HorsesAss.Org

A group of prominent conservatives have sent a letter to Republican senators urging them to filibuster President Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the US Supreme Court:

Our national experience in the past decade has changed the standard by which Republicans should cast their confirmation vote for a Supreme Court nominee of a Democrat president.  The benefit of a doubt that once arguably might have justified the indifference over the last two nominees of a Democratic president is no longer tenable.

Huh. Actually, this obstructionist approach might not be a bad political strategy… if Republicans are resigned to remaining a minority party for the foreseeable future. But if they ever plan to win back both the trust of the American people, and/or the White House, well, not so much.

Because, you know, what goes around comes around, and all that.

It wasn’t so long ago, during the Alito nomination, that Republicans reviled Democratic talk of a filibuster as unAmerican and unconstitutional. This was during the heady days following the Democrats’ disastrous showing in the 2004 elections, a time when Karl Rove was boasting about a permanent Republican majority, and Senate leaders threatened the “nuclear option”—eliminating the filibuster altogether—should minority Democrats put up too strong a fight. They didn’t.

But if a mere 40 Republicans follow this letter’s advice, and do vote as a block to hold up the Sotomayor confirmation over issues of judicial philosophy, then the standard by which senators cast confirmation votes really will have changed. And it will be a standard by which Democrats will measure their own actions the next time a Republican president nominates a justice.

The letter argues that “Americans have been awakened to their own stewardship of the federal courts,” pointing to 2008 exit polls that showed three quarters of voters considered Supreme Court nominations a significant factor in their vote, and 7% the determining issue. But it might behoove the authors to remember that this was an election Obama won by a comfortable margin, capturing electoral votes in every region of the country, and one in which Democrats made substantial gains in the Senate, thus making the “stewardship” argument profoundly self-defeating to the conservative cause.

With Republican presidents having appointed seven of the nine sitting Supreme Court justices, and one Republican-appointed Chief Justice after another having run the court for more than half a century, I understand if Republicans feel they have some sort of unique claim on the institution. But they don’t. Obama has just as much of a right to leave his imprint on the court as the presidents who preceded him.

So it would seem an odd political calculation to choose now, when the balance of power on the court isn’t even at stake, to seek a confrontation that could redefine the confirmation process for decades to come. And I’m guessing that cooler heads in the Republican caucus won’t.

As most of you probably remember, four men from Newburgh, New York were arrested a few weeks back after they took part in what they thought was a plot to blow up a synagogue in the Bronx. Instead, the bombs were fake, and the ringleader of the operation was a government informant trying to mitigate his own legal troubles.

The cable news shows made a huge deal about the arrest as if it were some chilling reminder of the dangers of homegrown terrorism, but the reality was that without the informant, these four morons couldn’t have plotted to change a light bulb. The “leader” was being paid in weed by the informant and was high when they got arrested. Another of the four was described by his own sister as being “the dumbest person on this earth”. And a third one had previously been judged insane in an immigration hearing. This was nothing more than a desperate and persistent man trying to work a deal with cops finding whatever patsies he could dreg up in order to give police some “bigger fish”.

It’s hard to have sympathy for anyone who would even go along with a plot to blow up a synagogue (or any other place with innocent people inside), but I’m also not afraid of people like the Newburgh four. People that stupid and gullible are far more likely to be a threat to themselves than anyone else. And as Zachary Roth writes, it leads to some questions about how useful it is to do this in the first place:

Let’s be clear about what all this might and might not add up to. If these men were willing to go through with planting what they believed to be deadly bombs — as they appear to have been — then they should be charged, and, if convicted, sentenced to jail-time. (Their lawyers, of course, will likely claim entrapment, and it’ll be up to a judge and jury to weigh that claim after hearing all the evidence.)

But the emerging evidence that “Maqsood” aggressively targeted these men, and may have convinced them to participate in the plot only by offering them money and gifts, raises a different question: is pursuing “plots” that may well never have existed in the first place were it not for the work of a government informant, really the most effective way for the federal government to spend its finite terror-fighting resources?

