Archives for March 2007

The DC chatter says that John Edwards is pulling out of the presidential race due to his wife’s health. (She was treated for breast cancer in 2004.) I sure hope not. It would be a shame, on both counts.

They will be holding a press conference at 12 noon (ET). We’ll see.

UPDATE:
From The Politico:

John Edwards is suspending his campaign for President, and may drop out completely, because his wife has suffered a recurrence of the cancer that sickened her in 2004, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, an Edwards friend told The Politico.

“At a minimum he’s going to suspend” the campaign, the source said. “Nobody knows precisely how serious her recurrence is. It’ll be another couple of days before there’s complete clarity.”

“For him right now he has one priority which is her health and the security of the two young children,” said the friend.

As for the campaign, “You don’t shut this machine off completely, but everything will go on hold.”

UPDATE, UPDATE:
The press conference is going on now. Elizabeth Edwards cancer has returned, and has spread to her rib bones. At this stage, once breast cancer has metastasized, it is “treatable but not curable.” Both Edwards and his wife are smiling, and keep expressing their hope.

“The campaign goes on… the campaign goes on strongly.”

Nobody really expects Tom DeLay to actually have written his own book. But you think at least he would have bothered to read it.

I’ve had some fun at Rep. Dave Reichert’s expense in recent posts, mocking our nation’s 419th most powerful congressman for his lack of influence and his ham-fisted recommendations to replace ousted U.S. Attorney John McKay. But it looks like our state’s juniorest congressman could become a much more formidable force in both Washingtons now that Reichert seems to be following the savvy lead of a crack new political advisor: me.

Just last week I advised Reichert that the whole brouhaha was a rare opportunity to combine good policy with political expedience by nominating the eminently qualified John McKay to replace himself. And today we read in the Seattle Times that he’s kinda, sorta doing sorta, kinda that:

Rep. Dave Reichert has come to the defense of fired U.S. Attorney John McKay, whom he praised for pushing the federal government to work more closely with law enforcement in the Seattle area.

“It doesn’t seem to me that John’s being treated fairly,” Reichert, R-Auburn, said Tuesday.

He suggested the Justice Department reinstate McKay as U.S. attorney while the agency and Congress investigate “why they fired him.”

Sure, it’s a couple months late and more than a few dollars short, but it does at least show that somebody on Reichert’s staff is attune to the political danger — and opportunity — inherent in this growing scandal. Reichert’s newfound public skepticism follows that of Rob McKenna, who last week said that President Bush “made a mistake.” But McKay was fired months ago, and both McKenna and Reichert were actively involved in naming his replacement, thus their sudden willingness to speak out in his defense should be viewed in the context of the prior failure to do so.

Perhaps if Reichert and his staff continue reading my column, they can get out in front of the next inevitable scandal. I’m always eager to help.

Update: That’s swell of Reichert to take Goldy’s advice and ask the Justice Department to reinstate McKay as U.S. attorney. Before doing so, I’m sure Reichert listened to all the complaints against McKay, investigated the facts (as he’s inclined to do), and weighed all of the evidence. In the end, it seems Reichert has rejected Stefan Sharkansky’s theories about election fraud and the suggestion that McKay didn’t properly investigate the 2004 election. I’m just sayin’… [—Darryl]

Why isn’t Sound Transit doing any transit planning on the west side of Seattle? The story, I’m told, is that the Seattle Monorail Project folks told ST to stay out of Ballard, West Seattle, and other neighborhoods because that’s where the Green Line was going to be. Now that the Green Line is toast, why doesn’t ST get it’s ass in gear and start serving the whole city?

Yes, yes, I understand that Sound Transit is a regional organization. But folks in Seattle don’t have much choice about who they want to build rail. King County Metro won’t, and the citizen’s initiative route was a disaster with the SMP. Sound Transit is the only game in town.

Sound Transit should do more for the folks who want more. That’s me and other Seattlites. Seattle supports transit in election after election.

My message to Sound Transit: You gotta dance with the one what brung ya’, and that’s Seattle voters.

Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah) has an interesting relationship with “the truth.”

On Monday Rep. Cannon told a NASA scientist that he was not entitled to free speech — that apparently, he did not have the right to truthfully testify as to the conclusions of his taxpayer-funded research, if those conclusions contradicted White House policy.

“Free speech is not a simple thing and is subject to and directed by policy.”

Rep. Cannon is essentially defending the scientific equivalent of the Downingstreet Memo, only in this case it was the scientific research that was “being fixed around the policy.”

Well today Rep. Cannon shot yet another sophistical broadside through the notion of an open and informed public debate, vociferously arguing against issuing subpoenas that would command top White House aides to testify under oath as to their role in and knowledge of the controversial U.S. attorney firings.

“Let’s get to the truth. Let’s do it in a deliberate, even-handed manner, not in a stampede that will only serve to trample the truth and unnecessarily provoke a confrontation with the president.”

Because, of course, nothing tramples the truth more than, um… sworn testimony.

