All posts by NanuqFC

Weapons of Mass Distraction

So did everyone get that this “missile defense” project suddenly announced for (ahem) Poland to defend against non-existant Iranian missiles was another of Shrub’s weapons of mass distraction?

It sure got cleared up quick with his buddy Vlad Putin, once the other members of the G-8 summit settled down and gave up on Angela Merkel’s formal, enforceable carbon emissions limits.

And, as usual, the carbon story got buried as U.S. media followed the red flag waving over a “new cold war,” salivating all the way.

Disgusting.

NanuqFC

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.  — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Does Vermont ‘CARE’ Enough?

[Disclaimer: I have no connection to Vermont CARES, never served on their Board, never worked for them, never used their services, never even volunteered. I’ve made an occasional donation, and I’ve written about the agency before elsewhere (see the link below). I wrote this because even a temporary shutdown due to a major but relatively short-term funding shortfall will leave clients with nowhere to go.]

1986 was a watershed year for the gay and lesbian communities in Vermont. Among other advocacy organizations founded that year was Vermont CARES (Committee on AIDS Resources, Education, and Services) — back when a lot of the stigma attached to AIDS was because of its spread among gay men. Democratic activist Terje Anderson was one of the founders, along with Keith Goslant, among others. They were the first group to offer “safe sex” information and workshops to Vermonters based on current medical fact rather than scare tactics.

Now Vermont CARES is in its 21st year, and has been serving people with HIV/AIDS way beyond the gay community for a long time. A couple of years ago, under then-director Kendall Farrell, the agency opted not to apply for federal funds for prevention because accepting the money meant also accepting intrusive federal regulations on data reporting and requirements for Bush-administration-beloved “abstinence only” education, among other things.

Today, Vermont CARES has scraped a pretty deep hole through and below the bottom of the barrel — to the tune of $100K. It’s not just because of the federal funding they opted to forego. Add to that the shift in funding by a few major foundations away from “service” to “policy,” and the decreasing attention to the domestic disease in public awareness, and you’ve got a “perfect storm” creating a huge hole where a budget used to be.

Three other factors: First, AIDS is no longer a death sentence — it doesn’t carry that tragic “zing” factor of young lives cut short. Now we’re looking at — and Vermont CARES is supporting — the survivors of the early years who are in their fifties and sixties and dealing with both the disease and the decade or more of side effects from anti-retroviral meds, the famous “cocktail.” 

The disease is about as sexy as Alzheimer’s, but mostly without so much dementia. Treatment side effects include lipodystrophy (migration of body fat in ways that might disfigure) and neuropathy (the often painful loss of sensation and sometimes of autonomic responses in the nervous system, typically hands and feet, but not always). Add in potential liver damage, cardiovascular stress, and clinical depression, and that’s a lot of now-chronic health issues to deal with that carry absolutely no zing.

Points two and three below the fold, along with what you can do to help, should you be so moved.

Second, most of the public’s limited attention for AIDS has turned overseas, specifically to Africa, which needs all the first world attention it can get, especially when that attention includes help with expensive medicines. It’s a good thing, and thanks to the William and Melinda Gates Foundation, among others, that help is happening. And, unfortunately, people here forget that they can have a positive impact two doors down the street as well as thousands of miles away on another continent.

Third, there are many more places in Vermont now where people at risk for HIV can get tested and treated without running a gauntlet of prejudice and  disapproval, particularly if they have health insurance. That’s another good thing. But what it means is that the insured now go to Fletcher Allen, for example, while the uninsured, disabled, and unemployed go to CARES. Something like 90% of CARES’ clients make less than $12k a year.

CARES runs the only specialized combined AIDS residence in the state — in Fort Ethan Allen in Colchester. It runs another ten scattered residences housing 20-25 people and subsidizes housing for another 30-40 people.

It was the first to offer rapid testing with results in 20 minutes instead of the two weeks it used to take, and that has resulted in many more people getting tested because they don’t have to live in uncertainty for days on end.

CARES fills in the gaps for people whose lives are full of potholes: whose electricity gets turned off because a medicaid payment was late, and the money for the electric bill was used to fill in; or whose choice is between paying for transportation to medical appointments and buying groceries. They subsidize food and actual meals for those who need it, and have partnered with the Intervale Society to provide organic veggies when available.

