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

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

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

( – promoted by odum)

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

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

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

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

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

Not much, I’d guess.

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

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