Our American society is like a runaway train.  Everything is moving so fast we never have time to step back, and look at the big picture.  We concentrate on our strengths so much we overlook our own weaknesses.  It’s time to re-asses

Our own Central Intelligence Agency website confirms this; www.cia.gov/publications/html to see for yourself.  We have the highest military expenditures of any nation in the world.  We have the most number of incarcerated persons in the world.  We also lead the world in illicit drug use.

There is a third world developing within the U.S.  As the divide between wealthy and middle class grows, more working class families are becoming working poor.  All a result of inflated costs of living, and high taxes due to out of control government spending.

Our government of by and for the people, has become a tool of the rich and powerful.  Tax-cuts for the wealthy allow the rich to get richer at the expense of people who have work harder to earn a living.  Our taxes pay for our government to use its military to make the world safe for American corporations.  We trade soldiers lives for business overseas, that makes the rich, richer.

Where is the benefit to the common man?  If the future of American industry is overseas, what is to be the future of the American people?  What jobs can they expect to have in this outsourcing, do business at the lowest cost, world?  Goods may get cheaper, but if Americans are without gainful employ, how will they be able to afford those goods?

I blame corporations for being greedy and pursueing the almighty dollar at any cost.  I blame our government for being unresponsive to the needs of the people.  I blame politicians who vote based on party lines and special interest money, instead of their constituents desires.

I challenge politicians and government to fully fund education rather than spending all our money on defense.  I challenge corporations and business to provide American workers with livable wages and meaningful employ.  I challenge ALL Americans to end the cycle of voter apathy, and send a clear message to our government by voting in record turnouts.

It is time for change.

Well, anyone reading this blog knows that the Vermont Democratic State Committee passed an impeachment resolution yesterday.

It was an interesting meeting, beginning with some “dirty tricks” wherein someone claiming to be from the Democratic Party HQ had apparently called the venue and cancelled the reservation sometime during the week. Our new Executive Director, Jill Krowinski, handled the situation admirably, securing the space for the day after a brief discussion with the building supervisor.

The meeting began with Peter Shumlin, President Pro Tempore of the VT Senate, who had some sobering reflections on the Governor’s lack of leadership ability. While the Governor is very good at the public face portion of his role (things like ribbon cuttings and other public appearances), he is woefully inadequate at his more important management role, leaving the legislature in the difficult position of having to not only do policy, but to provide the leadership and management that should be the Governor’s responsibility.

Some examples provided: On jobs, the Governor has failed to recognize the decline in skiing and maple syrup industries and prepare for the future induced by global climate change. As a result, the Governor has done little to support the creation of a robust alternative energy industry in the state, which could easily supplant the declining industries with the kind of jobs that we really need.

The Governor hasn’t created jobs, seems not to understand that next economic revolution will be global warming-related. If VT can get a piece of it, then we will be part of the boom. People will come from out of state for those jobs. This Governor doesn’t have the management skills to do it.”

He also discussed the way the Governor, rather than “do” anything about the state hospital in Waterbury, relied on the crutch of federal regulations as an excuse for an absurd plan to build a huge hospital, someday, on one of the most expensive pieces of land in the state.  A Governor who was a good manager would have made a few phone calls to get a waiver from those regulations – regulations designed for states with very large populations – so a plan appropriate to our small state could be developed. Governor Doesless, unfortunately, failed to figure this out, and instead has proposed another Fletcher-Allen style high-cost boondoggle.

He then went on to dicsuss global climate change, from the perspective of someone who has lived, farmed, and hunted on the same piece of land for half a century. He mentioned that the governor’s version of “leadership” on the issue is to say “There’s not much Vermont can do,” then fly off to China to “advise’ them on how to deal with it.

One arresting quote on this topic:

Governor Aiken once said: “Only Vermont could take 4 ft of snow and 20 below and turn it into economic opportunity.”

