Wince: 

Senate Democrats on Tuesday subpoenaed Attorney General Michael Mukasey for testimony and documents about the Justice Department's legal advice to the White House on detention and interrogation policies since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., complained to Mukasey that after five years of efforts to glean the information, the committee still has seen only a fraction of the documents it is seeking. “There is no legitimate argument for withholding the requested materials from this committee,” Leahy wrote in a letter to Mukasey that accompanied the subpoena.

The document compels Mukasey to appear before Leahy's panel on Nov. 18 and bring with him documents from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel concerning the legality of White House policies toward military detainees.

You probably didn't hear about this, did you? Wasn't that long ago when a congressional subpoena of a major administration figure would've been front page news and pundit fodder for days – even weeks. Now? Nothing. Because it means precisely nothing, so where's the news? This congress will not play the kind of hardball needed to make these things worth the paper they're printed on. They're committed to the honor system in dealing with a dishonorable President who couldn't care less – as has been shown now over and over and over again.

The Democratic leadership in Washington has opted instead for a political Waiting for Godot strategy of just sitting tight until an Obama administration arrives, restores honor in the executive branch, and by extension restores their relevance for them. In the meantime, what should be a major event is a complete non-event.

Please, Senator – as a longtime and sincere supporter, I'm begging you – don't bother with any more of these “subpoenas.” They're… well, a little embarassing.

So you know the story the R's have been trying to sell: Sarah Palin is a new kind of Republican; not as corrupt, more mavericky.

The news of the last few days, which may not seem too important taken separately,  really seem to reveal that she is every bit as venal and self-dealing as the old Alaska hands like Ted Stevens. I think these stories about the expense accounts and so forth are not a side show at all, but reveal the candidate's character.

Big money first. The story that broke overnight tells us that the Republican National Committee dropped $150,000 on her, spending money at Nieman-Marcus, Saks, and Barney's. Obviously she needs to look good, but $150K? That's what Josephine the Plumber spends on clothes? Sure, they eventually cooked up the story that they're giving the clothes to charity after the campaign, but I'd like to see that in writing from before the shitstorm started, wouldn't you?

Then, we also get the story that in her job as governor of Alaska, Palin charged the people of Alaska over $20,000 to fly her kids around the country on various jaunts, put them up in hotels, and otherwise show them the high life. Then, when she gets caught on it, she goes back and doctors her expense reports to they look like official state business, but those claims are particularly transparent.Possibly the worst of it was when she flew her kids to the National Governors' Association convention.Expense forms describe the girls' official purpose as “NGA Governor's Youth Programs and family activities.” But those programs were activities designed to keep children busy, a service provided by the NGA

to accommodate governors and their families, NGA spokeswoman Jodi Omear said.

 In other words, she takes her kids to a convention, puts them up in the babysitting service they set up for governors' kids, and then claims that they were on official state business because they got in on the babysitting program. Nice, huh?

And, following the rule that three data points make a trend, we can go back to earlier in her career as governor.   Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has billed taxpayers for 312 nights spent in her own home during her first 19 months in office, charging a “per diem” allowance intended to cover meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business.

So what do these incidents have in common? In each case, what we see is Sarah Palin using her official position as an elected official (or candidate) to enrich herself. You could argue that the thing with the kids is just because she's a devoted mother who wants to spend time with her family, and I have no problem with that, but I do have a problem with charging the state for what is a purely personal expenditure.

How is this any different from Ted Stevens letting someone build a house for him?

I guess it's a good thing that the McCain-Palin slogan of the week is “Country First”, and not “State First”.

This HAS to stop!

VERNON – Federal regulators are investigating the cause of radiation exposure that forced the evacuation of 25 workers at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.

Officials say the unsafe levels of radiation were released on Monday after the top of the reactor vessel was placed too close to a fan as workers prepared to refuel the plant.

ntergy Nuclear spokesman Robert Williams said the workers were evacuated from the top floor of the reactor building for four hours, inspected for contamination and later went back to work.

