Archives for May 2010

What started as a rumor running through the halls and barrooms of Olympia has jumped to the other Washington today, with the National Journal’s Reid Wilson confirming that Gov. Chris Gregoire is indeed on the White House’s short list to replace Elena Kagan as Solicitor General:

WA Gov. Christine Gregoire (D) leads a short list to replace Solicitor General Elena Kagan, the WH has told members of Gregoire’s home-state delegation.

Gregoire, a 2-term incumbent and a former WA AG, has been a rumored contender for other admin positions. But the WH has informed top aides to WA members that she is under serious consideration, according to several sources inside the delegation.

An admin official confirmed Gregoire’s name is one of those being considered. Gregoire endorsed candidate Obama just before the WA caucuses in ’08, offering a helping hand as Obama picked up two-thirds of the state’s delegates.

Yesterday, Gov. Gregoire’s aides seemed eager to quash the rumor, but in the wake of today’s reports, the most definitive comment I’ve been able to extract from insiders today are assurances that the Governor “has not been seeking” the job. Clearly unanswered in that response is whether Gov. Gregoire would consider the position if offered.

Of course, she’d be crazy not to, at least in terms of her own career. Gov. Gregoire does not appear to be planning to run for a third term, and there’s a better than even chance she’d lose if she tried. So there’s zero downside to her moving on to the national stage.

As to the political chaos her early retirement would create here in Washington state, well, that’s a different matter.

Even putting aside the unsettling prospect of Lt. Gov. Brad Owen’s brief stewardship, the political disruption would be immense, resulting in either a cakewalk for Dino Rossi in a special election, or a messy free for all that could leave several open seats in its wake. Would Rep. Jay Inslee suddenly abandon his congressional reelection for an early run at the governor’s mansion? Would Reps. Adam Smith or even (don’t laugh) Dave Reichert? Would WA Attorney General Rob McKenna defer his own gubernatorial dreams in favor of Rossi, or would he try to muscle the two-time loser out… or even risk splitting the Republican vote?

Given the circumstances, I’d have to put my money on Rossi. I’ve often joked about how well Rossi runs in the polls during off years, but a special election with little time for an opposing Democrat to gain statewide ID would be just the opportunity Rossi needs to break this cycle.

Hmm. Much to think about. Especially for Rossi as he continues to contemplate a near hopeless run at Sen. Patty Murray.

When I wrote a post back in March, laying out Dino Rossi’s shady business dealings with accused swindler Michael Mastro, Rossi’s defenders depicted the maybe-senatorial candidate as one of Mastro’s victims. When a real estate investment firm Rossi co-owns was found to owe over $20,000 in unpaid property taxes, Rossi’s business partners downplayed his culpability, saying “It definitely is nothing Dino is involved in.”

And Monday, when Politico reported that a failing bank Rossi co-founded and co-owns runs the risk of being shut down by the feds at taxpayer expense, a Washington State Republican Party spokesperson laughed off Rossi’s involvement, repeating the Rossi-as-victim meme by saying of his investment, “It’s not worth as much as it used to be.”

All of which raises a question: If Rossi — who frequently touts his business acumen and experience as one of his prime qualifications for higher office — is so hands off his investments, so easily swindled by his associates and so frequently on the wrong end of a deal gone bad, can we taxpayers really afford to have Rossi run government like he runs his business?

Or, is Rossi really much more involved with his business dealings than he lets on?

He’s allegedly a millionaire after all, so it’s hard to believe that Rossi is as clueless and detached as his surrogates consistently make him out be. Take, for example, the foundering Eastside Commercial Bank at the center of the latest expose. Rossi was one of 35 founding stakeholders who put in a minimum of $10,000 each to start up the venture, and it was Rossi who recruited Dick Ducharme, “a friend, lobbyist and business partner” to both invest in the bank and serve as its CEO.

So, when the federal Comptroller of the Currency declares that Eastside has “engaged in unsafe and unsound banking practices relating to its strategic and capital planning, credit underwriting, credit administration, concentration risk management, and liquidity management,” doesn’t that even somewhat reflect on Rossi’s judgement, if not his business ethics and management skills?

