Sirota beat me to it. With Obamamania sweeping the Democratic left, all my alarm bells have been clanging for weeks, fueled by remembrances of the many discussions and frustrations that have been brewing around the freshman superstar. I’ve been intending for days to type a diary about my concerns. Concerns that, given how little Obama has really done and how far he has fallen into the game of reinforcing many of the Republican talking points about liberals on his book tour and casting it as reaching out, it may be premature to be falling all over each other to anoint this guy as the second coming (of Clinton, Kennedy or King, depending on who you listen to).

It’s just as well, as my fellow Bernie-Sanders-staff-alumnus Sirota (okay, I was only a little organizing toady, while Sirota was a press secretary…) was typically far more direct and compelling than I ever am:

For progressives, this situation is perilous indeed. Obama is a candidate who has kept his record deliberately thin, who has risked almost nothing for the bigger movement, and in fact who has sometimes gone out of his way to reinforce dishonest stereotypes about the left. This is a man who has helped launch the Hamilton Project designed to undermine Democrats pushing for fairer trade deals. This is a man who belittled Paul Wellstone as merely a “gadfly.” This is a man who refused to lift a finger for Ned Lamont. Flocking to a candidate like that without demanding that he change only reinforces the damaging concept that our movement is a Seinfeld Movement about nothing.

His thesis was, by my reading, simple and irrefutably valid:

I want to be clear: I don’t think our movement is a Seinfeld Movement. But don’t fool yourself: a movement that rushes to embrace a candidate without demanding that candidate actually lead on the issues that the movement is supposed to be about – well, that could be a death blow for what we are working toward. Movements move because leaders lead and because they weild power by forcing politicians to stand up for people. Movements are killed by false prophets, cults of personality and by the unwillingness of those in the movement to wield their power for their agenda.

Okay, so maybe some don’t agree. I happen to, and in fact consider it self-evident. But there are reasons not to. Perhaps someone takes an “electioneering” perspective over an ideological one, and sees Obama as eminently marketable and electable. Regular readers of my scribblings won’t be surprised to hear that I don’t subscribe to that line of reasoning, but hey, I recognize it as a legitimate point of view. Or perhaps you share Sirota’s concerns, but your “gut” tells you that Obama will nevertheless be the guy to run for president. Fine. We all depend to some extent or other on the “gut check.”

Hoo-boy. Was it not that simple. Let’s just say there’s another reason I’m glad Sirota beat me to the punch, as this is the sort of response he received:

Narcissistic Sirota doesn’t think his movement is a Seinfeld Movement. But don’t fool yourself: a movement that rushes to embrace a writer who belittles leading Democrats – well, that sort of mindless negativity could be a death blow for what we are working toward. Movements move because writers write in ways that unify and promote popular causes — and because they spell words like “wield” without inappropriately applying mnemonics like “i before e except after c and sometimes w.” Movements are killed by false prophets like Sirota, who mistake self-righteousness for substance.  They “weild” their power for their own, self-referential agenda.

As Sirota responded on his own blog shortly thereafter:

None of this is Obama’s fault, and as I’ve written repeatedly, I strongly believe he has incredible potential to be one of American history’s great leaders, and in fact a great presidential candidate right now – but only if he starts aspiring to actually lead, starts using his bully pulpit to promote a real, substantive cause (and by the way, as I have written before, that goes for ALL of the potential Democratic candidates). In fact, the Obama obsession as a political phenomenon really is less interesting in what it says about him than what it says about us, the progressive movement. People just want to say “shut up, Obama for President” or claim like conspiracy theory freaks that I am on the payroll of another presidential candidate (I am not), or claim that we simply cannot talk about the presidential contest and must fall in line immediately without any discussion. What it all signals is that parts of the progressive movement are so singularly focused on personality that they don’t want to even think about the tough questions that ask whether we actually are an issue-based “movement” at all.

