Cross posted from Rational Resistance.

Activists get the DEA to remove obsolete information from its website claiming that the American Medical Association (AMA) still opposes medical marijuana.

After just one day of emails from activists, the information disappeared.

Now, if we could only get them to delete the more fundamental lies about marijuana, like it's dangerous, it's addictive, it kills you, it causes you to use other drugs . . .

We've covered this issue here before. Vermont's been in the vanguard on other issues, this seems like a pretty logical one. There are three bills in the Legislature relating to marijuana. It might be a good idea to contact your senators and representatives and tell them you'd like to see action on these bills.

An excellent op-ed piece in today's Free Press lays out the myths and realities of the so-called tort reform movement. The piece, by Lars Lundeen, emonstrates the recurring reality that the tort “reform” movement is nothing more than an assault on the rights of injured patients, while offering no benefits to anyone but insurance carriers.

<!–Saxotech Paragraph Count: 2
–>

Those opposed to real health care and health insurance reform appear to be flailing around to come up with alternative, real solutions to our health care crisis. With all the talk of death panels, government takeovers and rationing of care, now tort reform has been thrown into the mix in Congress.

So-called tort reform will do practically nothing to lower health care costs, and certainly will not fix our broken health care system. However, it will most definitely hurt innocent patients injured through no fault of their own. It appears that the effects of legislation on real people have somehow evaporated from the discussion.

It's worth reading the whole thing.

From Vermont Digger:

After months of waiting for the axe, Curtis Sinclair was officially laid off today. He ran the Canteen at the Vermont State Hospital and was downsized with five other people who worked at the snack bar in a basement room adjacent to the mental health facility. The Canteen was shuttered on Friday.

Advocates fought the closing of the Canteen because they say the snack bar was the only place for mentally ill patients from the hospital to get a break from the wards. Last month, former patients, VSH workers and activists embarked on a letter-writing campaign and held a press conference at the Statehouse.

 I've spent time in the Canteen, either to pick up a quick lunch or to talk to clients. A longtime state worker commented Friday that he's been having lunch there since the 1970's. To a person, every VSH employee I have talked to has been opposed to the closing of the canteen.

I was there yesterday.  There was free pizza for the patrons, and cake, and all their inventory of drinks was either already gone or on the way out the door. People working in the complex stopped by to wish the staff good luck, or express their appreciation for all they've done over the years, and now the place is closed.

 Since we know the savings claims are bogus, let's hope a way can be found to reopen the Canteen when the Legislature comes back in January.

This is sad news. Like many people of my generation, my first introduction to folk music was through the Clancy Brothers, who brought Irish music to a mass audience in the United States.

Now Liam Clancy, the last of the brothers, has died.

There's a lot to tell about him, but here's something I never knew: he and Bob Dylan were friends.

Liam Clancy lived in Greenwich Village, where he befriended another young folk singer, Bob Dylan. They dated a pair of sisters, Mr. Clancy told interviewers. Recalling that time in an interview on Irish television two years ago, Mr. Clancy said that he, a Roman Catholic from rural Ireland, and Mr. Dylan, a Jew from a small Minnesota town, shared an important quality.

“People who were trying to escape repressed backgrounds, like mine and Bob Dylan’s, were congregating in Greenwich Village,” he said. “It was a place you could be yourself, where you could get away from the directives of the people who went before you, people who you loved but who you knew had blinkers on.”

Mr. Dylan told an interviewer in 1984: “I never heard a singer as good as Liam ever. He was just the best ballad singer I’d ever heard in my life. Still is, probably.”

Follow the link and enjoy the video.

After his speech this week President Obama's been taking some hits from Vermont Dems. Not just the left fringe of the party, ably represented here, but even the mainstream Democrats:

Senator Leahy: “For me it boils down to whether or not there is a convincing answer to this question:  What can realistically be achieved, and is it worth putting our soldiers’ lives on the line, at a million dollars a troop, as our economy continues to struggle here at home?  Sizeable deployments of soldiers from Vermont and other states are only the latest compelling reasons for reaching deep to find the right answer this time.