I bet Aiken could never imagine a Vermont that couldn’t keep snow on its mountains. “

He ended with a brief mention of impeachment:

If one can have impeachment hearings for an indiscretion, then one should be able to have impeachment hearings for a war that killed many Vermonters, Americans, Iraqis, and others.

He stated that he sympathizes with Speaker Symington’s position – the House has a lot of business to address this session, and working people in our citizen legislature need to get back to their real lives in May, it’s hard to do it all. But in the final sentence, he said “I personally would like us to do it, but I’m out of the loop with others on that.”

After Senator Shumlin’s remarks, a discussion of property taxes (worth its own diary), and the usual mundane committee stuff regarding office space, new hires, budget, etc, we came to the impeachment discussion. The discussion was remarkably brief (in stark contrast to the “unusual” discussion in Brattleboro).

Highlights from the discussion and the resolution after the jump:

I don’t know all the speakers’ names, so for consistency’s sake, I’ll leave them out. Also, things were moving so quickly, it was hard to catch the exact wording of all the comments. As a result, some of the comments below are paraphrased slightly. I did my best to capture the meaning and context of each comment. If I misrepresent anyone’s comment, I encourage the commenter to let me know, and I will be more than happy to correct the record.

The last few sentences of this comment struck a chord:

What is the harm? I see no harm in asking our legislators. It may not go anywhere, but how can we look ourselves in the mirror and see ourselves as people who did not do every single thing possible to stop this administration. I don’t want to be a “Good German.”

This commenter was pretty frustrated by some of the excuses we’ve been hearing about the “lack of time” and “other priorities”:

I have a problem with this “priority” thing we keep hearing about. This IS a priority. I propose an amendment: change “early passage” to “2007 passage” in last the paragraph of the resolution.

And a constitutional angle:

The Constitution says the legislature “shall remove…” It doesn’t say anything about “unless it’s politically inexpedient, or inconvenient.” It says “shall.”

Another constitutional angle:

Impeachment is not mandatory. It’s archaic, risky, with an uncertain outcome.  There are alternatives that will leave historical record that this outlaw president has done more damage than any other in history.  Be careful what you wish for.

There was also a bunch of discussion about how hard the legislature works (or not, depending on who was speaking).  One speaker suggested that the legislature may have “impeachment deficit disorder.”

It was also noted that as a result of last year’s resolution, 69 members of the House and Senate sent an official letter to the Vermont delegation in DC “asking them to pursue all remedies available under the constitution.” 

And now, without further ado, the Resolution:

WHEREAS, on April 8, 2006 the Vermont Democratic State Committee by unanimous vote adopted a resolution calling for the impeachment, trial and removal from office of George W. Bush, President of the United States, and directing the State Committee Secretary to send the resolution to the Vermont General Assembly for “appropriate action”, and

WHEREAS, twenty-one members of the Vermont  House, including many Democrats, are co-sponsoring Joint Resolution 15 (JRH 15) that incorporates substantially most of the April 8, 2006 State Committee resolution, and

WHEREAS,  on February 15, 2007 JRH 15 was referred to the House Judiciary Committee where it awaits action, and

WHEREAS, on March 6, 2007 more than three dozen Vermont towns passed resolutions calling for the impeachment, trial and removal of George W, Bush as President of the United States, and/or Richard B. Cheney as Vice President of the United States, and

WHEREAS, the State Committee recognizes that  a President and Vice President can abuse his or her authority and power, thereby oppressing the people, diminishing their liberties, imperiling their lives and impoverishing their substance in illegal wars and conflicts, all in subversion  of the Constitution and the rule of law, and

WHEREAS such abuses and subversions can, and should, be checked and restrained by the Constitutional engine and remedy of  impeachment,

NOW THEREFORE, be it

RESOLVED that the Vermont Democratic State Committee transmit this resolution to the Speaker of the Vermont House of Representatives, the President Pro Tempore of the Vermont Senate, and the Vermont delegation to the US House of Representatives and Senate, and

RESOLVED that the Vermont Democratic State Committee advocates that JRH 15 be amended to include Vice President Richard B. Cheney, and

RESOLVED that the Vermont Democratic State Committee strongly supports and advocates, as “appropriate action” the 2007 passage of JRH 15, for the State of Vermont, under Section 603 of Jefferson’s Manual of Parliamentary Practice, for the US House of Representatives to submit, as soon as possible, impeachment charges against George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney for their trial and removal as President and Vice President of the United States.

