A moment during today’s hearings reviewing Dick Cheney’s EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson’s decision to reject California’s request for a waiver to implement tougher emissions standards, despite the consensus of EPA staff that the waiver should have been granted. The announcement of the rejection came the same day Bush signed the Energy Bill, and in the form of a press release entitled “America Receives a National Solution for Vehicle Greenhouse Gas Emissions,” rather than following the protocol of including technical reasoning behind the decision (presumably because there was none). Johnson has said in regards to the decision that “the Bush Administration is moving forward with a clear national solution – not a confusing patchwork of state rules.”

What follows is Bernie trying to get a straight answer out of Johnson:

(Bumping back to the top… – promoted by odum)

UPDATE: The planned rollout has been completely flipped around. From TPM:

The first vote today will be on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s version of the surveillance legislation, which contains no retroactive immunity for the telecoms who collaborated with the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. That will be at two o’clock this afternoon. There is no agreement that such a vote meet a 60-vote threshold, so when the Republicans move to block that bill, the vote will be held on a 50-vote threshold. If they win that vote, then the bill will revert back to the Senate intelligence committee’s bill, which has a retroactive immunity provision.

After that will come a number of amendments, among them Sens. Chris Dodd’s (D-CT) and Russ Feingold’s (D-WI), which contains a provision to strip the immunity from the bill.

A new playing field – and its a sign that netroots calls and emails are having an impact! Keep it up, folks! Officially, its called “The Leahy Amendment”, and it may mean that maybe – just maybe – our Senators, as well as the other 98 – may now be able to protect our civil liberties in this instance WITHOUT resorting to a filibuster. There may be light at the end of this particular tunnel after all… (end update)

___

UPDATE 2: The “Leahy amendment” is defeated. Filibuster odds just went up.

___

UPDATE 3 (5:42 PM) As a cloture vote on the Intelligence bill (with telco immunity) was beginning, Reid and McConnell agreed to hold the cloture vote on Monday, with a likely final vote to be held on Tuesday.

Dodging the bullet? Obama and Clinton, who couldn’t be bothered to show up, but whose votes could be needed to prevent cloture. Stay tuned.

___

Retroactive immunity for telephone companies who have assisted with the illegal Bush wiretaps is back on the front burner in the US Senate.  

You’ll recall that the last time this issue came to the floor, courtesy of Majority Leader Harry Reid and in defiance of holds put on the bill by Senators Dodd, Feingold and others, that it was only withdrawn (temporarily) on the threat of a Hollywood-style, talk-it-to-death filibuster.

You will also recall that this bill was amended in Senator’s Leahy’s Judiciary Committee (through some unquestionably assertive action by Leahy that made us all proud) to remove the telco immunity, which would also, of course, incidentally prevent any meaningful investigation into Bush administration illegalities on the matter. Reid, although claiming to be against the immunity, has been in a pique ever since, ignoring basic Senate precedent and decorum to attack and undermine members of his own party in a way he has never pushed back on Republicans – all in an irrational insistence that the demands of Bush and Cheney be granted immediately, and without any mitigation. It has been an appalling display.

Let’s be perfectly clear: under the current order of business, the Intelligence Committee version of the bill WITH immunity WILL pass. When presented with the Judiciary version as an amendment after the the first bill’s introduction, stripping immunity WILL FAIL. This is reality, short of Reid deciding to back off and actually confront Bush (or one other possible scenario described below).

Supporting the Dodd filibuster may well be the ONLY means of stopping this thing. That’s reality, and we are supposed to be the “reality based community,” as I recall. It is a reality that will not be impacted one iota by any nice floor speeches or prepared statements. There may be one, and ONLY one, strategy in play in the Senate that has any hope of preventing retroactive telco immunity. Assuming (as I am) that it comes to that, Senators will either support that strategy or they won’t. In other words, they will either allow telco immunity, or they won’t.

Last time around, there was a handful of brave Senators who indicated they would support Dodd’s filibuster. On the minds of many Vermonters – as well as many across the nation in other blogs – were two questions: Why wasn’t maverick, independent Senator Bernie Sanders on that list? Why wasn’t Civil Rights champion (and Vermont ACLU “Civil Libertarian of the year”) Senator Patrick Leahy on that list? Sanders was supportive in a letter signed by 13 of his colleagues, but he stopped short of indicating his support for the filibuster.

