It’s become the mantra of the netroots, personified on the long-term, systemic end of the spectrum by DailyKos, and on the more immediate end by the fine folks at OpenLeft (which has been my favorite national blog of late). The netroots is clearly a phenomenon born, bred and thriving in the trenches of the Democratic Party grassroots infrastructure – redefining that infrastructure both culturally and functionally at an astonishing pace.

The founding culture of this site is no different. In fact, when I had the first conversations about the blog with Jack, Ed and David, I had three notions in mind; in the short term, I wanted to promote the hell out of the nascent “Rutland Resolution” impeachment movement, but in the longer term, I wanted to play catch-up with the rest of the country on effecting public dialogue in Vermont the way new media is effecting it nationally, but also on this grassroots transformation taking place within the Democratic Party elsewhere.

The soundbite summation of that goal is this netroots catchphrase, “more, better Democrats.” I think it might be interesting to dissect that a bit. In the face of the groundwork being laid for the inevitable capitulation of the National Democratic Leadership on Iraq funding (again), it would seem timely.

The phrase sums up the transformational goal. More Dems is not in and of itself a worthy target, we have to make them better. The need to promote “better” Dems is an implicit recognition that the greater Democratic political culture and leadership is in need of improvement. The tone on all of these blogs put the urgency to that sentiment.

What’s also implicit is that there are “better” Dems, and worse Dems. What I like about the phrase is that, in three simple words, it rejects the idea that anyone in Washington (or elsewhere) who calls themselves a “Dem” can be reduced to a simple, institutional generalization (bad or good). It implicitly recognizes that there’s a spectrum. In doing so, it makes each individual candidate and elected official accountable for their individual actions to their individual constituents, rather than making them each fully accountable for the collective sins of their Party-mates. This is, of course, what so often makes many third-party promoters so incensed at these blogs, as they’re predicated on the sort of individual accountability model that is incompatible with one of their primary rhetorical tools; the assignment of partisan collective responsibility.

Other third-party promoters are driven to their stances based on rejections of this sort of collectivist mindset. Many of those are often surprisd to find themselves very much at home among the netroots, despite sometimes considerable disagreements over policy. Many more are someplace in between, and find themselves simultaneously drawn to, and leery of, netroots sites like this one.

But “more, better Democrats” also sets up twin goals that may or may not always be in concert. Is Kos right, that our expectations of Democrats should be based on their districts, and that over time voting in conservative D’s from conservative districts is okay if we’re simutaneously pushing moderate Ds in liberal districts to respond to progressive ideals or get booted out in a primary? Maybe Bowers and Stoller are right, that every Dem everywhere should be pressured to be responsive to the full range of progressive ideals (implicit in that, is the idea that in every district that could possibly elect a Dem, there’s a latent progressive culture to be nurtered and allowed to blossom)?

For some on this board, the real manifestation of this question is the “will you vote for Hillary if she’s the nominee” question?

Are we on the cultural clock or the electoral clock for progressive change? Both? Neither? What does the mantra “more, better Democrats” mean to you?

For background, on this story, I’ve tagged all the related stories at Green Mountain Daily (GMD), so they can all be accessed via this link.

The short summary: VT state police went to at least three pharmacies in the state, and asked them for large scale data dumps of patient records.  Green Mountain Daily found out, and a team effort brought this whole thing out into the open.

That said, I will once again quote the fourth amendment, but marked up the way I think that it’s seen by some individuals:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

This, on the other hand, is how I think it applies in this case:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Before I continue, I want to note again that none of this would have hit the way it did if not for the work at Green Mountain Daily.  

So here’s what’s happened since I wrote yesterday morning:

Late Friday (trash day), an article showed up in Vermont’s Rutland Herald: State police admit to improper search.  A few choice excerpts:

MONTPELIER – The Vermont State Police admitted Friday that detectives recently asked three pharmacies to hand over all their information on patients’ use of powerful painkillers.

The actions came despite a directive from state law enforcement officials not to use indiscriminate searches.

Lt. John Flanagan said three state police detectives requested that information from three pharmacies in Vermont during the last two weeks, but that supervisors have now put a stop to that effort.

“Mistakes were made,” Flanagan said. “From our perspective this is a training issue and we have taken steps to remedy it.”

Now… this is really quite interesting, because the day before Major Tom L’Esperance, was saying things that were a bit different.  Green Mountain Daily’s John Odum offers his own perspective:

This directly and completely contradicts what Major Tom L’Esperance was desperately spinning saying on Mark Johnson’s show. In that appearance (and you should listen to the podcast – it would seem to be a complete fantasyland account based on what we now know), he insisted it was an isolated misunderstanding at one pharmacy, and proceeded with an elaborately detailed counter-history of the incident. I’m not saying he personally made it up – but somebody sure did. Circling the wagons doesn’t work when the wheels all fall off.

