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Jim Kenny, one of the two Democrats running to be the Snohomish County Prosecutor, has endorsed I-1068 to make marijuana legal in Washington. In his press release, he touches on the key reason why our budget-conscious politicians should be joining him:

There are also many cost savings which can be realized if the voters pass I-1068, especially at the cash-strapped county level of government. Kenny points to the 16,000 marijuana criminal cases per year that would be removed from our state and local court systems, saving tens of millions of dollars in police, prosecutorial, and judicial resources. “I can point to two medical marijuana cases in the last year on which the Snohomish County Prosecutor spent valuable taxpayer resources, neither of which led to conviction. If juries are throwing out cases like that, clearly we need to move on.”

“We are looking at a crisis in public safety with declining revenue for local government. I think it’s time to prioritize and really focus our criminal justice resources on violent criminals,” said Kenny. “Given the state of our economy and the projected financial situation facing government at every level, we need to get down to the fundamentals and prioritize.”

There was a time when politicians (let alone prosecutors) didn’t dare talk about reducing law enforcement budgets or cutting back on waging the drug war. But two things have changed since then – a bad economy forcing even police budgets to be slashed, and a growing awareness that marijuana prohibition causes far more crime in our communities than would occur if we treated it the same as alcohol. Being smarter about how we reduce crime in our neighborhoods – rather than doing things that appear tough – is one of the most effective ways that we can introduce more fiscal sanity to our bloated budgets.

This morning the Washington Poll released an expanded sample of their recent poll of Washington state voters. Their press release explains:

Last week (May 24) we released the results of an n=1252 survey, yet we continued to conduct additional surveys through Friday May 28th, and amassed a total of 1,695 interviews.

While there are some interesting results in this new release, particularly regarding the Teabagger element of the GOP Party, I’ll simply focus on the match-up between Senator Patty Murray (D) and perennial candidate Dino Rossi (R). I recently analyzed this poll with the original sample of 1,252 registered voters that went for Murray over Rossi 44% to 40%. The results suggested that Patty Murray was leading with an 86.5% probability.

The new results still have 44% Murray and 40% Rossi but now, with the larger sample, the uncertainty in the result goes down. In a Monte Carlo analysis Murray won 897,105 of 1,000,000 elections, suggesting that an election held now would be won by Murray with an 89.7% probability. Here is the distribution of outcomes:

A few days ago I did an analysis of the three polls in this race that were taken in May. The analysis gave Murray an 84.8% probability of truly leading the race. Doing that same analysis with the expanded Washington Poll ups Murray’s probability to 88.7%.

So, based on the available evidence, Dino Rossi is still losing to Patty Murray, but we can say this with a little more certainty.

(Cross posted at Hominid Views.)

According to sources close to the campaign, Democratic state Sen. Craig Pridemore will announce today that he is withdrawing from the race to replace Rep. Brain Baird in Washington’s 3rd Congressional District, leaving fellow Democrat Denny Heck with a sure path to the November ballot.

With a slew of establishment endorsements and a $250,000 infusion of his own money, Heck became the early Democratic favorite, an advantage Pridemore, a strong, populist-minded campaigner, simply wasn’t able to overcome, especially as he continued to be locked up in an endless, special legislative session. Pridemore had intended to run an energetic, grassroots primary campaign, a strategy that depended on strong support from labor organizations like the Washington State Labor Council and the Washington Education Association. And while he recently secured the endorsement of the former, word leaked over the weekend that the WEA would be endorsing Heck, largely based on his fundraising lead and frontrunner status. (I don’t think teachers have a bigger champion in the Senate than Pridemore.)

Pridemore’s withdrawal is of course a blow to progressives like me who saw him as the better choice of the two Dems. Whether it’s a blow to Republicans, who wouldn’t have minded a Democratic cat fight in the primary, remains to be seen. In this anti-incumbency year, my gut told me that the more populist Pridemore had the better shot in November than the more establishment Heck.