There’s way more to this story in terms of the services CARES provides, but let me close with one really important one: CARES makes it possible for Vermonters with HIV/AIDS — some of whom live in the back end of beyond, far away from Burlington or Montpelier or Rutland, in places like Highgate, Derby Line, Coventry, Montgomery, Eden, Troy, Middletown Springs, Fayston, Worcester, Corinth — to be able to talk to others in the same boat when they can’t talk to their friends and neighbors about the elephantine impact of this disease in their lives.

The agency has a plan for the future and a funding source that doesn’t kick in until the new fiscal year begins on October 1. In the meantime, I’m writing a check (scroll down for the address of the main office in Burlington) and asking friends and allies to do the same. If enough folks each help out some, the hole below the barrel will get filled in and the barrel bottom patched and waterproofed, with maybe a gallon or two to keep CARES going.

NanuqFC

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. — George Orwell

What I Want to Hear from EVERY Democratic Presidential Candidate

Today Bill Richardson made it very official — in Spanish, in California: he is a candidate for the Democratic nomination to run for president of the United States. And, in a campaign stop in Iowa,  reported by NPR’s Linda Wertheimer he said a lot of what I want to hear from EVERY Democratic presidential candidate:

Withdraw ALL the troops from Iraq — no advisers, no fudging.

Give active-duty vets a “hero card” which they could use like an insurance card to pay for health care at the provider of their choice.

Ending dependence on oil and cutting greenhouse emissions by 80% by 2040, and 50-mpg cars within 5 years.

Preventing nuclear proliferation.

National scholarships (remember Pell grants?).

And there is more that I can’t remember or access right now.

Even the Chicago Tribune agrees that he’s got “arguably the best resume” among the Democratic candidates: he’s been a member of Congress, is now a governor (the electorate likes executives for executive positions), was ambassador to the United Nations, was Clinton’s Energy Secretary, has done troubleshooting in North Korea and Iraq (while Saddam Hussein was running the place).

It’s way too early to commit. But at least he’s making the right noises.

NanuqFC

Ambush Aftermath

(Don’t read this over dinner — and hang in there until after the jump.
– promoted by NanuqFC
)

Bill Lippert’s been on quite the emotional rollercoaster over the past week or so. There was the close of a tough legislative session for the House Judiciary chairman, and the O’Really? Factoid ambush over breakfast in the State House (Freyne has his original story with a link to O’Really?’s site and a followup with the Speaker and the Pres Pro Tem about their letter to Faux News. O’Really? has his own followup charging the Rutland Herald with being a “corrupt enterprise” in response to its publication of Democratic consultant Bill Lofy’s Op-Ed castigating Fox for its bigotry in choosing Lippert to harass [check out the “in case you missed it: Vermont Chaos! Vermont paper turns Jessica’s law into a gay issue!” on O’Really?’s site] There’s more follow-up, including an editorial from Randal Smathers about O’Really?’s attackdogs calling him to object. Got all that?)

Lofy covered some of the threats that Lippert received via email. But here are a few others from among those I asked him to send me during a phone conversation on Friday:

i couldnt even tell you were a transvestite when i saw you making such a douche of yourself on oreilly.  and your drag queen friends that were trying to protect you were classic.  are all you socialist liberal pieces of crap like that?  maybe you queens could rent a pair of testicles next time you are on television?

you are one disgusting person, i really dont know how you can live with yourself,keep on smiling,you could give a shit about children,i spread the word on your state,over the web,keeping people from visiting the state of v.t,and it works. do me a favor drive fast and reckless,

Lippert sucks muslim dicks and likes it. I hope you get the shit beat out of you on a regular basis.

One such email began with the subject line: “Bill Lippert go drown yourself you pedophile bastard” and continued:

I hope you die of natural causes like a heart attack you F’ing bastard for protecting fags, and doing nothing for Jessica’s law. f you you ugly old white trash. America will soon turn to a militia, after this keeps going on. Vermont is shit, with all white trash.

The story gets better below the fold — and by better, I mean less disgusting and more uplifting. I promise.

There were also a couple of stern but polite ones in the batch he sent, including this one, signed (as many of the more vitriolic ones were not) and from someone who identified himself as from Vermont:

Sir, I don’t agree with the way Bill O’Reilly and his reporters conduct interviews, but a reporter was allowed access to speak to you, and you didn’t answer his question. You had an opportunity to set the record straight and you dropped the ball. What really was more disturbing was all your fellow law makers could do was boo the reporter. That and your no reply answer makes Bill O’Reilly look good and Vermont look bad. I await your reply. [signed, with mailing address and email address]

Another of the more polite ones:

Sir, I was watching Bill O’Rilley last night.  You said Vermont just increased the sentencing terms for child predators. I also watched Keith Olberman and he said O’Rilley got it all wrong. I am just trying to learn the honesty of each of those “Talking Heads”.

