Oops:

Probably best to stay within the confines of the law when you’re running for Governor.  

Full disclosure: I’ve driven this fast a couple times.  I never got caught.

So: quick poll: what’s the fastest you’ve ever driven on the Vermont interstates?

Question: Which five states have the highest salary expenditures for instructional staff members in rural districts (essentially the highest average teacher salaries)?

Answer: New York has the highest average expenditures for rural instructional staff at $74,800, followed by Alaska at $74,193, Connecticut at $73,632, New Jersey at $65,674, and California at $65,120. Actual salary levels may vary widely between districts.

Source: (The Rural School and Community Trust)

Some Vermont numbers (FTE = full time equivalent):

• Mean (average) salary per FTE: $53,063.76

• Median (half above, half below) salary per FTE: $51,379.19

• Salaries range from $31,936.67 to $72,625.14.*

(source: Vermont Ed Department)

*Too high my ass!

Elections – Governor: (Note: this diary was put together prior to the report of Peter Shumlin’s high-profile traffic ticket. More on that soon.)

The final stretch before the now-August primary has begun. In the coming weeks, everything will change as the race gets more headlines and the candidates turn to mass media pitches.

Direct mail blitzes? Radio ads? Perhaps even television buys? It’s going to depend on what the candidates can afford, and soon we’ll have a sense of that as well. Up to this point, the candidates will have laid the field, organizational and thematic groundwork into which paid media can be driven – and the results will change the face of this contest rapidly. Who will go for broke? Who will be the most conservative in rationing their resources for the General Election? And who will the press support or inhibit?

The answers to those questions will likely determine whether this race settles into a 2-person affair, or a 3-person affair, likely leaving the remaining 2 or 3 in the position of spoiler for one or more of the leaders.

So how do things seem to look at present? (Note: A more complete analysis of the Dubie campaign will come in a later, stand-alone diary.)

Racine ascendant, but… If the campaign team for Doug Racine’s earliest (and likely strongest) rival (Markowitz) has any smarts (they do), they’ve likely been trying for months to convince those liberal interest groups that make endorsements to reject endorsements in the primary as needlessly divisive and contrary to their organizational interests. Why? Because of exactly what has played out in recent weeks, as all those endorsements keep going going to Racine. The only other way to have kept them out of Racine’s portfolio would have been to convince enough primary voters that Racine was too milquetoast to win, making him an unteneble choice to endorsement committees due to the bad buzz.

But it didn’t happen that way, and Racine’s recent hiring of Joe Trippi as a campaign advisor may well have been the death knell for that narrative among many Democrats.

One by one, the unions have delivered their endorsements and the material backing that entails to Racine, and yesterday, the Vermont League of Conservation Voters also joined in. There’s no question that recent weeks have been good to Racine…

…but (and this is a big “but”)…

For all the same reasons these groups have backed him, the state’s most influential endorsers – newspapers – likely won’t (and not just the Free Press, which historically loathes Racine). It’s hard to say who will be the biggest beneficiary of the fourth estate’s largesse when that time comes, but it very well may turn out to be…

Bartlett adrift, but is that all about to change? Susan Bartlett continues to get high marks at forums and debates, but is still not developing the primary support that her rivals have. Her campaign also continues to make some odd tactical decisions (for example, going out of it’s way to draw attention to the recent Rasmussen poll that showed her behind the pack).

It’s a rough time, and there are only weeks left, but based on the history and temperament of many Vermont’s newspapers it’s likely that she will pick up quite a few endorsements (to the extent that the newspapers make primary endorsements) – and those endorsements do hold sway with many. If such an endorsement wave materializes out of this exercise in pure speculation, whether it can generate a last minute surge of significance for her likely depends on whether or not the voting turnout is traditionally low (which may help), or whether the added excitement raises it to historic levels, as many predict.

Markowitz steady. Much of the focus of the campaigns lately has been to attempt to grab some of the headlines from Racine. Markowitz has a nice new campaign vid out which helps that cause, but was also the closest thing to a beneficiary from the recent Rasmussen “poll” (if you can call it that – more on them another time). The numbers still show Markowitz with relatively high name recognition and favorables, and enables her to continue making her primary argument; that she is the most competitive against Brian Dubie.

It’s clear that Markowitz’s base is strong, and whatever erosion she may have experienced earlier in the year when the other campaigns kicked their operations up had anecdotally stabilized. The numbers recently released not only confirm that, but make it clear she is still in a commanding position.