My theory is, at the moment, they’re being cagey in the hope – possibly the expectation – that another amendment offered by Senator Feinstein of California may pass. It would let the FISA court play the role of gatekeeper for any lawsuits. That may not be an entirely unacceptable outcome.

But so far, this body of Republicans is very practiced in its own strategy of casual filibusters to kill anything reasonable that smacks of compromise – and of course, Reid does not force them to go through the spectacle of a full-out, talk-it-down filibuster, as he has promised to force Dodd into.

If/when this Feinstein compromise fails, Dodd will go to his only option – America’s only option – and filibuster. Will Leahy and Sanders stand with him when that happens?

As far as Leahy goes, it sounds like he has different priorities. From his remarks today (in what Greenwald calls an “obviously scripted” dialogue between himself, Reid, and GOP Leader McConnell) on the floor (emphasis added):

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, we have a number of Members who are supposed to go to the Davos economic summit tomorrow night, and I would note I have talked with Senator Bennett of Utah, who is the senior Republican on that trip, and the trip that is set to leave tomorrow night will not. We will put it on hold until Thursday, to determine whether we can leave on Thursday.

If I could have the attention of the majority leader for a moment. I appreciate the majority leader has been very clear. I happen to concur with him that this is important and we should finish it. All we want to do is to know how it will go. There is a Judiciary Committee amendment to the bill. I would not anticipate taking a great deal of time on that, but I think the distinguished majority leader is doing the absolute right thing.

Let’s be clear. From both Sanders’s and Leahy’s offices, I’ve gotten well-spoken, clearly worded comments against telco immunity. Here’s Leahy from last October:

A retroactive grant of immunity or preemption of state regulators does more than let the carriers off the hook.  Immunity is designed to shield this Administration from any accountability for conducting surveillance outside the law.  It could make it impossible for Americans whose privacy has been violated illegally to seek meaningful redress.

In fact, you can get similarly well-written, no-nonsense statements from Senator Reid’s office.

But, as before, neither will even acknowledge the possibiity of a Dodd initiated filibuster, let alone give a clear answer as to whether or not they will support it. This despite Dodd’s own clear statement:

“If after debate, the Senate appears ready to pass legislation granting telecom providers retroactive immunity I will use any and all legislative tools at my disposal, including a filibuster, to prevent this deeply flawed bill from becoming law.”

At this point, we have only Leahy’s above floor statement. And that doesn’t look good.

It’s clear from the media reports that, for whatever reason, it is Dodd that is earning the scorn of his colleagues, rather than Bush and Cheney who are pushing this abominable provision.

Perhaps someday Sanders or Leahy can tell us the reason, as they don’t seem in any hurry to back him up.

Sanders:

http://sanders.senate.gov/comm…

Washington Office:

332 Dirksen Senate Office Building

Washington, D.C. 20510-4503

Phone: (202) 224-5141

Fax: (202) 228-0776

Main District Office:

1 Church Street, 2nd Floor

Burlington, VT 05401

Phone: (802) 862-0697

Fax: (802) 860-6370

Leahy:

http://leahy.senate.gov/contac…

Washington office

433 Russell Senate Office Bldg

(at Constitution and Delaware)

United States Senate

Washington, DC 20510

(202) 224-4242

Burlington office

199 Main Street, 4th Floor

Burlington, VT 05401

(802) 863-2525

1-800-642-3193

Montpelier office

P.O. Box 933

87 State Street, Room 338

Montpelier, VT 05602

(802) 229-0569

__

As supplementary information, here’s the prodigiously-cited comment Greenwald links to that does an amazing job laying out how bad this bill is:

So to try to help counteract the latest White House PR push for immunity for their well-heeled secret corporate surveillance partners, here’re a few reminders and links about the core provisions of the amendments to FISA (beyond the brazen immunity provisions) that will be on the floor of the Senate this Thursday, in spite of Chris Dodd’s hold on the Intelligence Committee bill, courtesy of “Majority Leader” Harry Reid:

These two bills (the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary Committee FISA bills) are about (in addition to immunity in the Intelligence bill’s Title II) “Link Analysis” and the “largest database ever assembled in the world” – as indirectly confirmed by the House Judiciary Committee’s report on its FISA bill “RESTORE,” which cited the following two news articles as describing activity that the RESTORE Act (and thus obviously the two Senate bills) would permit:

…The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans – most of whom aren’t suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made – across town or across the country – to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.