Can you tell me what you meant when you said the laws were strengthen [sic]. Actually if you can give me a web site address that show the various laws, and you give me the law’s number, I can do the research myself.

Thank you for your guidance.

I wouldn’t want to lead GMD readers to believe that all Faux News/O’Really? watchers are as ill-informed and block-headed as the majority of the emails might suggest.

One of the 27 O’Really?-prompted emails Bill shared with me (which he had previously shared with Speaker Gaye Symington) was particularly nasty and blatant about its homophobia:

There has never been any correlation between homosexuality and Pedophilia, ……. Until now. […] Therapy is as successful conquering pedophilia, as it is with conquering  homosexuality.  The ONLY solution is incarceration or castration. […] If I were you,  I would seriously consider killing myself.

Now we get to the good part. Bill Lippert, whom I’ve known for 25 years, did an interview with Vermont Public Radio last Thursday to talk about the ambush, the reality of Vermont’s sex offender laws, and the emails he’d been getting.

Here are a few quotes from the 31 (plus) emails he got after that interview aired:

I was fortunate enough to listen to your segment on NPR [sic] regarding your Bill O’Reilly encounter.  I feel sad and scared to know that such people are in the public eye broadcasting such inaccurate and atrocious information.  I greatly appreciate all that you do for the state of Vermont and beyond.  I completely support your decision to  not support Jessica’s Law as I agree that its protocol would not protect the victims, properly rehabilitate the predators, or keep our communities safe. I was devasted to hear that you are receiving such emails as the one you read on the air today.  It’s scary to think how many intolerate, judmental [sic], and hateful people there are in the world.

I heard your interview on VPR this morning, and cannot refrain from writing you a letter of support.  It is appalling that these representatives of a foreign culture would come to Vermont to mount this kind of personal and baseless attack.  Your tolerance, intelligence, courage, and insight are evident in your articulate responses.
  I never am able to get over my surprise and sadness at the bigotry, ignorance, ugliness, and hate that seem to prevail in some quarters of our society.  I can assure you that most of us here in Vermont think that in fact it is you who represent the true and great traditions of our State, of our entire species, really, the traditions of open-mindedness, fairness, justice, tolerance, and compassion, which are the only values that stand between us and chaos.
  I know this episode must have been very hurtful.  Please know that there are a great many of us here who share a little fraction of that pain vicariously, and who hold you in the highest respect.  Your have made Vermont a better place for all of us.

I just heard your interview on VPR.  You are among the special, honorable people that make me proud to be a Vermonter.  Caring, intelligent, thoughtful and reasonable views like yours are notably lacking in our country’s public discourse.

I listened to you on VPT [sic] this morning and was so impressed with your composure, unwavering dedication and professional demeanor in light of what you experienced recently and in the past–in direct contrast to what you encountered eating breakfast at the state house.  I appreciate all that you are doing and have been doing and am so glad I live in Vermont so I can live next door to upstanding people like you.  The ignorance and hate that exists in this country and planet is too much sometimes to handle and gets overwhelming, but I hear you and remember that leading by example every day will hopefully make some change happen.

I caught your interview on VPR this morning – I hope you could hear my shout of “well done” from down the road in Williston. You did a great job explaining Vermont’s approach to the sex offender legislation.  You were measured and rational, such a sharp contrast to the hysterical attacks you were addressing.  The excerpt you read from the e-mail was chilling, and effective – who could fail to note the irony of the violence and immorality of the writer.  Allusion to suicide?!  I personally think we need to clone you.  I can only hope my four kids will take to heart the political and personal courage you have shown, you are an amazing role model for them.  You are my hero.

I have been following the story since Saturday, and have been enraged on your behalf– on so many levels. Thank you for your hard work on many critical issues facing Vermonters, but especially those related to the civil rights of members of the LGBT community. The courage it must require to withstand the persecution you have clearly faced as an openly gay legislator is truly inspiring.

There were many more in the same vein.

There’s one more piece, which can be read as a true example of how to be an ally, OR as a truly inspired political play — or both, as these things so often are (my view, not Bill’s, btw).

