No more hushed whispers and pussy-footing around. America tortures; and it's not because of some imminent danger to the homeland that lurks behind every shadow. Nope. The pure and simple reason America tortures or at least the reason why it did is because Cheney wanted to link Saddam to 9/11 so he could justify going to war with Iraq, and any living sap who could corroborate this delusional madness had to be waterboarded or worse.

Don't believe...? Here's the smoking gun from Richard A. Clarke, former chief counter-terrorism adviser on the U.S. National Security Council under President George W. Bush as explained in yesterday's Washington Post.

After a week which saw, among other things, a new radiator being put in my car, I was eager for some R&R in the high country. After hitting up REI Lakewood for some snowshoes, I tore down the road to my destination: Mt. Sherman.  On the map, my route is #1, modified by the red ascent.

Because I needed to be back in Denver by the early afternoon, I figured that Sherman would be a good pick. After camping out at the Leavick TH, I hit the trail around 5:40 am. There was a little alpenglow on Mt. Sheridan as I began the hike.

It didn‘t take long until I hit the upper trailhead. The road was pretty good all the way up, and as I was hiking it seemed as though the road, which Dawson says take a high clearance vehicle, was better than the road up Elbert, which is supposed to be “good.”

After getting up into the amphitheater, I took a few photos to give me a good panorama. After the conditions on Elbert last weekend, I was excited by the possibility of big views and perhaps a glissade or two down the mountain.

The hike continued up to the Hill Top Mine. The mining history of Colorado and the West is one of the fascinating things to me. It is difficult to picture it now, but places like Sherman could be filled with thousands of miners; a veritable community.

My own experience has been more in New Mexico, with places like Elizabethtown/Baldy Town. Whole communities were built up at higher elevations than more of us ever think about living at. Then men would haul heavier loads than most peak baggers to go to work in dangerous mines. Incredible!

Soon after Hill Top Mine I was confronted with a choice. Do I take the standard route and go up to the saddle then follow the ridge, or do I throw on my snowshoes and try to go straight up the side? I chose the latter, a mistake.

While much of the climbing was good, by the time it was 8:30 am, the snow had gotten too soft. There was a layer of drier recent snowfall (perhaps a couple inches) over a solid foot or so of wet, old snow. Earlier the snow had been holding weight, but now, after a couple hours of sunshine, it began to punch through. Combine this with the slope and my admitted lack of knowledge about avy safety, and I found myself in a less than ideal situation. I tried to work my way up in those spots where the snow seemed less deep and the rocks nearer the surface.

When I finally made the ridge, it was to my relief and exhaustion.

The view from the ridge was incredible. I‘ve never hiked the high country while surrounding peaks carried much snow. It was beautiful and awe inspiring.

A short while later I was on the summit.

The summit took longer to attain than I had hoped, in part because of the poor choice not to take the ridge. On the way down I ran into a number of people, including some from 14ers.com. Unfortunately, some folks took the same route up as I did, although I told those I ran into not to.  My route was more or less a straight shot up to the center of the ridge in this picture.

Finally, I made it back down to the car, tore down my campsite, and headed back to Denver.

General John Reiley Guthrie (USA Ret.), died peacefully at Walter Reed Army Medical Center on Memorial Day, May 25, 2009, with his loving family at his bedside. He was 87. Born in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, Gen. Guthrie graduated with honors in History from Princeton University in 1942, receiving his commission as a 2nd Lieutenant out of Princeton’s ROTC program, ultimately becoming the program's

I’m sitting in the den, minding my own business, watching the evening news, when I see that face and I hear that voice. My blood pressure starts to rise. My mouth starts to salivate. Is this a dream? Can it be real? Yes, it is! It’s Doug Wilder on the tube threatening to support Bob McDonnell, the Republican, for governor. There is even some speculation that Doug is going to become a Republican. Wow!

Okay, I need to calm down. I can’t allow myself to get obsessed about Doug again. I know that for more than two years Doug provided tons of material for this maven. I know that since Doug has dropped out of the public lime light my writing production has gone way down. With Doug back, this maven could soar again to his great levels of sarcasm and invective.

No! I will not allow Doug Wilder to draw me down that path again. I realize that I am a Doug Wilder addict. So, I can’t even allow myself to think about Doug. Let him do what he wants. This maven will just ignore him.

