Freyne Land

Cindy Sheehan, the soldier's mother who galvanized the anti-war movement, has told the Associated Press she plans to seek Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's liberal San Francisco congressional seat unless Pelosi introduces articles of impeachment against President Bush in the next two weeks.

Sheehan said she will run against the San Francisco Democrat in 2008 as an independent if Pelosi does not seek by July 23 to impeach Bush.

Interesting.

The fact is, with each passing day, the American public's faith in the current regime occupying the White House and running the government wanes noticeably. Even Republicans are defecting in droves.

We've been lied to and we know it.

What does Vermont's lone member of the U.S. House, Peter Welch, say?

Pedro is, after all, a close ally of Speaker Pelosi.

"I think that the folks who are arguing for impeachment are making a very, very compelling case about the misuse of power by the president of the United States," said Congressman Welch. "But the major question is what’s the best way to end this war, and what we’re seeing is Republicans are beginning to crack."

Welch noted last week's defections by two prominent GOP senators.

"Sen. Domenici, a very respected, a very high-ranking Republican expressed strong reservations about the war, indicating that he’s splitting from the Administration position. Sen. Lugar did the same," said Welch.

"So the one thing I know continues to be the case is that we’ve got to get Republican votes to join the 218 of us who voted to end the war in order to get 290 to overcome the president’s veto. And the one thing that I continue to believe would consolidate the Republicans would be defending the president on impeachment, whereas they’re abandoning him on the war.

"And I believe that’s the view of Speaker Pelosi," said  Vermont's member of the House.

Quite the healthy Sunday morning turnout at Montpeculiar High School for the "Bernie & Bill Show" - a United States Senator's Town Meeting on Global Warming featuring the one-and-only Bernie Sanders and Mr. "End of Nature" himself - Bill McKibben.

"I think we all know what the bad news is," said U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders as he wrapped up his two-hour Sunday morning town meeting on global warming at Montpelier High School. "This state, this country, this planet faces some terrible problems and we have got to get our act together. We have to do it quickly and we have to do it aggressively.

"The good news is, and it really is good news," he continued, "is that consciousness on this issue is rising all over the place, not just from progressives, not just from moderates, but from conservatives as well. I happen to believe that as often is the case, you’re going to see states play important roles, and cities playing important roles."

"There’s a sense that things are changing?" we asked.

"Absolutely," replied Ol' Bernardo, "no question about it. The oil companies, as powerful as they are, the coal companies, as powerful as they are, the big-monied interests - they’re on the defensive. But we’ve got to continue the strong grassroots effort and get Congress to do the right thing."

Certainly the Sanders Town Meeting on Global Warming is a perfect lead into Wednesday's showdown under Montpelier's Golden Dome over Republican Gov. Jim Douglas' veto of H. 520, the Democrats' global warming bill.

"I think Vermont is one of the birthing places," said McKibben, "of what’s now become a nationwide movement to do something about climate and we’ve just got to keep it up. We’ll have a chance this Wednesday to keep it up and we’ll have a lot more chances in the year ahead to make sure that this is at the top of the agenda in the presidential elections, that it’s the most important issue that we have out there. It's the one thing that really threatens our civilization and our way of life and we have to take every opportunity, including ones like this, to broaden the base of that movement all the time.

"What does it say," we asked, "that the governor of the state of Vermont vetoed it and it looks like his veto going to be upheld?

"You know," replied McKibben,  "I think that it says we need a new governor."

Any suggestions?

"The governor doesn’t take global warming seriously," said McKibben. "He’s the only politician of note that didn’t come to our rally last year when 1000 Vermonters walked up the state of Vermont to demand action and now we know why he didn’t come. He talked a good game on climate change. Says all the right things cause he’s in Vermont where people care about it, but he won’t do anything about it. And given the opportunity, he vetoes legislation about it. It’s a tremendous shame," said the Ripton writer.

"What's dissappointing is what’s going on in Montpelier," said Bill. "What’s going onin Washington is pretty exciting and Bernie is at the absolute centerof it. It’s amazing to turn on the TV and see Pat Leahy preventing themas best he can from shredding the Constitution and Bernie Sanderspreventing them, as best he can, from shredding the Earth."

Off to Montpeculiar bright and early this Sunday morning for a Senator Bernie Sanders town meeting at the high school on: Global Warming. It starts at 10:30. I know, competing with church. [No big deal, but Republican Gov. Jim Douglas, in his best George W. Bush impersonation to date, vetoed the global warming bill the Legislature passed. The showdown on a veto-override vote is Wednesday.]

Of the four committees Sanders of Vermont sits on, one is Environment and Public Works and one is Energy and Natural Resources.

He's connected and appears to love his new areas of responsibility: energy and the environment.

