Last week, we profiled Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Milne in a story that explored some of the quirks of his campaign. The story showed Milne traveling without staffers and repeatedly declining to engage voters — even those who indicated they were supporting him — during a 14-hour day on the campaign trail.

In all, we deemed it a "novel approach" from a man "uncomfortable with many rituals of modern campaigning." 

We may have been underselling it. A lot.

This morning, the Milne campaign released via Twitter (its first tweet in nearly a month) a link to something that can be called a campaign ad.

Tongue firmly planted in cheek (lord, we hope so, anyway) the clip, dubbed "Milk Bowl Legend," shows Milne winning the World Cow Chip Throwing Contest at Thunder Road in Barre last weekend.

In all seriousness, before we go any further, we need to be clear about one thing: Scott Milne can seriously hurl cow shit.

The video captures his textbook form. Milne steps forward with his left leg and bends gracefully at the knee, while in perfect synchronization his right arm swings back. As if a pendulum, his arm sweeps forward. At the point where he can reach no farther Milne releases the cow pie, sending it floating through the brisk autumn air, soaring with the grace of a migrating songbird before reaching its destination — a bull's-eye in the middle of a tire.

Winner! 

The video, which appears to have been filmed from a cellphone, had 15 views as of this writing, and we're pretty sure we account for at least 12 of them. 

Milne wasn’t the only politician to test his accuracy in Barre over the weekend. Roughly 30 other office-seekers also participated, the Burlington Free Press reported. But Milne's throw was reportedly the best.

Our spy who witnessed Milne's triumph reports that he did a little dance-shimmy thing after his throw that sadly was not captured on this video.

The moment has already secured a place in Vermont political lore and the ad represents a devastating salvo as the campaign enters the home stretch.

Your move, Gov. Shumlin. 

Updated 10/14/2014 to include information about other participants in the event; and corrected to note Gov. Peter Shumlin did did not participate.

“I’m going on the offensive!” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) exclaimed.

He was in a low-ceilinged room Thursday evening in Champlain College’s Hauke Family Campus Center along with 30 or so politicians, family members, college students and elementary school kids. Cameras flashed.

This was no town hall meeting or (not-yet-a) presidential campaign stop for the two-term senator, however. It was a chess match against Vermont’s lone national chess master, David Carter, and Sanders’ pawns were being knocked off like his political challengers in the Green Mountain State.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy visited Burlington this morning to unveil a small planning grant to help the city curb pollution runoff into Lake Champlain, and said her agency hopes to make a much bigger lake cleanup announcement in spring.

Uber has arrived. The smartphone-based car service officially launched in Burlington at noon today.

Seven Days reported on Monday that the company was coming to town this week to sign up drivers and distribute phones to them. At the time, Uber spokeswoman Kaitlin Durkosh said the company was still doing "market research." 

Apparently, Uber was pleased with the results.

The company has been advertising in the Burlington area for months. According to William Guernier, general manager for regional expansion at Uber, hundreds of people have signed up to be drivers and thousands have downloaded the app. Guernier declined to provide specific numbers.

Several hours before the launch, Durkosh and Guernier met with Mayor Miro Weinberger. His chief of staff, Mike Kanarick, said the mayor requested the meeting after learning about the driver sign-ups. Both Uber and the mayor described the meeting as "productive."

Uber has upset traditional taxi companies and clashed with regulators over the question of which laws apply to them. Queen City cabbies have written to the mayor and city council requesting that they ensure Uber is subject to Burlington's taxi ordinance, which requires drivers to get a license from the city, use meters to determine their rates and adhere to certain safety standards. Burlington taxi regulators, currently based at the Burlington International Airport, have made similar requests. The city's current ordinance, which was overhauled in 2011, does not address smartphone-based car companies. 

In response, the city attorney's office began work on a memo — not yet complete — to address concerns. 

By now, most Vermonters might think they know everything there is to know about Ben & Jerry's, the company that launched in a Burlington gas station in 1978 and grew into an international brand famous for its inventive flavors and social mission. But a recently released book promises a behind-the-scenes story. New York-based journalist Brad Edmondson wrote Ice Cream Social: The Struggle for the Soul of Ben & Jerry's, a comprehensive history of the company.

Edmondson, a longtime friend of Jeff Furman, chairman of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, says the book offers the first full account of the company's decision to sell to Dutch conglomerate Unilever in 2000. It details the arrangement in which Unilever promised to devote 7.5 percent of Ben & Jerry's profits to social missions, maintain the ice cream recipes and allow their new subsidiary to have its own board of directors. Seven Days caught up with Edmondson in advance of his appearance tonight at Champlain College's Roger H. Perry Hall. His 7 p.m. talk is free and open to the public. 

