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.