Five Before Chaos

…over at GMD, this one is about Iraq and activism. Enjoy.

Last Friday I met with Congressman Peter Welch for a sit-down interview for about an hour. We talked about the economy, Dem capitulation, Iraq and some self-reflection. Part 1 of the interview is available here. He’s not thrilled about Robert Rubin on Obama’s economic team, either.

I’m still organizing a bunch of my Denver media. Here’s a few pics fer y’all. You can click on them for larger ones:

Pat Buchanan indulges his Henry Kissinger fetish when the cameras are off. "Now where did I leave my Klan hood?"

Bubba speaks.

Kos,Peter Welch, and some guy who looks like he needs to lay off of the pig stomach tacos.

Downtown painter.

The Denver World Trade Center, one of many skyscrapers I photographed that day.

The only chance I'll ever have in my life to safely sit in the middle of the interstate.

“While stating that the two leaders had done “impeachable things,” [he] said that impeachment proceedings would occupy the congress and prevent them from doing anything else with their majority.”

No, it wasn’t Congressman Welch, but you’d swear it was. It was Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY-Brooklyn) at a recent town hall meeting with some rather pissed off constituents. He’s giving the same bullshit line of “reasoning” that Welch does, and his constituents aren’t buying it, either. You’d think they’d at least come up with something plausible when they come from districts that are high in approval for impeachment, such as Vermont and Brooklyn.

Over at American Humanist,  David Swanson speculates on this reasoning, believing that Pelosi and Co. are taking this line because they believe that having Bush around in 2008 will help them, come election time. Gee, small price to pay, having Bush around for that extra year so the Dems can do well at the polls. I woulda thought it was a moot issue, considering the Repugs are about as popular as spring thaw dogshit on a warm early April morning, and have nowhere to go but down.  Regardless, it’s infuriating, because to give the kind of answers Welch and Weiner do really gives the impression that they think their constituents are all stupid. They’d have to be to believe that premise. More importantly, as Swanson points out:

Impeachment, as the one course of action that can’t be vetoed, turns out to be the only thing Congress can do. And impeachment proceedings that would put the White House on the defensive might actually lead to a backing off on veto threats, as they did under Nixon. But there’s a larger point: when in the world did reinstating the Bill of Rights become a distraction? 

When, indeed, Mr. Welch?

Brattlerouser at GMD has the scoop on H.R. 1955: The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007. Yeah, I know, it sounds scary. According to an article in the Baltimore Sun:

(The bill) tramples constitutional rights by creating a commission with sweeping investigative power and a mandate to propose laws prohibiting whatever the commission labels “homegrown terrorism.”

The proposed commission is a menace through its power to hold hearings, take testimony and administer oaths, an authority granted to even individual members of the commission – little Joe McCarthys – who will tour the country to hold their own private hearings. An aura of authority will automatically accompany this congressionally authorized mandate to expose native terrorism.

Ms. Harman’s proposal includes an absurd attack on the Internet, criticizing it for providing Americans with “access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda,” and legalizes an insidious infiltration of targeted organizations. The misnamed “Center of Excellence,” which would function after the commission is disbanded in 18 months, gives the semblance of intellectual research to what is otherwise the suppression of dissent.

While its purpose is to prevent terrorism, the bill doesn’t criminalize any specific conduct or contain penalties. But the commission’s findings will be cited by those who see a terrorist under every bed and who will demand enactment of criminal penalties that further restrict free speech and other civil liberties. Action contrary to the commission’s findings will be interpreted as a sign of treason at worst or a lack of patriotism at the least.

While Ms. Harman denies that her proposal creates “thought police,” it defines “homegrown terrorism” as “planned” or “threatened” use of force to coerce the government or the people in the promotion of “political or social objectives.” That means that no force need actually have occurred as long as the government charges that the individual or group thought about doing it.

F-ing great. Anyways, to add insult to injury, Congressman Peter Welch voted for this bill. Go here to give him some grief. When the hell someone’s finally going to get up the nerve to mount a primary challenge, well, it seems like that time is drawing near, don’t you?

It remains to be seen how this will fare in the Senate and how Leahy and Sanders will vote. As soon as I get more info on the Senate bill, I’ll let you know.

The first videos of last Sunday’s controversial meeting with Peter Welch have been put up on YouTube. Go below the jump for more…
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Well, then. I had no idea the Welch meeting piece I did on Sunday night was gonna get the exposure it did. Unfortunately, most of the traffic went to Kos and GMD. C’mon, people. Show me some love, you ungrateful bastards. I don’t do this stream-of-consciousness type writing too much, but this meeting and the resulting coverage and responses took up a huge part of my emotional and mental landscape for the last 48 hours, so here it goes.

The attention paid to the article was kind of unsettling for me. Part of it was on a front page article in the Times Argus (which I didn’t even find out about until after dinner). I did the WKVT radio show today, which was actually pretty fun. It was in the rec’d column on Kos for most of the day yesterday. I was told that it was mentioned on Mark Johnson’s interview with Michael Colby yesterday. And it got a huge response over on GMD.

So where’s my goddamn check?

I’ve talked to a lot of people since this thing happened, including quite the back-and-forth with one of the principal organizers, who surprisingly called my article ‘fair’ (which was my intention – the fact that I’ve received zero personal attacks or backlash means I might have actually written a rather fair account).

But seriously, it got a lot of discussion going, which I guess is a good thing. Yeah, there’s a lot of angles one can look at it… tactically, politically, expressively, whatever. I see it mostly from a tactical angle. Sure, anger is good. If the intention was simply to express intense anger, and nothing else, well, it did the trick. But that’s expression, not a tactic to an end in itself. But if its intention was, as stated, to have a dialogue with Welch and hopefully have both parties come away with some better understanding of each other, I think it failed miserably. There simply was no room for that. Since then, there’s been a lot of defensiveness and finger pointing about who started what. I’m not going to get into that, because at this stage of the game, I don’t care anymore.

Both at Kos and GMD (sigh) when there was tense conversation, something often heard was “What will it take?” That’s a good question. What will it take? Some actions, such as the most recent sit-in at Welch’s office that prompted this meeting, are highly effective AND expressive. It had a positive result, and the participants were able to express themselves. Others, such as a march I participated in a few years ago in B-town on tax day, which culminated with a bunch of people standing outside an empty General Dynamics building were expressive, but utterly pointless. I had to split when people started singing Imagine. And that’s what I want to discuss. Tactics. What will actually work? What will it take? More importantly, what needs to change?

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Congressman Peter Welch met today with a group of some 100-120 Vermonters to discuss the war in the Aldrich Library in Barre today. Hoo boy, where to begin… Let’s just say that it was the most heated confrontation that I’ve ever personally witnessed between constituents and a politician. Much more below the jump…

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Good. Philip at VDB has more.