(Let patrioticresponse share the truth on the front page! – promoted by Brattlerouser)

Over the dissent of their executive committee, the Vermont Democratic State Committee today (March 24) voted overwhelmingly to call on the Vermont Legislature to endorse an impeachment resolution that has been until now stuck in the House Judiciary Committee in Montpelier.

Although the Vermont Speaker of the House, Democrat Gaye Symington, does not want to take up the issue, her counterpart in the Senate, President Pro-Temp Peter Shumlin,  called on the delegates to support impeachment. The vote was lopsided, with less than eight votes against, The State Committee also included Dick Cheney in their call for accountability, and demanded that the legislature take up the issue in this session.

This is a clear victory for the people of Vermont, who have followed up their town meeting calls for impeachment with a grass roots lobbying effort at the Vermont Statehouse.

Vermont’s Congressional delegation of Patrick Leahy, Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch have all voiced opposition to Vermont calls for impeachment. While Sanders and Leahy have great influence in the state, and receive support and admiration from a large majority of the population, they should be starting to realize that citizens know the difference between blind loyalty and thoughtful consideration. Vermonters are acting to save the Constitution and the Republic. Mr. Leahy and Mr. Sanders first interests on this issue seem to be staying loyal to the Democratic Party leadership. Maybe with the Democratic State Committee’s rejection of their anti-impeachment attitude, they will begin to see the light.

Peter Welch, who claims to be all about ending the war, is content to put all of his efforts into supporting resolutions that fund the war and make demands that the troops come home in a year and a half. Of course, Mr. Welch knows that if these demands survive a Senate vote (which they won’t) they will be greeted with a Presidential veto. But he persists in claiming that they are significant and carry the weight of law. Passing a House bill calling for withdrawal is a worthy symbolic gesture, but by itself is a rather pathetic one. If Mr. Welch wants to get serious about ending this war, then he will recognize that Vermonters are on the right track with their calls for impeachment and he will honor our calls by working with his counterparts in Washington to initiate the impeachment process.

The people’s voices are growing louder. As we saw today, even when their “leaders” are aligned against them, they will not be stopped. Today the Dems. Tomorrow the legislature. The next day the nation. We will not be stopped, because the law, the truth and the values of our Republic are on our side.

As Senator Leahy bravely tightens the noose around the neck of the Bush “administration,” Vermont Democrats have lent him invaluable political backing in signaling their support for the remedy that ultimately gives him his power in his subpoena showdown — impeachment. The Vermont legislature now stands poised to lend its voice to the growing chorus joining Leahy’s charge.

In her continuing opposition, however, the understandably cautious Speaker Gaye Symington clings ever more tenuously to the excuses she’s invented for herself not to act. With the nation’s eyes on the contest of resolve now being waged between Leahy and Bush, her expressions of concern become increasingly indistinguishable from willful protection of the Bush White House.

Just as principled, anti-war Democrats in Washington were this week called upon to support an Iraq appropriations bill about which they had grave misgivings, so the time has come for Symington to reconsider the bottom line consequences of her trepidation. Senator Leahy, on behalf of Vermonters and all Americans, stands eyeball-to-eyeball with Bush in a high stakes staring contest in which even Republicans are backing away from the President. Gaye Symington, though, busies herself with watching the clock, insisting that the overwhelming weight of Vermont’s legislative agenda precludes an expression of support for Leahy’s brave stand in defense of the Constitution.

