If you're a regular reader here you know Julie Waters' writing, and if you come around on Sundays you usually get to see some of her amazing photography, but you may not know about her music.

Now that Julie's just been featuerd in her local paper, we just had to share it with all of our readers. Start the story here, then follow the link for the rest of it.

Great going, Julie!

Guitar And Banjo Virtuoso Julie Waters

Robert F. Smith, Editor Thursday, June 04, 2009 10:43 AM

Julie Waters is one of those names that you hear frequently on the local music scene, and may occasionally have the chance to hear. She is an extraordinary guitar and banjo player, with a unique style that involves partial capo techniques and lots of string tapping on the fingerboard of the guitar. When she was asked if the late acoustic guitar genius Michael Hedges was an influence on her, she laughs.

UPDATE: In response to our query, GMD has heard from Brian Dubie.

He specifically denies having made any decision about whether to run for reelection, and says that he isn’t going to make any decisions until after the session is over. He does say that he’s always encouraging other people to run for office, though.

Amazing the things you can hear if you keep your ears open.

We don't know that it's for sure, definitely true, but GMD has been hearing from reliable sources that Lite Gov Brian Dubie is definitely not running for reelection.

True? It's a bit early to be sure, but if he does step aside this soon it may leave the Republican field open for Barre Mayor and Jim Douglas Pie Bodyguard and marijuana flip-flopper Thom Lauzon. After all, the Republican bench is pretty skimpy, and Lauzon has made no secret of his interest in moving to the copilot's seat.  (note: some more of Lauzon’s greatest hits, including advocating for the death penalty for drug dealers, can be found here and here. – odum)

Given that Floyd Nease is also considering a run for Lite Gov from the D side, this step would seem to create an excellent opportunity for our side to pick up one of the few statewide offices not in Democratic hands. Nease has already demonstrated his expertise with the legislative process, and his work as majority leader has given him the statewide exposure that Lauzon lacks. Still, the down ticket races can be unpredictable, especially with the attention the governor's race is likely to get next year.

UPDATE–See County Committee update below.

Green Mountain Daily has learned that Barre Representative and long-time Democrat Paul Poirier has announced his intention to become an Independent. He made the announcement to a statewide labor group this morning and confirmed it in an e-mail to Tommy Walz,  Chair of the Barre Democratic Committee. Poirier confirmed his decision in a conversation with GMD earlier this evening. He said that he has also discussed his decision with House Democratic Leadership. 

According to Poirier, the decision is not motivated by any desire to break with the Democratic Party on policy issues. He intends no change in his positions, and specifically said that he would be voting to override Gov. Douglas’s veto of the FY 2010 budget. Poirier flatly stated, “People aren’t going to see any change in my voting pattern.”

Poirier said that the change is motivated by a desire to push a more strongly pro-labor platform in the Legislature, citing as an example the fact that H-382, a labor backed bill to require paid sick leave for all employers with at least ten employees, could not even get a hearing in committee this session. He added that this isn’t one of those, “the party left me” things, but he thought he could more effectively push the labor agenda from outside the party.

On the budget, Poirier was one of the sponsors of the bill to enact the income tax surcharge, colloquially known as the Snelling surcharge. He had his differences with the bill as passed, including the state's reliance on regressive taxes like the increase in the cigarette tax, favoring a more progressive approach, but intends to vote to override the governor’s veto in next week’s override session. “Anyone who thinks I'm going to leave the positions I've taken all my life doesn't know me very well,” Poirier said.

UPDATE

Paul came to the Wasington County Democratic Committee meeting tonight to explain his reasons for this move. It was much as reported above. He specifically cited problems with getting the labor agenda moving, including the sick leave and mandatory overtime bills, and getting true progress on health care. He said that he intends to continue to work closely with the Democrats, including voting to override the Douglas veto.

On timing Paul said that he did it this week because he didn't want to go into the veto session next week knowing that he had made this decision, but not being open to the other members of the caucus about it.