Bill told me he was called by a network television news local outlet for an interview on Tuesday, after O’Really?’s piece had aired over at Faux. “I just really didn’t want to do it,” Bill said. “And when I said that to Gaye [Symington], she said, ‘You shouldn’t have to do it, Bill. I’ll do it.'” And she did.

On the one hand, Gaye was among the legislators who supported civil unions from the beginning and maybe even went on one of the legislator speaking tours to talk about it. For a straight person to offer to take on a media interview on behalf of a gay beleagured colleague, essentially stepping into the target zone,  and do a creditable job is the mark of a true ally — just as has happened here on GMD when the homophobes stomp by.

On the other hand, how will Bill now feel about voting against the Speaker, as he did during the impeachment vote? Does Bill owe the Speaker something? or was what Gaye did the obligation of any decent person to one persecuted out of bigotry? And can Bill see it that way?

NanuqFC

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act — George orwell

Home Impeachment: The Tool Guy

[05-14-07, 1 p.m. There’s an update, pulled from the Brattleboro Reformer’s report, an accurate soundbite from Peter’s response, about 2/3 down below the fold — NanuqFC]

The basic messages to Rep. Peter Welch at Saturday’s White River Junction “town meeting” on impeachment (short, non-repetitive version, exclusive of conspiracy theories and gratuitous heckling): Bush and Cheney have committed impeachable offenses beyond the war in Iraq; your duty to us and to your oath of office is to defend and restore the shredded Constitution and get these guys out; your rationales for avoiding impeachment hold no water.

The basic messages from Rep. Welch to the 200-plus souls in attendance (short, non-repetitive version, exclusive of side issues, litanies of outrages, rephrasings of impeachment as “change direction,” and self-serving stories): I agree that B/C have done terrible things to our country; impeachable offenses are whatever 218 Representatives say they are; impeachment is just one tool in the fight for accountability; in my judgment impeachment is the wrong tool because it will delay ending the war; look at all the investigating we’re already doing.

Did we change his mind or even cause him to doubt his own entrenchment behind stopping the war first? I doubt it. And, while I hoped that was possible, that’s not the only reason I was there.

For those who want exhaustive detail, it’s below the fold.

Some of the fringier elements were out at the gathering: the Lyndon Larouche  groupies (believe it or not, touting a book called “Children of Satan II” showing Dick Cheney on the cover); the 9/11 conspiracy buffs; and a couple of young loudmouthed guys I might suspect of being provocateurs with their unrelenting, disruptive, offensive taunts aimed at Welch. (The organizers apparently had no plan for how to deal with this, as it went on for way too long and only intensified after Liza Earle “reminded” us of the “rules” for the meeting: play nice, be respectful, take your turn.)

Denny Morriseau, a guy with a gray pony tail and a business card that identifies him as the progenitor of “Lieutenant Morrisseau’s Rebellion,” provided a full complement of more-and-less edgy impeachment signs outside the high school, along with a persistent level of high-decibel heckling inside from high on the bleacher seats.

In fine folk-protest fashion, the “Raging Grannies” led off the meeting with impeachment-adapted lyrics to the tune of “Michael Row Your Boat Ashore.”

Armed services veterans, many wearing their VFW/Legion soft garrison caps, were in the audience and lined up to speak after organizers Liza Earle and Jimmy Leas spoke, followed by the Congressman’s welcome and opening statement, then by three pro-impeachment “panelists,” including former Army Arabic linguist Adrienne Kinne, a recent immigre to Vermont. If the passions had not been so raw and real, the event might have been dismissable as another piece of great political theatre, another cynical attempt by an elected official to show “concern” and to “listen to constituents,” while doing nothing that matters on the issue at hand.

But the passions were very real, even if the speeches were too long. At least two of us — probably more — were wiping tears from our eyes during the two-hour meeting. Welch was moved enough to promise to read into the Congressional Record a letter from the mother of a Vermont soldier killed in Iraq urging Peter to impeach those responsible for our presence in that brutally occupied country. (And then he launched into two stories to show his sincere opposition to the war and concern for the soldiers.)

Was he moved enough to change his stance? Not by any evidence I saw. He lectured the participants on Congressional arithmetic, citing the recent defeat of a deadline amendment to a second Iraq occupation-funding bill:  it received 171 votes, more than expected (he said), but not enough to pass. Someone near the end of the speaker line reminded him that you don’t need 218 votes to initiate an investigation of the main players: George W. and Richard B. It takes only one Representative to do that.