Mr. Sirota, meet the guru mentality. It permeates the left, is an ongoing source of mischief and mania, and with every passing year seems only to get worse.

The guru principle could be considered a pathological manifestation of the leader principle. Unlike many on the far left of mainstream debate who come from a socialist framework, I’ve fallen into the public arena from more of a left-libertarian zone, and as such I’ve always been leery of leaders. Nevertheless, I recognize the role of – and need for – the leader from time to time, whether they manifest as an individual or as some sort of vanguard. Good leaders are visionaries who draw their vision from the people they lead, taking those shared values and making them manifest through word and deed. Good leaders know that they are a reflection of those they lead, and are only leaders inasmuch as there are like-minded people willing to follow. This is not to suggest that real leaders are simply parroting the impulses of their followers, as an important function of leadership is to provide the ugly, unpleasant truth when it is called for, and to sometimes chart a course that is not the one his or her followers would like to travel – but a good leader builds a trust with those they lead that acts as a contract, holding them together through the tough patches.

In other words, there is faith involved on the part of those who are lead, but it is a faith based in experience and confidence – or in other words, based on reason.

Contrast that with it’s pathological counterpart, the guru principle. The relationship between the political guru and his or her followers is not about reason. It is about feelings, stimulus responses and blind faith. Reason is not part of the equation – in fact, reason is anathema to the guru principle, for the obvious reason that it threatens absolute devotion.

The contract created between the political guru and the followers is not based on trust or experience, it is based on emotional need or the desperate desire for someone – anyone – to make things right, either in the world around the follower, or within their own psyches. The guru principle manifests when the political sphere gets too close to the religious sphere – which is, frankly, why the areligious are often the most susceptible to it (and I speak as an extraordinarily areligious sort myself). When we consider ourselves above religion and faith 9as opposed to merely separate from it),  I believe we underestimate the human tendency towards faith, and fall into the trap of finding faith in inappropriate places.

The problem with this contract is the extraordinary amount of power it invests in the guru. It is a blank check, and no leader should ever be issued such absolute power from those they lead. That’s a scenario that never goes well. At the very least, in electoral politics, it is a way to cast yourself as the absolute captive constituency, which – in the democratic vacuum created – makes the guru-leader far more likely to grant disproportionate influence to others who may not share your values simply because they need to be persuaded.

It’s bad news folks. It’s a bad way to create a movement, it’s a bad way to create a democracy. It’s a lousy way to be a follower, and – perhaps most significantly for the purposes of the Sirota experience – it’s a lousy way to be a leader. If you think Obama is the greates thing since sliced bread, fine – more power to him. If you’re ready to hand him the keys to the kingdom and rise to cast down any who would question his righteous ascendance, don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re doing your guru any favors.

If you want to see Obama be the kind of leader you imagine him to be, join with others in demanding he make his case clearly, respectfully, reasonably – and most important, completely. As Spider-man says, with great power comes great responsibility. If he wants the power, let’s make sure he accepts the responsibility to clearly account for what he will do with that power. or to put it in a less geeky way, is it too much to ask to see his application before we give him the job?

After all, if this guy has half the potential he seems to have, the last thing we want to do is push him into the deep end before he’s comfortable swimming. We should all have the conversation clearly and respectfully.

It’s just called looking before you leap, and if you’re angrily and defensively covering your eyes before you take the plunge into who-knows-what, perhaps you need to ask yourself if it isn’t because you’re a little nervous about what you might see if you let yourself look…

I didn’t think I was going to be able to get to the post-election party sponsored by the state Democratic Party tonight, but suddenly an opportunity presented itself and I popped into my car and zoomed over.  Around 100 people were in attendence from a couple different Dem “usual suspect” subsets that don’t usually mix. To my chagrin, I realized I had arrived just in time for the traditional parade of speeches from the electeds, so I took a deep breath and tried to look interested.

