Harking back to odum’s thoughtful analysis last month of H304, I think it would be a good thing for as many of us as possible to show up for the “Lobby Day” for H304 this Thursday.  Folks are to meet in the Pavilion Auditorium at 10:30, and teams of people will then lobby their legislators at the State House, ending with a meeting with key committee folks from 12:15 until 1:00 p.m.  Not that I expect there are too many shy people at GMD, but know that shy people are welcome and important too–they won’t have to talk, but numbers of people showing up is significant.

H304, to refresh your memory, is a bill to establish universal hospital care for Vermonters. Their website is http://www.SaveVermontHealthCa… (Note they’ve dropped “Take Back Vermont Health Care,” though I admit I rather enjoyed the boomerang effect of that phrasing.)  Also go back and read odum’s piece, http://www.greenmountaindaily….

Whatever your opinion is of H304 as it stands, keeping dialogue going about healthcare reform in Vermont is important.  The organizers of Thursday’s event are of course looking especially for people who support H304 outright, but based on earlier conversation with Deb Richter I’m sure they would welcome those who favor keeping the dialogue open as well. What happens on Thursday will have an effect on how whether opponents to the bill are able to shut down dialogue altogether.  The law of inertia is now on the side of keeping things moving.  If they should come to a standstill, inertia will work against any new dialogue getting started again in the near future.

In any case, and as ever, please contact your own legislators to let them know where you stand on the matter.

Gone virtually unnoticed by the media was a true rarity: a Bush power grab, pushed through by the previous Republican Congress actually rolled back.

And yes, it took dragging the appropriate Democratic leadership into action – in this case, the Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Here’s the GMD diary from back in early 2007:

Of the many disturbing things this President and his GOP Congress did, this was one of the more chilling. Passed and signed into law in a very hush-hush manner, the law opens up the door for Bush to use the National Guard and other military forces domestically for almost any purpose he might deem appropriate.

The “Insurrection Act Rider” was pushed by then-House Chairman Duncan Hunter, and the GOP leadership in the Senate picked it up. Leahy made a lot of noise about it at the time, but the Republican lockstep was in full play.

At the time, the public support for Leahy was not nearly loud enough, even though he was working with Governors and National Guard leadership. It’s not an issue that got enough ink, picked up by only a few B and C list blogs (like us) and given perfunctory notice in traditional press outlets. To large extent, that was probably due to outrage fatigue. Whatever the case, with little outcry, Bush acquired unprecedented, direct control over individual State’s National Guards. From a FAIR article by Richard Kubey:

News coverage of these significant changes in the law has been virtually nonexistent. At nearly every stage when it might have received coverage, the news media have completely ignored the story: When the NDAA was debated, when it was passed in the House on September 29 and in the Senate on Sept. 30, 2006, when it was signed into law on October 17, and even when Senate Judiciary chair Patrick Leahy (D.-Vt.) introduced his own bill on February 7, 2007 to overturn the Oct. 17 measures, mainstream media have provided no news coverage. Only on April 24, 2007, when the first hearings were held on Leahy’s bill, did a handful of mainstream media reports appear.

What could happen under the new law? As just one example, let’s say hundreds of demonstrators in Boston engaged in civil disobedience, sitting-in on the Boston Common to protest the country’s policies in Iraq, and traffic ground to a halt. Under the new law, the president could order in the Massachusetts National Guard to clear out the protesters even if the Massachusetts governor opposed this.

Indeed, the president could order the Guard of any state into any other state-even if the governors of both states objected.

So it was on the books, meaning a repeal would be necessary to change what was now the law of the land. Let’s be clear; nobody up there likes to advocate for these kinds of defense policy changes. It’s rolling the boulder uphill. That opens you up to all the soft on islamofascists/commies/moon-men stuff. As such, there is a lot of inertia in play once a policy like that is in place. Also, as we all know, Bush does not generally give an inch on any of his power grabs. Here s the statement on Administration Policy regarding the repeal attempt:

STATEMENT OF ADMINISTRATION POLICY

Repeal of Modification to Insurrection Act: The Administration strongly

opposes section 1054, which could be perceived as significantly

restricting a congressionally-granted authority for the President to

direct the Secretary of Defense to preserve life and property and by

limiting the President’s authority to call upon the Reserves. Such a

result would be detrimental to the President’s ability to employ the

Armed Forces effectively to respond to the major public emergencies

contemplated by the statute

Bt Leahy persisted, after its initial passage, in his repeal attempt, despite being rebuffed by now-Armed Services Committee Chair, Democrat Carl Levin of Michigan. With GOP Senator Kit Bond, he introduced a repealer bill shortly after the Dems took over Congress, with few expecting that it would be touched. It was only through dogged persistence that got it done, holding hearings and bringing in testimony and support from the governors and from the Guard community. He also continued to work Levin of the Senate Armed Services and his GOP counterpart, Senator John Warner (R-VA), who chaired the committee when the rider was originally passed.

And in the end, Leahy got the right people front and center before his committee. From Newsday Rogin at CQ:

Upon learning of the change, infuriated governors, National Guard

associations and local law enforcement groups mounted a campaign to

repeal the language, which they say usurps state authority and damages

domestic disaster response.

Spurred by belated public awareness of the law, lawmakers from both

sides of the aisle raised objections.