“There was never any issue of public health,” said William Irwin, of the Department of Health.

The incident happened during the nuclear plant’s regular refueling and maintenance outage, which is scheduled to last three weeks.

The workers, both Entergy employees and contractors, were exposed to a “very minor” amount of radiation, which was below their yearly exposure limits, Irwin said.

Such contamination incidents occur when a reactor is taken apart for refueling, he said.

“It was a minor contamination event. You don’t really want them to happen, but Entergy handled it well,” he said.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Neil Sheehan said the incident is being investigated.

Even though this has nothing to do with Vermont, I thought you “might” wanna see this piece I co-wrote with Carol Ann Burger of Huffington Post. The story was brought to my attention from my aunt in Lee County, Florida. I got hooked up Carol Ann in southwest Florida and we put something together. Enjoy! – Christian

Crossposted at Huffington Post’s Off the Bus.

Lee County and Collier County are the largest counties in Southwest Florida and are well-known as Republican havens. So when Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin visited the area on October 6th, it was no surprise she drew a record crowd to the Germain Arena in nearby Estero. The Arena seats 9,800 people and several thousand had to be turned away.

Some of those who made it in were 56 female Christian school students years away from voting age. The teacher who organized the trip said described it as an empowering lesson in U.S. politics.

“I got this crazy scheme to hear Gov. Palin speak. I thought it might have been hare-brained but it seemed a good idea to expose them to a woman running for one of the highest offices in the land,” says Susan Morris, a teacher at Evangelical Christian School in Fort Myers.

Morris says she’s a dyed-in-the-wool Republican but that she “isn’t all that crazy for Sarah Palin.” Still, she adds, “we teach for all possibilities here at ECS. We are an interdenominational school. ECS has 1, 200 students. We have Muslims and Buddhists. One of our students has become a Rhodes scholar and another is now playing in the NFL. All our girls are intelligent and thoughtful so I thought it would be a valuable experience for them to go.” The girls went with the school’s blessing.

The main inspiration for the “field trip,” Morris says, was the fact that Palin is a woman. “I wouldn’t take them to see John McCain or Barack Obama or Joe Biden. But I would take them to see Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama.”

Morris said the girls, who mostly are the children of well-do-do parents, were not pleased to have to stand for hours without food or drink. “That was the most suffering they’ve ever done, but as soon as they saw the Secret Service they knew this was serious stuff. We were very lucky and were only five feet away from Palin. I told them this was a campaign rally and to expect a political stump speech, but that it might very well also be a historic time for America. My point was for the girls to see that being a woman isn’t always as the media portrays it to be. Later, I had the girls write a paper on their impressions,” Morris said.

More below the fold.

So what did the girls think? “Well, it wasn’t her clothes or shoes that impressed them,” says Morris. “They thought she was a fiery chick, but also a lady. They knew not to expect a serious discussion of foreign policy but rather a boost for the McCain/Palin ticket, and that’s what they saw. They did notice the teleprompter, but Palin seemed to be controlling it. When she slacked off, it slowed down. Many of these girls hear their parents talk about politics, so they are not uninformed, and this is a predominantly Republican area so it wasn’t a surprise to hear Palin say that the Obama/Biden campaign is waving the white flag of surrender on Iraq and that Obama is too inexperienced to be president.”

Danielle Galietti, a junior at ECS reported all the female juniors and seniors were told it would be a once-in-a-lifetime educational experience if they could attend the Palin rally, since Palin is an important woman who may become the Vice President of the United States. Galietti said they were given VIP status and were told they would sit in the VIP section right behind Palin.

Galietti was one of three students who turned down the offer to attend because she was studying for a chemistry test.

She reported that students told her they were bused to the arena at 8:30 in the morning, arrived at about 9:30 and stood in line in some cases until l:30 p.m.. Palin did not appear until after 3:30. Many student VIPs had no seats but stood throughout the event.