To the Republicans I anglicize an old Yiddish curse that my grandmother used to use—a plague on you! May Doug bring you all the grief that he brought to the citizens of River City!

Life is good my friends, but busy and in flux.Loyal readers of this blog (both of you) will notice that I have REALLY slacked off of late. I feel bad about this, especially in light of everything that I have failed to cover in the ever changing situation in Zimbabwe. [Incredibly long story short: Things are better but still bad.] Hopefully, I'll be better about this in the future. [Although it

Life is good my friends, but busy and in flux.Loyal readers of this blog (both of you) will notice that I have REALLY slacked off of late. I feel bad about this, especially in light of everything that I have failed to cover in the ever changing situation in Zimbabwe. [Incredibly long story short: Things are better but still bad.] Hopefully, I'll be better about this in the future. [Although it

They’re back. Just when this political junkie had gotten used to seeing real “commercial” commercials on the tube, the political ads are back. Republican Bob McDonnell has been running these ads setting out his background, record and philosophy and has dubbed himself the “jobs governor.” Democratic Creigh Deeds tells us how little money he had when he left for college, explains his philosophy and then claims to be the best qualified Democrat to be governor. Democrat Terry McCauliffe is running ads explaining his programs and arguing that his business experience makes him the most qualified candidate to be our next governor. All of the McDonnell, Deeds and McCauliffe ads are positive. They say nothing about the rival candidates. (This, of course, is much easier for McDonnell because he doesn’t yet know who is opponent will be.)

Then there are the ads being run by Brian Moran. Rather than explaining why Mr. Moran should be our next governor, his ads attack Terry McCauliffe. I don’t know who is running Mr. Moran’s campaign, but they seem to be forgetting that Brian Moran and Terry McCauliffe are both Democrats. They also seem to have forgotten that the objective in this year’s contest for governor must be to keep the Republican Bob McDonnell from winning. By running these attack ads, the Moran campaign is giving Mr. McDonnell ammunition to use against Terry McCauliffe should he win the Democratic nomination. It is also making it a lot less likely that there will be a united Democratic party in the Commonwealth to run the fall campaign.

This maven has not yet decided who he will vote for for governor in the upcoming Democratic primary election. But I do know that any of the three Democratic candidates would make a better governor of Virginia than would Bob McDonnell. I also know that only a united Democratic campaign can keep Mr. McDonnell from being our next governor. That is why I am so angry at Brian Moran.

Brian Moran and the Coalition to Keep Surry Clean will host a joint press conference Monday, June 1 at 4 p.m. in front of the Surry Rec Center, 205 Enos Farm Drive, Surry, VA. (Map) Please join us as we speak out against the proposed coal-fired power plant in Surry County! We will have a potluck picnic [...]

 

As the cost of health care keeps going up, we find that the cost of doing nothing does as well. When people are uninsured, they often get free health care in a way that’s expensive for the rest of us: through emergency rooms.  A new study from Families USA and USA Today highlights how the high number of people without health insurance in America make healthcare more expensive for the rest of us. Below are some key findings of this study:

A few hours ago I arrived here in Richmond for the Republican Convention.  The Convention starts on Friday and ends on Saturday with the nomination of candidates for Governor, Lt. Governor, and Attorney General.  Also a new RPV chairman will be elected.

Bob McDonnell is unopposed for Governor.  Current Lt. Governor Bill Bolling is being challenged for re-nomination by Patrick Muldoon, a patent attorney from Northern VA who is originally from Giles County in the 9th District.  I have no idea why Patrick Muldoon is running such a side show in challenging our sitting Lt. Governor.  He certainly isn’t gaining anything other than ill-will.  Patrick is a smart person, but this has been such a royally pathetic and ill-advised maneuver.  He should suspend his campaign immediately because nothing good is coming out of the process.

Early on I threw my support to former U.S. Attorney John Brownlee for the Attorney General nomination.  I think Brownlee has all the experience and personality to make a great AG.  Also in the nomination race are Ken Cuccinelli, state senator and patent attorney from Fairfax County, and Dave Foster,a lawyer and school board member from Arlington.  All three of the candidates are superb with their credentials.  However, I think Brownlee stands out above the rest.  Cuccinelli and Foster have been mostly civil lawyers while Brownlee has been a criminal and civil prosecutor, managing large budgets, investigations, and many staff members.  This is the type of experience needed to run the VA AG’s office.