But then something odd happened. One after one, our statewide candidates (winners and losers) took the stage and were relaxed, positive and … well, brief – which only buoyed the crowd (which had already been drinking for an hour before my arrival) further. And one by one, the speakers reminded us all what we’d accomplished, sure – but also how much work was left to do.

Newly elected US Congressman Peter Welch was relaxed, sincere, funny – and downright inspiring. I like Peter, but I haven’t generally found him to be very inspiring in front of a crowd, which made it even more remarkable. He spoke eloquently about meeting with Rep. John Murtha after the leadership vote, and accompanying Murtha to the Bethesda military hospital the very next day to visit and speak with the Iraq wounded. The crowd practically yelled halleluia when he ended his three minutes by stating clearly and directly that he understood and embraced the fact that voters had sent him to Washington first and foremost to end the Iraq War and bring the troops home as soon as possible.

Senator-Elect Bernie Sanders followed, also more relaxed than I’ve ever heard him. Of course there is no one more inspiring on the stump than Bernie, but he doesn’t exactly exude a lot of warmth, generally speaking. This time was different, which is not to say his time-tested timbre and message were in any way altered, just that he was clearly among friends, and the crowd of Democrats (which have longed to be able to celebrate his work with him among them) responded in kind.

And finally there was our Senior Senator, Patrick Leahy. For those who’ve heard Senator Leahy speak, you know that his delivery can vary quite a bit. It can be easy to tell when he’s tired, physically or mentally – so Leahy on the stump doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing twice. But Leahy of late has had a fire in his belly, the likes of which we haven’t seen in a while. His sadness at the loss of comity and the discarding of basic Constitutional values under the Bush GOP has turned into outrage, and he has been consistently riveting in front of a crowd in recent months.

But since the election, that outrage has turned into inspiration, and it’s an inspiration he passed on to the crowd tonight. Like the speakers before him, Leahy was funny, thankful, exuberant… but there was an edge that was very serious. He related a conversation where he was recently asked if President Bush should be “worried” that he was now to be Chair of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee. The crowd started cheering.

“No, no” he said, calming the crowd, as if to be prepared for a softening of his rhetoric.

“No, he shouldn’t be worried. He should be terrified.”

And the room exploded.

Leahy went on to assure the crowd that, unlike “some in the administration,” he’d “actually read the Constitution,” and went on to promise that no judges nominated to the federal bench who would ignore that Constitution would ever get past his committee.

All told, it was a great evening. An inspiring evening, and it had been a long time coming – not just in the sense of wresting control of the COngress from Bush, but by having Senator Sanders in the room, breaking bread with so many of the people who had worked so hard to put him into office. It was a reminder of a big part of why we had won nationally – because while the Bushites were tearing the Right Wing apart with divisive politics and corruption, the Left Wing was coming together like never before to protect our shared values (if not always our shared strategies).

So who’d-a-thunk it? In the end, Bush ended up being a uniter after all.

( – promoted by odum)

If you check Seven Days (sevendaysvt.com) or the Advocate online (which cribs from Seven Days) this week, you know that Vermont’s venerable lesbigaytran newspaper, which just attained drinking age this year, is dead.

Or at least comatose and not expected to recover.

Disclosure: Yours truly was the paper’s longest-serving editor (four years, Feb. 2002-Feb. 2006).

It’s not like there are no gay issues left to cover: there will be a push for “equal marriage” in the legislature during this biennium; the gender identity bill (vetoed by the Gov. based on bogus “concerns”) needs revisiting. It’s not like faggots and dykes aren’t still threatened, especially away from what passes in Vermont for urban centers of “tolerance” if not embrace. It’s not like the dailies and weeklies are doing such a bang-up job covering our issues.

So why? Assimilation might be a small part of the answer after the jump. 