“This law authorizes the president to essentially strip the control of a

state Guard unit from a state’s governor without consent,” Leahy said

during an April 24 hearing the Judiciary Committee held on the issue.

Bond criticized the secretive origin of the measure.

“Nobody knows where it came from,” he said at the hearing. “I think it

was ill- conceived, unnecessary and dumb.”

Thomas M. Davis III, R-Va., introduced a companion bill in the House (HR

869), which was subsequently added to the House version of defense

authorization (HR 1585), passed May 17.

“The changes approved last year constituted a dangerous concentration of

power in the hands of the executive branch,” Davis said.

The National Governors Association has come out unanimously against the

new law and derided Congress for passing it without performing their due

diligence.

“No governor was consulted, no debate, no hearing, nothing took place,”

North Carolina Gov. Michael F. Easley, a Democrat, said at the April

hearing, adding that the law would hurt disaster response.

Ted G. Kamatchus, Iowa president of the National Sheriffs’ Association,

said he feared that the law lowers the bar for the president to

establish martial law.

The repeal went into the latest Defense authorization, and quietly, and with little notice, a Bush power-grab was actually rolled back last Monday. How often does that happen?

(Cross posted from VermontIRV at http://www.vermontirv.net.)

Vermont’s current instant runoff voting proposal, S.108(text here), is soon to be headed to the floor of the Vermont House for a full vote. According to Representative Chris Pearson of Burlington the IRV bill will be voted out of committee within a couple weeks.

Pearson told me there were a couple extremely minor wording changes, and he assured me nothing here would in any way change the intention or substance of S.108.

Pearson also stated he expects S.108 to pass but not anywhere close to a veto proof majority. This means it is now time to begin serious and ongoing contacts with the Governor Douglas’ office to let him know Vermonters want and expect instant runoff voting.

Governor Douglas has previously stated he signed on to Burlington’s IRV enabling charter change because the voters of the Queen City had so obviously supported the change. There is no reason to believe we can’t rely on the same rationale for instant runoff voting at the federal House and Senate seats level.

Vermont’s very own national blogger sensation, Steve Benen, gives a bit of background on this interesting short film by Bill Simmon, about Steve’s so-called blogging life…

Several months ago, my good friend Bill Simmon, a terrific filmmaker (and blogger), came to me with an idea: he wanted to do a short film about blogging, staring … me. Now, I’ve never been entirely comfortable in front of a camera – I’m more of a behind-the-keyboard kind of guy – but Bill is practically family to me, so I couldn’t turn him down. Besides, I thought, a short film about me would be a) good publicity for The Carpetbagger Report; and b) exciting for my Mom.

So, last summer, Bill and some of filmmaking colleagues came over and spent the day interviewing me and watching me work. It led to a short that Bill titled, “Digital Pamphleteer.” I’m hardly objective about the finished product, but it did win an award at the Vermont International Film Festival last fall and will also play at this year’s Green Mountain Film Festival.

Here’s the YouTube version…

 by Dan DeWalt

          When Congress reconvened for the New Year, Rep. Robert Wexler made an impassioned speech on the floor of the House, saying we could no longer ignore the unconstitutional actions of Vice President Cheney. He also has asked fellow members to sign on to a letter that he is sending to Judiciary chairman John Conyers, asking that hearings begin.

I contacted Congressman Peter Welch’s office to find out if he had signed onto the letter. No one in his office knew if he had, but they agreed to call me back. The next day, it was the same story, except no more call back promises. In over a week of repeated calls, I have not found anyone in the Congressman’s office either able or willing to find out whether Welch has signed on or not. (Although they promised that they would send me a written answer as soon as they could get to it.) In the meantime, a quick call to Wexler’s office informed me that Welch had not yet signed the letter. Rather than use a second hand source, I wanted to give Welch’s office a chance to say whether he was at least considering signing. After all, Peter voted against tabling a debate on these very same impeachable charges on the floor of the House when introduced by Dennis Kucinich, saying that Dennis had the right to have the charges heard. He then joined the majority in voting the impeachment resolution to the Judiciary for consideration, so you would think that he would want the committee to investigate the charges.

But unless he stole into Wexler’s office and signed with invisible ink, it looks like Vermont’s sole Representative has decided to keep his position with the Bush/Cheney protection racket.

And what’s Bush doing with all the breathing room? Well in just the last few days he managed to issue a signing statement promising to break several parts of a law he had just signed, which, among other things, will protect Halliburton and others from investigations into fraud committed against our military. Not to mention the long-term treaty that he is finalizing with Iraq, assuring a permanent U.S. military presence there. It used to be that treaties had to be ratified by the U.S. Senate, but under the new Democratic doctrine of acquiescence, Bush has seen clear to drop the Senate’s role altogether, calling it a declaration of principle rather than a treaty, and claiming his right to put it into effect.

But the Democrats have made it clear that no crime or lie is great enough to sidetrack them from their holy grail of regaining the Presidency. The Constitution, the rule of law, our nation’s honor, the next twelve months worth of military and civilian casualties; all these are willingly sacrificed for the sake of electing more Democrats.

Only after repeated confrontations with hundreds of angry Vermonters, did Rep. Welch finally end his pattern of voting for war funding, voting against the last war appropriations bill. It will take at least as loud of an outcry to get him to care enough about the Constitution to take action to defend it. Do we care enough to put on the pressure?