(I think “good work… so, when are we going to impeach?” is a sentiment many on this site share, in the face of these two bits of good news… – promoted by odum)

The Senate voted Wednesdy to prohibit the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods on terror suspects despite President Bush’s threat to veto any measure that limits the agency’s interrogation techniques.

The prohibition was contained in a bill authorizing intelligence activities for the current year. The bill would restrict the CIA to the 19 interrogation techniques outlined in the Army field manual. That manual prohibits waterboarding, a method that makes an interrogation subject feel he is drowning. The bill passed on a 51-45 vote.

The House had approved the measure in December, so Wednesday’s Senate vote set up a confrontation with the White House, where Bush has promised to veto any bill that restricts CIA questioning.

(Senate votes to ban CIA waterboarding, other harsh interrogations, Times Argus, 02/14/08)

Don’t stop now .. there’s more!

The House voted Thursday to hold White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before a panel investigating the firing of several United States attorneys.

Ahead of the vote, Republicans had walked out in an effort to show that they want to work on a permanent update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) rather than be part of a “partisan fishing expedition,” as House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) put it.

(House finds Bolten, Miers in contempt of Congress, The Hill, 02/14/08)

The House appears to be standing firm on the issue of not giving retro-active immunity to the telecoms.

Peace & war, criminal conduct in the federal adminsitration … these are all issues worth devoting substantial and substantive time on … even at the risk of not doing other things.

But then impeachment is still off the table.

The Senate voted Wednesdy to prohibit the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods on terror suspects despite President Bush’s threat to veto any measure that limits the agency’s interrogation techniques.

The prohibition was contained in a bill authorizing intelligence activities for the current year. The bill would restrict the CIA to the 19 interrogation techniques outlined in the Army field manual. That manual prohibits waterboarding, a method that makes an interrogation subject feel he is drowning. The bill passed on a 51-45 vote.

The House had approved the measure in December, so Wednesday’s Senate vote set up a confrontation with the White House, where Bush has promised to veto any bill that restricts CIA questioning.

(Senate votes to ban CIA waterboarding, other harsh interrogations, Times Argus, 02/14/08)

Don’t stop now .. there’s more!

The House voted Thursday to hold White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before a panel investigating the firing of several United States attorneys.

Ahead of the vote, Republicans had walked out in an effort to show that they want to work on a permanent update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) rather than be part of a “partisan fishing expedition,” as House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) put it.

(House finds Bolten, Miers in contempt of Congress, The Hill, 02/14/08)

The House appears to be standing firm on the issue of not giving retro-active immunity to the telecoms.

Peace & war, criminal conduct in the federal adminsitration … these are all issues worth devoting substantial and substantive time on … even at the risk of not doing other things.

But then impeachment is still off the table.

What happens when you deploy troops who have seen high intensity combat time and time again with inadequate dwell time between tours? You see skyrocketing mental health issues.  

After months of investigative work, talking to our troops and veterans, we released a report on the situation at Fort Drum in Watertown, New York. Since 9/11, the 2nd Brigade Combat Team has been deployed for more than forty months, more than any other brigade in the Army, and we are seeing what is nothing short of a cry for help from the men and women on the base; a cry we will answer for the Guard and Reserve troops here in Vermont as well.

A cry for help that is also coming from the leadership on the base. In a New York Times article today about our report, Major General Michael Oates, commander of the 10th Mountain Division, says: “We recognize that there is stress on our force and their families from this conflict, but until recently, we have not fully appreciated the extent of some of the mental stresses and injuries or how to best identify them.” Please read the rest of the article here.

What is happening at Fort Drum — with Soldiers still on active duty suffering from PTSD, with Soldiers and their families in need of counseling, with Soldiers literally dying while still on duty — is going to happen all around America unless we begin to address some of the basic issues of this war.  As our report explains, DoD itself has stated that the likelihood of troops having mental health problems increases by 60% with every tour of duty. So, in short, through ourdeployment policies, we are consciously compounding the wounds of war.

This is unacceptable to us. Veterans for America’s Wounded Warrior Outreach Program will continue to address these problems from the bottom up.  

We are going to go to as many bases as we can afford to go to, see what is happening on those bases and see how we can help. If you can help us, we would greatly appreciate it.

We are going to continue our Wounded Warrior Registry Outreach — if you or someone you know needs help getting help with PTSD or TBI, please click here.

And above all, we are going to continue to serve and help those that serve and have served us with the same level of dedication and courage they have shown. Click here to learn more about what we are doing.

