As GMD urged him to do this morning, Peter Welch voted against the debt ceiling “compromise”.

Here is his statement, also available on his web page:

“From the start of this debate, I have been guided by two objectives: First, America must pay its bills. Congress and the President should negotiate, but America should never default. Second, we need a balanced agreement that puts everything on the table.

“While I am pleased that, with this agreement, America will continue to pay its bills, I voted against it because it is not a balanced plan with shared sacrifice. It ignores glaring inequities in the federal tax code while cutting programs important to the middle class, seniors, and low-income Americans. There is simply no excuse for condoning continued tax breaks for Wall Street hedge fund managers, the ethanol industry and big oil companies while the middle class struggles to hang on to their jobs, pay their bills and send their children to college.

“I also voted against this bill because it validates the tactic of putting a gun to the head of the American economy to advance a party's agenda. Never before has a willful majority in Congress held hostage the full faith and credit of the United States of America in order to get its way on the budget. This is a dangerous precedent that will make it more difficult than ever for Congress to meet the many challenges facing our country. It is regrettable that those who employed it have succeeded.”

It was just Thursday night and yesterday morning that I was resigned to another sellout by President Obama.

Once again, although negotiating from a position of strength, Obama was just about to sign onto a deal to give the Republicans what they wanted while holding out for what, exactly? Pretty much nothing. The terms of the deal were vague, but they clearly included slashing Social Security and other expenditures in exchange for some vague promise to raise revenues in the future. Like in the middle of campaign season next year, right when the R's were going to need to prove to their base that they held firm on no tax increases, ever.

Senior House GOP aides they had reached a tentative agreement on cuts of $300 billion to Medicare over 10 years and reductions of between .25 percent and .50 percent in program spending over the next 10 years. These savings were to be achieved by raising the eligibility age, increasing premiums and co-payments and other measures.

There was also an understanding the White House would accept up to $125 billion in 10-years savings on Medicaid and the children’s health insurance program. Those agreements, GOP aides said, did not shift and represented what they hoped would be the foundation of significant entitlement reform.

And remember, there was no reason for Obama to agree to this. The polls show us that Obama was winning this issue with the American people: they realized that the Republicans were to blame for the crisis, so Obama should have had the upper hand.

And still he wanted to cave.

But then John Boehner rides to the rescue. With his “fuck you” letter to Obama, Boehner rescued Obama from himself.

Because nothing is enough for the Republicans.

So instead of cursing yet another capitulation by the Democrat we worked to elect, we are cursing the Republicans, and thanking them for their loyalty to their wealthy patrons above all else.

Firfst, our senior Senator, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee and has served Vermont in the Senate since 1975:

Senator Leahy chaired the first-ever congressional hearing on legislation to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act on July 20. The hearing, held by the Senate Judiciary Committee, focused on the significant economic harm to families that is continually caused by DOMA, from how they are able to care for one another during poor health to how they plan for retirement, and other issues.

 Then, from The Nation:

'Gang of Six' Plan? 'Not So Fast,' Says Bernie Sanders

But the one senator who has stood most steadily in defense of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—and for fiscally sound budgeting—is not joining the mob.

He is objecting. And he says the American people should join him in challenging a a plan that he says would result in devastating cuts to needed programs.

“While all of the details from the so-called Gang of Six proposals are not yet clear, what is apparent is that the plan would result in devastating cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and many other programs that are of vital importance to working families in this country. Meanwhile, tax rates would be lowered for the wealthiest people and the largest, most profitable corporations,” says Sanders.

And Representative Peter Welch:

I didn’t watch the coverage of the Casey Anthony trial. At all. I just wasn’t interested, so I really have no opinion about whether the jury did the right thing, or whether she actually killed her baby, or anything like that.

What I am interested in, though, is prosecutorial misconduct. In a criminal trial the cards are already stacked against the defendant, with all the investigatory and prosecutorial resources of the state lined up to throw one person in jail.

What we have learned now, though, is that the prosecution’s tactics went beyond its permissible advantage against the defendant and withheld potentially crucial evidence it had.

The murder case against the defendant was based in part on a finding that she had done on-line searches for chloroform, and that demonstrated her intent to kill her baby and her knowledge of the means of doing it.

Only it turns out that the computer analysis was wrong. The expert who did the analysis realized that he had made a mistake, and that when he thought he had identified 84 times that the defendant had searched for “choloroform”, it turned out that it was only one time. He did the responsible thing. He redid his analysis, presented it in spreadsheet form to the prosecution, and even offered to fly down at his own expense to explain his error to the jury.

According to yesterday’s New York Times:

Concerned that the analysis using CacheBack could be wrong and that a  woman’s life might be at stake, Mr. Bradley went back to the drawing  board and redesigned a portion of his software to get a more accurate  picture.        

He found both reports were inaccurate (although NetAnalysis came up with  the correct result), in part because it appears both types of software  had failed to fully decode the entire file, due to its complexity. His  more thorough analysis showed that the Web site sci-spot.com was visited only once – not 84 times.        

Mr. Bradley, fearing that jurors were being given false information  based on his data, contacted the police and the prosecution the weekend  of June 25. He asked Sergeant Stenger about the discrepancy, and the  sergeant said he was aware of it, Mr. Bradley said. He waited to see if  prosecutors would correct the record. They did not.        

If you’re a regular viewer of any of the myriad of Law and Order shows on TV you know about the Brady rule. Based on the Supreme Court decision of Brady v. Maryland, it requires prosecutors to turn over potentially exculpatory evidence to the defense. Among other things, evidence that evidence being presented against the defendant may not be credible is specifically covered by case law applying the Supreme Court’s Brady decision.