He's also competing with himself since he'll be the featured guest on WCAX-TV's "You Can Quote Me" at 11. It was taped on Friday. Marselis and Andy Potter ask the questions. Do let me know if anything newsworthy happens. WCAX is too stingy to post video, audio or transcripts of its "premier"  Sunday Morning News Special. In fact, it's the station's ONLY news/public affairs program outside of the regular news.

Meanwhile, did want to share this photo of a rainbow over The Burlington Free Press, Gannett's cash-cow in Vermont. Took it last Monday after we were tipped off about Publisher Jim Carey's decision to end the free parking for employees and remove the bottled spring water cooler from the newsroom.

Tough economic times, you know.

Our report in Wednesday's "Inside Track" got picked up last Thursday by "Romenesko" - a website that covers all the inside poop in media and journalism.

Caused such a traffic flood to "Inside Track" that it crashed the Seven Days website for an hour!

Somewhere, over the rainbow!

So I went up to the Mary Fanny Hospital bright and early Friday morning thinking it was Chemo #7.

Turns out it was Chemo #8 - the last one!

Time flies.

And since it was the last one scheduled [and so far it appears to be working just fine] I used it as an opportunity to finally experience what a foot massage was like. Hey, you only live once.

Absolutely marvelous!

There are two massage therapists who work the chairs in the Oncology Center. The funding is from a grant from the Victoria Buffum Foundation.

Cindy Schaefer told me she "really loves to be able to offer comfort."

Yes, I was taking notes while getting the foot massage.

"It's a reminder," said Cindy, "that they can feel good with their body. People in pain need to be connected to their bodies to heal."

Amen.

I never realized the foot had so many parts!

Tore myself away from the Ol' Internet this afternoon for a coffee-shop run and a hand-held edition of The New York Times to peruse.

That's Marie Claire working behind the counter at Speeder & Earl's on Pine Street.

This afternoon I learned about her "other life," as quite the talented singer, songwriter and piano player!

Do give her a listen at www.myspace.com/MarieClairemusic.

The I made a run downtown for a little more caffeine at Uncommon Grounds on Church Street.

Crowded, but there was an empty seat at the table occupied by this gentleman.

Recognize him?

Currently taking a six-month unpaid leave from his faculty position at the University of Vermont, Huck Gutman is working on Capitol Hill on the staff of his longtime friend and political ally, Independent U. S. Sen. Bernie Sanders. Professor Gutman is a "senior policy advisor."

Ol' Huck's been teaching 19th and 20th Century poetry at UVM since 1972!  And he's worked on Bernie Campaigns since 1972, he said. Looking good, isn't he? And three years ago he pedaled a bicycle from Minnesota to Burlington.

I don't know if it's just me, since I woke up feeling a little "funky" this morning, but I'm not noticing a lot of "friendliness" or "openness" in the air as I make the rounds this afternoon. [Lots of tourists in town, too.]  I sense people are uneasy and fearful about what more serious damage the Cheney Administration, sorry, the Bush Administration, will do to Americans, America andbeyond.

The current Bush is an American president who avoids the American public and only leaves the "security" of the White House to go to his presidential father's Maine seaside retreat, or to give a "patriotic" speech to National Guard troops at a West Virginia military base urging more sacrifice. And Cheney?

When's the last time he spoke before anything other than a carefully screened audience devoid of Americans who disagree with him on the Iraq War?

Given George our Prez and Dick our Veep's draft-dodger pasts when they were young men in the 1960s, should we really be surprised?

Today, even GOP Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico called for U.S. troops withdrawing from Iraq starting by next March.

"I am unwilling to continue our current strategy," said Sen. Domenici.

More Republican members of Congress will be joining him soon, eh?

"World Leaders" is a photo exhibit by U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy. It opens this evening at 5 p.m. at The Big Picture Theater & Cafe in Waitsfield, and will stay up through July.

Leahy’s quite to ol' photographer and he does shoot some pretty interesting subject matter:

President George H.W. Bush wearing Mickey Mouse ears; the Dalai Lama, Leahy’s personal friend, caught informally;

the late Pope John Paul II’s installation and funeral; history-changing bill-signings taken from behind several presidents; and backstage moments with musical icons Bono and the Grateful Dead.

Nice.

Leahy's photographs have been published in several newspapers and magazines, including U.S. News & World Report, TIME Magazine, and USA Today.

Free and open to the public.

ALso, St. Patrick was on the WDEV airwaves this morning with Eric Michaels and addressed head-on the current state of the wars of and on terrorism:

LEAHY:  I think British Prime Minister Brown handled it very, very well. These are criminals and we sometimes get a little too carried away, saying that some massive well-coordinated terrorist conspiracy. These are criminals. Timothy McVeigh, one of the greates mass murders in theUnited States, was a criminal. Those who did the mass murders at the Twin Towers, they’re crimnals. And we should look at it that way.