Unless you’re gay or used to like to hang out at gay bars, you may not know that there are no gay bars left in Vermont. There were three at one point: in Bellows Falls (under several names, including the Rainbow Cattle Company, most recently the Rainbow Lounge), Burlington (Pearls, more recently 135 Pearl), and for a couple of years in Rutland (Shooka Dooka’s).

And there’s part of the problem. Gay papers elsewhere depend heavily on advertising revenue from bars and liquor distributors for income. Vermont never had enough gay bars — or enough truly urban polities to support them — to make that happen.

And now there are none.

Is the demise of the bars attributable to the same factors as the demise of the newspaper commonly known as OITM?

Did they die from the erasure of a distinct identity because it was based on oppression and discrimination that have now faded away? Is assimilation the secret weapon of homophobes?

Okay, that last is over the top. But what happens when the gay folks who just want to be treated like everyone else get their wish? What happens when the necktie gays and lipstick lesbians successfully fade into the background mass of the middle class? When the gender of their significant others is as significant as the college from which they got their undergraduate degrees?

Assimilation.

And the marginalization of queers who don’t pass: The pierced and punk, the faery and fey, the flamboyant and fiery, the leather-clad and lascivious.

That, after all, was the primary argument for nondiscrimination laws and state recognition of partnerships, a kind of logical double-think: We’re the same as you, except for this one thing we can’t help. [There have been long and heated debates about the origin of same-gender sexual and affectional affiliation, whether nature, nurture, or choice, but I’m not going into that here.]

Assimilation is viewed as “healthy,” a consummation devoutly to be wished. It’s the melting-pot American dream. According to the American ethos, it’s what all immigrants should aspire to:  lose the accent, wear ‘American’ clothes, maybe even change the name to something that sounds less ‘foreign.’

Once upon a time there were ethnic newspapers and clubs; the last one I knew about was the German Club in Burlington. They were places of refuge where folks could gather and relax, speak the language, be reasonably assured that their body language and idioms would be understood without explanation, reconnect with where they came from and feel effortlessly at home.

As those folks aged and died, their children felt no need of such a gathering  place.  The clubs reinvented themselves or died out; the newspapers just died out (with the exception of Spanish-language papers).

Gay bars and OITM were like that too. Maybe they’ve gone away because a utopia of acceptance has arrived in Vermont six years after civil unions, and no gay man who misreads another man’s gestures will be beaten outside the bar. But I doubt it.

Assimilation didn’t save Germany’s Jews from annihilation. It won’t save queers, however well-disguised, from second-class citizenship enforced as a matter of law and policy. Log Cabin Republicans, gay Republican Reps, and high ranking gay staffers of Republican members of Congress have made zero difference in the Republican Party’s support for laws that make us permanently unequal.

I wish I could end this on a high note, with hope and optimism like that I wrote about during the campaign, but I’m a Democrat  in a county where at least half the Democratic legislative delegation would vote against equal marriage. I do have hope that my being here, being known, and attending occasional events with my partner will help them make the connection between their votes and my life. But without OITM, it doesn’t feel like being equal, it doesn’t feel like assimilation; it feels like having no voice to speak, no ears to hear.

This is by no means a complete discussion of reasons for OITM’s departure. It was a nonprofit, depending on declining grants and donations. It had a poorly paid staff for only the last 6 years of its existence — before that, it was all-volunteer. It suffered from the same economic effects as other print newspapers have. Its economic base is — was — Chittenden County, which is the biggest polity in Vermont and the most tolerant; when the money folks there stopped seeing a need, they dumped the rest of us overboard, too.

Perhaps the loss of OITM in print will catapult someone into the blogoshpere with a distinctly Vermont gay voice. That’s something to hope for, but it benefits only those who have broadband access, who probably have already been connecting online to other gay news sources. The rest of our brothers and sisters out in the boonies have lost their lifeline.

NanuqFC

Justin Rood has a nice profile of Pat Leahy over at TPMmuckraker tonight.

My favorite line: Remember, he’s the only senator who has earned the distinction of having Dick Cheney tell him publicly to go fuck himself.