Rossi’s defenders insist “no,” dismissing this latest revelation as just another skid-mark in a Democratic smear campaign, but one can’t help but wonder if Rossi’s refusal to take any personal responsibility for the negative consequences of his own business ventures might have contributed to their failure? No doubt Rossi helped start the Eastside Commercial Bank with the intent of getting in on the huge profits that were being made during the recent real estate bubble, but now that it is collapsing under the weight of the same kind of “unsafe and unsound banking practices” that were widespread in the industry at the time, Rossi expects to be held blameless for his own co-creation.

This is exactly the sort of moral hazard that led to the Wall Street disaster and subsequent bailout, for when there are no consequences for one’s actions, or when the consequences are always the responsibility, perceived or otherwise, of some third party, then there is little disincentive to reckless behavior or benign neglect. And while the term has most recently been applied to the machinations of Wall Street, it is just as applicable to the way Rossi routinely leverages his political capital for both political and personal gain, apparently without fear of ever being held publicly responsible for his actions.

Rossi could have accepted at least a little responsibility for the unsound practices of the bank he co-founded, just like he could have accepted responsibility for not seeing through the fraudulent practices of his mentor Mel Heide or his investment partner Michael Mastro. He could have accepted responsibility for being a partner in a business that failed to pay its taxes, or for his gubernatorial campaign’s misuse of the Everett AquaSox mailing list, a team he part-owned. But in all these situations he allowed the blame to fall on others, painting himself the innocent victim of a Democratic smear campaign.

The thing is, it’s not a smear when it’s the truth. Rossi’s mentor was convicted of fraud, and Mastro is accused likewise. Rossi did misuse the AquaSox mailing list, his business did fail to pay its taxes, and his bank is on the verge of collapse. I suppose you could argue that it is unfair of me to imply guilt by association, but it is not unreasonable to attempt to infer a pattern by connecting the dots.

More troubling though for Rossi and his boosters at the NRSC is that the dots keep coming, and it is important to note that despite the vetting he received during his two gubernatorial runs, these latest revelations involve post-2008 timelines. This is the way Rossi conducts his business, and if he truly is as hands-off a manager as his defenders insist, or as morally hazardous as critics like me suspect, then dollars to donuts there are plenty more dots to come.

Please join us tonight for an evening of politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. We meet at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning at about 8:00 pm. Stop by even earlier and enjoy some dinner.

Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 352 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.

According to the TNT’s Peter Callaghan, the rumor du jour in Olympia is that Gov. Chris Gregoire is on President Obama’s short list to replace Elena Kagan as Solicitor General, a prospect that conjures three frightening words: Governor Brad Owen.

(Shudder.)

Callaghan goes on to explain that a resignation before May 31 would result in a special election, both primary and general, whereas a resignation after May 31, but before October 3 would result in a November free for all. (A resignation after October 3 would result in — ugh — Lt. Gov. Brad Owen filling out the remaining two years of Gregoire’s term.)

One intriguing aspect of this rumor is that should it come true, Dino Rossi would become the instant frontrunner in a special election. Yet one more bit of gristle for him to chew on as he considers flushing his career down the toilet in a futile challenge to Sen. Patty Murray.

Last night at the 37th LD Dems’ monthly meeting, U.S. Rep. Adam Smith talked about the tough electoral climate Democrats will be facing this November, pointing out that even he faced a credible challenger for the first time in years.

Really?

According to the FEC, Rep. Smith was sitting on nearly $650,000 cash on hand at the end of the March quarter, while his closest rival, James Postma, had an almost respectable reserve of about $135,000 at the end of 2009. I emphasize the date, because Postma has failed to file the Q1 report due April 15. Postma also hasn’t updated his website since at least early April, his Facebook page since March, and his Twitter feed since, well, ever. So it’s not really clear that Postma is still running.

Not that Postma was ever all that credible. Rep. Smith already defeated him by a nearly two-to-one margin back in 2008, and of the $150,977 Postma had raised before apparently dropping off the edge of the earth, $150,900 was a loan from himself. No, $77 in individual contributions is not really credible at all.