I think what we should do is take some folks who’ve been arrested for various offenses like fraud and tax evasion and allow them to mitigate their sentences by going into churches around the country and recruiting disaffected crazies who would be willing to help them blow up a Planned Parenthood office. Then, after we bust like 4 or 5 “terrorist plots” in middle America, we can ask that question again.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37eu8MSXdP8&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Hate-mongering anti-choice activist Randall Terry holds his own vigil of sorts for Dr. George Tilly, essentially blaming the doctor for his own brutal assassination.

“Pro-life leaders and the pro-life movement are not responsible for George Tiller’s death. George Tiller was a mass-murderer and, horrifically, he reaped what he sowed.”

Huh. Well, as long as Terry is promoting this eye for an eye school of biblical justice, perhaps the proper response to this sort of vicious terrorist attack is to take out one of the terrorist leaders in return? Maybe Terry should reap the same sort of hate and violence that he sows?

And if you think that sentiment is a little harsh, I’d be happy to discuss it further with you over a beer.  I like Guinness, and prefer my wings really hot and a little crispy.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT1MhKhpqjA&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

The Seattle Times editorializes about education, which as usual, leaves me totally confused.

Our state is at a crossroads. An ambitious education plan recently approved by the Legislature was a major hurdle crossed. The next hurdle is a question: where do we go from here?

Um… how about funding it?

Debates in this state about education reform rarely rise above the level of money.

You know, except during the past legislative session when an ambitious and expensive education reform package was passed to great editorial applause, without any discussion whatsoever about how we’re going to pay for it. Surely the Times isn’t implying that these reforms won’t require a major investment to turn all schools around?

Granted, it will take a major investment to turn all schools around, but without planning and general consensus, the cash will be useless.

Okay then, I’m all for planning and consensus.  Now where are we going to get the cash?

Federal input wouldn’t be intrusive, it would be welcomed.

Silly me… the money comes from the federal government, of course, because those are magical dollars pooped by fairies and wood nymphs, and don’t in any way come from the kinda income and estate taxes that the Times argues would be so unfair and wealth-destroying should they be collected in Washington state.

Education stimulus dollars account for the largest spending increase ever.

That’s swell, but what’s this about the largest spending increase ever? I thought we just dramatically slashed education spending in WA, even with the federal stimulus dollars? Am I missing something?

This state will use much of the money to mitigate education cuts imposed by the state Legislature, but millions will be available with varying degrees of flexibility. The new rule in spending should be money spent on unproven efforts is money wasted.

Wait… so do “education stimulus dollars account for the largest spending increase ever,” or did we just “use much of the money to mitigate education cuts imposed by the state Legislature”…? And if the latter, how does this in any way implement the “new rule” the editorial kvells about.  I’m soooo confused.

Encouraging signs from Duncan, and President Obama, are the two men’s refusal to simply throw money at public education’s many problems.

Right, because otherwise, gutless legislators, cheered on by gutless, anti-tax editorialists, might just use the federal money thrown at them to “mitigate education cuts” rather than applying it to public education’s many problems.  And we would want that to happen.

Consider this the warm up before Congress delves into reauthorization of the federal No Child Left Behind law. The massive law should be tweaked, necessary improvements include additional flexibility and money, but not abandoned.

Again with the shilling for more federal dollars. Can’t debates in this state about education reform ever rise above the level of money? The editorial mentions money nine times; I thought we were talking about education?

(Oh, and note to the editors who edit the editors: that last sentence doesn’t scan well, so you might want to consider rearranging the clauses. But then, I graduated from public schools, so what do I know?)

So there we have it, the Seattle Times editorial board’s usual clarity of thinking: we need to spend more money on education, but federal money, not local money, and we want to be careful not to throw money at the problem because more money won’t do any good anyway, which is why we shouldn’t even be talking about money, investments, cash, dollars or money in the first place.