Updated at 4:07 p.m.

Employees of the Burlington Free Press will have to reapply for their jobs in the coming weeks, executive editor Mike Townsend announced Tuesday night on the paper's website.

How many jobs will remain and whether those rehired will suffer pay cuts was not clear from Townsend's note, which ran under the headline, "Free Press resets for the future."

"With systemic changes in the media business in recent years including changes in approach, format and staff size, we are redefining journalism jobs for the future and our vibrant website, BurlingtonFreePress.com," Townsend wrote. "During the next several weeks, the staff will apply for these jobs with new expectations. We expect time for adaption to the change in structure."

The Free Press is just the latest newspaper owned by Virginia-based Gannett Company, Inc., to force its employees to reapply for new jobs with names like "engagement editor" and "content coach." As we reported last month, Gannett's so-called "Newsroom of the Future" downsizing initiative is expected to cut newsroom costs 15 percent across the company's 81 papers.

After 37 years at the Burlington Free Press, veteran newsman Sam Hemingway plans to retire later this month. 

"I'm 66 years old and I'm looking forward to doing other things with my life," he says. "It just seemed like a good time to do it."

Hemingway announced his departure to colleagues Tuesday afternoon, the Free Press reported shortly thereafter, telling them, "I will miss you, and I will miss this work, so much."

The Connecticut native moved to Vermont in 1971 and joined the Free Press staff in 1977. In the 1980s, Hemingway edited the paper's Sunday magazine and then served as city editor. From 1989 to 2005, he wrote a thrice-weekly column that ran the gamut from politics to investigative reporting to more lighthearted fare. 

"I've never had a beat at the Free Press. I was always sort of a generalist," he says. 

A lawsuit challenging the Church Street no-trespass ordinance was dismissed today by a judge who concluded that the two plaintiffs did not have legal standing to pursue their case.

Judge Dennis Pearson expressed sympathy with argument that the ordinance, which allows police officers to banish repeat troublemakers from the downtown street, is an unconstitutional overreach.

But Pearson ruled that the plaintiffs, Burlington attorneys and social justice advocates Jared Carter and Sandy Baird, could not bring the case because neither has been issued a citation ordering them to stay away from Church Street.

"No matter how strongly Plaintiffs Carter and Baird feel about the arguably legitimate questions raised concerning the ordinance, they simply do not have the concrete and personal stake in the outcome or controversy that entitles them to be the proponents of such a lawsuit," Pearson wrote in a 15-page opinion.

Greater Burlington is still waiting on a memo from Mayor Weinberger’s administration about how the Queen City plans to handle smartphone-based car services that have been eyeing the area.

Uber — the best known among them — is not. It’s sending representatives to the Holiday Inn in South Burlington on Wednesday and Thursday to sign up local drivers and hand out phones.

Wildly popular among consumers, resented by cabbies and perplexing to regulators, Uber now operates in more than 170 cities worldwide and is valued at roughly $15 billion. The company connects passengers with drivers through an app, offering them a convenient alternative to hailing a traditional taxi. It's clashed with regulators in numerous cities, who've taken the company to court for not obtaining taxi licenses and failing to adhere to other regulations that apply to livery operations. 

Several months ago, Uber began recruiting Greater Burlington drivers by posting ads on Facebook. On Sunday, the company sent out an email and text blast inviting those who have signed up to "meet the Uber team" and pick up phones at the Holiday Inn. Drivers who attend one of the sessions are promised a $50 bonus after their first fare, as well as additional $50 bonuses for each driver they recruit.

In August, Uber spokeswoman Kaitlin Durkosh said the company was simply doing market research in the Burlington area. Reached by email Monday morning, Durkosh maintained that is still the case. "We have driver partner sign-up events in every city we're exploring as a way to gauge interest from local drivers who'd like to partner with us," she wrote.

Uber is making moves in Burlington at an interesting time. The city is poised to restructure the way it oversees the taxi industry — for years, drivers and passengers alike have complained that it has not enforced taxi regulations. In part, that's because the regulators have been based at the Burlington International Airport. Meanwhile, the downtown has become a "wild west," according to airport commissioner Jeff Munger. At the request of his commissioner colleagues, who claim the oversight responsibility has become a burden, the city attorney's office recommended overhauling the system and beefing up enforcement. No changes have yet been implemented.

Weinberger's chief of staff, Mike Kanarick, was surprised to hear of Uber's upcoming events. "This is the first that either the mayor's office or the city attorney’s office has heard of Uber's plans to come visit Burlington on Wednesday, as you indicated to us. We in the mayor's office do plan to reach out to Uber to learn more about their plans," Kanarick said on Monday. 