Shumlin wobbly, but still a force. The news hasn’t been good for Peter Shumlin after the session, as the absence of the easy public microphone provided by his position in the Senate has mightily impacted his capacity to generate a presence in the headlines. A high profile endorsement from popular fiscal centrist Jeb Spaulding puts him back on the radar screen, and as the strongest speaker on the stump, Shumlin continues to impress at forums. Obviously, Shumlin needs to be sure this doesn’t sugar out into a 2-person race between Racine and Markowitz, but at this point, the race still feels far more open and dynamic than that, due somewhat to Shumlin’s persistance, but more as a credit to the efforts of…

The Dunne Machine. Matt Dunne, like Shumlin, needs to make sure this doesn’t polarize into a 2 person race in the final month and half, as he would not be likely to be one of those two given Markowitz’s base and Racine’s institutional backing. The Windsor County native took affirmative steps to keeping the mix open by introducing the state to his vaunted field network last week during a series of public events targeted to key Democratic communities where he will need to mine votes, and where word-of-mouth can have a big impact.

Much of the energy his opponents have been using to find headlines, Dunne has also apparently been using to build his field network, and his strength there keeps him competitive. Raise your hand if you’re an active Democrat who has not received a call from a Dunne supporter in recent weeks.

In a Sharply Divided 5-4 Ruling, Justices Say ‘No’ to Christian Student Group’s Demand That It Be Recognized and Funded by Public, Taxpayer-Funded Law School Despite Group’s Refusal to Admit Gays and Non-Christian Believers in Defiance of the School’s Anti-Discrimination Policy

DRAWING THE LINE — A sharply divided Supreme Court on Monday refused to breach the constitutional wall of separation between religion and government when the justices, by a 5-4 majority, rejected a private Christian student group’s demand that it be officially recognized and funded by the public, taxpayer-financed Hastings College of the Law of the University of California, in spite of the group’s refusal to admit gays and non-Christian religious believers. The justices sided with the law school’s policy that bars official recognition and funding to student groups that do not comply with the college’s requirement that they be open to all students without discrimination. (Photo courtesy  supremecourtus.gov)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EDT Tuesday, June 29, 2010)

By SKEETER SANDERS

A day after hundreds of thousands of spectators lined San Francisco’s Market Street to watch the city’s 40th annual Gay Pride Parade, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday sided with a San Francisco-based public law school’s refusal to recognize or fund a Christian student group that refused to admit gays and non-Christian religious believers as members.

On the final day of its 2009-10 term, the justices, in a sharply-divided 5-4 decision, ruled that the Christian Legal Society could not expect to receive official recognition or funding from the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law if it refused to comply with the school’s anti-discrimination policy.

The justices declared that the First Amendment did not require the public college to sanction the private group’s membership policies based on its religious beliefs. While the court did not explicitly say so, its ruling strongly implied that granting such sanction would have violated the constitutional wall of separation between church and state.  

CHRISTIAN GROUP’S DISCRIMINATORY CONDUCT — NOT ITS BELIEFS — AT ISSUE, SAYS GINSBURG  

Writing for the court majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg rejected claims by the Christian Legal Society that the law school’s anti-discrimination policy violated its First Amendment right to the free exercise of its religious beliefs and freedom of association.

To the contrary, Hastings’ anti-discrimination policy “ensures that no Hastings student is forced to fund a group that would reject him or her as a member,” Ginsburg wrote. “It is the CLS’s conduct, not its Christian perspective, [that] is, from Hastings’ viewpoint, what stands between the group” and recognition by the law school.

“In requiring the CLS — in common with all other student organizations — to choose between welcoming all students and forgoing the benefits of official recognition, we hold, Hastings did not transgress constitutional limitations,” Ginsburg wrote.

Colleges and universities, both public and private, fund student groups through activity fees directly charged to students, in addition to their tuition, room and board, and other expenses. For student groups at Hastings to receive official recognition and funding from the school, they must be open to all students, without regard to race, ethnicity, religion, gender, disability or sexual orientation.

Ginsburg — who read the majority opinion in the court’s chamber even as she was mourning the death Sunday of her husband, Martin Ginsburg, from complications of metastatic cancer at the age of 78 — was joined by Justices Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and — on his last day before his retirement — John Paul Stevens.