In a statement issued following the adoption of the Vermont Democratic Party’s impeachment resolution, which calls for a similar act from the legislature, Symington concocted her most self-serving excuse to date:

I do not believe that it is appropriate for the Vermont legislature to initiate an impeachment process of a president — any president — until the United States Congress conducts a formal investigation using its Constitutional prerogative.

Symington continues — probably willfully — to misunderstand her role in all this. Vermont’s legislature cannot force the Congress to do anything it doesn’t want to do. Congress can easily ignore Vermont’s resolution if they don’t feel they’ve conducted enough inquiry to warrant moving immediately forward with impeachment.

One might well ask why the legislature should proceed if the resolution can be ignored. But one might have asked the same question about the legislature’s resolution calling for an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq — a resolution Symington both supported and somehow found the time to allow to the floor.

To borrow the Speaker’s phrasing, I do not believe that it is appropriate for the Vermont legislature to imagine it can cause complications with the Congress’ Constitutional prerogative that it in fact has no direct influence over. Symington’s excuse is that she’s worried that she’ll be short-circuiting the Constitutional process, when in fact all the resolution can do is ask that that process be initiated by the very people whose prerogative it actually is.

Ironically, if she were right, and the legislature truly did have the power to force immediate consideration of impeachment, many Vermonters would consider her reluctance to act an even more egregious dereliction of duty. The fact that she’s wrong only makes her tremorous indecision that much more indefensible.

Cross posted on EvolvingPeace (http://www.evolvingw…)

This last week the Vermont House or Representatives unanimously voted in favor to support the recommendations of the Agricultural committee’s bill entitled THE VIABILITY OF VERMONT AGRICULTURE (H.R.522). While many proposals float in and out of committee meetings that offer suggestions and highlight faults of current policies too often there is little action that is taken in finding real solutions to the problems of the day. Many bills and aid packages come to the legislative process that are mere band-aid solutions and never take a proactive approach to solving a situation; however this latest action by the Vermont Legislature goes beyond that and is a beginning step in protecting family farms and our rural landscape.

Including within the bill is a provision that allows small scale poultry producers to sell their poultry to local restaurants and directly to consumers at local farmers markets without going through the costly and restrictive inspection process. The provisions are only for small scale producers of less than a thousand birds per year. Restaurants and farmers will be required to label each sale as “non-inspected.” To refute critics of those that oppose the measure on the grounds of public health, many feel that locally produced meats are much safer than those that come from factory farms that genetically modify poultry or inject the poultry with untested antibiotics.

There are many amongst the population who are calling for a more locally based agriculture. This past summer American Flatbread in Waitsfield tried to use organically raised poultry from a farm across the street, but was shut down by Health Department regulations. George Schenk, the owner during his recent testimony to the House Agriculture declared that we as a society have turned our backs on our agrarian roots and that we are responsible for the failures of the family farm. While regulation after regulation have been put in place to check on the large scale factory farms of Purdue and Tyson the responsible and local based producers of our local rural economies have been straitjacketed into poverty.

We have seen rises of food and animal produced illness from the factory farm industry and the debate is beginning to take fold of the roots of the problem. The most important factor to returning food safety is to fortify and support a local based food system and that will require your support. Small farmers have been bankrupted by a system that was supposedly designed to check on the larger scale producers, but instead we the populace have been left to pay the price with inferior quality meats and the paving over our rural communities.

There are many issues to be addressed when it comes to agricultural policy and while there are those farmers that are left struggling by anachronistic regulations I am proud to say there are representatives proactively seeking solutions to the demise of family farms and rural communities. If you live in Vermont, I recommend you thank Agriculture Committee Chair Zuckerman (P), Vice-Chair Perry (D) and all the other members of the committee for being proactive in finding solutions to the crisis in local agriculture. If you are not from Vermont I suggest you recommend that your representatives follow Vermont’s lead and be proactive.