But here’s hoping the Democratic establishment proves me wrong.

UPDATE:
It’s official, and Publicola has Pridemore’s statement.

The Washington Poll released additional results today based on an expanded number respondents on top of last week’s survey, and Sen. Patty Murray still leads real estate speculator Dino Rossi 44-40, only this time with only a 2.3% margin of error. Perhaps Darryl will update his Monte Carlo analysis to put that in perspective.

Today’s results also include a number of questions intending to gauge the attitudes and breadth of the teabagger movement, and after a quick glance at the results, honestly, I don’t see what Republicans have to gain in the general from playing to this crowd. As one might expect, Republicans and Democrats approve and disapprove of the teabaggers in similar numbers, with independents slight leaning in approval, just like the way they tend to slightly lean Republican.

Looks to me like Tea Party is simply another name for “conservative Republican,” at least here in Washington State. A stinking pile of poo by any other name, and all that.

Google has long offered employees their choice of operating systems, but according to a report in yesterday’s Financial Times, the search giant is ending its OS agnosticism in response to January’s high-profile security breach. New hires are now being offered a choice of Macintosh or Linux PCs; Microsoft Windows is no longer an option.

“We’re not doing any more Windows. It is a security effort,” said one Google employee.

“Many people have been moved away from [Windows] PCs, mostly towards Mac OS, following the China hacking attacks,” said another.

Ouch.

Of course, sources claim the prohibition on new Windows installs is due to security concerns, but I say it’s just payback for a series of really stupid Seattle Times editorials. Way to go, Frank.

The Israeli Army has killed at least nine people and arrested dozens more after attacking a flotilla trying to bring aid to Gaza. Andrew Sullivan discusses it here. Juan Cole has some additional information, including an email from someone on one of the ships. Glenn Greenwald calls out the glaring contradictions between how we treat Israel and how we treat other countries and groups who do similarly appalling things. Paul Reynolds at BBC News reports on the fallout, including the cancellation of an expected meeting between Netanyahu and Obama originally scheduled for tomorrow.

UPDATE: ThinkProgress has some more links here which do a good job debunking some myths about the effects of the Gaza blockade. What I find most horrific about this action – and the Israeli policy on Gaza – is that it’s a rationalization of the necessity of punishing civilians in order to achieve political outcomes. Normally, we refer to people who think like that as terrorists.

UPDATE 2: TPM has a running timeline of reports.

UPDATE 3: George Friedman at Stratfor has a very sharp piece explaining how Israel is losing the edge in public perception and continues to risk further isolation.

I spent about three hours this afternoon at Folklife collecting signatures for I-1068. As expected, it was a friendly crowd and my biggest obstacle to getting signers was that many people had already signed. Still, there were too many young people who wanted to sign, but haven’t registered to vote yet.

Also in Seattle Center today were a number of paid gatherers for I-1098 (the Income Tax initiative), I-1100 (privatization of liquor sales), and some revival of the 2/3 vote for tax increases (don’t remember the number, don’t give a fuck).

One of the paid gatherers was clearly out of her element and I chatted with her for a bit. She said she’d been paid $100 to collect signatures, but knew nothing about the state (she was from California) or the history of our recent initiatives. She was confused as to why a lot of people were refusing to sign the 2/3 vote petition and I had to explain the history. She was far too shy to be doing that kind of work and eventually just started approaching the people who had already stopped to sign my I-1068 petitions.

On top of that, one lady who signed my petition said that one of the paid gatherers told her that the 2/3 majority vote petition was not a Tim Eyman initiative (it is). It sounds like the folks from California have learned what they need to say to get people to sign.

And the highlight of my day was when I asked a short black man with dreadlocks to sign – and he politely said “thanks, I’ve signed” and showed me the baseball-sized bud he was carrying in his hand.

Last week’s contest was a challenge, but after a clue was given, it was solved by Don Joe. It was the Yester Years Pub and Grill in West Allis, Wisconsin, where the bar owner was videotaped burning a statue of Obama last week.

