It doesn’t take a crystal ball or a dowsing stick to come to the realization that Vermont is not exactly Crawford, Texas, or anywhere in Utah.. You might be surprised at where some of the voices calling for an end to this criminal and reckless Administration come from…..
The insurrection continues below the fold.

No doubt, you’ve heard about the resolution put forth in Newfane:

ARTICLE 29
We the voters of Newfane would like Town Meeting, March 2006, to consider the following resolution:

Whereas George W. Bush has:

1. Misled the nation about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction;

2. Misled the nation about ties between Iraq and Al Quaeda;

3. Used these falsehoods to lead our nation into war unsupported by international law;

4. Not told the truth about American policy with respect to the use of torture; and

5. Has directed the government to engage in domestic spying, in direct contravention of U.S. law.

Therefore, the voters of the town of Newfane ask that our representative to the U.S. House of Representatives file articles of impeachment to remove him from office.

NEWFANE(Brattleboro Reformer)

— Among votes to approve the budget and education spending at Town Meeting, residents will wade into national waters and vote from the floor for the impeachment of President George W. Bush.
Selectboard member Dan DeWalt wrote the Town Meeting resolution and gathered enough signatures to get the question on to the ballot.
The vote for impeachment will be taken from the floor.
DeWalt said he was not going to bring any evidence to Newfane’s meeting, claiming that the people of the town know enough about Bush’s presidency to vote on the resolution.
If voters approve the resolution, DeWalt said he is going to ask U.S. Rep. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., to file the articles of impeachment to remove the president from office.
“We have an immoral government operating illegally,” DeWalt said. “I feel morally compelled to act.”

You know what they say, ‘It takes a village”…….

Newfane votes on this resolution at Town Meeting Tuesday, March 7th.

But did you catch this?

Statement by Dennis Morrisseau, Republican candidate for Congress.

They are totalitarians. Obvious totalitarians. That is why they have to come down. The war in Iraq is not the reason. They began the war as a means to power over us. The war is first a way to silence us. Further sham elections will be an aid in that, but we have been suffering sham elections in America for some time now. (More on that later)

“Rove’s Dream”. You can probably Google it. It’s right in the open and yet somehow unseen: The plan to take control of all three branches of government and make that control permanent. “The Architect” Bush calls him. This “Architect”, said to be a gay man, who bashes gays, has designed a strange church.  An Orwellian church adding the power of religious belief and bigotry to government power, all in derogation of our beloved constitution, our beloved short history, real religion, our true values. Hate is love. War is peace. Stealing your lives, your sustenance, your oil, your children, your votes, your money, your minds—all in the name of “Freedom”, in the name of “Democracy”. That’s what we’re going to impeach them for.

These men and Ms. Rice are not Republicans. They are also certainly not conservatives. Nor Americans. I mean that. I hate to say it, because of the history of the phrase: they are un-American—in clear violation of their oath’s of office to “preserve and protect the Constitution”. Read the oaths. Read the Constitution. You can do all that in half an hour. Take the time.

These men and Ms. Rice are not hidden. Right in front of our noses they are condoning torture and a war of conquest. What are the permanent Iraq bases for? In court and in public, this group is claiming that The President’s War Powers trump all other US and international law—that Bush’s “inherent powers” as commander-in-chief to manage the war, mean that he can ignore court orders, written law, the Congress, and can override the Constitution itself, at will. That is why we must impeach them. And, by the way, I am a Republican. Running for Congress now, for ’06, up in Vermont.

  Wow. Even from a Red Teamer in the Green Mountain State, we hear the call to IMPEACH! (Not that we can expect Governor Douglas to jump on that bandwagon – he was Chimpy’s Vermont campaign manager in the 2004 election.)
  Now Morrisseau is one of the two “dark horses” in the race for the GOP nomination to fill the House seat Bernie’s vacating as he steps up to the Senate, but any Republican speaking so is at least worthy of note. (As for the other “dark horse” in that race……..don’t get me started on Mark Shepard. Not just now. We’ll do that another time, if it becomes relevant.)
  To Peter Welch, I would say that the appropriate response to Morrisseau’s stance in this respect is to STEAL THAT ISSUE. Morrisseau is already the most marginal candidate in the House race. Marginalize him further, and steal that issue from him.