About 75 minutes into the meeting, Peter was asked if he remembered the words to the oath of office he took in January, and if so, would he recite the first few phrases. “I solemnly swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States,” he answered. “And protect and defend?” asked the questioner at the mike. “And protect and defend,” he agreed. “And do you feel that you are fulfilling the terms of your oath in refusing to use a non-optional provision of the Constitution to protect and defend it?”


Update from the Brattleboro Reformer on Peter’s response:

“The point of the question here is that Bush has committed impeachable offenses; therefore it is the duty of Congress to impeach him,” Welch responded, to the loudest and most sustained applause of the day. “I hear you.”

The meeting erupted in a roar and a standing ovation: this was the question everyone wanted answered [and the answer everyone wanted to hear]. But his attempts to [further] answer it were broken up and sometimes drowned out by the taunting and yelling of some in the crowd, notably Morrisseau in the bleachers and a conspiracy buff and a LaRouche supporter in the front row. The questioner, standing next to Peter Welch, bellowed, “I ASKED A QUESTION AND I WANT AN ANSWER!”, trying to get the crowd to respect her turn, even though they weren’t satisfied with Peter’s answers.

I left soon after that. Peter Welch never changed his tune. I was sad, but not depressed. Peter will do whatever he feels is “appropriate.” But really, I was there because I have to do everything I can to save and restore Constitutional rule as much as possible, and it’s not possible when an administration as corrupt as this one faces no consequences beyond an election. I’ve said it before: I refuse to be a “good German,” while my constitution and country are raped and assaulted from within by those power-hungry, greedy thugs who have violated their own oaths of office. I have to do everything I can, and if I’ve done that, then (at least so far) I can sleep at night.

NanuqFC

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. — George Orwell

Cowardly Lion: Howard Dean and Civil Unions

Congratulations to New Hampshire for achieving civil unions (without threat of a court order) for Granite State gay and lesbian couples. A wonderful day for my natal state, in keeping with their wisdom and courage in electing the Episcopal Church’s first openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson.

I like civil unions. Lots less baggage than “marriage.” We get to invent our own traditions, or carry on parts of the old ones, or take on the whole marriage panoply of ceremony and tradition as we like.

But — and you knew there would be a “but” — what sticks in my craw are comments like those of Howard “Fifty State” Dean, the former governor who signed Vermont’s civil unions bill secretively, behind closed doors, so as not to offend the bigots or allow the queers and their equality-minded allies opportunity to celebrate. Howard Dean, the former presidential candidate who made millions of dollars for his 2004 campaign from hopeful queers across the country, thanks in large part to gay and lesbian Vermonters who campaigned for him among out-of-state communities he otherwise had no clue how to address, shows an odd mix of almost-courage buried in cowardice. It’s as if his heart for justice is battling his fearful political instincts, and unfortunately there is no well-meaning but ultimately fraudulent Wizard of Oz to give him a medal so he could finally go with justice.

About New Hampshire’s enactment of civil unions, a step toward equality for gay and lesbian couples, Howard Dean, the current kingmaker of the Democratic Party, said in a statement carried by WCAX TV:

You know I don’t think marriage or civil unions are a national issue. I think the defense of marriage act is unconstitutional. Clearly the states have the right to make these kinds of decisions about benefits and legal relationships and that’s always been the way it is. I think there should be less federal regulation not more.

Okay, he threw one good line in there: “I think the defense of marriage act [DOMA] is unconstitutional.” That’s the courageous Lion part.

The problems with the rest of his statement are below the fold.

The Cowardly part of his Cowardly Lion act lies in the rest of what he said:

Clearly the states have the right to make these kinds of decisions about benefits and legal relationships and that’s always been the way it is. I think there should be less federal regulation not more. [emphasis mine]


Problem #1: When the federal government exercised no say in marriage laws of individual states, 13 or 14 states decided that whites and African Americans could not legally marry. That issue was dealt with in the Loving v. Viginia Supreme Court ruling.

Problem #2: No civil union is recognized by the federal government, which grants more than a thousand rights and benefits to married couples.

Here are two major examples of the consequences of not having equal federal rights and benefits: income tax and health care.