No, the only way we’re really ever going to “get to the truth,” according to Rep. Cannon, is to have Karl Rove testify behind closed doors, without a transcript, and not under oath. For if the truth, as Rep. Cannon implies, is not a simple thing, and is subject to and directed by policy — and if that policy is largely directed by Rove himself — then surely, anything Rove says must be the truth.

That is the sort of “deliberate, even-handed manner” in which Republicans have exercised their oversight authority these past six years. And that is why voters handed control of Congress over to Democrats this past November.

Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah) arguing that taxpayer-funded NASA scientists are not entitled to free speech:

“Free speech is not a simple thing and is subject to and directed by policy.”

Yeah… I guess if the White House pays for the research, it gets to determine the results.

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E.

I’ll be bringing a special date who I hope to take home and get into bed at a reasonable hour, so come by early if you want to say hello.

Not in Seattle? Liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities. A full listing of Washington’s eleven Drinking Liberally chapters is available here.

This morning on KUOW’s Weekday the topic of discussion was “Who Won in Iraq?” Steve Scher’s first guest was Neocon posterchild David Frum. While Frum was discussing Iraqi deaths, he rather casually threw out the statement (at 8:14) that “the Lancet study [of Iraqi mortality] has been pretty thoroughly discredited.”

No, Mr. Frum, it hasn’t.

The Lancet study has been widely misunderstood, but not discredited. There are many batshit crazy neocons like Mr. Frum who wish, in their heart of hearts, that the grim reality uncovered by the Lancet study wasn’t so. But, if wishes were horses, neocons could ride…in a new crusade to world dominance….

The Lancet study [Burnham et al. (2006) Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq:a cross-sectional cluster sample survey, Lancet 368(9545):1421-8.] found that there were 654,965 excess Iraqi deaths (with 95% confidence that the true number falls between 392,979 to 942,636) in the post-invasion period. The study used a standard epidemiological method of cluster sampling—methods that have been used in thousands of studies without controversy.

What is largely misunderstood about the Lancet study is that the estimates reflect a change in all forms of mortality between the pre-invasion period to the post-invasion (July, 2006) period. The excess deaths are mostly violent, but they also include non-violent excess deaths, like those resulting from increases in disease or resulting from destroyed health care infrastructure, etc. Other estimates, like counting media reports of deaths (i.e. the Iraq Body Count project) are not only attempting to measuring a subset of the mortality of the Lancet paper, but the IBC project method vastly underestimates all war-related mortality, just because every fatality is not reported in the Iraqi press. (In other words, because the estimates are substantially biased downward, the IBC body count would never be considered valid scientific estimates of total mortality in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.)

Frum’s statement is just another wingnut talking point that was directly disseminated by George W. Bush the morning the Lancet article was covered by the media. Bush came out swinging: (hear it here) “Six hundred thousand or whatever they guessed at is just, it’s not credible.” And then he defined the administration-approved wingnut talking point that the study was “pretty well discredited.”

Uh-huh. A newly published paper in one of the top scientific and medical journals in the world, “pretty well discredited” within hours of publication? Not!

You see, the opinions of politicians and pundits are irrelevant—they have no bearing on the validity of a scientific study. It is scientific review by the people who are qualified to evaluate the work (you know, people with PhDs in statistics, demography, or epidemiology) that determine whether or not the science is valid.

So far, there has been little scientific controversy over the findings. Because science is a constant game of oneupsmanship, a number of skeptical scientists have probed the methods for potential flaws and biases. Scientists consider this kind of skepticism extremely healthy—no paper is above scrutiny and there are large rewards in the community of science for uncovering fundamental flaws in a published paper. As a result, every now and then flaws are found that lead to the retraction of a paper.

Not so in this case. Despite a number of spirited attempts by qualified scientists to uncover scientific flaws in the paper, nothing of substance has been demonstrated that substantially challenges the scientific findings. If and when flaws in the paper can be demonstrated, the paper will be retracted. But for now, the scientific community considers that the paper’s findings are valid.

I just thought I would help clear up Mr. Frum’s misunderstanding…even if it means kicking the legs out from under his warrior horse.

As a junior member of the minority party, and the 419th most powerful congressman in the U.S. House, Rep. Dave Reichert has a lot more opportunity these days to exercise his mighty biceps than he does his puny political influence. So on those few occasions when he is given the chance to play a role in current events, it is instructive to see what he does with it.

With the U.S. attorneys scandal metastasizing around him, the task of recommending John McKay’s replacement fell squarely on Reichert’s broad shoulders, and he responded with the kind of bold competence we’ve come to expect from the brawny “Sheriff” who had Gary Ridgeway firmly in his grasp, but on a hunch, let him continue murdering women for another 18 years. I’ve already remarked on the candidate at the top of the list, former congressman Rick White, a lapsed bankruptcy attorney with little courtroom and zero prosecutorial experience. Sure, he isn’t even eligible to practice law in Washington state (or, um, anywhere,) but he’s a loyal Republican, and that’s really all that counts, huh?