Morris said there was an Obama heckler in the crowd who was shouting profanities. “That was unfortunate because there were children nearby who had to hear that sort of thing.” But it showed the girls that Americans have very strongly held opinions — on both sides — in this presidential campaign, she noted.

“I’m not a cookie-cutter conservative,” Morris says, “but I do vote Republican because I go with God. I’m anti-abortion so I’m a one-issue voter, it’s true. I’m thrilled with the Republican Party’s stand on abortion, so, so far so good. But if they change their stand I may not vote at all, but that’s just me personally. And I also believe in the Republican view of the economy. Sarah Palin is not an idiot and she brings more accessibility to politics, whether you agree with her or not.”

Morris is no fan of Obama. “Obama hasn’t been middle class since his childhood,” she says, “and we’re not even sure where he was born. That hasn’t really been brought up by the mainstream media.”

Told that news outlets have all but unanimously accepted the validity of Obama’s Hawaiian birth certificate, Morris remained skeptical.

Other local Christian schools, including SW Florida Christian Academy and the Cape Coral Christian School did not officially excuse students to attend the rally. A spokesperson for SW Florida Christian said that some thirty students did attend, “but they didn’t represent the school. Their parents signed them out and took them.” A spokesman for Cape Coral simply said, “We didn’t go.”

The Barron Collier High School Band played at the rally. “It’s really cool,” band Co-Captain Stehpanie Karaczun told local WINK News, “’cause it’s like a once in a lifetime kind of experience to go and play for a presidential rally.”

Workers were wearing special work clothes provided by their employer  

I didn’t think they could re-fuel without an “event” and it’s still not completed(several more weeks) .850 contract workers are re-fueling the aging Vermont Yankee while it is off line .Could this nuclear plant even survive at this rate until 2032?

There must be a point between incident and tragedy that some official will say enough to this .Our Gov.Jim doesn’t have the stomach to bait his own fish hook let alone take on a corporate giant like Entergy of New Orleans and it’s Yankee franchise .These articles are almost routine in their bland statements,promises of never ,never again and fill in the blank style reassurances .The frequency and routine of these event says more than any spokesperson is capable of glossing over .

Given this record and the new difficult financial situation Entergy  faces with it’s efforts to spinoff  5 aging plants into an Enexus shell entity a tougher road lies ahead.On top of all this re-negotiating the power contract rates has been kicked down the road until after the election.In a manner of speaking this could continue to be a hot button issue for some time .

Alarms went off on the refueling floor alerting workers to the rising levels of radiation, and workers were evacuated from the refueling floor for four hours, checked for levels of contamination and later returned to work, according to Entergy Nuclear spokesman Robert Williams.

“There was never any issue of public health,” according to William Irwin of the Department of Health.

Irwin said that while the incident “was something we wished hadn’t occurred,” Entergy Nuclear had handled the incident well.

“It was a minor contamination event. You don’t really want them to happen, but Entergy handled it well,” said Irwin.

http://www.timesargus.com/apps…

(Ed has the latest on Vermont Yankee, Dave O’Brien and the DPS. Check it out.   – promoted by Christian Avard)

Continuing saga of David O’Brien, Gov. Douglas’ main man in the Dept of Public Service. That department is supposed to be the protector of Vermont ratepayers, but for years has instead been the protector of Entergy Nuclear.

The latest: after foot-dragging on everything Entergy (e.g., the many studies mandated by Act 160 on energy needs and resources, jobs, evacuation plans, environment, etc; the Comprehensive Vertical Assessment; fence line radiation dose) O’Brien continues to call out nuclear expert, whistleblower, and appointee of Peter Shumlin to the independent inspection oversight team, Arnie Gundersen.

From the Brattleboro Reformer,

DPS and the governor’s office have never really liked Arnie simply because he is an expert in his field and has the courage to step forward and tell people what he knows and what he thinks might happen as a result of things he is seeing,” said Bob Stannard, spokesman for Citizen Awareness Network, which is lobbying for the closure of Yankee in 2012. “The department has never been terribly supportive of Arnie and his comments. That’s too bad, because it appears he’s the only guy who’s been consistently right.”