Income tax: Every year my partner and I have to do two federal tax returns apiece: one as if we were filing separately, as legal strangers; one as if we could file jointly, as the all-but-married, civilly united couple that we are. Because Vermont’s state taxes are a percentage of federal taxes, and the federal government does not recognize our legal relationship, the second federal return is required to enable us to file our state taxes as a couple.

Not only do we have to give the state copies of our fake second federal return in order to prove our numbers (which no mixed-gender married couple has to do),  but because we do not get to file federal tax returns as a couple, we lose out on more than a thousand dollars a year in refunds. Screw all that whining about the so-called “marriage penalty.” We — and all other Vermont gay and lesbian civil union couples — lose serious cash every year on a major “civil union penalty.”

Howard Dean’s support of “states’ rights” with regard to marriage and civil unions ignores this federally enforced major economic disadvantage.

Health care: One of Bush’s few “big ideas” (other than war as a vehicle for transfer of wealth) was employer-and-employee-funded, consumer-controlled “Health Care Savings Accounts” to supplement (in some cases to replace) employer-paid health insurance. It was supposed to help slow the growth of health care expenses by enlisting the consumer in making choices based on cost and real necessity not just on whether the insurance plan would pay for any given piece of premium care.

Even if you accept the premise (and so far I can’t say it has worked well), it is a federal program. Because it is a federal program, the amount of my spouse’s health care savings account money we can use for my health care expenses is: ZERO. Zip. Nada. Nichts. Nothing. At the same time, married couples can use their health care savings account money for any family member’s expenses. My spouse’s employer has made an HCSA part of its diminishing health insurance benefit package.

And that’s not even mentioning all the other issues from Social Security survivor’s benefits to buying a family pass to national parks.

So, Mr. DNC Chairman Howard Dean, thanks for the incremental step toward equality in Vermont. Thanks for supporting civil unions so that Heartland Democrats who are confused or uncertain, or fear that the issue will bite them in the next election will know that their party’s leader thinks civil unions are okay (but not “gay marriage”) — and just in case that’s too scary, that he supports “states’ rights.” BTW, your statement on civil unions appears nowhere on the DNC site, so maybe I’m giving you more credit than you deserve.

The courage you showed seven years ago in signing Vermont’s civil unions law and your cowardice in doing it “in the closet” shows in what you did not say this week: “States should be able to define marriage and civil unions, and in the name of equality for ALL Americans, as long as the federal government awards benefits to married couples, those benefits must also be awarded equally to partners in civil union.”

Vermont Senate Passes Impeachment Resolution (Updated)

Just heard via the grapevine that the Vermont Senate has passed this morning (Friday, April 20) JRS032: “REQUESTING CONGRESS TO COMMENCE IMPEACHMENT PROCEEDINGS AGAINST THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.” SR 16 calling for the initiation of impeachment proceedings against the President and Vice President (- correction by odum). Neither the text of the resolution nor the roll call vote was available online as of half an hour after the vote.

The heroes here are Sen. Dick McCormack (D-Windsor) and Sen. Jeanette White (D-Windham), who put together the wording and pushed it through — despite the President Pro Tem’s purposeful dithering (Fairness/disclosure note: the sponsors of the resolution were Senators White and Shumlin -odum).

They deserve our thanks.

Now, if we could only get Bill Lippert off the dime — or find some heroes in the House to pull the House resolution out of committee without  a committee vote.

And, oh, yes. there was information that Lt. Gov. Dubie was absent from the Senate this morning. (NOTE: This allowed Shumlin to run the proceedings and bring the matter to an immediate vote, rather than let Dubie, in his capacity as Senate president, send it to a committee to rot – odum again)

UPDATE (from odum): The vote count in the Senate was 16-9, with all the Republicans voting against and nearly all the Dems voting for. I dont know the roll call. Senator Shumlin, on the Mark Johnson Show this morning took responsibility for not taking hold of the issue sooner. Interestingly, according to Shumlin, it was brought to the floor and dealt with in only 5 minutes. Wow. He also noted that he decided to make this move 2 days ago and informed the Speaker, who reaffirmed on-air her refusal to allow the matter to come to a vote in the House. Shumlin also acknowledged that this wouldn’t have happened without the outpouring of support since Town Meeting Day. The resolution does name both Bush and Cheney. The full text below the fold (hat tip to Freyne):

UPDATE 2 (from odum): The Times Argus has a poll up on the issue now. Stop by and tell ’em how you feel.

Vermont’s state senators do support a resolution requiring the United States House Judiciary Committee to initiate impeachment proceedings against the president and the vice president of the United States.