As I catch up on the news and see that Iraq has turned into an even bigger shitstorm over the last few weeks, and see increasing calls for withdrawl from all sides (including the upcoming Baker report), and I see our dipshit-in-chief’s refusal to do anything but ‘stay-the-course’, I have a question that hopefully someone out there with a bit more knowledge about the legal workings of government can answer for me. Now, I know the Prez is the ‘commander-in-chief’ the armed forces. But is there any way to withdraw the troops without his explicit order to do so? I know about the politically iffy ‘cut-off-the-funding’ approach, but I’m envisioning a scenario maybe six months from now where things are even worse, and other than the executive branch, there is no support for the war anywhere else. What can be legally done?

You can read more of JD Ryan at five before chaos. But why would you want to?

PRESS RELEASE
Speaker Gaye Symington
Office of the Speaker
115 State Street
Montpelier, Vermont 05633
802-828-2245
December 1, 2006

Statement from the Speaker:  Resignation of John Tracy from Vermont Legislature

It is with great regret that I accept the formal resignation of John Patrick Tracy from the Vermont House of Representatives. John has been an outstanding representative for Vermonters, and he will be sorely missed as a legislator. John has served his district in the North End of Burlington for ten years. He has been a caucus leader and a committee chair.  He is a colleague and a close friend.

Most recently, John ably chaired the House Health Care Committee, which in close consultation with their Senate counterparts, developed the Health Care Affordability Act, Vermont’s groundbreaking health care reform legislation.  John has also co-chaired, with Senator Jim Leddy, the Health Care Reform Commission, set up by the Legislature and the Governor to oversee the implementation of Catamount Health.

John’s irrepressible optimism, his delight in working with all kinds of people, and his fine leadership abilities not only make him a joy to work with, but have been essential in creating and passing such challenging legislation.

John is moving on to work with Senator Patrick Leahy, as a Vermont Field Representative. He will focus in-state on issues of veterans’ affairs, health care, human services, and education, among others.

John often speaks of the honor of serving his state as a member of this citizen legislature. Our loss in the Statehouse is Senator Leahy’s gain. But I am pleased that John will continue to serve all of us in Vermont, even if in a different capacity.

To finish John’s terms on two key commissions, I have appointed Representative Michael Fisher of Lincoln as an interim member of the Health Access Oversight Committee, and Representative Harry Chen of Mendon as an interim member of the Health Care Reform Commission.

I and my colleagues in the Statehouse will miss John, and I wish him well in his new endeavors. 
#  #  #

Contact:
Loring Starr

There is new thinking (well, new for Vermont, anyway) from Bobby Sand about the so-called War on Drugs.

WHITE RIVER JUNCTION – Windsor County State’s Attorney Robert Sand says he thinks illegal drugs should be decriminalized and a different approach used to help people who use the drugs.

“It’s hard for me to see the vast resources expended on drug cases,” said Sand.

Sand has gone public with what many of us have been saying for years: it’s the illegality of drugs that is causing crime and the risk to public safety: “Drug transactions cause the most serious crimes,” he said.

“That’s the violence of drugs,” he said “We don’t see crazed crack heads or someone on crystal” methamphetamines committing violent crimes.

The statistics document the ridiculous cost of drug prohibition.

“The United States has the highest prison population rate in the world, some 714 per 100,000 of the national population, followed by Belarus, Bermuda and Russia (all 532), Palau (523), U.S. Virgin Islands (490), Turkmenistan (489), Cuba (487), Suriname (437), Cayman Islands (429), Belize (420), Ukraine (417), Maldive Islands (416), St Kitts and Nevis (415), South Africa (413) and Bahamas (410).
“However, almost three fifths of countries (58%) have rates below 150 per 100,000. (The rate in England and Wales – 142 per 100,000 of the national population – is above the mid-point in the World List.)”

and

“Prisoners sentenced for drug offenses constituted the largest group of Federal inmates (55%) in 2003, down from 60% in 1995 (table 14). On September 30, 2003, the date of the latest available data in the Federal Justice Statistics Program, Federal prisons held 86,972 sentenced drug offenders, compared to 52,782 at yearend 1995.”