UPDATE: A reader emailed to make the point that this was NOT a fundraiser, and spent a sentence or two promoting the innate superiority of airport events… and then went on to complain about the Democratic presidential candidates. Whatever.

It’s the big day! GOP Presidential-nominee-lock John McCain is stopping by the Green Mountain State for another Vermont Republican-style fundraiser event. The kind he can walk to quickly from his plane and run back out as fast as possible without having to actually be in the state any longer than absolutely necessary. And while he is here, he’ll be safely bunkered away in the airport, secure in the knowledge he’ll be well insulated from Vermont and Vermonters.

I remember the last time there was such a GOP bunker style event – waaaaay back when VP Dick Cheney his-very-self was on hand, safely hidden away while about 200 of us protested at the gated entrance. Ah… good times.

And it was leaked footage from that Cheney event that was used in this little-seen campaign ad from the Clavelle for Governor campaign. Here, then, is that golden oldie, for your entertainment…

More news that the Vermont secession movement is history:

February 14, 2008

By John Curran Associated Press

MONTPELIER — Supporters of a campaign to get Vermont to secede from the nation failed to get the necessary signatures to put independence resolutions on Town Meeting Day ballots, but they say some people may introduce resolutions from the floor in hopes of airing the idea with voters. “We've got citizens in a number of towns interested in using Town Meeting as a way to advance this,” said Rob Williams, editor of Vermont Commons, a newspaper devoted to secession. “If it happens, it's going to come from the floor. But we don't know who's going to introduce it.”

 We've talked about this a lot here, and to get a lot of the back story you can also hop over to Vermont Secession. 

I didn't know this was happening, but apparently the neo-confederates and assorted shallow thinkers who've been dreaming about secession have been trying to get the idea on the ballot across the state for Town Meeting Day. You know, the organ of democracy, where the Bush/Cheney impeachment movement was advanced a couple of hears ago?

Yup, I didn't know about it and probably neither did you, even if, like me, you live in one of the sixteen towns they tried to get the issue on the ballot.

I guess this isn't surprising, since they could barely attract twenty people to their banquet last month. 

 If they do the right thing, and just fade away like any number of fringe movements, I can't say I'll miss them.

I’m just going to quote a bit from the Bradblog and provide the link, and I’m only doing this because I’ve watched this story unfold … as if it were encased in an invisibility cloak.

Former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson says the recent disclosures in the UK’s Sunday Times concerning the sale of U.S. nuclear secrets to the foreign black market, as aided by high-ranking government officials, are “stunning”…

The previously covert agent, who had worked in the agency’s counter-proliferation division for years monitoring traffic in the nuclear black market under the guise of a cover company named Brewster Jennings until being outed by Bush Administration officials, was asked about the recent series of explosive stories in the British paper during an interview this morning with Florida radio host Henry Raines of American AM.

Those disclosures include allegations that Brewster Jennings’ real identity as a CIA front company was outed to Turkish officials by then-Asst. Sec. of State for European Affairs Marc Grossman as early as 2001…

A text transcript of the interview, as well as the audio, is now posted at the end of this article.

The series of three Times stories so far has corroborated information detailed by former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds. Edmonds has been gagged by the Bush Administration’s Department of Justice in this country under the “State Secrets Privilege” since 2002, disallowing her from speaking about her work at the bureau. In a BRAD BLOG exclusive late last year, Edmonds announced she would disclose all of the information she’d be barred from revealing to any major U.S. broadcast media outlet that would allow her to tell the full story.

LINK HERE

Hey, we can only hope, right? This from CBS:

Huckabee called the next several weeks “very intense weeks where a lot of delegates are at stake and a lot will be decided as far as the long term impact of where this process is going.” He listed North Carolina, Ohio, Vermont, and Rhode Island on the short list of states he will be campaigning. He leaves for Wisconsin tomorrow.

A quick call to HuckHQ reveals that “there’s nothing set in stone yet,” but hey, things happen fast in this business. I know I’d love to see which Vermonters might show up at a Huckabee campaign event in Burlington. Somebody better alert the squirrels.

Tony the Tiger?  No silly, Vermont Tiger!  For the last several weeks, I’ve been having a lot of fun sparing with the boys over at VT Tiger.  Too much fun I guess, since they appear to have unofficially banned me from commenting on their site anymore for some reason.  I’ve been amazed, in general, at how thinly-skinned most of them are over there at “the Tiger” (as they refer to it).

I’m still waiting for multiple comments that I’ve left on their site to appear in the following threads:

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

Yea, that’s eight different posts, and I’m not holding my breath.