WHEREAS, President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney have exercised the duties of their respective offices with respect to both domestic and foreign affairs in ways that raise serious questions of constitutionality, statutory legality and abuse of the public trust;

WHEREAS, the president’s conduct in his role as commander-in-chief  leading our nation into the military conflict in Iraq and the vice president’s continual advocacy for American troops remaining in Iraq have cost the United States much of the good will that was extended in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States;

WHEREAS, the president and the vice president’s domestic leadership on issues relating to individual privacy and personal liberty under law has raised constitutional issues of the greatest concern to the nation’s citizenry;

NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED BY THE SENATE, that the Senate of the State of Vermont urges Vermont’s representatives in the United States House of Representatives to introduce, and Vermont’s United States senators to support, a resolution requiring the United States House Judiciary Committee to initiate impeachment proceedings against the President and the Vice President of the United States, and be it further resolved that the secretary of the Senate be directed to send a copy of this resolution  to United States Represenative Peter Welch, United States Senator Patrick J. Leahy, and United States Senator Bernard Sanders.

Back to the Constitution

Over at Altercation, in the correspondents’ corner, a poster named Darrel Plant responded to a comment on the impossibility of impeaching a president just “because he’s a self-evident f**k-up.”

Plant quoted Congress’s own report on the uses of impeachment, done in the run up to Nixon’s potential trial.

In early 1974, when the House Judiciary Committee took up the issue of whether or not President Nixon had performed an impeachable offense, they wrote a report about the history of impeachment in the English and American systems, which The Washington Post helpfully reproduced for the Clinton impeachment.

They address the “maladministration” language and its intent, as well as the assumption that criminal conduct is necessary in section III, “The Criminality Issue”:

“Impeachable conduct, on the other hand, may include the serious failure to discharge the affirmative duties imposed on the President by the Constitution. Unlike a criminal case, the cause for the removal of a President may be based on his entire course of conduct in office. In particular situations, it may be a course of conduct more than individual acts that has a tendency to subvert constitutional government. …

“In sum, to limit impeachable conduct to criminal offenses would be incompatible with the evidence concerning the constitutional meaning of the phrase ‘high Crimes and Misdemeanors’ and would frustrate the purpose that the framers intended for impeachment. State and federal criminal laws are not written in order to preserve the nation against serious abuse of the presidential office. But this is the purpose of the consitutional provision for the impeachment of a President and that purpose gives meaning to ‘high Crimes and Misdemeanors.’ “

Discuss.

Throw Away Your Dixie Cups*

Given all the hoopla over SVR and its unrepudiated League of the South ties, this story from the Washington Post (via the St. Albans Messenger, if you please) by Neely Tucker caught my eye. It suggests that Richmond, Virginia, may lose its 117-year-old Museum of the Confederacy, either to relocation or to a name change that omits the word ‘confederacy.’

Attendance has dropped by nearly half over the past decade. The museum has been losing about $400,000 each year for a decade. Employees have been laid off, hours curtailed. A recent report by a panel of outside experts in museum management concluded that the 117-year-old institution was at a “tipping point” that was going to affect “its very existence.”

More after the jump.

Really, there are just so many reasons! The problem is bad location there in Richmond, the capital of the Old South, next door to the “White House of the Confederacy, home of Confederate President Jefferson Davis” and a National Historic Landmark, to boot. It’s at the end of a dead-end street, lacks parking, is nearly “swallowed by a surrounding medical complex” (emphasis added). It faces competition from roller coasters at a nearby amusement park.

Eventually, a perhaps more plausible reason is brought forward:

a historic shift in the mind-set of the white South, whose psychological underpinnings were held together for more than a century by the romantic ideal of “the lost cause” of the Confederacy. This held the antebellum world as a largely mythological place, a land of moonlight and magnolias, of “Gone With the Wind,” of mint juleps and Henry Timrod’s “Ode to the Confederate Dead at Magnolia Cemetery”:

Stoop, angels, hither from the skies!
There is no holier spot of ground
Than where defeated valor lies . . .

(The Messenger edited out the poetry).

Lee’s uniform, J.E.B. Stuart’s plumed hat, letters, battle flags, locks of hair from those who died in the holy cause** became “sacred relics” housed in a shrine to the Confederacy.

And finally, there is, of course, the reason no one wants to talk about: race.