It will be very interesting to see if this very public comment and proposal gets much traction in the Legislature, or whether policy makers will once again prove that drugs cause insanity: they make the government do crazy things.

(I wanna give this diary the attention it deserves. – promoted by Brattlerouser)

The American people have just done a beautiful thing. We have finally declared to ourselves, our leaders, and the rest of the world, that we will no longer follow along willingly as the Republican right wing leads the nation into disrepute.
  Exit polls from around the country showed that we are overwhelmingly fed up with this illegal war and with the corruption, hypocrisy and lawbreaking of so many in the Republican Party.
  Just before the election, Howard Dean made the assertion that the Democrats would not go down the road to impeachment. Rather, he asserted that a Democratic takeover of Congress would be in response to the Dems “positive message”, addressing issues like raising the minimum wage, health care etc.

Dean has it exactly backwards. For six years the Bush administration has operated as it wished, regardless of the law or the Constitution. When we complained to the Democrats and called for action, we were told that we were wasting our breath with a Republican Congress in power. So we voted the Republican Congress the hell out of power precisely so the Dems could quit moaning and do something.  If the Republicans had not so fully abused their power, we would have spread our wrath to all incumbents. Instead, we have spared the Democrats, and dumped the whole mess in their laps – one last chance to make good as it were.
  The Dean/Pelosi (keep adding Democratic names here)position against impeachment is understandable only from Pelosi’s point of view. Impeaching Bush and Cheney (you can’t have one without the other) could appear to be an unseemly power grab, handing the presidency to Pelosi and politicizing the debate. The rest of the party hides behind her excuse, cynically seeing impeachment not as a constitutional obligation, but as a losing political tactic. The irony is that they’re even wrong about that, as more and more polls are showing.
Instead, we citizens will frame the debate about accountability. People from towns in every corner of the nation are drafting and circulating petitions calling for an end to the war in Iraq, and for impeachment investigations of Bush and Cheney to be initiated.
By the time the next Congress convenes in January 07, there will be impeachment and end the war resolutions on the town meeting agendas of scores if not hundreds of New England towns. There will be active efforts in several state legislatures to get impeachment resolutions based on Jefferson’s manual p603 passed and sent on to the U.S. Congress.
It is up to us to put on the pressure so that by the time the next Congress is sworn in, the members will know that we expect our leaders to be held accountable for their actions. When the Democrats can truthfully say that they are only bowing to the demands of their constituents, they will be happy to start meaningful investigations. Any such investigation, if not leading to impeachment, would at least hamstring the Bush administration, which could save us from further disastrous military adventures in Iran and elsewhere.
  Tuesday’s election is more of an opportunity than it was a victory. While the Democrats savor their win, let’s surround them with an urgency that they cannot ignore. Let calls for withdrawal from Iraq, petitions for impeachment, letters demanding restoration of lost constitutional rights, and demands for government accountability resound so loudly that our politicians fear for the collapse of their marbled halls.
  It no longer matters if our politicians have no spines, as long as we give them ours. This is the best and first opportunity that we have had in years to have an affect on the course of our nation. Let us each act now and know that haven’t failed the ideals upon which America was founded.

[Originally published in the Vermont Journal. No linky, as they’ve done something weird to the site. This is my final column, as the paper’s been sold and – temporarily, at least – mothballed. Thanks to editor John Bauer for the fun (if brief) experience as a print-person.]