Oy.

There will be a vigil tonight, 6pm, near the south end of the reflecting pool at Cal Anderson Park in Seattle, to offer thoughts and prayers to the family and friends of Dr. George Tiller, who was brutally assassinated yesterday by a right-wing terrorist as he was entering his Wichita, KS church.

Hey… apparently, I’m a genius…

“Everyone who owns GET plans, they’re starting to look like geniuses,” said Joe Hebert of TrueNorth Financial Services in Seattle.

We prepaid our daughter’s tuition when she was five years old, back in 2002, when the cost was only $42 a credit. After this week’s GET price increase, the cost is now $101 a credit. That’s a pretty damn good annualized return. But I’m no genius.

Washington’s in-state tuition costs were bizarrely low at the time we bought in, and there seemed nowhere to go but up. The GET program was only advertising (but not promising) a projected 6 percent average annual return at the time, but that seemed impossibly low considering rising costs and stagnating state tax collections. Besides, the “G” in GET stands for “guaranteed,” so it wasn’t much of a gamble to plunk down $16,800 in 2002 for four years of college tuition our daughter wouldn’t finish redeeming before 2019. I suppose it might have turned out to be a conservative investment, but it also bought us peace of mind.

But, as is my wont, I digress, for it’s not the virtues of GET I planned to blog about, but rather the first comment on the story in the thread on the Seattle Times, in which rawdibob asks:

Why has the cost of college tuition increased faster than inflation?

Yes, I understand that part of the government-run college tuition increases represents a decrease in the taxpayer subsidy but that is not all of the story.

No, the recent budget cuts aren’t all of the story, but this question gets to the heart of one of the basic misunderstandings many taxpayers have about the cost of providing government services… a misunderstanding I’d argue is intentionally perpetuated by many of those in the smaller government crowd.

Government critics often point toward population plus inflation as a formula for constraining government growth, and while that’s not the best metric (growth in demand for government services most closely tracks growth in personal income), it does appear somewhat reasonable, at least on its face. Problem is, there are multiple measures of inflation, and the familiar Consumer Price Index is perhaps the least applicable when it comes to measuring rising goverment costs.

Why? Because as a broad index of the economy as a whole, the CPI reflects productivity gains resulting from technological and policy efficiencies (such as trade) that simply aren’t available to state and local governments, for whom the bulk of the services provided rely on highly trained professionals.  Think about it.  You can automate a factory floor, resulting in fewer workers producing more and better product, but you can’t comparably automate a doctor’s office or a fire station or a police precinct.

Or, a classroom.

The only way to dramatically increase the productivity of a university professor is to either increase class size, or require the professor to work longer hours for less money, neither of which is a tenable alternative if your goal is to attract and retain quality students and faculty. And even if one were to head down that route, the productivity gains could not possibly be sustainable compared to those achieved in the broader economy, even compared to many industries that also rely on a highly skilled labor force. For example, Microsoft can exploit the global economy by outsourcing engineering to India and China, but the University of Washington simply can’t outsource its faculty.  (It can outsource its students perhaps, but not its faculty.)

Republicans point to year over year spending increases and argue that state government has grown too fast, but the fact is that the cost of providing most government services simply rises faster than consumer prices. Indeed, when adjusted for the Implicit Price Deflator for State and Local Governments (the IPD is widely accepted as the most accurate measure of inflation for various industries), Washington state taxes per capita were already at a 15-year low heading into the Great Recession that sent our budget off a cliff.

Just look at the widening gap between CPI and IPD. What that represents is a decline in government spending power.

And that, rawdibob, is one of the main reasons why the cost of college tuition has increased so much faster than inflation.

It looks like the long expected backlash has finally struck KIRO radio in the wake my controversial firing:

At KIRO-AM and KIRO-FM, well, it was time to be philosophical about the quake that had just gone through the market.  […] Ross and Monson and the rest of the gang had sunk from No. 3 in the winter 2009 book (which used the diary format) to No. 19 in the PPM rankings.

