Smarting from his steady loss in viewership (and in the face of Keith Olbermann’s steady rise in viewership), Bill O’Reilly continues his never-ending quest for Democrats to demonize in the hopes of throwing more gasoline on his dwindling flame… and once again, he’s turned to li’l ol’ Vermont, his favorite state. From the Freeps: A film crew from Fox TV’s O’Reilly Factor caused a stir at the Statehouse this morning as legislators were gathering for the last day of the legislative session. The crew approached Rep. Bill Lippert, D-Hinesburg, as he sat in the cafeteria eating breakfast before 9 a.m. Legislators described the crew as aggressively asking questions about sex offender legislation, accusing Lippert of supporting child sex offenders.

“They take the mic and stick it in his face,” said Sen. Richard Sears, D-Bennington, who was across the room. “He was ambushed.”

Sounds like quite a scene, from Hallenbeck’s description, with other Legislators moving in to support/shield Lippert and subsequent calls for some sort of official legislative statement or action on the matter. Big hat tip to B_VT for drawing this to my attention.

Question for the day: There are plenty of Vermont legislators that could draw this sort of ire, and yet O’Falafel (and his local buddy, frequent Factor guest Paul Beaudry of WDEV’s “True North Radio”) for some reason seem to fixate on Lippert… hmmmm, now why would that be? Anyone on the right have an answer? Bueller…?

Bigotry is so transparent…

crossposted at five before chaos.

Now, I know I continually state that it’s just too damn early to be talking about Election ’08. But every now and then something pops up that needs mentioning. If you paid attention to the MSM after the first Dem debate a few weeks ago, one of the frames was about crazy Senator Mike Gravel, who had the audacity to point out that the fact that none of the top tier candidates had strongly denounced the idea of using nukes against Iran, even asking Obama who he’d “want to nuke”. Yeah, that’s reeeeaaal crazy, right? At the DNC winter meeting he had the temerity to claim that  “because of the extreme importance of any decision to go to war,” anybody who voted for it is not qualified to hold the office of President.” Oh, the insanity, please lock this man up!

As you can read in this piece in The Progressive, Gravel has a history of going out on a limb and saying and doing the right thing. He was at the forefront of trying to cut off funding to end the Vietnam War. He’s not afraid to hold his own party responsible for the Iraq mess. And sadly, he’ll never be president. His honesty is truly a liability, and easy to paint in the MSM as unhinged madness. Could you imagine how the MSM would spin this? –

“Our leaders are promoting delusional thinking when boasting that the United States and Americans are superior to the rest of the human race. We are no better and no worse,” he says, in a highly unusual pitch for a candidate.

Gravel says “we’re number one” is a hollow slogan when the United States is actually number thirty-seven in health care and when 30 percent of students fail to graduate high school.

On the other hand, the United States is number one, he points out, in the production of weapons, consumer spending, government, commercial, and personal debt, the number of prisoners, energy consumption, and environmental pollution.

He also favors carbon taxes to fund alternative energy initiatives, gay marriage, and the legalization of marijuana. Sounds like he could come to Vermont and beat the pants off of Douglas in a heartbeat. But sadly, we still have places like the Bible Belt to contend with in this country, whose unhinged whackos will undoubtedly think Gravel is an unhinged whacko.

He’s 76, and is the longest of long-shots. But I hope to hell he stays visible in this race until the very end, because his message is a refreshingly honest alternative to Obama’s calculated “inspirational” rhetoric and Clinton’s consultant-written drivel. And it gives the leftier of us an alternative to Kucinich’s hokey New Agey claptrap, which is extremely unsettling to those of us who have our feet on terra firma. Let’s hope he sticks it out. You can visit his site at http://www.gravel2008.us/.

Someone at the Agency of Natural Resources seem to have their undies on a bit too tight lately. On Wednesday, this editorial appeared in the Rutland Herald entitled “Douglas’ Sterling Environmental Record” under the byline of George Crombie, the new ANR chief:

Now I know that there are those who are disappointed that the governor doesn’t sign every pledge or agree to support all pieces of proposed legislation that come across his desk. But as I saw in February when Gov. Douglas urged his New England colleagues and the premiers of Canada’s eastern provinces to take a regional approach to climate change, auto emissions and energy production, he takes bold action on initiatives that will have long-term benefits for Vermont’s – and the country’s – natural resources.

Methinks he doth protest too much? As anybody in the environmental comunity will attest, Douglas is always doing with environmental issues what Douglas does best; being a roadblock and an impediment to any meaningful action, but then taking full personal credit for any tiny bit of positive policy change that manages to squeeze through (even if he was against it from the beginning).Ol’ Jimbo has mastered the art of political theater in making the smallest ventures seem like the most grandiose accomplishments, and unfortunately the public falls for it, more often than not.  Nothing to be surprised about, but this seems like an unusually direct response to what has been a growing chorus of criticism (in pieces such as this one). In fact, I’d even say the writing looks, somehow familiar.

Maybe this?…

“You may have noticed Darren Allen’s absence from the Halls over the last couple of days, and we want to explain, the editors noted. ” Allen, who started this blog two legislative sessions ago as this paper’s first venture into the blogosphere, has decided to leave his post as chief of the Vermont Press Bureau to become the communications director for the Agency of Natural Resources.”

Allen will join two former colleagues in the Douglas administration – David Mace, who is the spokesman for the Agency of Commerce and Community Affairs, and John Zicconi, the spokesman for the Agency of Transportation. Mace and Zicconi have been in their posts for some time.

Now, a few people on the inside that I talk to occasionally think this is the work of the former reporter who is now part of the army of highly paid spinmeisters in the service of the Governor.

So whose nerve was rubbed here? Was it Douglas? Crombie? Or maybe just Allen, who has certainly demonstrated at this very site that he is exceptionally prickly and hates to leave things he doesn’t like just hanging out there.

It’ll be interesting to see if we hear more from “Crombie” on the matter, and if Crombie’s voice continues to sound eerily… familar.

They’re still at it under the golden dome in Montpelier, and despite my comments in the diary just below this, the potential is there for this to spill into early next week (although I doubt it will).

Legislators are reportedly at loggerheads over the Transportation bill. With the passage of the energy bill and the other lingering pieces, transportation is the budget item that has the whole process stuck between the Douglas Administration – which is only concerned about the statewide (a la state highway and such) issues – and legislators who are pushing for a range of local projects.

Interestingly, Sen. Dick Mazza, Democrat of Grand Isle (and Colchester), is reportedly playing the role of Douglas’ point man in the fight, which again begs the question as to why there always seems to be a self-described Democrat on call to help Douglas roll over the Dem caucus?

Sigh. We’ve got a lot of work to do…