  What is not generally known is that impeachment proceedings against the President of the United States can be initiated in the House of Representatives by action taken by a state Legislature.

  Lifted from a diary by arbortender on Daily Kos:

Pages 314-315 of the House Rules for the 109th Congress, incorporating Jefferson’s Manual, which the House uses as a supplement to its standing rules, read as follows:

  Section 603. Inception of impeachment proceedings in the House.
  In the  House there are various methods of setting an impeachment in motion:
  (yakyakyak;)
  by charges transmitted from the legislature of a State (III, 2469)

  And the rumor mill is buzzing with something I can’t talk about just yet, but I can say that something may be about to break open under the dome in Montpelier. I hope that time comes soon.

An unjust composition never fails to contain error and falsehood. Therefore an unjust connection of ideas is not derived from nature, but from the imperfect composition of man. Misconnection of ideas is the same as misjudging, and has no positive existence, being merely a creature of the imagination; but nature and truth are real and uniform; and the rational mind by reasoning, discerns the uniformity, and is thereby enabled to make a just composition of ideas, which will stand the test of truth. But the fantastical illuminations of the credulous and superstitious part of mankind, proceed from weakness, and as far as they take place in the world subvert the religion of REASON, NATURE and TRUTH.

from “Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man”
ETHAN ALLEN

  What would Ethan Allen say about a President who claims that Jesus Christ is his favorite philosopher, yet pursues an unjust and illegal war at the expense of the people he was elected to serve? A man that declares the wall of separation of church and state to be a bridge? Who leaves poor people to die on rooftops in a city devastated by floods? Who sanctions the use of torture, subversion of our civil liberties, and indefinite detention of at least one American civilian in a military lockup? Who subsidizes corporate interests with huge tax breaks in the face of a staggering deficit that swells at the rate of at least 170 million dollars a day based on the costs of the war in Iraq alone?
  A person who turns a blind, accepting eye to this is complicit in the destruction of the Republic, and should remember that while he points the finger at Cindy Sheehan or Michael Moore (who have more patriotism in their little finger than most Republicans have in their entire body), he points three back at himself.

  IT DOES NOT TAKE COURAGE TO FALL INTO LOCKSTEP. FREEDOM DOES NOT MARCH. DISSENT AND REJECTION OF CORRUPTION AND AN UNAMERICAN ADMINISTRATION REQUIRES COURAGE.

 
  The patriots see this – the unAmerican, traitorous sheep of the Right either do not, or are fine with it because they place their jingoism, their economic and social Darwinism, and their irrational belief in the supernatural ahead of the good of this country and its people. And that is beyond the pale, and beneath contempt. My grandfather built ships to support a war against people like that. He fought them then, and I will fight them now. All enemies, foreign and domestic.
  What would Ethan Allen say of a Robin Hood in reverse – who robs from the poor to give to the rich?
  “The fantastical illuminations of the credulous and superstitious part of mankind” are what Bushco depends on to stay in power. The weakness must end.
  What better place than the home of Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys for “the religion of REASON, NATURE and TRUTH” to rise up and say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH?

“It’s not a matter of whether the war is not real, or if it is, Victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia but to keep the very structure of society intact.”  -George Orwell

“What an impressive crowd: the haves, and the have-mores. Some people call you the elite, I call you my base.” – George W. Bush

“There are your enemies. They are ours, or this night Molly Stark sleeps a widow!”
–Vermont Yankee General Stark, reportedly challenging his men to fight to the death against the British who were coming to seize the colonial storehouseful of horses, food, and munitions.

  Let it begin now, and let it begin here.

  FREEDOM AND UNITY.

The Rich Tarrant “fake blog” story is generating a fair amount of hubbub. If you haven’t heard, Peter Freyne broke the story in the last issue of Seven Days. It seems the rarely-visited (we should talk, I know) and utterly irrelevant web site VermontSenateRace.com is a poorly hidden front for the Tarrant campaign, set up and maintained by a paid campaign staffer. The news will hardly shock visitors to the site, as it’s sole purpose has clearly been to beat up on Bernie Sanders and praise Mr. Tarrant. In other words, if it wasn’t sponsored by his campaign, it might as well have been…

The bite to the story, however, is the black eye it gives Tarrant. It makes him appear sleazy, underhanded and just plain tacky (and perhaps, none too bright to think this wouldn’t get noticed).