Yeah, I suppose KIRO’s plummetting News/Talk ratings might be due to Arbitron’s switch from diaries to PPM ratings, or due to the audience disruption created by dropping its familiar AM signal, or some combination of the two. But I prefer to think it’s all due to a delayed audience rebellion after my weekend show was dropped back in February of 2008.

Meanwhile, Fisher Communications’ STAR 101.5, which has its studio just down the hall from those of KOMO 1000, saw its ratings climb to number one exactly at the time I started showing up at the building, subbing on The Commentators.  Coincidence? I think not.

If you want to lift the curse Rod, you know how to reach me. Personally, I’d prefer Dori’s slot, but I’m willing to negotiate.

“Kansans for Life,” (yeah, I know) says it deplores the assassination of Dr. George Tiller.

We value life, completely deplore violence, and are shocked and very upset by what happened in Wichita today.

They should be upset I guess, since by my count there were over 80 references to Tiller in their 24 page spring newsletter (PDF,) including the main front page story. Obsess much?

And you’ll notice the second story in the pdf newsletter is about Kathleen Sebelius. A reader at TPM and Josh Marshall point out that the fact Tiller was a donor to Sebelius was something the GOP tried to make a big deal of during Sebelius’s confirmation hearings.

The subjugation of women movement spent decades demonizing Tiller, and then used Tiller’s support as a justification for attacking Sebelius, so the assassination is not exactly some random, out of the blue event. More like sadly and horribly predictable.

That doesn’t mean the gunman isn’t, at some level, nuts, as someone who would do such a thing clearly has issues. But the subjugation movement will now correctly come under intense public scrutiny for the kinds of tactics and rhetoric they have employed in pursuit of their goals. (And yes, the First Amendment gives one remarkably broad freedom to say many, many things when commenting on public issues, but it also gives everyone else the right to be repulsed and sickened by extremism.)

And pretty soon someone in the traditional media will inevitably demand that liberals be respectful and civil, because nothing earns respect like gunning a doctor down at a church service. I’d say we’re a wee bit past “civility” now.

What a terrible day.

The Lawrence Journal-World reports that the man in police custody in connection with the assassination of Dr. George Tiller had a “brush with the law” in the 1990’s.

Scott P. Roeder, the man who was detained by Johnson County officials as a “person of interest” in the Sunday morning killing of George Tiller, has a brush with the law in his past.

He was convicted in 1996 of criminal use of an explosive after police discovered a blasting cap in his car when his car was pulled over because his car was not registered. Roeder served time in Kansas prisons before an appeal was granted on the basis of the search of his car being unlawful, according to court of appeals records.

The article goes on to quote court documents saying that Roeder’s convictions for driving offenses were sustained, and mentions that they were somehow related to the “Freeman Group.” It’s not completely clear if the reporter means the “Freemen,” the nutjobs who holed up in Montana during the last Democratic administration.

At any rate, the killing of Tiller was a political assassination as vile as any assassination. The American Taliban had hounded Tiller for decades, and Tiller had even suffered right-wing attacks previously, having been shot in both arms and enduring a bombing of his clinic. The former attorney general of Kansas, Phil Kline, had relentlessly harassed Tiller and the women of Kansas with legal maneuvers until even Kansans said “enough” and booted Kline from his state post.

While details are still emerging, the pro-subjugation-of-women movement is trying to scramble for political cover.

“For the movement, it could not come at a worse time,” the Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition, which lobbies against abortion, said of the killing.

“If they make it seem that people who embrace the pro-life movement are kind of this extremist violent group, that could diminish some of the passion and energy on confronting Sotomayor.”

Nice sensitivity there. Don’t let the family grieve or anything.