The main point of the discussion, and not only from Poirier, is that there is a gap between the Democratic Party and organized labor, and that while efforts are being made to bridge that gap, it is essential that we bridge that gap in order to serve Vermonters, including the 40,000 dues-paying union members in the state, and to run a strong, unified statewide candidate next year.

The reception was not at all hostile, and he did say clearly that if the Barre Democrats nominate him he will accept that nomination, although he did use the unfortunate phrase “Independent Democrat”, which he would do well to drop like a bad habit.

Nobody at the meeting bought the theory that he's doing this to head off a Prog challenge. Nobody, including the Barre members, thinks the Progs have much strength in his district, so even if they wanted to recruit a challenger they would be on very weak ground.

He taught Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago.

He said he would end torture, and then he did it.

He said he would close the prison camp at Guantanamo, only to be shot down by his own party. NOTE: Full credit to Pat Leahy and Peter Welch for supporting this effort!

But now we have this: Not only has he pivoted on military commissions (motto: military justice is to justice as military music is to music) apparently Barack Obama is considering imposing a system of preventive detention on people the government doesn't like.

At a private, off-the-record with human rights advocates, Obama broached the topic of preventive detention.

The two participants, outsiders who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the session was intended to be off the record, said they left the meeting dismayed.

They said Mr. Obama told them he was thinking about “the long game” — how to establish a legal system that would endure for future presidents. He raised the issue of preventive detention himself, but made clear that he had not made a decision on it. Several senior White House officials did not respond to requests for comment on the outsiders’ accounts.

“He was almost ruminating over the need for statutory change to the laws so that we can deal with individuals who we can’t charge and detain,” one participant said. “We’ve known this is on the horizon for many years, but we were able to hold it off with George Bush. The idea that we might find ourselves fighting with the Obama administration over these powers is really stunning.”

Note: “individuals who we can't charge and detain” means people who haven't done anything, or we don't have evidence that they've done anything, or the case otherwise wouldn't stand up to scrutiny in court.

You'll remember that it was less than a year ago that the Supreme Court, in the case of Boumediene v. Bush, invalidated the Military Commissions Act because it abolishes the right of habeas corpus for military detainees. The new Obama initiative, if it ever comes to fruition, will have to have the same abolition of habeas corpus in order to enable the government to keep people it suspects of harboring lethal intent towards us. How will our Constitutional Law professor president square his desire to abolish habeas corpus with Boumediene, or, for that matter, with his oath of office?

UPDATE (from odum): Here's a link to a posting of the prepared remarks Obama will make on these issues today. They are well-written (although more than a bit defensive), will no doubt be well-spoken, and pretty much say simply: “state secrets, military commissions, holding back photos… the Bush admin was bad when they did these things because they weren't thematically coordinated and didn't appreciate American values like I do. Since I do have those values (as you can see because I said 'no more torture' and want to close the Gitmo gulag), you can just trust me to do these things – but with a more noble attitude and in a manner that you shouldn't trouble yourselves over. That's why my critics are all wrong.”

There are people who love Maureen Dowd's column in the Times. I'm not a huge fan, myself, but she does have the occasional good insight.

I am a huge fan of Josh Marshall, so I do get annoyed when people, especially bigfoot journalists, steal his work and don't give him credit, like MoDo did Sunday.

After she got called on it she admitted it. At least, she admitted that the words in her column had apparently come from somewhere else. Really, what choice did she have? You judge for yourself.

Josh wrote:

“More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.”

Maureen wrote:

“More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.”

I'll save you the trouble of counting. It's forty-five words, and the only change is from “we were” to “the Bush crowd was”. Dowd's explanation is that she got the line from a friend and reproduced it in her column. Even if you grant that as a professional writer she may have a slightly greater sensitivity to, and recollection of words, than most people, do you believe that she heard this sentence one time, in a conversation, and was able to reproduce it in her column, word for word, down to the punctuation?

Or if you're like me, maybe your first reaction was, “My sweet lord!”