So I suppose the credible challenger Rep. Smith must’ve been talking about is Pierce County Councilman Dick Muri, who raised $56,000 through the end of March, for a total of $43,000 cash-on-hand. No, money isn’t everything, but from all reports Muri isn’t exactly the kinda imposing political presence who can afford to be outspent by a 15-to-1 margin.

No doubt Rep. Smith hails from a swing district, at least demographically, despite the firm electoral hold he’s managed to take on it over the past decade, but I haven’t heard even whispers of Republican optimism in WA-09, despite the GOP’s almost religious belief in the cleansing powers of an imminent Big Red Wave.

So sorry Adam, don’t mean to put a crimp in your fundraising appeals or anything, but the real opportunity for a GOP pickup is WA-03, where Rep. Brian Baird’s retirement has left an open seat for the taking, and to a much lesser extent in WA-02, where it remains to be seen if Snohomish County Councilman John Koster can wage the credible challenge to Democratic incumbent Rep. Rick Larsen that state Republicans have been promising. But, you know, it never looks good to come off as overconfident, so keep at it.

Paul Armentano brings us the scary resume of President Obama’s nominee to run the DEA, Michele Leonhart:

As interim DEA director, Ms. Leonhart orchestrated federal raids on individuals and facilities who were compliant with the medical marijuana laws of their states — a policy that is in direct conflict with the wishes of the present administration. Further, Ms. Leonhart has inexplicably called the rising death toll of civilians attributable to the U.S./Mexican drug war “a signpost of the success” of current drug prohibition strategies. Finally, she has repeatedly acted to block clinical research into the medical properties of marijuana — actions that would appear to run contrary to this administration’s pledge to allow science, rather than rhetoric and ideology, guide public policy.

You can contact Senators Murray and Cantwell with this online alert.

I just got back from the 37th LD Democrats monthly meeting, and I gotta say, I have absolutely no sympathy for those whiners who complain about politics and politicians being detached, inaccessible and elitist.

This being the “nominating convention,” the entire legislative delegation was present: State Sen. Adam Kline, and State Reps. Sharon Santos and Eric Pettigrew. But also speaking tonight — and available for one-on-one jawboning in the vestibule outside the meeting room — were King County Council President Bob Ferguson, State Supreme Court Justice Richard Sanders, and U.S. Rep. Adam Smith. (Apparently, a handful of 37th LD precincts extend into Rep. Smith’s 9th Congressional District. Who knew?)

You want a little face time with your elected officials? Show up at meetings like this. Otherwise, quit your whining.

If Dino Rossi is betting on Tea Party enthusiasm to sweep him into a competitive race with Democratic incumbent Sen. Patty Murray, he better not bet too big, at least according to a couple of ‘baggers quoted in yesterday’s TNT:

Rossi is considering whether to enter the race against Sen. Patty Murray. One of a long roster of less well-known Republicans seeking to unseat Murray, former NFL tight end Clint Didier, last weekend said tea party activists would reject Rossi. And no candidate will win without their backing, he said.

Pierce County Tea Party member Lawrence Hutt agrees, though he supports a different candidate for Senate, Sean Salazar.

“Rossi is too establishment to get the tea partiers all fired up,” said Hutt, a paralegal from Wauna. “He’s not going to fan the flames of any tea partiers I know.”

Sen. Patty Murray’s alleged vulnerability hinges on a voter enthusiasm imbalance… you know, that Big Red Wave that’s supposed to sweep Democratic incumbents out of office come November. But if a lot of that Republican enthusiasm is coming from the over-hyped teabagger wing of the party, then the later Rossi jumps into the race, the more of an establishment interloper he’s going to appear to Didier and Salazar’s passionate supporters.

I mean, it would have been one thing if Rossi had gotten into the race back in March when he first started dominating the headlines and rumor mill, but for him to just step in and claim the nomination a couple months before the primary, well that can’t help but piss off a bunch of the true believers, and it’s tough to see how it puts him in much of a position to win their enthusiastic support.