Mostly what I’ve had some fun with over there at “the Tiger” was watching them defend the indefensible by trying to go on and on about how “non-partisan” they are over there:

See:

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

Mr. Art Woolf is a personal favorite of mine over at “the Tiger”.  I like his folksy style, and he seems to be the smartest of the routine bloggers over there.  He was at least smart enough not to wander into the minefield that I tried to plant in his way above when I expressed my glee at seeing that he was implying (what we both know wasn’t really true) that he was a supporter of the Clintons and the DLC in the 1990s.  

Another fine example of the type of “non-partisanship” (that’s been discussed here before I think) that “the Tiger” loves to engage in can be found here:

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

where they say

the Democratic Party — and the environmental movement in general — have been taken over by more radical activists who seem to be inspired by the anti-technology Luddite movement of the early 19th century.

 

What a lot of people fail to understand about the environmental movement is that it’s really not about saving the planet.  The planet will be just fine.  It’s we that need saving…as we are slowly making our planet unlivable…for us.  I also don’t know of that many people that think that our planet is still governed by the Malthusian Cycle in a post-Industrial Revolution world.  A frequent Tiger commenter also laid another turd when he responded to this post by saying

the Constitution only guarantees the right to the ‘pursuit’ of happiness. It does not guarantee actual happiness.

Ummmm, I think he might have been confusing the Declaration of Independence with the U.S. Constitution.  One is the document that formed our government, and the other one didn’t.  

The comparisons that they sometimes draw over there at “the Tiger” are also quite humorous.  I loved when they tried to link obesity & energy efficiency together in this post:

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

and then they conveniently left out the part where the real reason that “fat people” might be cheaper to treat in the long run is that they tend to DIE sooner than other people…nice.

Or here:

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

where they compare immigrant English lessons to health care reform.  I wonder if they actually feel that the public has no interest at all in having all incoming immigrants learn English?

Wild hyperbole is another theme that frequently comes up over at “the Tiger”, like here:

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

where the political situation in VT is compared to fighting the Nazis in WWII.  Then, of course, they try and remember how “great” things were after Ronald Reagan saved us all.  I wonder though how we would be if we continued the move towards alternative energy sources that Jimmy Carter tried to start when he was in office.  Reagan even went so far as to take down the solar panels that the Carter administration had placed on or near the White House.  IMO, Mr. Jon Harrison has earned the nickname “Mr. Hyperbole” by many of his comments on “the Tiger”.  He’s one of the few routine posters over there that I have any respect for though.

In this post about health care policy:

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

“the Tiger” asks,

Would it not be possible to design a system where the employees got the money and then went out and shopped for their own insurance?

To which I say, how about if we had a system where the employees got the money that their employers were spending on their health care coverage, then they only had to pay a fraction of that money to the govt. to pay for a single-payer health care system?  Sounds cheaper to me.

This Tiger post was actually inspired by a comment that I had made in an earlier post:

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

Unfortunately, I was not allowed to respond to this post on “the Tiger”.  I merely wanted to say that I do think it’s disturbing to boil down the entire VT Supreme Court system to “a few activist lawyers and judges”…see:

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

Let’s hope that “Mr. Hyperbole” doesn’t ever end up in front of the VT Supreme Court, since he’ll likely find it a lot less forgiving and liberal…especially if he calls them a bunch of activist judges.  He also misstates the reason why the Brigham decision was made in the first place I think.  The Legislature had failed to act to make VT’s educational system fair.  I also don’t believe the court ever mandated a specific way to raise taxes for VT’s education system, which makes the “taxes imposed by the judiciary — taxation without representation” comment ridiculous IMO.  I also don’t think that the Legislature has failed to re-appoint any of the VT Supreme Court judges recently.  Perhaps “Mr. Hyperbole” would like to see judges directly elected by the people in VT?  

The other funny thing about “the Tiger” is that they apparently restrict comments that actually AGREE with the postings that they put on their website. For instance, in response to this post:

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

I tried to say that I completely agreed with ending govt. milk price supports, but also that speaking out against them in VT would be like speaking out against ethanol subsidies in Iowa I bet.  I also completely agreed with the statement:

Housing for the young families that Vermont desperately needs can be built on the land that goes out of production.