I don’t know why anyone would think violence is part of the pro-subjugation strategy, other than say, all the violence. Weird how so much of it happened during the last Democratic administration. I’m sure that’s just an unhappy coincidence and has nothing to do with intemperate and inflammatory comments made by political leaders and media personalities.

There’s no discussing things with people who think they have exclusive insight into the supernatural and wish to impose their beliefs on all of society. They either follow the law or they suffer the consequences, and any bastard who thinks he has the right to be judge, jury and executioner needs to feel the full force of a real jury, judge and well, life in prison.

The death penalty is killing after all.

UPDATE 8:45 PM PDT–McClatchy just moved a story with some interviews of people who knew Roeder.

Those who know Roeder said he believed that killing abortion doctors was an act of justifiable homicide.

“I know that he believed in justifiable homicide,” said Regina Dinwiddie, a Kansas City anti-abortion activist who made headlines in 1995 when she was ordered by a federal judge to stop using a bullhorn within 500 feet of any abortion clinic. “I know he very strongly believed that abortion was murder and that you ought to defend the little ones, both born and unborn.”

The McClatchy article also discusses Roeder’s association with right wing extremists.

Morris Wilson, commander of the Kansas Unorganized Citizens Militia in the mid-1990s, said he knew Roeder fairly well.

“I’d say he’s a good ol’ boy except he was just so fanatic about abortion,” said Wilson, who now lives in western Nebraska. “He was always talking about how awful abortion was. But there’s a lot of people who think abortion is awful.”

Yep, it sure sounds like an assassination, although those of us who believe in the rule of law and democracy must hasten to add that Roeder is presumed innocent until he has had a trial by a jury of his peers or pleads guilty, something that Tiller was not afforded at church this morning.

According to the Seattle Times, housing prices fell throughout the region during 2008, with the median price per square foot dropping 5 percent in King County.  But one neighborhood is bucking the trend, North Beacon/Rainier Valley, which saw median prices rise 12 percent over the year.

Why?

[I]t boasts an amenity almost no other neighborhood can offer: the region’s first light-rail line, scheduled to carry its first passenger July 18.

There is a lot of opportunity to make fun of the Times’ latest effort at real estate market cheerleading, not the least of which being its apparent attempt to lump everything south of I-90 and east of I-5 as a single neighborhood. (The examples cited appear to be from distinct neighborhoods we locals would describe as Beacon Hill, Rainier Valley, Mount Baker and Rainier Beach, covering a distance of five light rail stops… but then I guess from Times’ distinctly suburban perspective, all us Southeast Seattleites must look alike.)

Still, it’s good to see the Times finally acknowledging something we light rail boosters have been arguing all along: folks like choo-choos. In fact, they like them so much, they’re willing to move to be near them. On the flip side, I challenge the Times’ intrepid real estate reporters to find one anecdote of a person willing to spend a little extra for a house on the basis that it’s a mere eight minute walk to a bus stop.

Put aside for a moment the question as to whether this behavior is rational, and don’t worry your pretty little heads debating the relative economic efficiency of investing in buses versus rail. All that’s entirely beside the point. Rational or not, for whatever reasons, folks simply prefer trains and trolleys over buses. And it’s a preference whose impact is consistently repeated wherever rail systems are built.

It is ironic that, in a nation that otherwise reveres the market, establishment voices like the Times should so often ignore consumer demand when debating transit alternatives, always arguing that we should build the transit system that costs taxpayers the least, rather than the one they actually want. That’s no way to run a business, and I’d argue that’s no way to run a government either… at least not if your goal is to keep your customers happy.

So North Beacon Hill/Rainier Valley is about to get its light rail, and I’m guessing once it does, our region’s other four “neighborhoods” will want their’s too.

Milwhcky just keeps on rolling. He won last week’s contest for his fourth win a row. It was the London Zoo in the UK (thanks to wes.in.wa for posting the link). This week’s is a tough one. I may have to throw out a clue a little later today. Good luck!