The longer Rossi waits, the more toes he steps on, and the harder the logistics of a competitive race become. For example, if he were to jump in tomorrow, Rossi would have to raise about $60,000 a day between now and Nov. 2, just to match Sen. Murray’s current totals. And it’s not like Sen. Murray would be standing still; in 2004 she raised an additional $5.1 million from April through the end of the campaign, while facing only an anemic challenge from George Nethercutt.

Nor can Rossi count on anything approaching the $13 million worth of “independent” expenditures that came his way during his 2008 gubernatorial campaign. The BIAW, by far his biggest backer, is betting the farm on an initiative that would gut our state’s worker’s compensation system, while the NRSC would have an awfully tough time matching the $5.5 million the RGA put behind Rossi two years ago. Meanwhile the Washington Association of Realtors, one of the state’s wealthiest Republican-leaning PACs, has already endorsed Murray.

So is Rossi too liberal? No. Is he too establishment? Maybe. But his biggest problem is that he’s not really enough of anything.

Canada’s justice minister signed off on Marc Emery’s extradition. He’s expected to be in federal court in Seattle this week.

Growing up, one of the surest signs to me of the quiet by endemic antisemitism that persisted in the United States was the relative lack of Jews on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Sure, Jews never made up more than 2 to 3 percent of the U.S. population, so the bare handful to have been appointed from 1789 through 1993 wasn’t bad considering our representation in the population as a whole. But the legal profession, well, that’s a different story.

At the risk of perpetuating even a positive stereotype, the professions, that’s kinda our schtick, and so over the three decade drought between the confirmations of Abe Fortas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a string of presidents had to pass up an awful lot of Jewish legal scholars to a degree that just wasn’t true for other minority groups. Imagine over the same period of time, if Hollywood executives had refused to hire Jewish comedy writers; that’s sorta like what our nation’s highest court looked like to me.

Now, with the appointment of Elana Kagan, the Supreme Court is about to become a full one-third Jewish, a presence pretty far out of whack with the general population, but which is actually unremarkable considering the composition of top New York and D.C. law firms. In fact, the truly notable statistic here, is that with Justice Stevens’ retirement, for the first time in its history the court will now be zero percent Protestant.

It’s been 20 years since a WASP, Justice David Souter was last confirmed, a period during which the court has seen a stunning transformation. In 1985, Justice William Brennan, a Catholic, was the only non-Protestant on the bench, and had been since Fortas retired in 1969 after the Senate refused to confirm his elevation to Chief Justice. Since 1986, six Catholics and two Jews have been confirmed.

To put that in perspective, over the court’s first century, 49 of the justices were Protestant, and one was Catholic. Over the next 97 years religious diversity improved, with six Catholics and five Jews joining 41 Protestants on the bench. But over the last quarter century, the once dominant WASPs will have been outnumbered nine to one.

How to explain this phenomenon? Well, I guess it’s only fair to assume that our nation is not nearly as bigoted and narrow minded as it once was, at least when it comes to religion. There is no “Jewish seat” or “Catholic seat” on the court anymore. Religion no longer appears to be an issue when it comes to Supreme Court appointments or confirmation.

Or is it?

It is curious to note that five of the six Catholics on the court were appointed by Republicans, while all of the Jews were appointed by Democrats, and it’s hard to chalk this up to mere coincidence. In fact, at the risk this time of perpetuating a cynical stereotype, it’s hard not to chalk this up to the increasingly threatened status of Roe v. Wade.

This is not to suggest that all Jews are reliably pro-choice, or that all Catholics are not. I myself married into an Irish Catholic family that is pretty strongly pro-choice, at least politically, if not always as a matter of personal conscience. But let’s just say that, in general, Catholics are much less reliably pro-choice than Jews, and vice versa.

Thus a conservative Catholic appointment has proven a pretty safe bet for any anti-choice president wishing to avoid an overt litmus test, as evidenced by Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito and Roberts, and as opposed to the last two Protestant appointees, Justices Souter and Sandra Day O’Connor, who both disappointed Republicans on this issue. Meanwhile, I think we can count on Kagan to be as reliably pro-choice as Ginsburg and Breyer.