Here’s this week’s, good luck!

Leviticus 24:16
And he that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him: as well the stranger, as he that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of the Lord, shall be put to death.

Discuss, God damn it.

– Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske made a very odd claim to an Irish newspaper that we’ve “ended [our] war on drugs”. I think some folks in Jamaica might disagree. And Mexico. And Canada. And Afghanistan. And not to mention right here at home. For even more on the ongoing disaster in Mexico, click here.

– Teachers in Virginia were suspended for showing students a video explaining what rights they have during a police encounter. Next door in Maryland, people who legally videotape police officers in public are still being prosecuted.

– The truth on pot and schizophrenia.

– I’ll be out at Folklife tomorrow gathering signatures for I-1068. We have one month left to get on the ballot. If you have some free time in June, please consider volunteering.

In a column accusing liberals of “nonsensical delight” over the downfall of Mark Souder, S.E. Cupp writes the following:

Fallen Rep. Mark Souder, a Republican from Indiana, is just the latest excuse to throw poor abstinence under a bus full of condoms. Salon.com’s Alex Pareene wrote about Souder’s unseemly tryst with a female staffer – who was not his wife – under the headline, “Abstinence Proselytizer Mark Souder Regrets Nothing.” For Pareene, the fact that Souder supported abstinence education is apparently an important thread of the story line.

But why? Granted, the promotional video of Souder and his mistress advocating abstinence is a delightfully vivid and embarrassing twist of irony. But Souder’s infidelity, and his inability to abstain from having extramarital sex, has nothing at all to do with abstinence education.

Zero. Abstinence education is a policy issue that we should discuss on the basis of its merits, without leaning on irrelevant, tawdry tabloid stories to prop up a position. Kids deserve better than that.

And everyone in the world deserves better than this embarrassing opinion column. There’s not much of an argument any more about the merits of abstinence-only education. Federal studies on the subject have been quite clear: that they don’t work, and that they might even increase the risk that teens will engage in unsafe sex.

What Cupp doesn’t understand is that the reasons for the failure of abstinence-only education are very much parallel to Souder’s inability to abstain from his own extramarital affair. Those of us who delighted in the hypocrisy of Mark Souder’s transgression are certainly able to connect the dots. If you understand why abstinence-only education doesn’t work, you’re not too surprised to see the reasons for that failure manifesting itself in ways that embarrass its strongest proponents.

But Souder wasn’t just a moral scold about sex. He was also the most fervent drug warrior in Congress. His infamous provision to the Higher Education Act in 1998 has cost hundreds of thousands of (disproportionately minority) students educational opportunities over the past decade. One can only imagine that Souder believed that such harsh measures would discourage drug use, but it clearly had no such effect. All it did was reduce opportunities for those who got caught and couldn’t subsequently rely on their family to continue to pay for their education.

There are strong parallels between abstinence-only education and programs like D.A.R.E. They both put a great amount of faith in the ability to use fear to keep teenagers from engaging in certain behaviors. And they both don’t work. At least with drugs, an effective regulatory scheme that keeps them out of the hands of young people could make it easier for kids to be drug-free, but we don’t have that right now. For both drugs and sex, we have very little ability to force young people to control their urges. The smartest thing has always been to provide them with accurate information and teach them how to be safe.

The reason that Mark Souder’s downfall has everything to do with abstinence-only education is because if even the biggest nanny in Congress doesn’t have the ability to abstain from sex that he knows could have serious consequences, very few teenagers out there do either. That’s the basis for why comprehensive sex-education is more realistic and more effective than trying to scare teens into keeping their pants on.

[via Sadly No – who hilariously refers to Cupp as “Sipp E. Cupp”]

Rasmussen released a new poll for the Washington senatorial race yesterday. The poll, taken on 26 May on a sample of 500 likely Washington state voters, has Sen. Patty Murray leading real estate salesman and perennial candidate Dino Rossi by 48% to 47%. The margin of error for the poll is ±4.5%.