I will pause to give a brief nod to Air America’s Rachel Maddow here, because my next point is relevant to an issue she frequently discusses.  “Trash Day” is political jargon for Friday afternoon.  It’s generally considered to be the best possible time to dump information that you’d prefer not get out there, but is going to get out one way or another.  By issuing a press release about something on a Friday afternoon, it tends to get lost in the news cycle and disappear over the weekend, hopefully (from the point of view of the releaser) to fade under the importance of other stories.

I strongly suspect that’s what happened here.  First they defended it while pretending it wasn’t going on:

Calls to Sleeper’s office Wednesday were forwarded to the State Police’s criminal division in Waterbury. When asked about the allegations, Major Thomas L’Esperance would not directly answer if troopers had attempted to collect mass amounts of patient information.

“If they have, it was with the goal of stopping the potential spread of deadly drugs on the street,” L’Esperance said.

Then they pretended it wasn’t as bad as was said (url is mp3 download link):

It’s not happened across the state.  Has it happened at other pharmacies?  Absolutely… it’s not happening… uh… like the article would want people to believe…

and, in the same interview, called it a “communication” problem:

communication is the key and I just want to be sure that your listeners are at ease… Anthony describes two now.  I only have information about one.  It was a communication issue between the trooper and the pharmacist.

Then, last night, provided a new story:

Mistakes were made,” Flanagan said. “From our perspective this is a training issue and we have taken steps to remedy it.”

So here’s what it boils down to, at least for me: I don’t know which version(s) of the story are true, but I don’t think we’ve heard the last of this.   The reassurances by the state police (once again from the Rutland Herald) aren’t of major comfort to me (emphasis mine):

The admission from the State Police came late Friday afternoon after the agency issued a two-page press release that detailed the new efforts to stop the illegal sale of prescription drugs, but did not admit any errors.

“Specifically, the allegations in these cases are that the Vermont State Police requested Schedule II prescription records from three particular pharmacies without a nexus to specific criminal activity,” the press release read. “Such conduct, if true, would not be in violation of state law but would be a deviation from the directive given to the Vermont State Police by the commissioner of public safety.”

Flanagan clarified later that these situations did occur. In the future, state police would only ask for prescription information when investigating a specific criminal allegation, he explained, as had been the process for years.

The absurdity at this point would be funny if not for the fact that these our our civil rights we’re discussing.  For all I know, this could have been a genuinely good faith effort to try to stem the tides of drugs, but if that’s the case, why the slow bleed of news and the changing of stories throughout the week?  Why the contradicting stories?  Why the spin cycle?  Why not just say “we tried something that we thought was the right thing to do but it’s clear that this is causing confusion and frustration, so let’s work to come up with a plan for approaching this from a public safety issue that still lets everyone feel as though their rights are being respected?”  

But this sort of approach that they’re using?  It is so not working.  

From my own point of view, three things need to happen at this point:

1. the Vermont state legislature has to announce (soon) that it will be holding hearings on this issue and revising the loopholes in the law which allow for it;


2. Vermont Governor Jim Douglas needs to address this and clarify whether any of this approach was signed off on by the Governor’s office and what actions he will take to assure us that no such abuses will take place in the future;


3. an opinion has to be issued by the Vermont attorney general as to whether or not the actions taken by the police in this case were legal under Vermont law and a similar one needs to be issued from the Federal level about compliance with HIPAA.

I’m not saying anyone needs to be arrested over this.  I’m not even saying anyone needs to be fired over this.  But I need something to happen that tells me that this is something being taken seriously as a real issue, not just something that gets taken out with the trash on late Friday afternoon.

Deja vu? The Washington Post is now reporting:

House Democratic leaders could complete work as soon as Monday on a half-trillion-dollar spending package that will include billions of dollars for the war effort in Iraq without the timelines for the withdrawal of combat forces that President Bush has refused to accept, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said yesterday.

In a complicated deal over the war funds, Democrats will include about $11 billion more in domestic spending than Bush has requested, emergency drought relief for the Southeast and legislation to address the subprime mortgage crisis, Hoyer told a meeting of the Washington Post editorial board.

If the bargain were to become law, it would be the third time since Democrats took control of Congress that they would have failed to force Bush to change course in Iraq and continued to fund a war that they have repeatedly vowed to end. But it would also be the clearest instance yet of the president bowing to a Democratic demand for more money for domestic priorities, an increase that he had promised to reject.

Getting tired of this yet? More below the jump. 

Mitch McConnell is behind the deal, in which there wil be 20 billion more dollars than the Dems initially agreed to in their latest short-term funding bill. The article goes on to mention that both Reid and Pelosi have vowed to oppose any additional money for the Iraq war that does not come with a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. So who's calling the shots here, Pelosi or Hoyer?