On Wednesday evening I along with a few other delegates from Smyth County had the pleasure of having a dinner meet-and-greet with current RPV chair Pat Mullins.  The meeting went extremely well and all of us had a good time discussing politics and other issues.  Pat is such a great person and seems to have things at RPV under control and getting back on track.  I see no reason to remove him, so I will support Pat Mullins for a full term as RPV Chair.  I hope he is in it for the long haul as the revolving chairman’s door at RPV must be removed.

Regardless of the vote outcome, I hope that all the candidates supporters come together and go forward toward November as a unified force.  We must win all 3 statewide offices and show America that Virginia isn’t ready to be counted in the reliable Democrat column.

In the last few weeks I have sensed a major enthusiasm among Virginia Republicans, something I haven’t really seen at this level in years.  Republicans seem to think that we have such great candidates and are going to march to November and put Virginia back on the right track.  I think the candidacy of Bob McDonnell for Governor can be compared to that of George Allen in 1993 in many ways.  McDonnell is going to be picking up the mess that Democrats Warner and Kaine have made of Virginia in the last 8 years and take us forward to better days in Virginia.  Maybe a new Virginia Renaissance?

With only 12 days left before the Democratic primary here in Virginia,PPP takes a look at the remaining undecideds, and their findings are surprising.

First, this is an astonishingly fluid electorate. The candidates are largely unknown:

Among the voters still undecided 66% don't know enough about Creigh Deeds or Brian Moran to have an opinion about them one way or the other, and 55% don't know enough about McAuliffe.

So, who and where are these undecideds?

Many of them are African American, which could bode well for Terry McAuliffe:

-They're disproportionately African American- 37%, compared to 27% of the overall primary electorate in our most recent survey. So far McAuliffe has had the upper hand with them so that could work to his advantage.

Most are not in Northern Virginia - bad news for Brian Moran:

-They're disproportionately not from northern Virginia. While 29% of voters total in this race are, just 22% of the undecideds hail from the metro DC area. That's bad news for Brian Moran, who hasn't been able to get much momentum anywhere else in the state, and good news for Deeds whose weakest performance is in that region.

And many trend conservative, which may favor Creigh:

-They're more conservative and less liberal than primary voters as a whole. Among undecideds 27% are liberal and 22% are conservative, while in total 34% are liberal and just 14% are conservative. This could help Deeds, who does best with conservatives and worst with liberals, and hurt McAuliffe who does the best with liberals.

There's been a lot of good news lately for the McAuliffe and Deeds camps, and not much for the Morans. The trend continues.

By Bob Gibson
Charlottesville political blogger

  It’s fun, every once in a while, to wander back and read a 5-year-old column and see how fresh it still feels. Here’s one that ran Sunday, Jan. 18, 2004, as my Political Notebook. It isn’t as stale as I feared. Perhaps Virginia still changes at the pace of dear old sea slugs. The headline then read:

Little bills, big impact on mores

RICHMOND—

    The boys are back in town, so a raft of creative little bills to regulate the reproductive mores and sexual rights of individuals are back on the table.

    The male-dominated and conservative atmosphere of the General Assembly remains conducive to protecting the right to bear arms and bear children. Virginia’s men look out for their women in peculiar ways.

    The best little bill in the 2004 session of the General Assembly is a small morality measure that could temporarily spare the life of a few convicted criminals.

    Del. Robert G. Marshall, R-Manassas, introduced the measure to ban the execution of anyone who is pregnant.

Halting executions?

    This extremely limited moratorium on capital punishment is less a baby step toward elimination of the death penalty than perhaps an attempt to enshrine in the state code certain rights afforded a small number of the unborn.

    Marshall’s legislative creativity knows no rival in Richmond.

    A bill-drafting giant, he is smart, principled and owns a sizable sense of humor, but the unintended consequences of his anti-death penalty measure are hard to imagine and may exceed even Marshall’s ability to foresee.

    The value of sperm samples on death row could skyrocket. Who is to say when a female inmate there is not pregnant? After All, Marshall considers a woman pregnant before a fertilized egg is implanted in the uterus.