The Hastings College of the Law currently recognizes about 60 student groups, including the Hastings Association of Muslim Law Students, the Hastings Catholic Law Students Association, the Black Law Students Association, the Hastings Jewish Law Students Association and even Hastings OutLaw, a group formed by Hastings students who are openly gay.

All have provisions in their bylaws, as required under the school’s nondiscrimination policy, that membership is open to any full-time student at Hastings, but the Christian Legal Society is the only student group at Hastings that requires its members to strictly adhere to its religious principles.  

GROUP’S ‘STATEMENT OF FAITH’ BARS GAYS, NON-CHRISTIANS

The CLS, a nearly half-century-old, Illinois-based national organization with chapters on 40 college campuses across the country, effectively bars gay men, lesbians and bisexuals from membership by requiring that all its members and officers affirm its “Statement of Faith,” which includes the belief that “Christians should not engage in sexual conduct outside of a marriage between a man and a woman.”

A resolution passed by the CLS board was even more explicit: “Unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle is inconsistent with an affirmation of the Statement of Faith,” the resolution said. “We condemn all acts of sexual conduct outside of God’s design for marriage between one man and one woman, including fornication, adultery and homosexual conduct.”

The group’s “Statement of Faith” also effectively bars non-Christian believers by explicitly stating that “all officers, directors, members, advisory council members, and staff of CLS shall, as a condition of their employment or membership in CLS, acknowledge in writing their acceptance of . . .the Deity of our Lord, Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary; His vicarious death for our sins through which we receive eternal life; His bodily resurrection and personal return.”

JUSTICE KENNEDY: ‘STATEMENT OF FAITH’ AKIN TO COLD WAR-ERA LOYALTY OATHS

In a concurring opinion, Justice Kennedy wrote that the CLS’s Statement of Faith amounted to a “loyalty oath” reminiscent of the kind that was imposed on federal government agencies during the Cold War era by President Harry Truman.

“The era of loyalty oaths is behind us,” Kennedy wrote. “A school quite properly may conclude that allowing an oath or belief-affirming requirement, or an outside conduct requirement, could be divisive for student relations and inconsistent with the basic concept that a view’s validity should be tested through free and open discussion.”

In his final opinion before stepping down, Justice Stevens wrote that while the CLS is free under the First Amendment to determine who can and cannot be members, a public university is not required by the First Amendment “to validate or support” the group’s “discriminatory” practices.

“Other groups may exclude or mistreat Jews, blacks and women — or those who do not share their contempt for Jews, blacks and women,” Stevens wrote. “A free society must tolerate such groups. It need not, however, subsidize them, give them its official imprimatur, or grant them equal access to law school facilities.”

ALITO RIPS DECISION AS ‘SETBACK FOR FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION’ — CLS DEFIANT

In a hard-hitting dissenting opinion, Justice Samuel Alito blasted the court majority, denouncing their ruling as “a serious setback for freedom of expression in this country.”

Writing for the court’s four conservatives, Alito cited the long-held judicial principle that “we protect the freedom to express ‘the thought that we hate.’ Today’s decision rests on a very different principle: No freedom for expression that offends prevailing standards of political correctness in our country’s institutions of higher learning.”

Alito’s opinion was co-signed by Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice John Roberts.

The CLS — backed by the Alliance Defense Fund, one of several conservative groups defending California’s Proposition 8, which bars same-gender marriage — issued a defiant statement in response to the high court’s ruling, insisting that Hastings’ anti-discrimination policy was “unusual,” that the court “confined its opinion to the unique policy” and that the justices “did not address” whether other public colleges and universities with similar nondiscrimination policies are free to enforce them.

“All college students, including religious students, should have the right to form groups around shared beliefs without being banished from campus,” Kim Colby, senior counsel at the CLS’s Center for Law & Religious Freedom, said in the statement. “Today’s ruling, however, will have limited impact. We are not aware of any other public university that has the exact same policy as Hastings.”

LAWYER FOR CONSERVATIVE GROUP SAYS RULING ‘DOESN’T SETTLE CONFLICT’

Gregory Baylor, senior legal counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund, said the ruling “doesn’t settle the core constitutional issue of whether nondiscrimination policies in general can force religious student groups to allow non-believers to lead their groups. The conflict still exists.” In the long run, Baylor said, the decision “puts other student groups across the country at risk.”

Baylor insisted that the Hastings policy “actually requires CLS to allow atheists to lead its Bible studies and the College Democrats to accept the election of Republican officers in order for the groups to be recognized on campus. We agree with Justice Alito in his dissent that the court should have rejected this as absurd.”