The poll was taken on the day of Rossi’s long-anticipated formal announcement of his candidacy. Of course, Rossi still has to make it through Washington’s top two primary. Given the crowded Republican field, there is some chance Rossi will not make it. The other general election match-ups have Murray up by even larger margins: 50% to 35% over Don Benton, 47% to 37% over Clint Didier, and 47% to 32% over Paul Akers.

A Monte Carlo analysis of the Murray-Rossi results, based on a million simulated elections at the same sample size and observed percentages, gives Murray 557,078 wins and Rossi 430,204 wins. The results suggest that, if the election was held today, Murray would have a 56.4% chance of beating Rossi. The distribution of election results looks like this:

The Rasmussen results are closer than those found in a recent Washington Poll that had Rossi leading by 4% in a sample of 1,252 registered voters. My analysis of that poll gave Murray an 86.5% probability of being the winner. In addition to the Washington Poll, there was another Rasmussen poll taken on 04 May that had Murray leading Rossi by 2%.

A joint analysis of the three polls taken in May—yes, I am not including the recent Elway Poll because it was started in April—gives Murray a hefty advantage. From a total of 2,252 voters surveyed Murray gets 45.8% and Rossi takes 42.9%. Normalized to just the 1,997 who went for Murray or Rossi, Murray gets 51.6% to Rossi’s 48.4%. The Monte Carlo analysis gives Murray 844,678 wins to Rossi’s 151,587 wins. In other words, the evidence from the May polls suggests that an election held this month would have an 84.8% probability of Murray winning. Here is the distribution for the pooled polls:

Here is a summary of the normalized polls for this contest over the entire year:

If Rossi had entered this race in mid-March, he could have claimed the advantage of the lead in all the early polling. At the end of May, however, Murray has now led in the most recent four polls and six of the past seven polls, suggesting that Rossi’s late entry into the race comes with a solid disadvantage.

While I certainly plan to return to the subject of Rep. Dave Reichert’s reversal on Net Neutrality as symptomatic of his lack of guiding principles, I would be remiss to touch on the subject without thanking Rep. Jay Inslee for his leadership on this issue.

It is Rep. Inslee who is proving to be Net Neutrality’s most vocal champion in the House, and it is he who is a circulating a letter urging the FCC to follow through on its plans to enforce this principle on broadband providers: the basic principle that all content must be treated neutrally.

Under Net Neutrality, Qwest cannot legally block or or slow down access to HA when I berate them for their terrible service, or in perhaps a more likely example, Comcast could not limit access to competing video content, or perhaps strike a deal to provide superior enduser throughput to Google over Bing, or vice versa.

Net Neutrality is a principle that ensures a free and open Internet, and as such is absolutely crucial to health of our economy and our democracy. So thank you, Rep. Inslee, for holding firm to your principles, and fighting the wealthy and powerful telcos and cable companies on our behalf.

Dan Savage joins Keith Olbermann to discuss “gay Hitler.”

(There are 40+ more media clips from the past week in politics at Hominid Views.)

Kudos to Jim Brunner at the Seattle Times for finally getting Rep. Dave Reichert on the record about the embarrassing leaked audio in which he brags to room of Republican PCO’s about taking environmental activists “out of the game” in his district with a few well placed, cynical votes.

Reichert tried to laugh it off as “tongue in cheek,” just so you know.

But considering their scoop — I know other reporters have attempted, and failed, to get a comment from Reichert — um… 3PM on a Friday afternoon before a three-day weekend? Could the Times have buried this any further?

Brunner writes that he’s been meaning to get to this sooner, and that he even posted on his day off, and I’ve got no reason to doubt him. But it’s awfully damn frustrating to see Reichert consistently get the benefit of timing, as well as doubt.

I’ll take everybody at their word here (except, of course, Reichert), and just say that the Times owes DelBene a raincheck which, if they’re as fair and balanced as they claim to be, they’ll ultimately deliver.