Thanks to independent journalist Christopher Ketcham and the Huffington Post for this article about our emerging independence movement here in the once and future republic of Vermont.

 Free Vermont! Long live the UNtied States.

Dennis Steele and young Vermonter at the Warren 4th Parade.

 --- snip ---

There is an important difference between a principled philosophy of decentralism, and a self-serving ideology of libertarianism. In this week's New Yorker magazine, an illuminating and disturbing article by Jane Mayer profiles the billionaire Koch brothers and their massive influence on right wing politics.

And hear our most excellent home-grown, all-Vermont Funk band, Electric Sorcery !! Playing 2:00 PM at the historic Gathering Inn, Hancock, Vermont !

The doors of sound have been ripped off the hinges by Electric Sorcery who routinely electrify Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. Towns are regularly woken out of their slumber by the by the wicked sound of this power trio.

Electric Sorcery takes psychedelic music firmly rooted in the 70s and adds their own special twist. Funky rhythms and psychedelic guitar riffs come together to create an intriguing sound that is sometimes very heavy.... This is a fun listen and anyone who gravitates towards the psychedelic sounds of the 70s needs to hear this… - SeaOfTranquility.org 

Meet & Eat    Greet & Drink

Saturday, September 25, from 2 – 4 PM  

1295 Route 100

Diagonally opposite the Hancock Hotel

Please bring your concerns, your hard questions, and your ideas.  The Independent vision for Vermont is all about you, your families and communities !

OK, I'm late to the game in commenting on US District Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling overturning California's Proposition 8. But I haven't seen anyone comment on Walker's hilarious use of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia's writings to support his ruling that enshrines marriage as a fundamental right not be denied on the basis of sexual orientation. 

Scalia wrote a dissenting opinion in the Supreme Court's 2003 6-3 Lawrence v. Texas decision that overturned a law against sodomy. In his dissent, Scalia says it's OK for a majority to prohibit sodomy because of a belief that it's "immoral and unacceptable," and says the same principle applies to same-sex marriage, adult incest, and bestiality. He decries a Supreme Court "that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda" and declares that courts have no role in protecting homosexuals from those who would exclude them from jobs, volunteer positions, or lodgings.

In short, Scalia is not a likely vote to uphold Walker's ruling, should the case get to the Supreme Court. Yet to build one of his findings of facts, that no state has ever required
that partners in a marriage be willing or able to have children, Walker quotes from Scalia's dissent in Lawrence v. Texas:

If moral disapprobation of homosexual conduct is ‘no legitimate state interest’ for purposes of proscribing that conduct * * * what justification could there possibly be for denying the benefits of marriage to homosexual couples exercising ‘the liberty protected by the Constitution’?  Surely not the encouragement of procreation, since the sterile and the elderly are allowed to marry.

It seems like an impish poke, to use Scalia's dissent to bolster the case for same-sex marriage. Yet Walker chose not to quote, for some reason, the larger point that Scalia was making in his Lawrence v. Texas dissent:

Today's [majority] opinion dismantles the structure of constitutional law that has permitted a distinction to be made between heterosexual and homosexual unions, insofar as formal recognition in marriage is concerned.

Maybe that's because Walker anticipates that the Prop. 8 case, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, will be the one in which the majority of the Supreme Court will finally agree to dismantle the legal distinction between heterosexual and homosexual marriages. 

Paul Starobin is the author of the newly published "Five Roads to the
Future: Power in the Next Global Age" (Penguin) and a staff
correspondent for the National Journal and a contributing editor to the