Peace
Robb Kidd

“Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to it’s liberty and interests by the most lasting bands” Thomas Jefferson

There has been a lot of urgency on this and other blogs lately about impeachment and the level of democratic commitment to making changes in the war strategy, and in other areas. The intensity of these voices prompts my response today, and some thoughts to share with you.

Kagro’s “warning” about VTDems about to abandon Leahy’s back brought this into focus for me. Kagro – love your stuff, but you got to give folks a little room now and then! Especially when things are moving in the right direction, and I would argue, about as fast as they possibly can and still be effective.

More below…

Think about the nature of political leadership… or any kind of consensus leadership, really. You can usually only move change as fast as a “critical mass” number of the group will move and change with you. I had written on this site that I was opposed to impeachment; that was back before the new congress took their seats. I feel vindicated by my position. Congress has diligently gone about passing a series of needed measures in the house, and serious investigations in the Senate. Because of the way these motions have proceeded and the deliberateness in which the process has moved and taken the time to include a majority along the way, the momentum has built to a place where impeachment IS now really coming closer to the table, and closer to a political reality to consider, and perhaps to achieve.

I think it’s vital to understand that there is a fundamental difference in the nature of leadership and power between the dems and the reps. Republicans rely more on a power structure that builds a hierarchy of authority, and respects that hierarchy. A leader like Bush can pull the BS he has because the people who follow (or instruct) him do so because they are invested in that very structure of power. Their goals are to eliminate the checks and balances on that power so they can have wider rule.

Political power for democrats comes from the people, through consensus, and is much harder to manage. That’s why scandals rock us a lot more. It’s not just that we tend to jump all over each other, it’s because we rely on holding the consensus together, and tough times shake the foundation of that consensus. We don’t have a base of believers of iron-rule autocracy.

There’s a place for voices like Kagro’s and others to demand change NOW!, and in our time and age, this is certainly it. But while we absolutely need to keep the pressure on our elected officials to provide real leadership in these areas, I think they have done a great job, perhaps even the very best job possible, in advancing the critical issues of our day. I think we can help by joining and strengthening the growing consensus that the war is wrong and the Bush Administration has violated the constitution and continue to add momentum to the movement.

Recently, Congressional Republicans maneuvered to deny the people of a major American city representation in Congress.

One blog struck back.

Cross-posted at Rip and Read

Note:While one the surface of it, this story has nothing directly to do with Vermont, it has a lot to do with democracy…so I take the liberty of putting it up.

Besides:  it’s a funny story, and after 7 years of Bush and War, I need all the laughs I can get.

The residents of D.C want a vote in the U.S. House. There are plenty of people who don’t want to give them that vote. After all, if you give a D.C. mouse a cookie, he will want a seat in the Senate. Since voters in the District of Columbia (which is a large, east coast city after all) tend to have problems like poverty, crime, drugs etc, they tend to vote Democratic. So, the last thing Republicans want is to see these inner-city residents sneaking into Congress bringing a lot of those damn Liberal Democrats in through the back door. (Especially at risk would be a Senate divided by the width of a whisker.)

So, when the U.S. House seemed poised to grant D.C. it’s first full representative, Republicans used a little legislative chicanery to send the bill back to committee, where it will, hopefully, die. The reason Republicans gave was that D.C.’s gun laws were too tight.

The Washington Post has the story.

Besides, according to Texas Republican Louie Gohmert, these inner-city people don’t NEED their own Representative to Congress:

I would submit to you that Washington, D.C. is also the only city in the entire country that every Senator and every Member of Congress has a vested interest in seeing that it works properly, that water works, sewer works, and no other city in America has that. [Hear him for yourself here]

Well, according to the Post, the Washington Blog, DCist, picked up on Congressman Gohmer’s….opps: that’s Gohmert….remarks and was delighted to have finally found a representative to whom they could direct complaints.