This body of law was addressed by the Supreme Court this spring, when they allowed a conspiracy by New Orleans prosecutors to conceal evidence to go unpunished.

So now we have a well-established example of the prosecution sitting on substantial exculpatory evidence in a high-profile case.

What’s the response from the prosecution?

The State Attorney’s Office in Orlando did not return messages seeking comment.

“We’re not going to relive the trial again,” Captain Nieves said. “We are not prepared to do that nor are we going to participate in that.”

I hope there is followup to see that justice is done.

In a process likely to be repeated in legislative districts across the state, the Montpelier Board of Civil Authority voted last night, 13-3, to reject the proposal of the Legislative Apportionment Board to split the two-member Montpelier House district into two single-member districts.

As we've previously reported, reapportionment is a legislative football again this year, and the board initially assigned to the task took the radical step of eliminating every one of the forty-some two-member House districts, splitting them into smaller single-member districts.

Not surprising, right? If your party is the minority party in the legislature (or parties, since we're talking about both the Republicans and the Progressives) you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by screwing around with the seats held by Democrats, which is most of them.

Only it led to some peculiar decisions. For instance, Montpelier has been represented by two Democrats since 1984, and our two current representatives are Warren Kitzmiller and Mary Hooper. The only tricky thing is that Warren and Mary live on the same street, about half a mile apart, so in order to preserve incumbency, one of the legislatively permitted considerations, the line drawn by the apportionment board has a peculiar jog to avoid putting Warren and Mary in the same district and making them run against each other.

In last night's discussion the Board of Civil Authority considered all the arguments, including the idea that a smaller district is more democratic because each voter is one of only 4,000 residents of a district as opposed to 8,000 in a two-member district, and that a smaller district creates lower barriers to electoral participation, but the Board was ultimately persuaded by the homogeneous nature of Montpelier's population and the benefits of having two representatives, each of whom represents the entire city.

 Look for this to be repeated across the state as local boards of civil authority meet to comply with the July 31 reporting deadling.

It’s obvious by now that not only does Rupert Murdoch have no affirmative interest in journalism, he’s actually opposed to it, right?

Almost two years ago, shortly after Murdoch bought it, I published a diary pointing out how Murdoch’s ownership had corrupted the news side of the Journal, bringing a newspaper formerly acclaimed for the quality of its reporting down to the status of a house organ.

Yesterday Joe Nocera has a column in the Times making the same point.

In her book, “War at The Wall Street Journal,” Sarah Ellison recounts how editors inserted the phrase “assault on business” in an article about corporate taxes under President Obama. The Journal was turned into a propaganda vehicle for its owner’s conservative views. That’s half the definition of Fox-ification.

One of the reasons we in the blogosphere do what we do is dissatisfaction with the mainstream sources of information. Even for someone who, like me, has never been a reader of the Wall Street Journal, the debasement of any publication of genuine quality is very bad news.

From today's Free Press story on campaign finance filings:

A potential Sanders opponent, State Auditor Tom Salmon, wrote in a filing that he won't seek re-election and hasn't incurred enough expenses to trigger federal disclosure. He said he's considering a run for Senate or perhaps governor.

Now we know from all the wild comments we've heard from Salmon that what he says isn't necessarily a reliable guide to what he's going to do, but this statement, and a longer statement reproduced in the print edition, sounded pretty definite.

Maybe we'll have a chance to elect someone who actually wants to do the job.

If you're a regular reader here you've undoubtedly noticed some perspicatious and highly detailed diaries and comments by Matthew Breuer.

Matthew just finished his freshman year at Yale, but even while he was in high school he was working on analyzing election results to see what they teach us about politics and campaigns.

Today, the picture you're looking at and a long accompanying article are on the front page of the Burlington Free Press. The article quotes academics and  leaders from all three political parties in Vermont praising the quality and value of Matthew's work. For example:

Eric Davis, a retired Middlebury College political science professor who continues to offer political analysis, praised Breuer’s index and his interpretation of the data.

“The work he did last fall, I was very impressed with,” Davis said. “It was very thorough, and well over 90 percent accurate.”

You should read the whole article, but I'll just close with a big CONGRATULATIONS, MATT!

The first round of the Wisconsin recall elections was held today, and there's good news.

You probably recall that the Wisconsin Republican Party organized a bunch of fake
democrats to run in the primary leading up to the recall election. It was estimated that running the fake Democrats, which the Republicans didn't even bother to pretend that they weren't behind it, were going to cost the state more than $400,000.

That's right–the party that was supposedly trying to save the state money by screwing state employees out of their pensions and collective bargaining rights–is making the state throw money away.

The result, possibly inevitable, came out today. All six fake Democrats were defeated, leaving the real Democrats to move forward to the general election on August 9.

One step closer to replacing those union-busting scumbags.

UPDATE; MARRIAGE EQUALITY PASSES, 33-29.

If you've been following the news you know that the big question on marriage equality in New York is whether the Republican conference in the Senate will allow the bill to come to the floor.

They decided earlier this evening to allow the bill to be taken up, and it is now being debated, and the Republican leadership is showing signs that they don't have the votes to block it.

“After many hours of deliberation and discussion over the past several weeks among the members, it has been decided that same-sex marriage legislation will be brought to the full Senate for an up or down vote,” the majority leader, Senator Dean G. Skelos of Long Island, said in a statement. “As I have said many times, this is a very difficult issue and it will be a vote of conscience for every member of the Senate.” 

 In case you're wondering, “It will be a vote of conscience” means the leadership doesn't think they can hold the caucus together.

Here's the live stream from the floor of the Senate. You can check back here for the results. They're voting now, with each senator giving a speech explaining his vote.