Gundersen predicted cooling tower failures, increased dose rates at the plant’s fence line, gaps in the plant’s preventative maintenance and inspection program that led to a transformer fire and cracks in the steam dryer, said Stannard.

http://www.reformer.com/localn…

O’Brien claims they “have committed significant staff resources” to the inspection. That’s wrong. First, any costs are supposed to be billed to Entergy Nuclear, but Gov. Douglas has been consistent in running all state nuclear oversight on the cheap. Second, staffing has been so minimal that the inspection ordered by the legislature has been shortchanged.

The heart of O’Brien’s accusations against Arnie Gundersen this time are that Bob Audette from the Reformer received emails from Gundersen recounting the roadblocks thrown up by the DPS. Wrong. Small potatoes, maybe, but still, Wrong. Turns out the emails were released by DPS’s own lawyer, Sarah Hoffman, to the Free Press and Seven Days, in response to Freedom of Information Act requests.

Shumlin fired back at O’Brien today.

What I find most disturbing is that these attacks undermine the long tradition of civility and respect that Vermonters have rightly come to expect from their state officials.

McCain-Palin style campaigning comes to Vermont. With last month’s WCAX poll showing 52% of Vermonters supporting shutdown for the Entergy reactor, we can expect the losing side to start up with “anti-American” slanders soon.

As dramatic as Colin Powell’s endorsement was, the more interesting endorsement that’s come down the pipe in the last couple days is that of neoconservative bigdog Ken Adelman (I know Jack refers to him as a paleocon, but I don’t think he’s a paleocon, especially given his buddy list… will check it out). Adelman goes way back with Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, etc., and he has been consternated over what he calls the mismanagement of the Iraq War. When pushed by George Packer of the New Yorker, Edelman indicated that he has concerned by McCain’s questionable temperament, and by his lack of good judgment – in particular as demonstrated by the choice of Palin to join him on the ticket. Adelman:

“That decision showed appalling lack of judgment. Not only is Sarah Palin not close to being acceptable in high office-I would not have hired her for even a mid-level post in the arms-control agency. But that selection contradicted McCain’s main two, and best two, themes for his campaign-Country First, and experience counts. Neither can he credibly claim, post-Palin pick.”

Interestingly, this was also a major complaint of Powell’s during his endorsement. Powell, of course – for whatever his faults – is not a neoconservative. In fact, he has been famously loathed by the neocons, and its easy to infer from press smatterings that this affection has been returned in kind.

But this common ground is no coincidence, as the neocon wing of the GOP and the pragmatic centrist wing have the same enemy; the theocons, popularly known as the religious right. While the Palin pick was a bone to what the media repeatedly calls “the Republican base”, really it was a bone specifically to the fundamentalist base, leaving the other lobes of the GOP base left out. To many of these jilted basers, Palin was the last straw, in what has become a huge heaping stack of such straws ever since the breakdown of the Reagan-era marriage of convenience among the conservative lobes. To them, Palin is a smack in the face. She is nakedly unqualified for the position, and that appeal to the theocrats would then seem to be the only thing that mattered in her selection. That sent a message to many other hard-right types that they were out – that fundamentalist appeal is truly the only thing that matters in the modern Republican Party – and that they were now simply a captive constituency.

Now to some, it doesn’t matter. The most parochial of neocons only care about whether a candidate is going to take us to war with Iran – and regardless of other concerns, McCain most assuredly will – with Palin eagerly alongside. But to Adelman and others, enough is enough. He, the pragmatist Powell, and an increasing number of Republicans have decided to draw the line for influence, if not control, in the conservative movement, and they’ve decided that the centrist Obama is not so appalling to them that they can’t stomach putting their feet down in the context of the Presidential election when the fundies’ control and credibility is seeming increasingly tenuous with Palin turning out to be such a drag on the ticket.