Today's Burlington Free Press covers a new watering hole in Montpelier.

Montpelier's new Three Penny Taproom is bringing local brews of all kinds to the capital city. One of the three owners, Wes Hamilton, shared the inspiration behind the fledgling business.

• WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO START THIS BUSINESS? We love beer! Aside from that, a lot of people only know beer as one style, one flavor. A lot of folks may be familiar with the more popular or mass-marketed microbrews, but there are so many really exciting, creative, unique things happening with beer right now. We wanted to bring that to people.

 In case the name sounds familiar, Wes is a regular here at GMD, as well as running his own blog, Integral Psychosis.

 Follow the Free Press link to read what Wes has to say about his new venture.Then when you're done, stop by the Threepenny Taproom on Main St. in Montpelier. Tell them GMD sent you.

Where does this quotation come from:

Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his face continually. 1 Chron 16:11.

A. Pope Benedict's blessing on the inauguration of Barack Obama.
B. Jerry Falwell's graduation address at Liberty “University”.
C. A daily defense briefing from Donald Rumsfeld to George W. Bush.

If you guessed C, you are correct.

This is part of a slide show of defense briefing cover sheets delivered by Rumsfeld to Bush to keep manipulating him in his conduct of the war in Iraq. GQ magazine has uncovered these cover sheets as part of its coverage of how Donald Rumesfeld's organizational behavior contributed to the Bush Administration's crimes and failures.

On the morning of Thursday, April 10, 2003, Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon prepared a top-secret briefing for George W. Bush. This document, known as the Worldwide Intelligence Update, was a daily digest of critical military intelligence so classified that it circulated among only a handful of Pentagon leaders and the president; Rumsfeld himself often delivered it, by hand, to the White House. The briefing’s cover sheet generally featured triumphant, color images from the previous days’ war efforts: On this particular morning, it showed the statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down in Firdos Square, a grateful Iraqi child kissing an American soldier, and jubilant crowds thronging the streets of newly liberated Baghdad. And above these images, and just below the headline secretary of defense, was a quote that may have raised some eyebrows. It came from the Bible, from the book of Psalms: “Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him…To deliver their soul from death.”

This is only the latest of exposes involving Rumsfeld, which include such things as Rumsfeld's cheating at squash against his subordinates (Hey, if you're the Second Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, are you going to call the boss on his cheating?), but this is obviously much more substantive, since it involves the failures and crimes the permeated the Bush administration.

The article is exhaustive in cataloguing Rumsfeld's bureaucratic tactics, and the entire thing is worth reading. The logical question, of course, is whether Rumsfeld's mastery of the situation absolves Bush of responsibility.

I submit the answer is clearly no. First, the fundamental decisions were made, and the fundamental lies were told, by or at the behest of Bush. Second, in Bush we had an aggressively ignorant and incurious president, who by his actions mocked the very idea of competence as a governing principle. Despite the fact that he seized power in a judicial coup, once he took office Bush had the same obligation to the American people as any president, a responsibility that, once again, we are shown that he utterly failed to discharge.

And as Frank Rich points out in today's Times, it is for this reason that we cannot afford to simply turn the page, move on, and act as though the past eight years never happened.

Good news for Daniel Hauser: a judge in Minnesota has ruled that his parents may not refuse him treatment for his cancer, even though he allegedly also wanted to refuse treatment.

The boy is thirteen years old, and dominated by his parents, who are Catholics but also belong to a made-up cult that claims to use “natural healing” methods. His doctors testified that with treatment Daniel has a 90% chance of surviving, whereas without it his chances are 5%.

So why doesn't the kid get to make his own decision?

Well, first off, he's thirteen, and kids that age don't get to make that kind of decision. He can't read. And, as the judge found, Daniel has only a “rudimentary understanding at best of the risks and benefits of chemotherapy. … he does not believe he is ill currently. The fact is that he is very ill currently.”

