A few days ago I was surfing the blogs and found myself struck by so many of the comments from Clinton supporters. They were so angry – and as consumed with righteous indignation as were the Obama supporters.

I honestly had a hard time understanding. The anger of Obama-ites I understand. Even before the Clinton slash-and-burn “kitchen sink” strategy – now dubbed the “Tonya Harding” option – the ongoing race baiting was a hard thing to stomach. But all the comparable charges from the Clintonites seemed almost delusional in comparison.

Most of the criticism now is focused at the comments of now-legendary former Obama pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright, casting Obama as a racist “hater” for being associated with him. Looking at Wright’s comments, I firmly expected to debunk the criticisms by bringing the real quotes out into the sunlight, bypassing the game of telephone-spin being propagated by the Clinton crowd through their ironic repetitive hyping of the phrase “words do matter” after continually insisting that Obama’s inspiring words didn’t.

Unfortunately, though, along with some truly meaningful charges against the dominant culture, there are ugly overtones as well, and I’m not talking about the reprinting of an article by a Palestinian attacking Israel. It’s the words of Wright himself. Obama handled the initial controversy quite well by personalizing it and humanizing Wright, but in the process he has cleaved himself more closely to Wright in the eyes of the media and political observers. This means that, while the “god damn America” clips may be largely (not completely) neutralized, further, genuinely offensive comments are now in Obama’s lap, and he needs to deal with them in a way that is consistent with his campaign’s rhetoric.

This is from the sermon which has been the most recent fodder for the press:

We had some great news from the Supreme Court yesterday: they threw out a pot conviction because of an illegal search.

Okay, that doesn't sound that wild, but the circumstances were. The defendant lives over in the Green Mountain National Forest, off a forest road that only he and the Forest Service, and he was conspicuously doing everything he could to keep people away from the place. “No trespassing” signs all over the place, told the local Forest Service guys that he didn't want anyone, including the Forest Service, coming onto his property. This is one guy who's serious about his privacy.

If you're the cops, and you see a guy who's serious about his privacy, you figure he must have something to hide, right?  

The local forest official  suspected that defendant was responsible for marijuana plants that were growing in the National Forest (not on defendant's property) because he found defendant's insistence on privacty to be “paranoid”. The forest official suggested to the State Police that a Marijuana Eradication Team (“MERT”) flight over defednant's property might be a good idea.

What that means is they put a state trooper and a National Guard pilot in an army helicopter and flew over his place, where they circled and hovered, maybe 120 above the ground for up to an hour. Witnesses described the noise as “deafening”, another said he could feel the concussion from the helicopter's main rotor, and they all testified that the police were lying when they claimed they never went below 500 feet, which is the legal limit.

When they were all done they found three plots of marijuana.

The defendant's attorney, my old friend Bill Nelson, moved to suppress the results of the search, the trial court rejected the argument, but the Supreme Court said he was right, threw out the search, and reversed the conviction.  They concluded that this extremely intrusive overflight of a location where the owner had clearly expressed his subjective expectation of privacy, was a search, and since they didn't have a warrant it was illegal: 

We hold that Vermont citizens have a constitutional right to privacy  that axcends into the airspace above their homes and property.

So far, this is just regular good news: another guy not getting convicted and thrown in jail for a victimless crime. But what does Bobby Sand have to do with it?

You rember the flap over the legalization or decriminalization of  marijuana earlier this year, right? One of the topics of debate was whether marijuana prohibition wastes too many governmental resources; after all, while they're chasing down pot smokers, or even pot dealers or growers, they're not going after real criminals, like drunk drivers or spouse abusers (two crimes in which your odds of committing it and then getting away with it are really pretty good). The law-enforcers' argument is that this is bogus, because they spend so few resources on marijuana that it really doesn't cost the state anything, either in police, prosecutorial, defense, court, or corrections expenditures.

On the other hand, we now see the reality. I don't know how much it costs to fly an army helicopter over to Goshen, hover over a guy's house for an hour, scare all the neighbors, and then bring the guy to trial, but I really have to say that it sounds expensive to me. Not to mention the court and lawyer time taken up defending the indefensible in the District Court and Supreme Court–after all, this case has been going on since 2003.

So go ahead, guys, and try to convince us that you're not spending anything chasing down marijuana cases, but I'm not buying it. 

Senator Barack Obama said Friday he would return the country to the more traditional foreign policy efforts of past presidents, such as George H.W. Bush, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.

At a town hall event at a local high school gymnasium, Obama praised George H.W. Bush – father of the president – for the way he handled the first Gulf War: with a large coalition and carefully defined objectives.

(Obama likens his foreign policy to that of Bush Sr., JFK, Reagan, Haaretz, 03/29/08)

This is a major, major downside to an Obama presidency. Every time he has an opportunity to talk to non-violence and why war is undesirable, it seems Obama instead follows the militant lead of our nation’s ultra-violent imperialism.

Every time I hear or read of Obama talking like this it makes it more and more unlikely I would vote for him.

Disloyalty That Merits An Insult

Washington Post

By James Carville

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Last Friday the New York Times asked me to comment on New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson’s endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama for president. For 15 years, Richardson served with no small measure of distinction as the representative of New Mexico’s 3rd Congressional District. But he gained national stature — and his career took off — when President Bill Clinton appointed him U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and later made him energy secretary.

So, when asked on Good Friday about Richardson’s rejection of the Clintons, the metaphor was too good to pass by. I compared Richardson to Judas Iscariot. (And Matthew Dowd is right: Had it been the Fourth of July, I probably would have called him Benedict Arnold.)

…..If Richardson was going to turn on the Clintons the way he did, I see no problem in saying what I said. Because if loyalty is one virtue, another is straight talk. And if Democrats can’t handle that, they’re going to have a hard time handling a Republican nominee who is seeking the presidency with that as his slogan.

A man

A metaphor

A Fool

Carville

Former Selectboard member, community volunteer in many organizations and columnist for the Brattleboro Reformer, Joerg was omnipresent. His intelligence, wry wit, candor and resolve were uncompromising.

Brattleboro is richer for all he did, and poorer for losing him.