So what’s a gazzilionaire Republican candidate to do? Give no comment, take the sight down as quickly and quietly as possible, change the subject, and figure people will forget it in a few days. After all, it’s a pretty inside baseball issue. Move it out of sight, out of mind quickly and no harm done, right? Uhhhhh, well……

Richard Tarrant’s U.S. Senate campaign says it will do nothing about a neutral-looking political blog that is being operated by a paid campaign staffer….

…(campaign spokesman Tim )Lennon said it was a coincidence that Bartley started working for Tarrant and created the blog at about the same time.

Seriously — sneaky fake blogs, shifty tax returns around a question of state residency, and now having the ego to dig his heels in and leave up a public monument to his campaign’s shifty tactics for the world to see …I wonder at what point Bernie should have to report the actions of Tarrant and his campaign as an in-kind contribution?

This is a big deal. A proposal that passed the State House of Representatives is a major smackdown to Governor Douglas and the Republican caucus:

The proposal would limit the exemptions to state open records law that the executive branch of state government could claim when someone requested the release of documents.

The House voted 82-49 in favor of prohibiting the administration from claiming the so-called deliberative process privilege.

Click on the link for the scoop…

As a quick refresher: this whole issue stems from the refusal of the Douglas Administration to turn over documents relating to stormwater runoff regulations (as well as possible contamination at Jay Peak) that were requested by environmental groups under Vermont’s Open Records law. Under a novel interpretation of “deliberative process privilege,” Douglas simply ignored the lawful request. As a result, the Conservation Law Foundation went to court, and in the meantime, Congressional Democrats led by Rep. Tony Klein (D-East Montpelier) decided not to wait around. Klein’s bill followed, which leaves little room for either doubt or novel, self-serving interpretations. Nat Kinney at Vermonters First has been birdogging the issue, and Rep. Klein has posted on the issue at VF as well.

Republicans are twisting themselves into knots to try and scuttle the process while pretending to hold some semblance of moral high ground on the matter.

Rep. Peg Flory’s (R-Pittsford) strained objection:

“We are attempting to hold the executive branch to different standards — much different standards — than we are allowing ourselves to be held to,”

Rep. Klein responded:

“This is our deliberative process right here,” said Rep. Tony Klein, D-East Montpelier, as he gestured around the House chamber during Friday’s debate. “Our committee work is our deliberative process.”

Comments from the Governor’s office demonstrate where Flory’s line of defense originated, but coming from Douglas himself, the argument approached self-parody in what was a crude attempt to at once demand the right to ignore the law and keep whatever secrets he wants, while simultaneously casting himself as a champion of open government:

“If it’s uniform and applies to all levels and all branches, then I’ll support it,” Douglas said earlier in the week.

Of course, Douglas is the guy who created the problem by doing his best to emulate his national Party leader, President Bush — making up new “interpretations” of law virtually out of wholecloth — unilaterally giving himself permission to do what he wants.

The initial success of the measure is great news for several reasons. One, its a good law. It seems to me that it’s axiomatic that the more open government is, the better.

Two, it shows Vermonters that, not only is Jim Douglas’s style of governing looking more and more like that of his President’s, but the GOP caucus is showing itself willing to dutifully enable their chief even when he is clearly in the wrong — in other words, they are beginning to emulate their Washington counterparts as well.

Vermont Democrats’ “holy grail” of a way to tie Vermont Republicans to Republicans in Washington just got a lot more attainable.

UPDATED: The final bill went through today (Tuesday), with Democrats calling the Governor’s bluff and agreeing to apply the provisions to the legislature as well. We’ll see if he comes up with another excuse, or goes ahead and signs it into law.

Heavens. First they were Killington, then Sherburne, now Killington again, and now they really want to change the “Vermont” to “New Hampshire.” Maybe some counseling is in order. In any event, Killington’s secession plan has been in the news again. It started out as an interesting way to protest taxation under Act 60, and it was hard not to have sympathy at the time.

