members of the United States House of Representatives, who will take office in January 2007 as the 110th Congress, to uphold their oath of office to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, by investigating impeachable actions taken by the incumbent President and Vice President of the United States?

Shall the sense of the voters of the City of Montpelier be that the incumbent President and Vice President of the United States, George W. Bush and Richard Cheney, have committed impeachable offenses, and should be removed from office under Article 2, Section 4, of the United States Constitution?

I am of two minds on this. On the one hand, I’m obviously in favor of impeachment, and I’ve written about it before. On the other hand, is the November election, with all that’s at stake, the time to be doing it, or will it mobilize the R’s? Would it be better to hold off until Town Meeting Day, or will that just mean that we lose a lot of time in the 2007 session?

I don’t know the answer, but I understand that this is part of a statewide coordinated effort, so it’s going to happen and I think it will pass in many cities. The war is obviously the most important issue this year, so I hope people will get it.

Cross-posted from Rational Resistance.

Boy, am I so glad that we had Congress cram God into the Pledge of Allegiance half a century ago! It really helps us appreciate the people who were supposedly our Christian, or Judeo-Christian, if you will, forbears, to see how our society has evolved. Is it true, as the religious right claims, that this country has become so hostile to religion that we need some kind of grand realignment?

Well, think about the question in the context of a few recent news stories.

First we have Katherine Harris. You remember her: the woman in the fright mask who helped rig the Florida election for Bush in 2000? Allegedly! Allegedly!

Anyway, here’s what she’s saying now: “If you’re not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin.”

Nice, huh? This is a woman who already sits in the House of Representatives and now she’s running for Senate.

Then, also in the South, we have a charming Baptist church in Mississippi. A church that opens its arms to all God’s children, because, after all, we’re all sinners and equally beloved in God’s eye. Except, of course, if your skin is a little too dark for God’s taste.

According to Stevens, the church made race an issue after a biracial 12-year-old boy, Joe, began attending Fellowship Baptist with his temporary guardians.
The church was “afraid Joe might come with his people and have blacks in the church,” Stevens said.

Yeah! That’s what we’re all about in America!

Finally, so that I’m not just picking on Christians, Here’s a story from New York. It seems that there are now some schools, and I use the term advisedly, whose entire curriculum is having their students memorize the Koran by chanting it. 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, even in the summer. I’m not kidding. These are real madrassas, religious schools that get state recognition, and whose parents are allowed to claim that they’re sending their kids to schools that provide an education that is substantially equivalent to that provided by the public schools. I’m not saying this isn’t a hard task. In fact, it’s harder for American students to do this than students in traditionally Muslim countries, because Islam disapproves of translating the Koran. Because it is seen as the literal word of God, the use of translations is frowned upon. Students know how to pronounce the words but mostly do not know what they mean. So the project, for these kids, is to spend all their school time for two or three years memorizing a series of language sounds they do not understand. So what if one of these kids is the son of a lawyer for the city of Mount Vernon, and, though he’s old enough to be going into sixth grade, doesn’t know his multiplication tables?

So if you’re a big fan of God in the Pledge, God in the schools, God as the guide of American law, think about all of this. And think about how much you might like it if the people running the madrassas in New York all of a sudden got enough political power to change the Pledge to say, “one nation under Allah.” Because when civil libertarians express some discomfort at the Ten Commandments in the courthouse, and the religious loyalty oath we make our kids recite in school every day, that’s the kind of thing we’re worried about.

Here’s the link to today’s Burlington Free Press editorial about the debate. It was also covered on WPTZ (with video!) but so far I haven’t seen it on their web page. I’ll post it if I find it.

I just heard of this new blog, which I think is also new. They’re doing coverage on the tenth anniversary of Clinton’s welfare “reform” and pushing a more balanced view of the results than we’re seeing in the MSM.

For example, check out this commentary by Rachel Gregg on the 1996 Act:

Look, I hate the 1996 law. It is an extraordinarily mean-spirited bill that was driven almost entirely by political motivation. It put us on record as a nation as saying there are some people in our communities to whom we simply owe nothing; if they fall off the end of the earth, so be it. There is no question that a number of very vulnerable people were hurt by this bill – driven deeper into poverty with no way out – which for me violates a basic principle that government policy must first do whatever it can to protect those who most need our help.

I’ve also read posts about education policy, immigration, employment, health care, and I know there’s a lot more.

Take a trip over to Inclusionist.org and see what other activists are thinking about some of the important policy issues that face us here in Vermont.

You all know that’s the party line these days. Republican party, that is. The Republicans and their mouthpieces in the press can’t keep from talking about how Ned Lamont’s historic win in Connecticut shows that the anti-war, anti-American radical fringe have taken over the Democratic Party. Exhibit A, of course, is the photo of Ned Lamont flanked by Jesse Jackson and all-purpose loudmouth Al Sharpton.

Sure enough, anyone who would associate with these types must be beyond the fringe, outside of the mainstream, Right?

So how do Lieberman and his supporters explain the fact that he contacted Sharpton to ask for his support and was turned down?