Baylor’s argument was flatly rejected by the Reverend Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. “Religious discrimination is wrong, and a public school should be able to take steps to eradicate it,” Lynn told The Associated Press. “Today’s court ruling makes it easier for colleges and universities to do that. It’s a huge step forward for fundamental fairness and equal treatment.”

# # #

Copyright 2010, Skeeter Sanders. all rights reserved.

Well, I’ve gotta go to that place that probably no one else wants to.  I think we must squarely face the monumental Supreme Court Decision that was handed down today with regard to gun control in Chicago.  As some may have observed,  we at GMD are by no means united in our opinion on gun control; and I, for one, think that makes it an excellent topic to sort of kick around in an intelligent and respectful way, as I know we can.  It’s what we do, and there’s no avoiding it.

I’ll put my cards right on the table and say that I support me some judicious gun control.  I also grew up in Chicago, so I have more than a passing idea of the particular hell that city might become without it.  Granted, it’s like closing the barn door after the cows have escaped, trying to keep firearms away from the bad guys these days.  The entire continent is so heavily traversed by firearms, with or without permitting, that the argument that everyone ought to arm him or herself has grown exceedingly difficult to contradict; but I refuse to believe that this is what the Founding Fathers had in mind for our little experiment in democracy, conceived at the apex of the Age of Reason.

We need to grow-up and face the responsibility of making some decisions ourselves to preserve life, as well as liberty; and to understand the inherent conflicts in “the pursuit of happiness.”

You would think that I would be heartsickened by the Supreme Court Decision, but I am not.  I am far more distressed by the decision impacting campaign finance because that could well be the proverbial nail in the coffin of true citizen-directed democracy.  

On the contrary, the Chicago decision will test the viability of the argument that our Constitution and all of its amendments must ever more remain inviolate, resisting any further change or evolution due to educated enlightenment or altered circumstances.  I think it’s about bloody time we begin that conversation, and today’s decision is the catalyst that is likely to make it happen.

This has the potential to play-out rather quickly in real-time.  Unlike the campaign finance decision, whose ramifications may well be hidden from the casual observer,  there will be big-time attention on the part of every citizen as the arms race with their neighbors begins. How far will it go? Mortarfire and rockets exchanged between warring neighborhood gangs?   My impression is that right now, nobody really knows for sure.

“Be careful what you wish for…”

What about the romantic idea of the Tea Party that citizens should be able to arm themselves against a presumptive tyrant?  Okay; so, who gets to decide for the whole population that revolution is justified?  I think we can all see where that one is going.  “Treason” is just the ugly stepsister of “patriotism.”

We already incarcerate more of our population than any country in the world.  Perhaps that is the next recourse for gun control; but what does that say about us as a culture? What does that say about us as a democracy?  Are we poised on the brink of the great unwinding?

I’m not intractable on this.  Some of my best friends oppose gun control; but, so far, no one has managed to convince me that we’d be better off without it.  I guess we’re about to find out.

Oh, yes; I’m pulling up a comfy chair for this discussion.  

Kagan Supreme Court Hearings – Listen to live audio of Elena Kagan’s confirmation hearings beginning at 12:30pm ET on VPR

UPDATEVPR has Senator Leahy’s prepared opening remarks here.

We meet today to consider President Obama’s nomination of Elena Kagan for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States. Just last year, this Committee and the Senate reviewed her record, and a bipartisan majority voted to confirm her to be the Solicitor General, the top lawyer representing the United States before the Supreme Court. With her confirmation, Solicitor General Kagan became the first woman in America’s history to serve in that position, often referred to as the “Tenth Justice.” She was nominated to be Solicitor General while serving as Dean of Harvard Law School, the first woman to hold that position in the school’s 193-year history.

Today’s National Law Journal (NLJ) has a terrific interview with Senator Patrick Leahy, Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the confirmation hearings today for the possible appointment of Elena Kagan as a Supreme Court Justice.  

In his post Managing the Kagan Confirmation Hearing, author David Ingram queries Senate Judiciary chairman Leahy as to why “questions about the nominee’s personal life are off-limits”.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has participated in the confirmation hearing for every U.S. Supreme Court justice since Sandra Day O’Connor’s in 1981.

The National Law Journal: With President Obama’s nominees, you often use your first question to ask about a controversial subject. For example, your first question to Eric Holder was about waterboarding. Would you say you try to deflate the opposition in these hearings?