Senator Sanders: “I think the president made a mistake. I`m disappointed at what he did, and I`ll tell you one of the reasons…This is a worldwide problem. Where is Europe? Where is Russia? Where is China? Where is the rest of the world? With these 30,000 troops, we`re going to have 70 percent of the foreign troops in Afghanistan,” Sanders told Ed Schultz on MSNBC.

Representative Welch:

 “Nevertheless, increasing our military footprint in Afghanistan will not achieve the goals the President outlined. Our goal, and our obligation, is to protect the American people from another al-Qaida attack. Al-Qaida is a dispersed group pursuing a radical and violent agenda.  It is not a nation state. Our strategy should focus on containing and degrading al-Qaida worldwide, not expanding our military footprint in Afghanistan, a country rife with corruption and a history of tribal loyalties rather than stable government institutions.

He gets a bit more support, although it is far from enthusiastic, from Madeleine Kunin:

Are there really good wars and bad wars? We thought so during World War II, and in retrospect, we were right. But in Vietnam, and Iraq we were wrong. Will our renewed effort in Afghanistan and Pakistan keep us safe, can we leave a more stable situation in our wake, and can we really pull out in 18 months if we’ve made little progress?

Will we ever reach a time when we can beat swords into plowshares?

So many questions. I have no final answer except to say, for now, I will give our President the benefit of the doubt in the hope that this careful man, who does not like war any more than we do, will have made the right decision.

And here are some comments from friends:

BTW–I took my Barack Obama poster off the wall today. There is only so much that I can forgive.

Did candidate Obama promise 2 have more troops in Afghanistan than the Soviets did during their occupation? Well, he's topped them now. Sad.

Obama, at a jobs summit: “our resources are limited.” Not so limited, however, to stop us from waging a pointless war in Vietghanistan.

 I thought we had to invade Afghanistan when we did. I really think we had to under the circumstances. Still, at this point it's hard to see the justification for staying. Rik Hertzberg points out in last week's New Yorker that  most of the justifications, like needing to go to stamp out al Qaeda, just no longer apply: they are operating without much difficulty in plenty of other places, including Pakistan, which is much, much scarier than Afghanistan.

If you were watching the WCAX news last night, you might have seen this story:

12} PHILLIPS_VO

Possibly a significant criticism of Phillips, but also possibly sour grapes by crew members who were pissed off first at being hijacked, and then not getting the publicity and possible movie deal that Phillips has gotten, right?

Contrast that with this morning's Free Press story from the AP:

Records obtained by The Associated Press show that maritime safety groups issued at least seven such warnings in the days before outlaws boarded the Maersk Alabama about 380 miles off the coast of Somalia.

This seems to shed a very different light on the story, since it provides documentation for what could have been merely grumbling by disgruntled crew members.

We're not shy about giving the Free Press a hard time when we think they get it wrong, but in this case their coverage seriously tops WCAX.Another reminder to be careful about what you see in the news.

We have previously covered the drunk driving charges against Auditor of Accounts Tom Salmon, and there isn't a lot more to say about the substance of the charges. He got caught doing it, he admitted it, and he's now facing the criminal consequences.

Today was the date set for his arraignment, the date at which he was to appear, answer the charges, and enter his plea. GMD was in court today, serving on a jury, so we have this on-the-scene report:

At the arraignment today Salmon appeared with his attorney and pled guilty to the DUI charge. The court accepted his plea . Pursuant to a plea agreement Salmon was convicted and fined $500 plus standard court surcharges. He is already serving civil license suspension and was ordered to participate in the CRASH program. He made a brief statement andleft with his attorney and his wife.

It's almost two years ago now that Anthony Pollina started his campaign to try to get the state's Democratic Party to support him in his run for governor. What he heard from me, and presumably others, was that there was one straightforward way to get the support of the Party: enter the Democratic primary and win.

Of course we know that he didn't do that, but he didn't run as a Progressive, either. Instead he ran as an Independent, polled a lower percentage of the vote than he received in his last statewide race, but counted that as a win because he didn't come in last.

It's another year, both the governor's and lite gov's seats are open, and liberals and progressives across the state are hoping to avoid the mistakes of years past, including setting up three-way races likely to lead to a minority Republican win. Part of this strategy involves focussing on winnable races. For instance, while the D's were scrambling for a candidate against Douglas two years ago, this year there are five announced candidates

For the Lite Gov seat there are multiple declared or possible candidates, but with a twist: David Zuckerman, a Progressive State Rep. from Burlington, has announced that he's thinking of a Lite Gov run in the Democratic primary.