Now attention is turning to another of Reichert’s nominees, acting U.S. Attorney Jeff Sullivan, McKay’s number two, and the former longtime Yakima County Prosecutor. Scuttlebutt is that Sullivan would be the safe choice — an experienced prosecutor, (again) a loyal, machine Republican… and a man who once referred to undocumented immigrants back in Yakima as “wetbacks.”

Hmm. I wonder how that racial slur goes over with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales?

By all accounts, Sullivan has his supporters in WA’s legal community, but he has his detractors as well. He is widely disliked in the Yakima Nation for aggressively fighting their efforts to battle alcoholism by taxing or banning alcohol on their reservation. And victim-advocacy groups still cringe at a policy he started in 1979, that required rape victims to take lie-detector tests.

And while he can boast three decades of prosecutorial experience, Sullivan’s very last case as Yakima County Prosecutor didn’t go so well:

In a blistering decision, a Yakima County Superior Court judge has accused the county prosecutor’s office of misconduct and dismissed a murder-conspiracy case it was hoping to try a second time.

[…] “The state’s misconduct prejudiced the defendant’s right to effective assistance of counsel,” Judge Susan Hahn wrote in her ruling.

But then, a prosecutor admonished from the bench for withholding evidence from the defense might be exactly the kind of “team player” the White House is looking for.

And then there’s Reichert’s third nominee, Mike Vaska. An experienced litigator and prosecutor widely respected on both sides of the aisle, Vasca ruffled party feathers by challenging the annointed Rob McKenna in the 2004 GOP Attorney General primary. He doesn’t stand a chance.

It wouldn’t surprise me if none of Reichert’s three candidates gets the job. Nice work Dave.

No, he isn’t, but how would you know if you heard him say this?

“Patria o muerte, venceremos”, or “Fatherland or death, we shall overcome”

It’s an old communist sign-off used by Fidel Castro for years.

Read the rest here.

“But Clinton did it too.”

That was the refrain from one caller to The David Goldstein Show last night. I was a guest for the last two hours. The firing of United States Attorneys for political reasons isn’t new, they said. After all, Clinton dumped all of them when he took office in 1993.

What the right-wing retards don’t understand is the position of US Attorney IS a political appointment. Presidents get to put just about anyone they want in those jobs. They are usually party loyalists. That said, when a person is installed in the job, you don’t get to pressure them for not going after your political enemies. You can’t bully them.

That’s what folks seem to be missing.

The Bush Administration used to be, if anything, a savvy political shop. They were incompetent, sure, but they never got caught with their pants down like this (save perhaps for Scooter Libby, who allowed his successful prosecution to distract from the involvement of Cheney and others in the Valerie Plame scandal). These guys aren’t supposed to be bad at the tactical stuff. It seems they just got greedy, and they got caught at it.

The firing of these eight GOP attorneys isn’t worth the trouble they’ve brought. The top man at the DoJ, Alberto Gonzalez, is likely out within 48 hours.

All this over eight lawyers of “insufficient loyalty.”

Bush has had a “hard basement” of about 30% in most polls. I never thought it could go any lower, but I feel the basement caving in.

I find it curious that Republican blog-parrots keep scoffing at the idea that the U.S. attorneys firings represent any sort of scandal, at the same time the key players involved keep resigning in disgrace::

Republican officials operating at the behest of the White House have begun seeking a possible successor to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, whose support among GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill has collapsed, according to party sources familiar with the discussions.

[…] Republican sources also disclosed that it is now a virtual certainty that Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty, whose incomplete and inaccurate congressional testimony about the prosecutors helped precipitate the crisis, will also resign shortly.

[…] “We have a crisis where there doesn’t need to be one, and now Democrats have an issue where they can open up the subpoena floodgates,” said an exasperated Republican aide. “Once these investigations start, there always ends up being a lot of messy collateral damage.”

“Messy collateral damage” because investigations like this tend to uncover the truth.

Here’s the headline from Huffington Post:

Dems’ Health Plans Cover More People, Cost Less Than Bush’s

To which the fellas in the office said:

Bush has a healthcare plan?

Heh heh…

We all knew that Rev. Ken Hutcherson was a documented liar. Now, thank’s once again to The Stranger’s Eli Sanders, we now know that Hutcherson still is a liar.

From the Guardian:

His hands were bleeding and his eyes filled with tears as, four years ago, he slammed a sledgehammer into the tiled plinth that held a 20ft bronze statue of Saddam Hussein. Then Kadhim al-Jubouri spoke of his joy at being the leader of the crowd that toppled the statue in Baghdad’s Firdous Square. Now, he is filled with nothing but regret.

The moment became symbolic across the world as it signalled the fall of the dictator. Wearing a black vest, Mr al-Jubouri, an Iraqi weightlifting champion, pounded through the concrete in an attempt to smash the statue and all it meant to him. Now, on the fourth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, he says: “I really regret bringing down the statue. The Americans are worse than the dictatorship. Every day is worse than the previous day.”

Anti-war marches are scheduled for 3 PM today at both Westlake Park (4th & Pine) and the Federal Courthouse (700 Stewart St.) The two groups will eventually merge at the Henry Jackson Federal Building, 915 Second Ave.