Sen. Patrick Leahy: No, I want to learn as much as I can about the person, especially on a significant nomination. My questions are usually designed to answer things that I’m most interested in. And if it goes into controversial issues, obviously I assume that a lot of people are interested in the same issues.

My favorite part of the interview is here:

Leahy: I went through a great deal of questions with her privately and in the hearing when she was up for solicitor general. I will ask more when she’s before us for this confirmation hearing. Primarily, I want the American people to hear from her. I think we can do a great service to the American public by making sure they get some sense of who the nominee is.

NLJ: There have been complaints in the past that that’s hard to do, because senators are seen using their time to draw attention to themselves rather than to ask about the nominee. Is that something that you, as chairman, try to regulate?

Leahy: Every senator has to speak for himself or herself. Most of my questions are pretty short. I want to hear from the nominee. Outside of the opening statements we all make, I don’t feel any need to give long speeches to either impress the nominee or the American public.[emphasis added]

What is your take on the NLJ interview and the Kagan hearings?

We are a nation in denial about our food supply. As a result the UFW has initiated the “Take Our Jobs” campaign.

Farm workers are ready to welcome citizens and legal residents who wish to replace them in the field, we will use our knowledge and staff to help connect the unemployed with farm employers. Just fill out the form to the right and continue on to the request for job application.

Click here to register for YOUR farm job!

I posted Saturday about the Brattleboro Candidate’s Forum and focused some on the candidates who were there.  I’d like to take a moment to focus on one who wasn’t.

Deb Markowitz had an opportunity Saturday to make inroads in Windham County, to connect with a group of child care providers and to convince a very open and attentive audience that she was worthy of their vote.  But clearly, they weren’t worthy of her time.

Can Markowitz be forgiven for not attending a candidate forum on her kid’s birthday?  Of course she can.  It’s an understandable choice.  But she agreed to participate in this forum, only to bail on it shortly before the date.  It’s not like the birthday was rescheduled at the last minute.  

I don’t think that the forum participants were necessarily offended by Markowitz’s no-show, but she didn’t win any new friends that day.

Shumlin made a point during the forum to note that Dubie didn’t show up for the forum and that it’s important to tell him that this is a job interview and if you don’t show up, you don’t get the job.  No one said that about Markowitz, which I understand (and applaud– it’s important for us not to have Democrats getting too destructive for one another), but it does kind of apply.

For me, it just boils down to this: when you run for governor, you can’t afford to treat someone’s vote as irrelevant.  This makes me question Markowitz’s commitment to this race and her willingness to treat child care as a relevant and important issue.

Birding and camping in Northern Vermont this month took us through Island Pond, Victory Basin and a part of the Sylvio Conte refuge network.  We had good sightings of birds, butterflies and even one fairly cool sighting of a young bull moose.

We stayed at Brighton State Park which is a nice campground.  We arrived on a Friday night and almost bagged out Saturday morning due to rain, mosquitoes and general misery. [sidenote: we stopped for coffee and found a coffee shop with a right to life magazine on one table and a Second Vermont Republic on another.  Never let it be said that Vermont is easy to understand].  But, we stuck it out, and it’s a good thing we did.  The trip yielded not only some pretty amazing looks at birds (including two life birds), but a wide array of insects as well.

ISLAND POND

Our campground in Island Pond didn’t yield a lot of sightings, but it did show us a couple very cool things.  First, this photo…

…takes a bit of explanation.

What you see here is two birds.  On the lower left is a black-throated blue warbler.  In the upper right is a ruby-throated hummingbird.

In between them is a tree full of holes.  Those holes are wells dug out by this yellow-bellied sapsucker:

What you saw above was the hummingbird and the warbler getting in each others’ face over access to the well holes.

SYLVIO CONTE

Sylvio Conte is a lot of driving to get kind of in the middle of nowhere.  It turns out that one of the “trails” we went in to visit (Molly Beattie) takes you through complex, winding narrow dirt roads to hit a boardwalk which is approximately 50″ long and then just stops.  By that point, frustration was at a bit of a high and I just decided I wanted to walk along the road for a bit; I didn’t even care which direction, because I just was really annoyed.  Three miles of walking later, I was in a much better mood, partially because of this:

This is a Gray Jay, the first of the two life birds I got on this trip.  I was particularly pleased with this photo because I just had a few seconds to get it.  I heard the bird first (and luckily, recognized the call).  Then, I looked, spotted it, fired off about five shots and this was the best of them.  Not a spectacular shot, but a life bird is a life bird.