So delighted in fact, that the blog suggested to it’s readers that THEY call up their new congressman and share their concerns…early calls went to the wrong Republican, but no harm done, he also voted against the bill…but soon, Washington’s residents were eagerly jamming their new Congressman’s phone to complain about crime, garbage removal, and potholes.

As Republican staffers struggled to carry out their new duties, reviews on the DCist comment page were mixed. “I just gave a call to ask about garbage collection. And Man, our rep’s are not very friendly.”

According to the Post, one Republican congressional office was “deluged” with calls.

Now, I know that there is a legitimate debate to be held about why the District of Columbia was excluded from Congressional Representation by the founders.

But I also know that, to men like Gohmert, that is not what this is about. This is about keeping those damn Democrats from getting more votes.

After all, as the Post points out:

Democrats, who recently won control of Congress, have made a priority of giving a vote to the mostly African American city. [emphasis added]In floor speeches yesterday, they described it as an issue of fairness, linking it to laws and court decisions that gave blacks full rights.

Republican’s like Gohmert see it differently, and used the same old Republican Compassion Conservative line of Bush-Wah. But they got busted and embarrassed when Washington’s Voters decied to take them at their word

…and I’m having too much fun watching Gohmert and his buddies clean that egg off their faces to worry about the “legitimate debate”.

One reader writes in DCist that: Each week, DC residents should pick one member of Congress who opposes giving us voting rights and make him or her our “member of the week.”

Meanwhile, the author of the DCist itself remarked that, given the fact that Republicans based their maneuverings on gun rights, Representative Gohmert should reflect on “what happened the last time a group of Americans were taxed, unrepresented and, thanks to [Gohmert’s] efforts, armed to the teeth…”

All I can hope is that Gohmert’s Texas constituants have to pay his phone bill.

Footnote:

Gohmert is the same Republican who remarked of Decorated Veteran (and Democrat) John Murtha, that “…thank God he was not here and prevailed after the bloodbaths at Normandy and in the Pacific or we would be here speaking Japanese or German.”

This info comes from Wikipedia, which, I notice has been altered  to reflect recent events. As of 10:00 am Eastern Time, March 24, his entry reads:

In March of 2007 Gohmert unilaterally ended the historical disenfranchisement of Washington the District of Columbia … Since that time Gohmert has become the ‘go-to’ representative for the District of Columbia and residents are encouraged to contact his office for any constituent services.

Cross-posted from Rational Resistance

So far the most we’ve gotten out of Alberto Gonzales has been a string of bland assurances that yeah, he’s responsible because he’s the Attorney General, but he didn’t have anything to do with the purge, and he certainly never discussed the firings or had any meetings about it.

Now we know that this was a demonstrable lie.

The first two paragraphs in the story in today’s Times make that perfectly clear:

WASHINGTON, March 23 – Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and senior advisers discussed the plan to remove seven United States attorneys at a meeting last Nov. 27, 10 days before the dismissals were carried out, according to a Justice Department calendar entry disclosed Friday.

Is this the beginning of the end for Gonzo? Has he now committed the unforgivable crime? Not obstruction of justice, lying to Congress, or subverting the Constitution, but getting caught?

Stay tuned for more.

As kestrel9000 outlined the other day, Vermont’s own Pat Leahy stand at the point in the fight against the latest outrage in the six-year continuing saga of Bush power-grabbing.

The White House has pretty much been caught red-handed in an effort to corrupt and contaminate the actual administration of justice in the United States, by overtly hiring and firing U.S. Attorneys around the country on the basis of their partisan and personal loyalty not to the law, but to George W. Bush. Pat Leahy, righteously indignant at the implications for the future of our country, wants answers, and says he’ll subpoena top White House officials to get them.

George W. Bush says he’ll order his advisors to defy Leahy’s subpoenas.

The Vermont Democratic Party and the Vermont State Legislature are poised to lay down for Bush, leaving Leahy twisting in the wind.

How is that possible?