The question of Presidential impeachment was thrown around before November, and it’s a question that won’t go away in the election’s aftermath. A question as to whether or not the breaking of more than 750 duly passed laws (according to the Boston Globe), and the trampling of the 6th, 4th and 8th amendments (according to the Courts) through acts such as the reserved “right” to declare any citizen an “unlawful combatant” and lock them up indefinitely without charges or access to counsel, rise to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors” specified under the Constitution as grounds for – what amounts to – the ultimate job performance review and disciplinary hearing for our nation’s number one employee.

It’s a question that begs an answer.

I’m a blogger, which makes me an internet geek of sorts. As a geek, I know the old Star Trek series a lot better than I probably should admit to. To this day my favorite moment in the series was when Captain Kirk explains to an evil, bearded, doppelganger version of Spock the simple logic of social activism.

“If change is inevitable, predictable, beneficial – doesn’t logic demand that you be a part of it?”

It’s a powerful line that speaks to the responsibility of all of us not simply to be spectators of history, but to take part in it. Unfortunately, Democratic lawmakers have a tendency to head directly for the calmest waters in the interest of stability for stability’s sake. Of course, it’s no coincidence that the calmest waters are usually also the shallowest.

I share the belief that our responsibilities demand we act on what is right, even if that action is inconvenient. The transgressions of this administration show no signs of abating under the new Congress in light of the President’s self-appointed “signing statement” authority, through which he brazenly rewrites congressional laws to suit his own agenda and dares any and all to challenge him otherwise.

But that’s not even the point, is it? If the standard of impeachment is the Lewinsky scandal, this President has left the line in the dust. If we’re to be concerned with the integrity of process, of fairness, and of the basic tenets of law and order, it seems clear that an accounting must be made if the Constitutional impeachment provisions are to have any meaning.

It can’t be enough, to simply wipe the slate clean and pretend nothing happened, any more than it would in a court of law. To do so would be to cast impeachment forever as a purely political process – and if that’s truly all it will ever amount to, we should be doing away with it altogether.

Whether or not the US Congress will step up to the plate remains to be seen, but the responsibility not simply to watch from the sidelines but to act demands that we all do our part to defend our nation and it’s laws. For me and most people I know, that means speaking out.

For the Vermont House and Senate, it means much, much more.

A little known, seldom-used but recognized Congressional procedure allows impeachment proceedings for federal officeholders to be initiated in a state legislature. Activists urged the Vermont House and Senate to take up the matter, but were rebuffed despite a groundswell that drew headlines across the country. “There isn’t enough time” we were told. “It wouldn’t go anywhere in a Republican Congress” we were told.

This session activists will doubtless be dismissed with the reciprocal argument; that since Democrats are in power, there is no need to bring the matter up.

Poppycock. If we hold our American principles in any esteem, we must demand accountability of our chief executive when he acts contrary to those principles. Without accountability, there are no principles. Without principles, there is no America. And if America is all of us, we all have a responsibility to defend it by whatever tools we have available to us. As a private citizen, I do not have the tool of impeachment available. By virtue of their offices, our State Representatives and Senators do.

“Push `til it gives” Kirk admonished.

I, for one, choose to ask no less of my elected representatives

Frequent national blogosphere usual suspect, Next Hurrah front pager and GMD regular Kagro X has attained the lefty blogosphere holy-of-holies, as he has just been named by Kos to be one of the Daily Kos frontpagers for 2007.

Congratulations on the lofty perch, the groupies, the fame, fortune and derision-to-come from the wingers. Ah, it seems like only yesterday that Kags was considering being one of GMD’s original, startup front pagers before he decided a Vermont conflict of interest made that dicey (perhaps a tale you’ll regale us with someday, KX…)

So, we’ll all be watching, but we fully expect you to continue participating here at li’l bitty GMD (and we know you’ll keep coming back, as Vermont is about to become once again ground zero for your cause of the year – State-initiated Presidential impeachment, what with the soon-to-be-launched vtimpeach.com within a few days).

So don’t forget to write. Or to link to us from the front page of dKos…