Exactly the strategy some of us were urging on Pollina two years ago. While Vermont law says you can't appear on the ballot in two party primaries, there is no impediment to running on the primary of one party and launching a write-in campaign in another. Naturally, the only way this can possibly work is to run in the D primary and persuade your Prog supporters to write your name in. A few hundred write-ins and you're on the ballot as the fusion D-P (or P-D) candidate, going head to head against the Republican.

Last night Zuckerman took the first step down this path, meeting with the Washington County Democratic Committee. While making it clear that he hadn't decided whether to run, and what office he might run for (either Lite Gov or State Senate), Zuckerman laid out the key issues that would form the basis of his campaign, tok questions, and directly addressed the issue of electability.

The reaction of this favorably disposed observer was that Zuckerman was well received by the Democratic activists in attendance. His key issues of health care, agriculture and rural economic development, and environmental protection are all well within the Vermont Democratic mainstream. The answers he gave to the questions from the committee were detailed, fluent, and showed a good command of the issues. 

What may be more important is that he was open and approachable, emphasized the importance of looking at the future and on where we can work together, and explicitly called for both sides to drop the old fights of who did who wrong in the last election, or the one before that, or the one before that, or  . . . You get the picture.

This is Step One. He's met with one county committee, talked directly about how he would overcome the obstacles that any Prog would have in getting Democrats and Republicans to vote for him, and came away with good feelings on both sides. Over the next month or two Democrats in other counties can expect a visit. How those visits go will  tell us a lot about our chances in November.

Cross posted from Rational Resistance:

Last week I posted a link to a debate about whether the Catholic Church is a force for good in the world. To me it's not a close call, but possibly the strongest argument in favor of the Catholic Church is the work it does for social justice: opposing war and the death penalty, supporting orphaned children, feeding the hungry, and the like. Why, they're so committed to social justice that they're pushing the health care reform bill in Congress, right?

Yes, with a big “but”. They have supported health care legislation, but as we now know, they were willing to pull the plug on the whole thing without the Stupak amendment: no abortion for anyone who gets subsidized health insurance or health insurance through the public option or purchased through the insurance exchanges. And if the Congress wouldn't knuckle under to the bishops, no health care for anybody.

Now, an analysis by the George Washington University School of Public Health predicts that if the Stupak amendment becomes law it will affect not only women who receive insurance under the new law, but it will lead all insurance companies to drop abortion coverage.

“Under national health reform, millions of women, including women who are covered by small employers (as employees or spouses or dependents of employees) as well as those who are currently uninsured, will receive their coverage through health insurance exchanges. By barring the sale of subsidized products that cover medically indicated abortions as part of a broader package of benefits, the Amendment can be expected to cause the industry to re-design its offerings in order to avoid violating the legal restrictions on abortion applicable to exchange products that receive subsidies,” said Professor Sara Rosenbaum, JD, lead author and Chair of the Department of Health Policy. “The Amendment also can be expected to chill efforts to develop supplemental coverage for medically indicated abortions, because it appears to prohibit the joint administration of both a basic and supplemental product,” Rosenbaum noted.

Jeffry Toobin has an editorial about this issue in this week's New Yorker, and he has it exactly right. In a point that is often overlooked, he points out that the right to abortion is not simply a question of health care. “But, as Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg observed not long ago, abortion rights “center on a woman’s autonomy to determine her life’s course, and thus to enjoy equal citizenship stature.” Every diminishment of that right diminishes women. With stakes of such magnitude, it is wise to weigh carefully the difference between compromise and surrender.”

Who else is supporting rights for women? Cosmopolitan. Yes, the “17 Tricks to Keep Your Man Begging for More” Cosmopolitan. In their current online version they are providing a link to a petition to support abortion rights for all women.

Don't think you're going to need an abortion, or don't think you're going to be relying on subsidized insurance? It still affects you, so sign the petition and push your legislators to get on board with this. The game is now in the Senate. 35% of all women are likely to need an abortion at some point in their lives. This issue is of vital importance for everyone.