Sunday, July 24, 2016
“Hell no, DNC, we won’t vote for Hillary!” fist-shaking marchers chanted along the first half of a 3.5-mile route from Philadelphia City Hall to Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park near the barricaded convention hall.
“If we don’t get it, shut it down!” the Sanders diehards also threatened.
Some suggested in interviews that there is still hope of the Democrats turning to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Tuesday night, delivering victory to the Vermont socialist as an act of penance for what many of his supporters maintain was a rigged primary voting process. Failure to right that perceived wrong will mean trouble in Philly, the more militant protestors seemed to suggest.
WikiLeaks’ publication of hacked emails written by Democratic National Committee staffers showed they are “not a bunch of crackhead conspiracy theorists,” said Los Angeles artist Alex Schaefer. Some of the leaked messages confirmed Sanders’ complaint that the nominally neutral Democratic Party hierarchy was actually working to ensure Clinton’s nomination.
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Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said Sunday she would resign her chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee at the conclusion of the party's convention this week in Philadelphia.
The move came as party leaders sought to quell an uproar over leaked DNC emails suggesting that committee staffers had undermined Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) presidential campaign. In one internal email, released Friday by WikiLeaks, DNC chief financial officer Brad Marshall asked two other party officials whether the organization could "get someone" to ask Sanders about his faith — an apparent effort to hurt his electoral chances in Kentucky and West Virginia.
Speaking Sunday morning on CNN's "State of the Union," Sanders called the emails "outrageous," but "not a great shock to me."
"I mean, there's no question, to my mind, and I think no question to any objective observer's mind, that the DNC was supporting [presumptive Democratic nominee] Hillary Clinton — was in opposition to our campaign," he said. "So I'm not quite shocked by this."
Tags: Senator , Bernie Sanders , Hillary Clinton , Debbie Wasserman Schultz , presidential campaign , DNC 2016 , Recommended Reading , Image , Web Only
Friday, July 22, 2016
The defendants, seven of whom were arrested Friday, allowed dealers to use their apartments along a stretch of Malletts Bay Avenue, just a few blocks from the downtown Winooski traffic circle, authorities said.
U.S. Attorney Eric Miller said that law enforcement is increasingly focused on arresting "local facilitators": Vermonters who provide housing, transportation, links to customers and other support to out-of-state drug dealers who set up shop in local communities.
Tags: cocaine , DEA , drugs , Eric Miller , heroin , Malletts Bay Avenue , Opioid Crisis , Winooski , Image , Web Only
Abdul Zahir, 44, will likely return home to Afghanistan in the coming months after a recent military ruling, his attorneys said. The accused terrorist has been imprisoned at the prison in Cuba since his suspected involvement in a 2002 grenade attack that injured a Canadian journalist and two others in Afghanistan.
The Center for Constitutional Rights assigned attorneys David Sleigh and Robert Gensburg to represent Zahir. The lawyers have made roughly a dozen trips to Guantanamo to visit their client, and have fruitlessly lobbied military officials to grant him a trial.
Tags: David Sleigh , Robert Gensburg , Guantanamo Bay , Abdul Zahir , Image , Web Only
Thursday, July 21, 2016
A local and a national organization have combined forces to sue the state over its 3-year-old end-of-life law that allows qualifying terminally ill patients to seek a prescription to hasten their deaths.
The Vermont Alliance for Ethical Healthcare and the Tennessee-based Christian Medical & Dental Associations filed the lawsuit Tuesday in federal court in Vermont. They argue on behalf of several Vermont medical professionals that being required to offer patients the option of assisted suicide violates their religious or ethical beliefs.
Vermont is one of four states to legalize assisted suicide, but the only one that requires medical professionals to advise patients of the option, said Steven Aden, a Washington, D.C., attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom and one of several lawyers representing the plaintiffs.*
“They share a reasonable fear of this being imposed on them,” Aden told Seven Days.
Tags: Physician-assisted suicide , Act 39 , end-of-life law , Vermont Alliance for Ethical Healthcare , Alliance Defending Freedom , Image , Web Only
At a press conference held behind the derelict brick building, Weinberger told reporters he is giving the New Moran team until November 11 to prove to the city that they have an updated, financially viable proposal.
What, exactly, that entails, Weinberger couldn't say. But he reiterated his ongoing concerns — that the team lacks people with significant development experience and that they've failed to secure firm commitments from longterm tenants for the building.
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"But it often takes time for the state capital to catch up to public opinion," says Braden, who founded Gun Sense Vermont after the December 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Conn.
Now, with less than three weeks remaining before Vermont's gubernatorial primary, one candidate is staking her candidacy on the controversial issue. In a television advertisement released Wednesday, Democrat Sue Minter ties firearms to domestic violence and pledges to take on "the gun lobby."
"We need to keep guns away from domestic abusers and require background checks on all gun sales," she says.
It may not be the riskiest strategy in a Democratic primary. The Castleton Polling Institute found last February that 97 percent of Democrats support universal background checks. Even independents and Republicans overwhelmingly support the concept, the poll concluded.
Tags: Sue Minter , Peter Galbraith , Matt Dunne , Ann Braden , Evan Hughes , gun control , universal background checks , election 2016 , primary 2016 , Image , Video , Web Only
A hearing next month on Vermont Gas Systems' pipeline project will be closed to the public, the state Public Service Board has decided — a move that observers say is unprecedented.
As first reported by Vermont Public Radio, the board last week said that the August 4 technical hearing will be open only to the parties involved. Access to the hearing, at a state building in Barre, will be controlled by police.
The Public Service Board subsequently decided to allow members of the media to attend the hearing in person, board deputy clerk Holly Anderson said on Friday, though the number may be limited by space constraints.
The board ruled that the move to exclude the public was necessary because protesters have disrupted other pipeline hearings.
"Many members of the public rose from their seats in the hearing room and raised their voices loudly in song, refusing to heed appeals from the hearing officers to lower their voices so as not to interfere with the proceedings," the board said in its ruling, describing one protest.
Tags: Vermont Gas Systems , Addison Natural Gas Pipeline Project , Vermont Public Service Board , Geprags Park , Image , Web Only
Burlington’s 242 Main youth center and concert venue, the Burlington City Arts clay and print studios and the Generator maker space all must move. Burlington city engineer Norm Baldwin has concluded that the 1927 red brick auditorium on Main Street needs major work.
“The city engineer is not comfortable with the building remaining in use beyond the end of the year,” Mayor Miro Weinberger told Seven Days.
Tags: Memorial Auditorium , University of Vermont , 242 Main , Burlington City Arts , Generator , Image , Web Only
Two schools in the beleaguered Vermont State College system could become one under a proposal that would merge Lyndon State College and Johnson State College. Johnson president Elaine Collins would take the helm of the unified college when it opens on July 1, 2017, the chancellor’s office said in a statement Thursday.
Chancellor Jeb Spaulding recommended the merger, which has since been approved by the Vermont State Colleges Board of Trustees. The board will vote on a final plan for the change on September 29.
Tags: Vermont State Colleges , Jeb Spaulding , Lyndon State College , Johnson State College , Image , Web Only