Q. You’re saying we should not be at war on terror?

LEAHY: No, I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying what you do is you go after crimnals whether crimnals are acting as terroriatsa or acting as murderers in the street.  You go after them

But you also try to find the root causes of it. For example, before we went into Iraq there was no al-Qaeda in Iraq.  Now it’s swarming with al-Qaeda. It’s proven to be a training ground for them.

Did the Iraq War make us safer or less safe?

More and more, generals and Republicans and everybody else is saying, the war has made us less safe.

What you should be doing is spending your time and money in knowing how to be pre-emptive.

For example, we know now that the Administraton could have stopped 9/11 before it happened if the dots had been connected. One of the things they said after that was hire more translators for Arabic languages.

They still haven’t hired them. They still haven’t done it.

We’ll make a big thing about telling you you can’t bring a half-bottle of water on the airplane, but they haven’t done any of the things, any of the major things, the 9/11 Commission said they should do to make flying safer.

A whole lot more sun on the Third of July, eh?

And a big turnout, estimated at 80,000, along the Burlington Waterfront for the fireworks. Among them these four geezers, excuse me, distinguished grown-ups, on hand to honor Burlington College on its 35th Anniversary with a little boat cruise outside the breakwater on the Northern Lights for some dinner and fireworks.

From left to right, that's Marcelle Leahy, the guy she married, Bernie Sanders and the woman in his life - Jane Sanders, president of Burlington College.

Prior to their boarding, yours truly collared the members of Vermont's U.S. Senate delegation individually for the question of the day.

"I don’t think anybody there is surprised to see what the president’s done in commuting Libby’s sentence," said U.S. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee.  "Not surprised, but terribly disappointed."

It's clear now, said Sen. Leahy, why Scooter Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief-of-staff, kept his mouth shut about his boss's involvement in the lies about Saddam Hussein's WMDs and the distortions to make Americans believe Saddam Hussein was connected to 9/11, "and all the other things that were covered up."

Now we know, said Leahy, Scooter knew "that if he kept his mouth shut, he’d get taken care of." President Bush has made it clear he's not ruling out a full pardon for the convicted perjurer, noted St. Patrick, "and the quid-pro-quo is: you keep your mouth shut and we’ll take care of you."

"There’s no question he has the constitutional power to do it," added Leahy. "I wish he’d exercise the constitutional responsibility not to."

Many Vermonters I talk to see a government in Washington with the crooks & liars in charge like never before, I told him. They're a little scared.

"This is why I keep raising the questions that I have," replied St. Pat. "That’s why I keep pushing for the subpoenas. There’s a lot of other things I could do that would be a lot easier, would certainly allow me to get to bed before one o’clock in the morning, but I’ll keep on doing it."

"Are we ever going to hear the truth?" asked yours truly.

"I hope." he answered. "I will keep pushing as long as I’m in the Senate. I’ll keep pushing to get the truth. When I was pushing on some of these questions once before, as you recall, I got one of the two anthrax letters," noted Leahy. "I don’t deter easily."

Next up, I grabbed the junior senator from Vermont, the mayor of Burlington in the 1980s who fought the winning fight to turn the old abandoned, junkyard Burlington Waterfront into the beautiful People's Waterfront you see today.

"What Bush has managed to do," Sanders told us, "has been to kind of negate the word ‘unbelievable.’ Everyday you say, ‘This is unbelievable!’ Then the next day it becomes even worse."

The guy should have been a columnist, eh?

"The good news, and this is sincerely good news," said Ol' Bernardo, "is that the American people, clearly, have caught on to what a disaster this administration is...At all levels, people are turning away from these people and that includes not only the Administration, but right-wing Republican extremism."

Said Lady Jane to the gathering minutes later: "Having a congressional delegation that is without a doubt thebest congressional delegation in Congress, and that’s not just myopinion, not everybody agrees, certainly, but progressive-mindedpeople across the country look to the Vermont delegation forleadership. We are very, very, very lucky to have them down there andwe’re honored that they come and spend tonight with us for the 35thbirthday of Burlington College."

Do check out the Burlington College website.

And yes, Congressman Peter Welch was there, but he arrived late and we didn't get a chance for a one-on-one.

***Updated Wednesday afternoon with link to Dr. Dean's CNN remarks***

What a week and it's only Tuesday!

As I was heading out the door late this afternoon for Seven Days and the Ol' "Inside Track" final  check-up, this old familiar face popped up on the boob-tube.

{By the way, because of the July 4 holiday, Seven Days won't hit the streets until Thursday, but "Inside Track" will be posted online Wednesday morning per usual.]