Allow me to explain:

[L]et’s look at the mechanics of subpoena power. In its investigative capacity, Congress has adopted for itself the use of a subpoena power that’s roughly analogous to that more commonly seen in the judicial and law enforcement system, in which government prosecutors (employees of the executive branch) leverage the power of the judicial branch (in the form of its ability to sentence those brought before it for contempt, should they defy the subpoenas) to ensure compliance with the demands made.

But Congress is not the executive branch. Nor is it the judicial. Its independent enforcement powers are limited to only the most obscure and archaic procedure — “inherent contempt” — which hasn’t been exercised since 1935, and with good reason: this procedure itself requires a trial before Congress. Not a particularly helpful substitute when you’re trying to avoid a trial before Congress [read: impeachment] in the first place.

Instead, Congress depends for its enforcement powers on the executive branch. If you defy a Congressional subpoena, you face the possibility of charges of contempt of Congress, pursuant to the adoption of articles by whichever house is charging you. But those charges are not self-executing. In other words, they’re a request that charges be brought. In order to be effective, those charges still have to be prosecuted in court, and that’s up to the discretion of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. He’s an employee of the “unitary executive,” of course, and reports to the Attorney General.

So if you’re conducting oversight of, say, the NSA spying program, and you want answers from Gonzales regarding the program’s legality, and you subpoena him and he tells you to take a flying leap, what do you do?

You could try going to court, but not only will that pretty much run out the clock, but the courts are quite likely to tell you, “What are you crying to us for? You have your remedy. If you’re too chicken to use it, that’s your problem.” They may well hand it right back to Congress as a “political question,” and refuse to resolve it. After all, tied up in that question is yet another: should the legislative branch be able to leverage the judicial in order to force the executive to submit to its will?

Long story short: This is not an issue that can be resolved on moral, ethical, legal, or political grounds alone. It can be ignored for any or all of those reasons, but not resolved.

So what’s Leahy to do here? Enforcement of his subpoenas depend on the contempt power, and the contempt power falls ultimately to the U.S. Attorneys — the political strong-arming and contamination of which brought us to this crisis in the first place.

Clever of them, no? Heck, you’d almost think they… planned it.

[W]hen it comes to deploying its Executive power, which is dear to Bush’s understanding of the presidency, the President’s team has been planning for what one strategist describes as “a cataclysmic fight to the death” over the balance between Congress and the White House if confronted with congressional subpoenas it deems inappropriate. The strategist says the Bush team is “going to assert that power, and they’re going to fight it all the way to the Supreme Court on every issue, every time, no compromise, no discussion, no negotiation.”

Realize that the resolution of this stand-off will determine the extent to which the Congress is able to investigate everything that’s still on their plate. If they lose this showdown, they lose their leverage in investigating NSA spying, the DeLay/Abramoff-financed Texas redistricting, Cheney’s Energy Task Force, the political manipulation of science, the Plame outing… everything.

That’s the cost of leaving Leahy standing alone, with nothing but his rejected subpoenas in his hand.

Only one Constitutional power gives Leahy the leverage it needs to make the cost of executive noncompliance so high that the president has no choice but to submit, or be removed.

And yet it is that very power the Vermont Democratic Party and Vermont state legislature are poised to deny him, beginning at the state committee meeting tomorrow.

In very short order, Patrick Leahy will need to be able to lean on the threat of the impeachment power in order to restore and preserve the rule of law in the United States of America. Activists all over Vermont and all over the country have been working tirelessly for over a year to prepare for this moment, so that when brave statesmen like Leahy are finally forced to take a stand on the brink, the people they represent will have spoken clearly and said that they stand with them.

Senator Leahy doubtless has the courage and tenacity it will require to take this challenge on. But Vermont has a rare and perfectly-timed opportunity to steel his resolve, beginning on Saturday.

I would urge you to seize it.

I heard this on VPR tonight and now it’s available on YouTube. Great clip showing Pat Leahy fighting for getting to the truth of the purge.