You knew it would happen eventually, but now we get to see how the right responds to the first terrorist attack on US soil since Obama assumed the presidency:

George Tiller, the Wichita doctor who became a national lightning rod in the debate over abortion, was shot to death this morning as he walked into church services.

No, it’s not anywhere near the scale of 9/11, but it fits the definition of terrorism nonetheless: “the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes.”

Will Republicans rally around President Obama in his efforts to fight the terrorist threat, as Democrats rallied around President Bush in the immediate wake of 9/11? It remains to be seen.

From the Young Conservative Anthem.

“Phase me, make me, into something that ain’t me

Serious c… can’t nobody shake me

great like the Gatsby, poppin posers like acne

Don’t matter if your gay, straight, Christian or Muslim

There’s one thing we all hate, called socialism.

It’s loathsome, and America ain’t the outcome,

Raise taxes on the people,

And you’re gonna feel symptoms, problems

I gotta message for a young con:

superman that socialism,

waterboard that terrorism”

See the video at HuffPo!

Adding, it’s very novel for students at an Ivy League college to lecture people about hard work and playing the hand one is dealt. Not saying people there don’t work hard, but if you’re going to an Ivy League school you’ve got a pretty good shot at a decent life. As with seemingly all conservatives, the sense of victim hood is palpable, constant and—hilariously absurd.

Likely these two will be installed on Wall Street in a few years, where they can dream up innovative financial products so another generation gets to enjoy the benefits of derivatives.

(Props to Aneurin for noticing this bit of strangeness.)

– Kitsap County was forced to pay Bruce Olson $2,000 as reimbursement for the grow lights that they confiscated from him and never returned after the ill-conceived 2007 raid on his legal marijuana patch.

– The Marc Emery extradition hearings have been pushed back another few weeks as a potential plea deal is being worked out.

– Melissa Gira Grant writes in Slate about why the crackdown on Craigslist for their erotic classifieds will just lead to more problems when it comes to dealing with prostitution. Dominic Holden and Jonah Spangenthal-Lee write about a local case that illustrates the pointlessness of maintaining an absolute prohibition on paying for erotic services rather than regulating it.

– Scott Morgan dismantles the myth that marijuana is a “gateway drug”.

– In Mexico, the political party that most openly advocates for drug legalization has seen some of its candidates violently attacked, allegedly by the cartels. It’s an important reminder that those who steadfastly oppose drug legalization are on the same side of the debate as the organized crime groups who profit from the illegal drugs.

– Time Magazine writes about one of the most morally bankrupt aspects of the international war on drugs – the attempts to use the U.N. to ban the ancient practice of chewing coca leaves in indigenous areas of South America.

Hard to re-brand the GOP when its elected officials step in poo like this. From The Columbian:

A proposal by County Commissioner Tom Mielke that Clark County should withhold some public health services from people without valid Social Security numbers has inflamed some Latino civil rights advocates.

At a hearing Wednesday, Mielke said he was “concerned about the service that we give to illegals, and the cost.”

“If we don’t have those Social Security numbers, I would like to know who those individuals are who we are serving that are here illegally, and why we serve them and help them in their health,” said Mielke, a Battle Ground Republican. “I think Sheriff Lucas is very interested in who they are.”

To their credit, Republican Sheriff Gary Lucas and Republican County Commissioner Marc Boldt rejected Mielke’s idea out of hand, as did Democratic Commissioner Steve Stuart.

Tough economic times always put resentments in sharp relief. You could wipe out all public health spending in Clark County and it wouldn’t make much difference to the economy one way or the other. Unemployment is high in Clark County not because of illegal immigration but because the local economy was so heavily depending on construction and endless growth. And coming on the heels of the swine flu stuff, it’s a pretty asinine proposal by Mielke.

This is basically Mielke representing the Limbaugh wing of his party, and the more astute politicians are figuring out citizens are beyond tired of that particular vintage.