The city attorney is still working on the memo, according to Kanarick. Taxi company owners are anxious to see whether Burlington will embrace or crack down on digital car services. In an interview last month, Green Cab owner Charlie Herrick said, "I’ve had discussions with the other owners and everybody feels as far as I can tell that we welcome competition as long as they play by the same rules." In Herrick's opinion, Uber hasn't. "There’s gonna be a difference in opinion if they want to operate under the current model."  

Goddard College held its graduation ceremony yesterday three hours earlier than the publicly announced time, citing security threats the school received after choosing a man convicted of murdering a police officer to deliver the commencement address.

The Plainfield college secretly moved its ceremony from 4 p.m. to 1 p.m., citing lingering controversy over the 23 graduates' decision to invite Mumia Abu-Jamal to prerecord a commencement address from a prison cell where he is serving a life sentence. Abu-Jamal, who has become a human rights activist and cause célèbre for some liberal activists during his time in prison, received a bachelor of arts degree from Goddard in 1996 while incarcerated.

"There have been certain posturing and words that have come our way that have led us to make a security-based decision," said the college's interim president, Bob Kenny, according to WCAX.

The college received hundreds of threats against staff and students in the days after they announced Abu-Jamal's speech, VTDigger reported. The graduation ceremony was closed to the public.

Abu-Jamal was convicted of murder in the 1981 death of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner, and initially was sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment without parole in 2011, after a federal appeals court ruled that he was entitled to a new sentencing hearing because jurors had heard potentially misleading instructions during his trial. He was transferred from death row to the Mahanoy State Correctional Institution in Frackville, Penn. 

Goddard College released a written copy of his speech, in which he reminisced about visiting Vermont in the 1970s and urged students to follow their passions.

"I've been away from Goddard College, perhaps longer than most of you have been alive," he said. "I last walked on the campus in the late 1970s. But although it was undoubtedly quite a long time ago, it still sits in memory, and sometimes even visits in dreams of the funky atmosphere that suffused the campus, like a cloud of exhaled marijuana smoke. What really moved me however was the green life — the abundance of grass, trees standing like ancient sentinels, the majestic beauty of Vermont, which possessed a beauty that was, to a guy from the city, simply breathtaking."

Jamal did not discuss his crime or incarceration in his speech.

"How does a young person ... looking at the vast wide world, with a quiet sense of terror, have a voice amidst that monstrous din?" he said. "How does she/he find that voice that can create space, to think, to be — to grow? We know that it must come from the place within, that which moves you, that which stirs you, that which is your truest, deepest self."

Days before the ceremony, the union representing the Vermont State Police troopers wrote letter urging Goddard College to rescind the invitation.

"Your invitation to this convicted murderer demonstrates an absolute disregard for the family of Danny Faulkner and the families of other police officers who have been killed while serving their communities," Vermont Troopers' Association President Mike O'Neill wrote. "While our nation is searching for solutions to gun violence in our schools and communities, we are outraged that Goddard College is hosting a man who shot and killed a police officer. A college commencement ceremony should be conducted to honor the achievements of graduates, not provide a forum for recognition of a convicted killer. Invited speakers should be persons who exemplify honor, integrity and ethics, not the hate-filled rants of a killer."

Philadelphia police officers and members of Faulkner's family yesterday gathered at a plaque honoring Faulnker and held a silent vigil.

Faulnker's widow, Maureen Faulkner, released a statement blasting Goddard College, according to the Philadelphia television station WPVI.

"Mumia Abu-Jamal will be heard and honored as a victim and a hero by a pack of adolescent sycophants at Goddard College in Vermont," she said."Despite the fact that 33 years ago, he loaded his gun with special high-velocity ammunition designed to kill in the most devastating fashion, then used that gun to rip my husband's freedom from him —today, Mumia Abu-Jamal will be lauded as a freedom fighter."

Her statement continued, "Undoubtedly the administrators at Goddard who first accepted, then enthusiastically supported Abu-Jamal as their speaker will be moved by his 'important message' when, if one distills that message to its basic meaning, it amounts to nothing more than the same worn-out hatred for this country and everyone in law enforcement that Mumia Abu-Jamal has harbored his entire life ... This is not a matter of First Amendment rights — it's a matter of right and wrong."

Despite the vocal protests, Goddard College officials stuck by their students' decision.

"Many diverse commencement speakers have been chosen to represent perspectives not normally in our discourse," the college said in a prepared statement. "Even if it is unpopular, we need to listen to and engage in difficult discussions. This is what free speech is all about. Our students understand there is great merit in what Mumia Abu-Jamal has to say. It is important that we at Goddard College support this complicated inquiry and the freedom of speech."