I was also particularly pleased with this photo:

I was photographing a Tiger Swallowtail when it took off from the flower and caught it in motion.  I also got this cool shot of Arctic Skippers:

There’s a lot more in the photos, but if you click on the Sylvio Conte link from above, you’ll see the whole gallery.

VICTORY BASIN

So I have to start with this: we parked at a pullover spot which had an empty bird feeder nearby.  We chose the shady spot which was directly under the feeder, not thinking much of it.  Just as we started walking, about 15 minutes in, someone pulled up next to us and asked if that was our car back there.  We said it was and he warned us that a bear had just just come out of the woods by our car (“it looked like it came right out of your car!”) and to be careful.  So we thought about it, and decided we’d give the bear plenty of time to finish whatever it was doing and continued on our walk.  Fast forward more than an hour as we’d walked up the road quite a ways and were heading back.

 About 15 minutes from our car, a guy pulled up next to us and asked if we had a really big black dog and if it might be near our car which he saw a little ways back.  Of course, we figured out right away that he wasn’t talking about a great big dog but instead a small black bear.  Now… black bears are not dangerous except under some specific circumstances, one of those being if you startle them.  So we started making lots of noise as we walked back, even singing (“Shiny happy ursines holding hands!”) and planning (“if it’s not between us and the car we can set off the car alarm”) what to do.  Turned out to be the most uneventful eventful walk we’d ever had– no sign of the bear, but a lot of fairly rapid heart racing when I realized that the car was close enough to the trees that I wouldn’t be able to see if there were a bear in there.  But once we were in the car, we felt a little cheated– not even a hint of a bear?  Oh well.  

Anyway… Victory Basin’s a pretty awesome place to bird.  Last year we had some fairly amazing looks at warblers.  This year, not so much luck with warblers, but a life bird and some amazing butterflies, as well as this:

I’ve seen Ruffed Grouse a few times before, even locally, but I’ve never had one do its display like this.  Neat.  

There was also this neat shot:

I was taking a photo of one butterfly when another came rearing up behind it.

The coolest thing, however, was a new life bird.  This black-backed woodpecker…

…was just pecking away on a nearby tree and I got some okay photos of it, but then it flew in much closer, and I got the one shown.

So that’s some highlights (and a couple lowlights) from our camping trip.  Just a couple more things before I wrap it up, entirely personal, and totally pandering, so feel free to skip to the end at this point 🙂

1. I’ve completely redesigned my photos site.  If you click on any of the images shown above, you’ll see larger versions of the photos in the new site.  This site is a fairly major redesign, so I’d love any feeedback anyone has.
2. I’ve been taking time to seriously hone my web building skills as well as design a line of note cards based on my photography.  If you’re interested, feel free to check out the site and I’d love to hear whatever feedback you have on that as well.
3. As far as web design goes, I’m particularly interested in feedback from people using iPod touch/iPhone, Android, Blackberry or other hand held browsers.  I made a point of designing a different layout for those browsers (on both sites) and would especially appreciate any suggestions.  I can only simulate so many environments from my MacBook Pro.
4. Lastly, a totally shameless plug: if you need a web site designed, redesigned or just adapted for use with mobile device, feel free to drop me a line.  I work a lot with small clients who can’t afford thousands of dollars to have their site built but I’ve worked with some pretty huge clients, too.  I can do pretty much anything with a web site that I’m asked to do, as well as some cool stuff that no one else would think of but me.

Okay: the pandering and/or personal commentary is now over, and I shall simply leave you with a video I made the other day, taking a hummingbird in flight and slowing it down to about 1/4 its original speed:

and I don’t hear a whole hell of a lot of good from any of the gubernatorial wannabes.

Here’s the story, Officials see moves toward school district mergers (Barre/Montpelier Times Argus, 06/27/10), and it’s all about centralizing command and control over our for now local schools … you know … the ones that have Vermont consistently ranked at or near the top when it comes to national standards.

A constant bitch theme seems to be the administrative overhead. Yet I hear so much adoration for a system (Act 153) that encourages MORE spending on administration to figure out how to spend less on administration.

Although Shumlin did try, I haven’t heard a single sensible answer to the question: if consolidation makes such eminent fiscal sense, why does the state have to offer financial incentives for schools to do so?

The truth is it doesn’t. School districts have looked at it over the decades and a huge majority have rejected it.