And there's that cheapskate, fake-bookshelf shade behind him at "Vermont's Own," WGOP, er, sorry, WCAX-TV in South Burlington, Vermont. It's the nearest satellite up-link to the Dean "ranch," about a mile away.

Howard Dean was in the groove and kicking some serious butt regarding President Bush League's commutation of the sentence of Scooter the Liar, an aide who helped "out" a covert CIA agent. Nice people. Couldn't find a tape or transcript on CNN's website when I got home [see bottom of post for Update]. I wasn't taking notes, but I grabbed this official statement off the DNC website by Chairman Howard Dean of Vermont:

“Once again President Bush and the GOP have undermined a core American value: equal justice under the law for every American. By commuting this sentence, President Bush is sending a clear message that the rules don’t apply to the Bush White House or loyal Republican cronies. After promising that anyone who violated the law would be taken care of, President Bush instead handed Scooter Libby a get out of jail free card. Though Libby was convicted by a jury of lying about a matter of national security, President Bush is sparing him the consequences ordinary Americans would face.

This conviction was the first moment of justice in a Bush Administration void of accountability. It’s a sad day for America when the President once again puts protecting his friends ahead of equal justice under the law.”

There's also an official Dean video online here.

***AND, I just found the transcript of Ho-Ho remarks on CNN's The Situation Room here. Scroll down about a quarter of the page. Among the former Vermont governor's comments:

That's the fundamental difference. We believe in equal justice under the law. We believe in getting out of Iraq.

Every single Republican president running for president believes in staying in Iraq and evidently supports this pardon. They are wrong. The American people, by huge numbers, think the president did the wrong thing by commuting "Scooter" Libby's sentence and they think they're doing the wrong thing by staying in Iraq.

And I do not see how any of these guys are going to get themselves elected president of the United States by supporting things that the American people really disagree with.

*Updated Tuesday a.m. with gubernatorial response*

As you know, President George "WMD" Bush, the most dishonest, dangerous and damaging president of my lifetime, has quietly handed a "Get Out of Jail Free" card to a loyal political operative. Late this afternoon, our Presidential Liar in Chief commuted the 30-month federal prison sentence of his loyal servant Scooter Libby. He did so before Libby, a convicted felon, served one nanosecond behind bars.

Libby was Vice President Dick "Halliburton" Cheney's top aide, known to insiders as "Dick Cheney's Dick Cheney."

He was convicted by a jury of perjury for lying to federal investigators about his role in the White House leak of the identity of a covert CIA officer's identity.

Lying, after all, is "Job One" with the Bush Administration. And this president certainly leads by example, doesn't he?

First reaction statement in the inbox is from the senior member of the Green Mountain State's Troika on Capitol Hill.

Senator Patrick J. Leahy:

“The President’s muted words and deeds in the aftermath of this conviction pale in comparison to what he said before the investigation was launched.

"The President has the constitutional power to do this.  But accountability has been in short supply in the Bush Administration, and this commutation fits that pattern.  It is emblematic of a White House that sees itself as being above the law."

Next one:

Senator Bernie Sanders:

“A jury of his peers found Libby guilty of lying about his role in revealing the identity of a covert C.I.A. operative. It is unfortunate that President Bush in commuting his sentence has once again put political considerations above the interests of our judicial system.”

And finally:

Representative Peter Welch:

"The President's decision is shameful and shockingly disrespectful of the American judicial system.  He has betrayed the trust placed in him by the American people, who expect their president to uphold the rule of law.  And he has chosen to bow to political pressure at the expense of the integrity of our judicial system."

Governor Jim Douglas:

"Freyne Land" sent the governor's distinguished press secretary Jason Gibbs this question Monday night via e-mail:

"Are you putting out a statement on the president's commutation of Scooter Libby's 30-month jail sentence?

Got his response this morning via return e-mail:

"No."

I remember growing up in the 1950s and 60s, and I swear, every piece of clothing I put on my skinny body (except the Clancy Brothers' Aran Sweaters] had a "Made in U.S.A." label attached.

Below, the Freyne once-dirty laundry - all clean after our visit to Greer's Laundromat. Yes, indeed, a good feeling - clean clothes.

But the pre-seatbelt, pre-cell phone, pre-Internet, smoking-is-good-for-you 1950s and 60s are a distant memory in more ways than one. I went through the clean-clothes stack one-by-one.

The clothes you see at right, including  "American" brands like Dockers, Lee and Nautica were, according to their labels, made in:

China
India
Sri Lanka
Vietnam
Pakistan
Guatemala
Honduras
Philippines
Mexico
Dominican Republic

Not one, repeat, NOT ONE, was "Made in U.S.A."

Of course, there is an alternative: public nudity.

Hmmm.