    In Virginia’s not-too-distant past, female lawbreakers and troublemakers could easily find themselves sterilized involuntarily, but the commonwealth abandoned such barbarity several decades ago.

    Death-penalty advocates could call for emergency contraception, or “morning after” pills on death row.

Promoting pregnancies?

    “All we are doing is encouraging sex in prison,“ said one legislative aide unsure if Marshall has anticipated fully the unforeseen effects of keeping pregnant women on death row locked up until they give birth.

    Inmate F2005 could be told to give a first and last kiss to her healthy, soon-to-be-motherless baby girl. The infant could become a poster child for banning executions.

    Expensive devices to detect and guard against contraband sperm may be needed on a more sterile death row where better-paid female guards would remain vigilant.

    Marshall’s other bills include a few that could curb abortion, which presumably would not be desired by a pregnant death row inmate unless she became depressed and suddenly wanted to speed her executiion.

    One bill to restrict abortions would require the procedure to be performed in a hospital “or in a medical facility or clinic located no more than 15 highway miles from a hospital emergency room.“

    Marshall’s legislative package includes more than life and death measures. The Manassas delegate also intends to protect the sanctity of heterosexual marriage from out-of-state gay couples who might enter into a civil union and then move to Virginia and seek some sort of official recognition of their status.

    His House Bill 727 is not named after an airplane bringing gay couples to relocate in Virginia, of all places, but is titled “Same sex marriage; impeachment of judge.“

    Just as Marshall does not trust governors to do the right thing by pregnant death-row gun molls, he isn’t too sure Virginia judges are to be trusted when civil unions are considered. His bill “provides that any judge who rules Virginia’s prohibition against marriage by persons of the same sex unconstitutional is deemed to have committed malfeasance in office and may be subject ti impeachment under the Virginia Constitution.“

    If threatening to impeach judges doesn’t do the trick to protect the sanctity of marriage, Marshall has another couple of bills, dubbed the Affirmation of Marriage Act, one of them an emergency measure. That act would provide that Virginia is under no legal obligation to recognize a marriage, civil union or partnership contract “or other arrangement purporting to bestow any of the privileges of obligations of marriage under the laws of another state ... unless such marriage conforms to the laws of this commonwealth.“

    One of the bills quotes former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean in its text as saying “that in terms of legal rights there is no practical difference between same-sex civil unions and marriages.“ Marshall asserts in the legislation that “neither status is needed for the exercise or enjoyment of civil rights by citizens with same sex attractions.“

    Marshall truly enjoys his status as the creative conservative gadfly of the House.

    “He is very dedicated to his cause and is always looking for new ways to promulgate legislation in the areas that are important to him,“ said Sen. Jeannemarie A. Delovites, R-Vienna.

    His efforts to enshrine his Roman Catholic beliefs about sex and marriage are becoming more and more the talk of the House.

-30-

I've heard a lot of robo-calls in my career covering politics. Some of them were bad. Some of them were very bad.

Hideously bad.

The kind of bad that makes you want to hang up the phone, but you just can't, because you simply can't tear yourself away from the human train wreck happening on the other end of the phone. (You know who you are, I don't have to name names. *cough* Gov. Huckabee *cough*.)

But the call I heard today was quite possibly the most... well,  it really defies description. Listen to the latter half of the call via Bearing Drift.

Given, we here the Cheap Seats have very little room to talk about sending young children to do questionable tasks. (Still, it's not like I made 'em hold the bottle rockets while we were lighting them with the propane torch.  But I digress...)

Team Brownlee was, as one could expect, beside themselves.

The child these individuals used to make the phone calls sounded to be under 5 years old.  What kind of person uses a toddler to conduct a political smear?
 
To involve a small child in such a dirty political trick is appalling.  To make such scurrilous charges is unethical.  To conduct these calls without including a disclaimer is unlawful.

Brownlee's campaign says the calls went to delegates to this weekend's GOP convention, which means one of the two other candidates or someone with the state party is either behind the attack or gave info to a third party.

The man behind the anti-Brownlee Web site referenced by the pre-schooler in the robo-call, Brian Gentry, says he had nothing to do with the calls. Find a well researched defense of Brownlee here, via Hoodathunk.

Gentry spoke with Roanoke Valley Republican:

I didn't do the phone calls or know anything about them. I did get it in my voicemail, as I am also a convention delegate and will be there on Friday and Saturday.