So much for bi-partisanship…

In this post on “the Tiger”:

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

I tried to post to agree with quite a lot of what was stated there in a rather ham-handed way.  I would have loved to have pointed out that the direct radiation from the Sun (mostly visible light) is a shorter wavelength than the longer wavelength of radiation that comes off of a body that’s been heated.  So, plant greenhouses can be designed to have glass panels that only allow the shorter, incoming radiation from the Sun to penetrate and that trap the longer, outgoing radiation from the stuff that’s been heated inside the greenhouse.  The Environment Greenhouse Effect is the reason that our planet doesn’t heat up to some ridiculously high temperature during the day and then cool down to some ridiculously low temperature at night.  In other words, we have an atmosphere that allows most of the incoming radiation from the Sun during the day to heat the ground (which, in turn heats the air above the ground) and then doesn’t allow all of the outgoing radiation from the Earth’s system to escape into space at night.  It is also true that the air above the Earth’s surface is mostly heated from below by convection and, to a much lesser extent, by radiation from the ground, while very little of the atmosphere is heated by direct conduction with the ground’s surface.  Sure, the fact that a greenhouse is completely enclosed allows for the heated air to remain in place longer than if there were holes in the greenhouse’s walls.  I also think that Mr. Wizard would have been proud of Mr. Decker’s little experiment, but I’m not sure what the real meaning behind this post on VT Tiger was.  He goes on to ask,

Is it therefore necessary to pay attention to trapped radiation in deducing the temperature of a planet as expected by its atmosphere?

Yes, since it is a portion of the global heat budget of our planet.  I like talking about basic meteorology and physics too.   🙂

Mr. Decker gets more to point with his next post here:

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

where he tries to poke fun at the “consensus” over global warming.  I’m not a fan at all of global warming, but the Russian claim that’s mentioned here was already debunked, I think, over on Charity’s website…see:

http://shesright.org/2008/02/0…

The other desperate Canadian plea for research money is just that…an attempt to scare people with supposedly “new” information that needs to be studied more.  It’s a shame that both sides of the global warming issue feel the need to scare people in order to gain money for their side.  I’m a big believer that the first thing that goes right out the window when an issue of science becomes politicized is the truth, unfortunately.  The 11-year Sun cycle has been well-know for many decades now BTW.  

So, the point of this too-long post is to try and encourage some of you to venture on over to our friends on the Right (you know…the VT chapter of “the free market will solve all our problems and the GOP has most of the best ideas” crowd) and voice your opinions.  Don’t tell them that I sent you though!  

I’m a firm believer that when two opposing sides engage in a vigorous and emotional debate on issues that BOTH sides come out the other side stronger.  It’s a shame that the guys over at “the Tiger” apparently don’t believe in that.

P.S. – This is my first, real, public blog posting…so please excuse any obvious posting errors on my part.

Last night, Donna Edwards not only defeated incumbent Al Wynn in Maryland’s congressional primaries, but she completely routed him.

Per Kos:

As I wrote time and time again, we don’t have the money to buy off our politicians, and the bad Democrats know we’re not about to start voting for Republicans. So the only way we can hold our caucus accountable is to send notice that we will primary them. And sure, they may survive such primaries. But sometimes they won’t.

[…]

Our caucus is once again on notice. If they continue to serve corporate interests rather than their constituents, if they insist on remaining aloof to the nation’s popular sentiment, they’ll get booted in a Democratic primary like Joe Lieberman in 2006 and Al Wynn in 2008.

Donna Edwards lost to Wynn by a slim margin in 2006.  Wynn’s corrupt party machine was too powerful and, in a non-presidential year, there wasn’t as much of an investment in the race.  That was then.  This is now.  Wynn had been in the house for more than a decade and now he’s out.  Pelosi had supported him.  

His career as a politician ended because Democrats who opposed him rose up and challenged him and came out victorious.  It ended because voters in Maryland decided that Edwards was the better Democrat and because with Obama firing up new, younger, voters, they came out in droves, supporting not just Obama, but Edwards as well.

This is a huge victory.

So I only have this to ask: how many of our own state reps and senators have failed to live up to their expectations and how many of us are willing to challenge those who have?

(Amen. – promoted by odum)

I went to school in Richmond, VA – capital of the confederacy.  A city whose main boulevard is adorned with monuments to Lee, Stuart and Jackson (more recently Arthur Ashe was added, but that was a bitter fight).  Many of my fellow students did not refer to the Civil War – it was the War of Northern Aggression.  The Stars and Bars hung in many dorm rooms. 

I have a deep love of the south – its people, food and culture, but I also have no illusions about its dark history.  Get outside of NoVA, Tidewater and Richmond and Virginia is a deeply southern state.  

Last night, 59% of white Virginian males voted for a black candidate for president.  A majority of rural voters did as well.  More Virginians voted for Obama than voted for the entire republican slate.

Are we living in the era of post-racial politics.  Certainly not and I doubt we ever will.  However, last night's results illustrate how much things change.