But this has gotten ridiculous, and its costing time and energy in two state legislatures. So, given that Vermont towns, as Secretary of State Deb Markowitz said ”exist at the pleasure of the legislature”, let me present a modest proposal:

Okay, okay….just kidding (but it did feel good…)

( – promoted by odum)

It’s a hell of a thing when the Vice President shoots a man and it’s the best thing that could have happened to the Administration, but I’m afraid that’s where we are these days.

I’m watching Washington Journal on C-SPAN right now and they’re asking callers to nominate the top news story of the week. You won’t be surprised to hear that the Cheney shooting is at the top of the list. After all, it’s not every day that we hear of a Vice President taking a deadly weapon to a millionaire, is it?

But wait a bit, think about what we’re not hearing. The time on the news programs, the space in newspapers, and the attention of the public are all finite. While you’ve been reading and hearing about Cheney, how much did you see of this story from the Washington Post?

Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff testified that his bosses instructed him to leak information to reporters from a high-level intelligence report that suggested Iraq was trying to obtain weapons of mass destruction, according to court records in the CIA leak case.

Cheney was one of the “superiors” I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby said had authorized him to make the disclosures, according to sources familiar with the investigation into Libby’s discussions with reporters about CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Not much, I’d guess.

For that matter, how much did you read about the story that a NASA PR guy, fresh from the Bush-Cheney campaign, was tailoring NASA’s public statements to match the Administration’s religio-political opinions on creationism and the Big Bang? Or that George Deutsch, the 24-year-old PR guy, lost his job after it turned out he’d lied on his resume when he was hired?

Yes, as I say, it’s been a hell of a week.

( – promoted by odum)

These two combine for the story of the week. Political newcomer and cafeteria-Republican Gen. Martha Rainville limps in bleeding from allegations of trying to have her cake and eat it too. As Baruth said a while back:

With the exception of a single, perceptive editorial in the Rutland Herald, almost every journalist in Vermont has ignored the ethical problems involved with campaigning while pretending to explore, and campaigning while pretending to explore in uniform — and campaigning while pretending to explore in uniform with a war raging overseas.

While David Zuckerman makes a decision thats not entirely surprising. From the Freeps:

Zuckerman, a Progressive from Burlington, has been exploring getting into the race for several months. But he announced at a crowded Statehouse news conference that he would bow out.

So its probably Rainville v Welch, in a race that — despite how many Vermonters feel — is not, in my opinion, a sure thing. We’ll keep an eye on the polls here and post them as we find ’em.
UPDATE: …and lest we forget, Adam over at Vermonters First brought up Rainville’s possible misuse of National Guard rolls for political gain. Still waiting for more info on that one.

( – promoted by odum)

So, how in the world did I miss this? This snippet from the Messenger is referring to St. Albans Town:

Representatives from the Knights of Columbus went before the board at a budget meeting Tuesday asking that the Parental Notification Initiative item be placed on the ballot. They said 40 to 50 other Vermont towns have already agreed to the request.

“We are attempting to get this on all the ballots in the state,”
said Knights of Columbus President Jim Bianca.

I missed this completely. And lo and behold, its not just St. Albans Town, parental notification is on at least 31 town ballots this year. Click on “theres more” for a running list of towns…

The towns we know of are:

Bakersfield
Barton
Chester
Clarendon
Enosburg Falls
Fairfield
Ira
Kirby
Mendon
Middletown Springs
Milton
Moretown
Montgomery
Morristown
Morrisville
Newport City
Newport Town
Norton
Richford
Sheldon
St Albans City
St Albans Town
Stockbridge
Sudbury
Sutton
Underhill
Waterford
Westfield
Westmore
West Rutland
Windsor

It should be noted that this is an advisory ballot item, like the ones usually run by more lefty groups. Still, it’s a shot across the bow that with the RATS in power (thats Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Scalia), VT Right-to-Life is feeling its oats. With such help in high places, this merits watching.

Of course the best thing that could happen here is a good ol fashioned smackdown at Town Meeting, but if any issue is going to let the anti-choice crowd squeeze their way in the door, its notification. People tend to turn off their brains and act impulsively on the issue (if you need convincing, check out this piece from Planned Parenthood).

The group nominally behind these petitions is a 527 called “Caring Vermont Parents.” They seem to be moving up from being simply an anti Senator Kittell organization and are looking to hit the big time through this and a little exploitation of the Judge Cashman thing. More on these guys soon.