The peculiar result is that Obama has been drafted in a sense as the warrior proxy of some members of a different, disenchanted Republican base threatened by the theocons. He stands in as the last defense against a complete takeover of their party by religious fundamentalists. Obama is their line in the sand, and as such, the Democratic nominee finds himself at the nexus of a perfect storm that will help blow him into office.

That’s not to say the poll numbers won’t still tighten. They will as McCain falls back on ads and robocalls that will increasingly emphasize Jeremiah Wright. But the storm wont blow over. Those numbers will narrow, but they will harden, and all things being equal, the future is only looking better for Obama.

It was late. I couldn’t sleep. I had my laptop.

You already know about Powell's endorsement of Obama. You could well say that you don't care, since he forfeited all claim to be taken seriously when he lied to the UN. I think it's kind of a big deal because, whether he deserves to be taken seriously or not, there are still plenty of people who do.

Now there are two new big endorsements.

Zbigniew Brezezinski's endorsement isn't really new; he's been supporting Obama for a long time. I was never a big fan of his. When he worked for Carter he was a real hawk, possibly based on his own experience, but still, consistent with Carter's conservative administration. He has been highly critical of Bush's war, though, and what he has to say about Obama is great, not only because it's one more voice for our guy, but because of how he makes it clear that it is Obama, not McCain, who has the character, judgment, and gravitas for the position. Plus, he utterly silenced Joe Scarborough this morning, always a good thing.

The other new endorsement for Obama is a real blast from the past. You may remember Kenneth Adelman from the days when he was Reagan's guy on arms control. These were in the days when people were talking about the nuclear freeze, and in his confirmation hearings he couldn't go so far as to say it might be good if there were no nuclear weapons. A real paleo-conservative.

Today in the New Yorker, George Packer reports that Adelman is backing Obama. Here's why Adelman says he's doing it:

Primarily for two reasons, those of temperament and of judgment.

When the economic crisis broke, I found John McCain bouncing all over the place. In those first few crisis days, he was impetuous, inconsistent, and imprudent; ending up just plain weird. Having worked with Ronald Reagan for seven years, and been with him in his critical three summits with Gorbachev, I’ve concluded that that’s no way a president can act under pressure.

Second is judgment. The most important decision John McCain made in his long campaign was deciding on a running mate.

That decision showed appalling lack of judgment. Not only is Sarah Palin not close to being acceptable in high office—I would not have hired her for even a mid-level post in the arms-control agency. But that selection contradicted McCain’s main two, and best two, themes for his campaign—Country First, and experience counts. Neither can he credibly claim, post-Palin pick.

Of course, McCain still isn't alone. He has the support of mass murderer and war criminal Henry Kissinger, for instance.  Still, if there was anyone who could claim to be a serious thinker supporting McCain, that person has long since left the room.

Or, to put it another way, when McCain was selling experience he could claim that experience got you maturity, stability, character, and judgment. He has since thrown all those away, so what does he have left?

In my previous diary about the Vermont Stare (q.v.), I omitted the biggest practitioner/victim of them all: Jim Douglas himself.

Politically, he’s forward thinking enough to create a network of flacks and pretty much turn his Gubernorship into a permanent campaign. But policy-wise, he is the Vermont Stare incarnate. No matter what the situation, issue or crisis, he seems incapable of original thought. Even Bush (!) manages to back into a new idea once in a while — adopting Obama’s policy on Afghanistan (without admitting it, of course), and turning big-state Socialist on the Wall Street/banking crisis. (The banks bailout is a straight borrow from, gasp, Old Europe!)

Douglas… same old, same old. No tax increases, no matter how dire the budget mess becomes. Tax incentives to fix everything what ails us. Vermont Yankee falling apart? Write a letter. No attempt whatsoever to reinvent government or actually make it leaner and meaner. No apparent awareness that we might need an injection of new thinking or new ideas. Look… see his eyes drift off away from you? Vermont Stare.