[snip]

The usefulness of the NSA’s domestic phone-call database as a counterterrorism tool is unclear. Also unclear is whether the database has been used for other purposes.

[snip]

For similar reasons, this person said, NSA rejected Qwest’s suggestion of getting a letter of authorization from the U.S. attorney general’s office. A second person confirmed this version of events. – Leslie Cauley, USA TODAY, May 11, 2006

Http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm

…Matt Blaze, a professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania and a former researcher for AT&T, said the telecommunications companies could have easily provided the F.B.I. with the type of network analysis data it was seeking because they themselves had developed it over many years, often using sophisticated software like a program called Analyst’s Notebook.

“This sort of analysis of calling patterns and who the communities of interests are is the sort of things telephone companies are doing anyway because it’s central to their businesses for marketing or optimizing the network or detecting fraud,” said Professor Blaze, who has worked with the F.B.I. on technology issues.

Such “analysis is extremely powerful and very revealing because you get these linkages between people that wouldn’t be otherwise clear, sometimes even more important than the content itself” of phone calls and e-mail messages, he said. “But it’s also very invasive. There’s always going to be a certain amount of noise,” with data collected on people who have no real links to suspicious activity, he said.

[snip]

But critics assert that the further the links are taken, the less valuable the information proves to be. – Eric Lichtblau, the New York Times, September 9, 2007

Http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/washington/09fbi.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

Both articles were cited in Footnote #27 of the House Judiciary Committee report on RESTORE, released October 12, 2007:

Http://www.rules.house.gov/110/text/110_hr3773rpt_judiciary.pdf

This is not about the ‘foreign to foreign on a U.S. wire’ problem that has been used as justification for these revisions/eviscerations of FISA – that issue is separately addressed and resolved in these bills. This is a brand new world of spying being authorized by Congress against innocent Americans (under Title I of the Senate bills) without any meaningful Judicial Branch check. New corporate and government spying authority which is being accompanied by a simultaneous effort to hold immune from lawsuits the cooperating corporations, that would block off Judicial Branch review to prevent the Supreme Court from having an opportunity to rule that these spying authorities openly violate the Fourth Amendment.

http://intelligence.senate.gov…

This is collusion between the Executive and Legislative Branches of government to end-run the Constitution, and to try to avoid any check from the Judicial Branch which would stop and reverse this deliberate invasion of our privacy and knowing violation of our Constitution.

(Nicely put. – promoted by JulieWaters)

FYI, there’s a 7-minute video of Peter Galbraith discussing the Iraq War and the Bush Administration’s handling of it, the surge, and its broader implications over at Mulish Behavior: http://mulishbehavior.blogspot…

Worth checking out.

Also, I disagree with the conventional wisdom that Douglas cruises in a 3-way race. Rather, Douglas has it much easier in a head-to-head race against Pollina.

How’s that?

For starters, there is a large percentage of old-guard Democrats who simply WILL NOT vote for a Progressive, regardless of how much courting goes on, and regardless of whether the Democratic leadership could convince someone from running to give him a free pass (which won’t happen). In that case, Douglas either picks up those folks (“Douglas Democrats”?), or they take a pass on voting in that race. So, Douglas stands to win with anywhere from 55%-45% (best case for Pollina), or perhaps in a landslide somewhere around 65% or 70% to Pollina’s 35% or 30%) (more likely).

Second, in a 3-way race, the Democrats will vote, and turnout will be high in a hotly contested presidential election year. So, it does provide the opening to keep Douglas with a plurality of the vote – either throwing it to the legislature and allowing the 3rd place candidate to make a public appeal to throw their votes to the 2nd place candidate), or at a minimum hampering him by denying him a mandate.

Lastly, might I suggest that if the Dems put forth aggressive energy and health plans this session and Douglas vetoes them, or if the economy continues to worsen, OR, any number of other X-factors come into play (suppose Galbraith outraises Douglas using his national/international connections – who knows?!), then perhaps, just perhaps, the Democrat finishes first. Not entirely outside the realm of possibility if all the stars align.

It always blows my mind how readily leftists create more problems for themselves. It’s a quality I tend to ascribe to Democrats, but the carnival-like drama of the search for gubernatorial candidates demonstrates that its a failing of Progressives as well.

We’re experts at creating Frankenstein monsters for ourselves, and this story is a story of Frankensteins. The shared creation, of course, is Governor Douglas himself, who was allowed to develop a head of electoral and popular steam that led him into the Governor’s office by being allowed to run unchallenged as Treasurer.