I suppose I could be wrong, and the religious composition of the court is merely coincidental, or at the very least, incidental. But it sure doesn’t seem likely.

It looks like Obama is set to pick Elena Kagan for the open Supreme Court slot. Glenn Greenwald has previously laid out why this is a terrible choice. University of Colorado Law Professor Paul Campos explains how reminiscent she is of Harriet Miers:

At least in theory Kagan could compensate somewhat for the slenderness of her academic resume through the quality of her work. But if Kagan is a brilliant legal scholar, the evidence must be lurking somewhere other than in her publications. Kagan’s scholarly writings are lifeless, dull, and eminently forgettable. They are, on the whole, cautious academic exercises in the sort of banal on-the-other-handing whose prime virtue is that it’s unlikely to offend anyone in a position of power.

Take, for example, Kagan’s article, “Presidential Administration,” which appeared in the Harvard Law Review in 2001. The piece is dedicated largely to reviewing the extant literature on the power of Congress and the president to control the actions of administrative agencies. Kagan’s thesis consists of presenting a fairly standard view within administrative law scholarship—that relatively tight presidential oversight of administrative agencies can have beneficial regulatory effects—as if it were a novel argument. She maintains, on the basis of thin evidence, that such oversight increased significantly under the Reagan and Clinton presidencies, and concludes with the tautological insight that presidential oversight can be a good thing if it doesn’t go too far.

Kagan’s work reminded me of Orwell’s observation that, if book reviewers were honest, 19 of 20 reviews would consist of the sentence, “this book inspires in me no thoughts whatever.” The bottom line regarding Kagan’s scholarly career is that there’s no there there. This is a problem not only because we have no evidence regarding what her views might be on almost any important legal question, but also because Kagan’s supposed academic achievements are being touted as the primary justification for putting someone who has never been a judge on the nation’s highest court. Now the fact that Kagan is more or less an academic nonentity would be of merely academic interest if she possessed unrelated but compelling qualifications for ascending to the nation’s highest court. But what else, exactly, has she done?

Besides her law-school career, Kagan’s resume consists of four years in the Clinton White House, where she was Associate White House Counsel—a full rung down from Harriet Miers’ position in the Bush White House—and Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council, and six years as the dean of Harvard’s law school. (Last year, Obama chose her as his solicitor general).

Apparently her main accomplishment as dean at Harvard was raising a lot of money, which, given that it’s the Harvard Law School, sounds roughly as impressive as managing to sell a lot of pot at a Grateful Dead concert. (She’s also been given credit for improving the collegial atmosphere at the school, a.k.a., getting a bunch of egomaniacs to engage in less backstabbing, which anyone familiar with law school faculties can attest is not a negligible accomplishment. Whether it’s a sufficient basis for putting somebody on the Supreme Court is another matter.)

It seems clear Kagan is a bright person and an able administrator. But Harriet Miers was those things as well: She had a long and successful career in the private practice of law, she was the first woman president of the Texas Bar Association, and she was the top lawyer in the White House for several years prior to her nomination to the Court.

Miers’ nomination was derailed by two complaints: that her primary qualification was that she was a “crony” of the president, and that nobody knew what views she had, if any, on the vast majority of questions facing the Supreme Court. Both criticisms are just as relevant to Kagan’s potential selection.

Greenwald has a longer list of those pointing out the inadequacy of this pick.

UPDATE: Well, that didn’t take long. The “Obama is the messiah and I dare not question his judgment” point of view has already been shared in the comments:

As for trusting Obama’s judgement over my own? Yeh .. he is smarter than I am and has access to a lot of good advice. That is why I voted for him.

From Greenwald’s post I linked to above:

Perhaps most revealing of all: a new article in The Daily Caller reports on growing criticisms of Kagan among “liberal legal scholars and experts” (with a focus on the work I’ve been doing), and it quotes the progressive legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky as follows: “The reality is that Democrats, including liberals, will accept and push whomever Obama picks.” Yesterday on Twitter, Matt Yglesias supplied the rationale for this mentality: “Argument will be simple: Clinton & Obama like and trust [Kagan], and most liberals (myself included) like and trust Clinton & Obama.”