What's the parents' solution? Treat him with “herbal supplements, vitamins, ionized water, and other natural alternatives — despite testimony from five doctors who agreed Daniel needed chemotherapy.“

Sometime, assuming this kid grows to adulthood, and he understands a little more about life and death, I'll be glad to see him make his own decisions. Now, as a juvenile who has no understanding of the situation he's in, and in the hands of parents who are equally clueless, he needs someone with a level head on his shoulders to protect him from those parents. I'm glad this judge was there.

From today's Times Argus:

MONTPELIER – House lawmakers on Monday rejected a controversial amendment to a major transportation bill requiring all young men to register for the draft when they receive their driver's license.

Lawmakers voted against the amendment 68-60 after more than an hour of debate over the merits of the federal government's Selective Service System, which would be used to call up an army of young men if the draft is reinstated.

Next question, which can't be resolved in Montpelier: why are we retaining draft registration, as there is essentially no chance that a draft will ever be implemented?

An idea that the Legislature rejected a year ago has cropped up again in the Fee Bill, one of the big money bills the Legislature has to deal with every year. It was a bad idea a year ago, it's a bad idea now, and the Legislature should kill this before it goes any farther.

You know that Douglas likes to talk about Vermont's affordability crisis, and how hard people who don't have a lot of extra money have it to afford their basic necessities of life. And it must be really hard if your job pays you a very low salary, like $.25 an hour, right?

That's right, $.25 an hour. You could get paid that little if you're employed by Correctional Industries of Vermont. I'm not sure about license plates, but if you spend any time in state office buildings you've probably sat on furniture made by prisoners.

Well, you say, what expenses do prisoners have? Aren't all their needs taken care of? They get housing, they get three hots and a cot, they probably have doctors and dentists and people like that come in to take care of them, right? How about this: the Douglas administration wants to make prisoners pay a $5.00 co-pay whenever they go to the doctor. If you're only getting paid $.25 an hour, even $5.00, which is a pretty low co-pay in the private insurance world, starts to look like a lot of money.

It's part of the Fee Bill, and here's the legislative language (from last year–I haven't seen this year's language, but it's likely to be the same):

Sec. 10 28 V.S.A.§ 801 is amended to read
§ 801. MEDICAL CARE OF INMATES

They're doing it because, in their words, “[T]he costs of medical care could be defrayed, personal responsibility enhanced, and unnecessary usage reduced) (sic) by a modest inmate co-pay per visit.” They also think they'll save $50,000. Out of $130 million.

So in their view, doing this will have the beneficial effect of keeping prisoners from seeing doctors. On the other hand, a study on corrections policy across the country a couple of years ago argues that if we are going to provide decent health care to prisoners, who are, after all, people in the custody of the taxpayers' government, one thing we have to do is get rid of co-pays. 

In a study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to evaluate the cause of outbreaks of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in correctional facilities in Georgia, California, and Texas between 2001 and 2003, co-payments were singled out as a significant contributor to the spread of these serious and aggressive skin infections because they discouraged prisoners from seeking care (CDC 2003). . . . [I]t is impossible to devise a co-payment
program that does not erect barriers to care that could put the health of individuals n jeopardy, lead to the spread of disease, and cost correctional systems and communities much more in the long run when treatment is delayed.

Now do you know the big health care story of this week? That's right, swine flu. It's bad enough that people are dying of it, and it's spread to the United States. Is this really a smart time to start punishing people for going to the doctor?

 This is an area, one of many, in which Vermont is ahead of the rest of the country. While 33 states have adopted co-pays for prisoners, Vermont doesn't have them, and now the Douglas administration is once again racing to the bottom, trying to abandon one positive, progressive aspect of corrections policy, And it's also self-defeating. You may remember back in the fall of 2007 when the Springfield prison was locked down because of an outbreak of MRSA. How much worse would it have been if the prisoners were avoiding the doctor because they didn't have the five bucks to get into the office?

This provision of the fee bill is going to be discussed by the conference committee. It's in the Senate version of the bill, but there is still a chance if enough people contact their conference committee representatives.