Apparently, this one's a bit different, because along with the Iraq money, Dems have included $11 billion more in domestic spending than Bush requested, which is sure to raise the ire of certain conservatives who, now that they're no longer in power, want to come acros as so-called “fiscal conservatives”, except of course, when it comes to the war.

This one's a rather convoluted deal, and its passage is far from certain. It says that certain House members will not vote for any Iraq spending without a change in policy? Will Congressman Welch be one of them?

The worst thing about this is that through all this, with his about as popular-as-Vanilla-Ice approval ratings, Bush is still calling the shots, and he knows it. It' sreally fantastic how House Minority Whip Roy Blunt is all but telling the Dems what they will do, and why bother even putting those domestic spending things in there? (emphasis mine):

Blunt said yesterday that Democrats will give in on war funding, with or without additional money for domestic programs. “There's no reason to make a bad bargain,” he said. “The president holds all the cards.”

And Hoyer, showing the steely resolve and determination we've come to expect from him:

“Everybody knows he has no intention of signing anything without money for Iraq, unfettered, without constraints. I think that's ultimately going to be the result.”

I've seen this so many times, I'm running out of things to say. Perhaps that's what they want to happen.What do we do now?

You may remember the story about the governor and the prosecutor. Once upon a time there was a dedicated State’s Attorney, elected and re-elected by his county, who decided to take a different approach to drug law enforcement. When the big, bad Governor heard about this different approach, he got so mad he told his state police not to play with the State’s Attorney.

After all, the Governor thought the marijuana law was so important that it would never be okay to let someone caught with lots and lots of marijuana to go through the diversion program, so the only right thing to do was to keep marijuana prosecutions away from Bobby Sand, because he can’t be trusted to throw the book at pot smokers.

“This is not a small amount. It’s a very substantial amount,” Douglas told WPTZ-television, which reported the order on its Wednesday news broadcast. The governor said no other county prosecutor agreed with the way Sand handled the case.

“We have to make sure our drug laws are taken seriously and I think this step will ensure that in all counties of this state, they are,” Douglas said.

Or, as he told the Valley News last month, “This is a message to people who want to possess a large amount of controlled substances that you can go to Windsor County and get a get-out-of-jail-free card.”

Well, apparently that isn’t quite true. The Valley News had the story yesterday: NEWS:   No Criminal Charge for 110 Pot Plants; No Problem for Douglas The print edition goes on to say:  

“But just days before Douglas’ rebuke, a case involving 110 marijuana plants in neighboring Orange County was also sent to diversion. That case, and the Republican prosecutor who declined to seek criminal sanctions, escaped Douglas’ scrutiny.”

There’s more tonight on WCAX: CHELSEA, Vt. (AP) – A marijuana suspect allegedly caught in possession of 110 pot plants has been referred to court diversion, but Governor Jim Douglas – who intervened in a similar case because he considered the move too lenient – says he’s OK with it.

So why the change of heart? Yesterday in the Valley News, “Douglas spokesman Jason Gibbs said the two cases are not comparable.” Why not? Because of the appearance of preferential treatment to a lawyer in the Windsor County case, and the fact that Sand is known to disagree with Douglas’ opinion on how marijuana should be dealt with.

In other words, he decided to attack Bobby Sand and not his counterpart in Orange County, Republican Will Porter, for purely political reasons.

So how important is it to prosecute pot smokers, and how important is it to pick out a political enemy to attack?

I’m just wondering.

Just up from the VT Press Bureau (h/t DB):

The Vermont State Police admitted Friday that detectives recently asked three pharmacies to hand over all their information on patients prescribed powerful painkillers, despite a directive from state law enforcement officials not to do so.

Lt. John Flanagan said three State Police detectives requested that information from three pharmacies in Vermont during the last two weeks, but that supervisors have now put a stop to that effort.

“Mistakes were made,” Flanagan said. “From our perspective this is a training issue and we have taken steps to remedy it.”

This directly and completely contradicts what Major Tom L’Esperance was desperately spinning saying on Mark Johnson’s show. In that appearance (and you should listen to the podcast – it would seem to be a complete fantasyland account based on what we now know), he insisted it was an isolated misunderstanding at one pharmacy, and proceeded with an elaborately detailed counter-history of the incident. I’m not saying he personally made it up – but somebody sure did. Circling the wagons doesn’t work when the wheels all fall off.

But the word that this was all just a “training issue” needs a bit more explanation. Is that to say that three full Detectives spontaneously across the state had some sort of rookie-mistake breakdown? Please. And what is the third pharmacy in question? We currently know that pharmacists at Fairfax Pharmacy and Wells RIver Pharmacy were approached. Who else?

The State Police need to come clean about the full extent of this program, and what specifically the plan was for implementation. There’s still an email out there, supposedly sent last Friday when pharmacists started pushing back, that is likely going to be incriminating when it finally surfaces (and it should be a matter of public record).

No doubt there’ll be more in tomorrow’s paper.