Meanwhile, an even more probable reason for the old museum’s decline is a nearby $13-million American Civil War Center providing artifacts and testimony from three points of view: the South, the North, and from blacks. The new center is packing in paying customers.

One Richmond writer quoted in the article suggests that a lot of the local citizenry are “just sort of embarrassed” by the museum of the holy relics of the War Between the States, especially when contrasted with the new Civil War Center.

Context, they say, is everything. And in the Richmond of the  “New South,” nearly half the residents are not descended from white southerners; they’re snowbirds or immigrants. To them, writes Tucker, paraphrasing one source, “the Confederacy is irrelevant.”

We can applaud the New South in moving past its attachment to a heavily edited and romanticized view of an ugly history, just as we applaud and respect politically moderate and progressive Germans for coming to terms with past fascism and the “Final Solution,” and Amercans — especially Democrats — who come to terms with FDR’s order to forcibly relocate and detain Japanese Americans in prison camps after Pearl Harbor solely because of their race.

At the same time we regard as dangerous and pathological and even pathetic the attachment of fascists everywhere to the symbols of German Nazism. Attachment to the symbols of the Confederacy are clearly of the same ilk.

Too bad the secessionists in our neck of the woods haven’t gotten that message.

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* In my southern Maine childhood, we mocked confederate nationalism with this saying: “Save your Dixie cups — the South will rise again!” I don’t know where it came from, but I thought it was widely known until I read this to my midwestern-raised spouse and had to explain the title.

** A concise version of the “holy cause” (or causes of the War Between the States): some combination of state’s rights; preservation of slavery as the economic underpinning of the region; cultural and economic independence of the fast-growing industrialized North; and continued control of the federal government by a virtual oligarchy of slave-owning plantation holders based on a skewed census that counted 5 slaves as 3 people.

Barack Obama’s Vermont Connection

I was picking up a few things in the (ONLY) grocery store in Enosburg one Saturday last month, having beeped and waved at the anti-war vigileers at the park on my way by, when I ran into a friend. She’d been at the vigil and was picking up a few things herself, including a copy of Vermont Life. At the front of the store is a nice seat-height wooden ledge. We sat.

As we chatted she said, “I wish Barack Obama would get more specific on policy instead of all this general ‘let’s work together’ stuff.” I agreed and mentioned Obama partisan and blogger Philip Baruth.

“You probably know the story, don’t you?” I did not. “Barack Obama’s grandfather, that was Hussein, was our family’s cook in Kenya.” (more below the fold)

Paula’s mom, now aged 94, still lives in Nairobi, and Paula was on her way there on the last day of March to check in on Mom. Her family had moved to the Kenyan capital in 1956, where the house they occupied came with its own staff, including  Hussein.

Barack Hussein (senior) went to school and came occasionally to visit. “He would come to the house and say, ‘I’m here to see the old man’,” Paula said. Hussein was proud of his educated son, who got the chance to go to America to study, first at the University of Hawaii, where he met Ann Durham, the woman who would become Senator Barack Obama’s mom. Barack Obama now-the-Illinois-Senator was born in Honolulu in 1961.

Obama senior then had a choice to make: go to Columbia University, which was offering housing for him and his wife and daughter; or go to Harvard, the best of the best, which offered no housing. “Barack senior was ambitious,” Paula remembered. “He couldn’t turn away from Harvard, even though it meant leaving his wife and son behind.”

Eventually, “other things happened and Barack senior and his wife got divorced. Then he married another American woman named Ruth. I remember this was the early sixties, and it wasn’t all that common for a black African man and a white woman to be married, and especially not in Kenya. He brought his new wife back to Kenya, and brought her to visit my family because he knew my parents would be welcoming.”

According to Paula, Barack senior and his wife Ruth moved back to Nairobi, where he “brought his two children down from his village wife and said to her, ‘Here, raise my children,'” half-siblings of the Senator. Ruth eventually also divorced Barack senior. He died in a car accident in 1982. Ruth is still friends with Paula’s mom in Nairobi.

Paula said she’d read Senator Barack Hussein (named after his father and grandfather, eh!) Obama’s memoir and had sent him a hand-written note, reminding him that his grandfather also worked for Americans, and not just Brits in Kenya (as he apparently wrote in his memoir). “I don’t know whether he ever got my letter or read it, but he never replied.”

There’s no dirt here, and none meant. Just awe at what amazing connections can be found or made in small-town Vermont.

Nanuq FC