My website clearly states my name, and has my contact information available. If I were going to do calls, I would have not made my website private, as ANON suggested, I would have put my name on the phone call.

With all the calls, voicemails and threatening emails I've been getting, it would probably have been better if I did register my domain privately.

The convention is this weekend.

Why would Terry go negative this late in the campaign after supposedly being so far ahead in the polls and after promising he would never attack another Democrat?

I owe both of our readers an apology. I totally overlooked and missed Scurvy Awareness Day. I wrote about it last year, but can't believe that I forgot this year. So let's all have an orange today, and maybe we can forget this little incident. And here is a book about Scurvy that you can find at Amazon.

I just read that May is National Skin Care Awareness Month. But this is a topic that can certainly be considered at any time, especially now, the beginning of Summer. Here is a site that gives you some quick facts about skin cancer:

* Skin cancer and melanoma account for about 50% of all types of cancers diagnosed combined.
* Skin cancer is one of the more preventable types of cancer.
* More than 90% of skin cancer is causes by excessive exposure to the sun.
* Each hour, 1 person dies from skin cancer.

So lather up with lotion and enjoy the sunshine, safely.

Published: May 27, 2009
Washington Times

The election of Barack Obama opens the door to the implementation of a new-left program, which I have called the “new socialism.”

Grounded in fear after the Sept. 11 attacks and Wall Street panic and fueled by a great anger and frustration with the Bush administration, a long-sought program of the political left is under way.

The political rules that have developed over years - seniority, campaign-finance restrictions and pork-barrel politics in both parties - may make it difficult, if not impossible, to arrest this leftist program.

The nation’s only hope rests in the conservative movement, which must provide the intellectual underpinnings for new and different directions for America.

Read the entire article here.

Why I'm going to Richmond this weekend to vote at the Republican convention for John Brownlee:

1. He was the U.S. Attorney for the W.D. Va., the head lawyer for the United States of America in (the better) half of Virginia. That's more like being Attorney General than about any other law job there is. If you look'em up on Westlaw, Mr. Brownlee's name is on Westlaw hundreds of times, just like the Attorney General's name is on every case the Commonwealth appeals or defends in federal court.

2. In the Purdue Pharma case, the Pocahontas murder cases, the Bedford fundraiser case, the Dr. Knox case, among others, that office made some gutsy calls, I think - not all of them right necessarily but none based on expediency. The buck stops with the boss when decisions about high-profile cases are made - fairly or not.

3. We've debated before whether prosecutorial experience is better than not for an Attorney General. It is. It might even be better than patent litigation experience or antitrust litigation experience.

4. The newspapers were usually on his case. The newspapers are usually wrong.

5. I first met Brownlee in federal court in Big Stone Gap in 1995 - he's lived all over Virginia, as a student in Fairfax County and Lexington and Williamsburg, as a law clerk and lawyer in Abingdon and Roanoke and Northern Virginia. I doubt that Southwest Virginia will ever be much of a priority for the other fellows.

6. His wife and the girls - lovely. He must be doing something right. And - she is on a first-name basis with Johnny Wood, from her time on TV here in Bristol.

7. He is a veteran of the military, and clerking for Judge Wilson, and working for Woods Rogers, and which of these was the more demanding I couldn't say - probably clerking for Judge Wilson. I'd vote for anybody who clerked for Judge Wilson, as those ex-clerks feel the influence of their old judges, always. The Woods Rogers litigators (including alumni) I've known all share a high level of diligence and competence, and you want them with you rather than against you.

8. He's a conservative but a free thinker, with a sense of humor. I've spent a little bit of time with him, as he came to our blogger meeting in Martinsville and one of our bar meetings in Bristol when I was running those and more recently we've met at campaign events, and he speaks well and laughs easily. I rate him as a good guy, besides everything else.

9. OK, I'll add this one - he supported the effort of my client Buchanan County to get $1 million in forfeiture money from the Big Coon Dog case remitted from the United States Department of Justice.

Great profile piece in today’s Washington Post (front page of the Metro section): For 13 years, Moran was the go-to guy, the water carrier for the Democrats, the minority party in the Virginia House of Delegates. If a Republican got up to insult then-Gov. Mark Warner or Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, Moran, in an increasing crescendo, [...]