Just think about what that means. If the choice is Kagan, you’ll have huge numbers of Democrats and progressives running around saying, in essence: “I have no idea what Kagan thinks or believes about virtually anything, and it’s quite possible she’ll move the Court to the Right, but I support her nomination and think Obama made a great choice.” In other words, according to Chemerinksy and Yglesias, progressives will view Obama’s choice as a good one by virtue of the fact that it’s Obama choice. Isn’t that a pure embodiment of mindless tribalism and authoritarianism? Democrats love to mock the Right for their propensity to engage in party-line, close-minded adherence to their Leaders, but compare what conservatives did with Bush’s selection of Harriet Miers to what progressives are almost certain to do with Obama’s selection of someone who is, at best, an absolute blank slate.

Exactly. The idea that progressives need to support Obama’s decisions without question just turns us into what has been so dangerous about the current incarnation of the Republican Party.

UPDATE 2: Lawrence Lessig’s post at HuffPo is a good rebuttal to those who say that Kagan is unqualified. I’m still in agreement with Greenwald that Obama should be faulted for not picking a justice with a more well-established background, but Lessig does make me feel a little more optimistic about what is my primary fear – that Kagan will end up being the direct opposite of David Souter, a justice who ends up shifting the court in the opposite direction from what was expected by his/her supporters.

UPDATE 3: Adam Serwer finds some evidence that Kagan may be better on executive power issues than expected, but wonders why the Administration hasn’t been more forthcoming over it.

Last week’s contest was won by waguy. It was the Bank of Greece in Athens.

Just as a reminder, each contest picture is related to something happening in the news. Also, the view can now be from any direction. Here’s this week’s, good luck!

Jeremiah 20:14-18
Cursed be the day I was born! May the day my mother bore me not be blessed! Cursed be the man who brought my father the news, who made him very glad, saying, “A child is born to you—a son!” May that man be like the towns the LORD overthrew without pity. May he hear wailing in the morning, a battle cry at noon. For he did not kill me in the womb, with my mother as my grave, her womb enlarged forever. Why did I ever come out of the womb to see trouble and sorrow and to end my days in shame?

Happy Mother’s Day. Discuss.

– Poland has some draconian blasphemy laws.

– Radical Muslims are trying to shut down the Facebook profiles of Arabs who profess to be atheist or otherwise anti-religious.

– Israeli settlers are suspected in a recent fire at a West Bank mosque. This is following the burning of a different mosque in December and vandalism at another mosque last month.

– Commenter ‘slingshot’ sent me this NPR piece with Philadelphia Daily News reporters Barbara Laker and Wendy Ruderman. Laker and Ruderman won a Pulitzer Prize this year for their investigation of corruption within the Philadelphia Police Department’s narcotics division. As a result of their work, hundreds of drug cases in Philadelphia were re-examined.

Last summer, when my parents (who still reside in suburban Philadelphia) came out to visit me, I asked my dad what he thought about the case. My dad reads the Inquirer and watches local news, but he’d never even heard about it. At least the Pulitzer folks can still recognize that a rogue narcotics unit that may have sent hundreds of innocent people to prison counts as an important news story.

Dominic Holden has a very interesting post about how Q-13 Fox is threatening to sue the photographer and KIRO news over the video showing Seattle Police beating up an innocent man. The photographer is claiming that Q-13 refused to air the video in order to preserve their good relationship with SPD. He then turned around and sold it to KIRO, which Q-13 claims was illegal since the video was their property.

The photographer denies that, of course, but Q-13 sat on the video for three weeks. When it finally aired on KIRO, it caused such an uproar that the officer involved gave a teary apology at a press conference last night. Q-13 may very well be right that the photographer illegally sold the video, but what’s much clearer – and far more important – is that Q-13 tried to bury this important news story. I think we deserve to know why.