But the Dems and the Progs are both dealing with their own monsters made manifest in each other, because both seem all too content to leave their political fortunes to the forces of nature – and nature abhors vacuums, as I’ve said many time before on this site.

It was the vacuum created by the lack of a Democrat making serious movements last year that enabled Pollina to swoop in so easily and readily. Pollina becomes the Dems Frankenstein monster.

But the lack of any effort to meaningfully reach out to the Democratic grassroots to shore up the support Pollina claimed to want also left a vacuum just hanging out there. If Pollina had paid more than some occasional, casual lip service to the idea of repairing long-burnt bridges, there would have been no room for what we’ve heard and seen today – Peter Galbraith, for all intents and purposes, being anointed the Democratic party nominee.

And so, Progressives have seen the Dems’ Frankenstein monster with one of their own. There will be lots of grumbling from both sides now, while observers of all political stripes will merely be left to chuckle about how predictable this has all been. In any event, the game’s afoot – and now that the players seem to be on the board, the details become a lot harder to second-guess. I just got in from hearing Galbraith address the Democratic caucus – not quite announcing his campaign, but pretty close (sound familiar?). It’s easy to see the problems presented by such an electoral neophyte, but I suspect that Progressives, Republicans and frustrated Democrats underestimate him at their peril.

Whatever happens next, this all sure is interesting.

I know, some of you probably forgot he was even running – that's okay, sometimes he did, as well. His campaigning was best summed up by David, at the Right's Field:

So ends the laziest candidacy in American history. They’re showing b-roll of Fred “campaigning” on MSNBC and they literally can’t find anything more interesting than him eating a bowl of soup.

A great post on this subject has already appeared on  GMD- I suggest looking at:

Missing Emails: “Where are What?

In Orwell’s 1984, inconvenient truths contained in historical documents were consigned to “The Memory Hole”; quite simply, an incinerator, which destroyed all traces of documentary evidence contradicting the Government’s current version of the Truth.

Of course, Orwell did not foresee that, in the digital age, very little in the way of “hard copies” would exist, making the task of alteration or disposal even easier.

According to The Washington Post (

“White House Has No Comprehensive E-Mail Archive:System Used by Clinton Was Scrapped” by Elizabeth Williamson and Dan Eggan):

For years, the Bush administration has relied on an inadequate archiving system for storing the millions of e-mails sent through White House servers, despite court orders and statutes requiring the preservation of such records…

As a result, several years’ worth of electronic communication may have been lost, potentially including e-mails documenting administration actions in the run-up to the Iraq war.

Henry Waxman’s House Oversight Committee is planning to hold hearings on this matter, currently scheduled for February 15.  Let us hope that this committee, of which Vermont’s own Peter Welch is a member, makes plenty of copies of what they find.

Originally posted at http://vnrc.org/article/view/1…

There's an interesting development in the upcoming Governor's race. There's been lots of speculation as to whether a Dem was even going to jump into the race. Well, it appears that Peter Galbraith is getting much closer to jumping in, with the setup of the Vermont Leadership Fund:

In Vermont, we have a chance to end six years of stagnation with new progress. Health care is a human right, and not just for those who can afford it. We need leadership to unleash Vermont's potential in the new green economy, to better protect our environment and to find innovative ways to conserve all our precious resources. And, we should add our voices forcefully to those demanding an end to the Iraq War.

I am excited about the possibilities for Vermont — especially if we are working with a Democratic President and Congress — and for that reason I am now giving serious consideration to being a candidate for Governor.

Since my potential candidacy was first mentioned in the press, many Vermonters have contacted me asking how they can help. I am very grateful for these offers of support. In order to make them more concrete, I am launching the Vermont Leadership Fund with the help of the Vermont Democratic Party.

The Vermont Leadership Fund will support Democratic leaders on all levels around the state, and cultivate new leaders who will help build Vermont's future. It will highlight the multiple shortcomings of our administrations in Montpelier and Washington and present positive alternatives.

Looks like Anthony Pollina's job is about to get a bit harder. 

Anthony Pollina’s day just got a little worse… and Jim Douglas probably thinks he’s got it made (although that false sense of security may be his undoing) as Peter Galbraith takes another step towards running for Governor.

Today Galbraith sent out an email touting his “Vermont Leadership Fund” which will support candidates at all levels, but presumably serves as the official “dipping of the toe” into gubernatorial waters.

“Interesting,” as Peter Freyne would say. You can check out the message and contribute at: http://www.vermontleadershipfu…

I think I’ll send something his way and see what happens. Maybe this guy CAN give Douglas a run for his money. At least he’s got the guts not to be scared off by Douglas and/or Pollina. Anyone else?  

We’ve talked about this a bit before.  I won’t give the whole history, but you can visit Green Mountain Daily’s Pharmacy Fishing Archive for all the stories about collection of personal data by Vermont State Police on medical data from pharmacists throughout the state of Vermont.

Well, it’s just gotten a bit more interesting.  In some of the earlier discussion (I don’t recall how much of this was private discussion and how much was posted online) involved a database to try to get a handle on illegal prescription drug use.  What I didn’t realize at the time was that the Department of Health had already begun developing that database and has, in fact, put out bids for the creation of it.  

I’m a tech geek and know databases and secure information management extensively.  After the fold, I’ll try to explain exactly what this database can do, doing my best to translate tech geek into standard human English.  

For those of you who are tech geeks yourselves, this may sound like I’m talking down to you.  I apologize, but I want this to be understood by the general public, and I want to be thorough.

I’m going to begin by quoting a few items from the requirements set forth by the state for the database:

The contractor will collect data on all Schedule II, III, and IV controlled substances

dispensed by VT licensed pharmacies.

(You can see what drugs fall into the various schedules through the Department of Justice)

A complete record for each prescription dispensed will be stored for six years, and shall be available for query during this period.

“Available for query” means that any authorized user can, at any time, look up information up to six years in the past.

The following data elements will be collected by the application from dispensing pharmacies:

1. Patient full name

2. Patient date of birth

3. Patient’s complete address

4. Prescriber name

5. Prescriber DEA#

6. Pharmacy Identification

7. Pharmacist’s name or initials

8. Generic or brand name of drug dispensed

9. National Drug Code for the drug dispensed

10. Quantity of drug dispensed

11. Dosage

12. Number of days supply dispensed

13. Number of refills prescribed

14. Date drug dispensed

15. Source of payment

16. If the patient is an animal, the patient’s name and species, along with the owner’s full name, DOB, and address.

I think this is mostly self-explanatory; from what I understand, people who prescribe medications have Drug Enforcement Agency codes which ID them to Federal Officials.  I’m assuming source of payment is relevant because cash payments are believed to be more likely in criminal transactions than credit car payments.

More from the requirements:

The contractor will be an Application Service Provider, hosting the Vermont Prescription Monitoring System (VPMS). The contractor shall utilize and maintain all hardware and software for the VPMS application, throughout the life of the resulting contract.

This may take some explanation.  Here’s the deal: an “Application Service Provider” means that the person who handles this bid will, themselves, be hosting the system.  In other words, instead of having it housed on secure servers by the state itself, a private company will be holding onto all the data.  

This means that although the company will be required to maintain strict security codes, there’s little the State of Vermont can do to guarantee that security.  There is no motive for the company hired to do this work to reveal security breaches on their part, because doing so could place their corporate interests in jeopardy.

Really, for me, this is what it boils down to:

1. If we’re going to collect this data (I’m not convinced we need to, but if we do it, we need to do it better than this), it has to have a firewall of some sort with respect to access of data.  Specifically:
   
   
   • separate access for personal names (for routine data cleanup, elimination of duplicate records, etc.), which aren’t connected to medications or history, combined with…
   • a set of criteria for revealing the names.  I.e., if the same individual has prescriptions at four different pharmacies in a six-month period, then it can trigger a report which allows law enforcement to determine whether or not an investigation is warranted, but without those specific triggers, a warrant is required to obtain the information.



2. If we’re going to collect this data, it needs to be housed somewhere where we can keep an eye on it, not where some corporation somewhere may or may not have any strong motivation to keep the information private



3. The proposal itself uses the terms “HIPAA compliant” and “fully HIPAA compliant” without ever defining explicitly what is meant by those terms.  These are terms which are relatively ambiguous, though they don’t sound this way on the surface.  They’re open to so much interpretation that we need to be specific as to exactly what the Vermont Department of Health assumes HIPAA to require and how it expects to meet those requirements.

One final thought: having the information stored like this has real potential in politics down the line.  Someone who opposes a sitting governor or legislator can easily covertly track down personal information about them and leak it to the press through the system as described in the proposal.  To me, this is a very big deal.