HorsesAss.Org

Glenn Greenwald has the details on how House Democrats surrendered to the Bush Administration today, also reminding us why the Democratic-led Congress has a higher approval rating among Republicans than Democrats.

From the Roll Call votes, Adam Smith, Norm Dicks, and Brian Baird all voted to give the President greater powers, as Ryan Singel at Wired explains (emphasis mine):

Under the proposal, the intelligence community will be able to issue broad orders to U.S. ISPs, phone companies and online communications services like Hotmail and Skype to turn over all communications that are reasonably believed to involve a non-American who is outside the country. The spy agencies will not have to name their targets or get prior court approval for the surveillance.

Under the longstanding rules of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the government was free to engage in dragnet wiretapping outside the United States, but in order to tap communications inside the country, the government needed court approval and individualized warrants if an American’s communications would be caught.

Additionally, the bill grants amnesty to the nation’s telecoms that are being sued for allegedly breaking federal wiretapping laws by turning over billions of Americans’ call records to government data-mining programs and giving the government access to internet and phone infrastructure inside the country. The bill strips the right of a federal district court to decide whether the companies violated federal laws prohibiting wiretapping without a court order.

Obama’s response so far has been pretty pathetic, especially when compared to one of his opponents this November.

Of course, we could just spend all of our transportation dollars building and expanding roads, as Dino Rossi and Tim Eyman would have us do, or we could actually give commuters more options… you know, before steadily rising gasoline prices takes our only option away.

This week’s Birds Eye View Contest is posted

Also, Jonathan Gardner longs for the days of slavery

Not a problem:

Putting commuter trains on the Interstate 90 bridge will require protecting the structure against damage from stray electrical current and may require innovative ways to attach the rails to avoid damaging the span, a panel of experts told state lawmakers Wednesday.

A Sound Transit project manager said the trains would likely have to slow for a few seconds while crossing joints between the floating bridge and its approaches. And who would pay for what part of the project is still being worked out.

“This is very new to us, the idea of putting light rail on a floating bridge,” said state project manager Theresa Greco.

I think the idea of transit in general is new to our state’s Department of Highways Transportation. These guys see that center span as theirs, and they look at any project that doesn’t rely on cars or buses as suspect.

During the meeting, Rep. Judy Clibborn compared installing light rail on I-90 with The Big Dig. Really? Putting rails on a floating bridge is the same as the most ambitious public works project in American history? Making “Big Dig” comparisons is a sort of “Godwin’s Law” of transportation arguments: every project you oppose is the same as the “Big Dig.”

How can something be a “Big Dig” when we’re not even digging?

The Government Accountability Office has granted Boeing’s challenge of a lucrative refueling tanker contract, citing numerous errors by the Air Force.

Officially challenging the contract was widely considered to be a risky move on Boeing’s part, as the GAO is not known for lightly granting challenges, and Boeing risked its relationship with military officials. But the GAO decision now gives more ammunition to members of Congress seeking to overturn the $40 billion contract that largely went Europe’s Airbus.

I guess John McCain has some further explaining to do to WA voters.

Jim Webb (D-VA) is once again showing that he’s in a league of his own in the U.S. Senate. Tomorrow, he’ll be convening a hearing on the drug war and exploring the damage it’s doing to our country.

Via The Other Side Online, a photo of the Rossi signs that have been popping up all over Eastern Washington.  Notice there is no “paid for” notice as required by law, allowing Rossi to deny responsibility, but really… we all know these professionally printed signs are as much a part of the Rossi campaign as the BIAW’s multi-million dollar media blitz.

But you know, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.  If it’s okay for Rossi to stoke anti-Seattle passions in Yakima, while the media covers for him back here, then I think Seattle voters deserve to see the same message, paid for by equally anonymous benefactors.  So I’m going to anonymously check out what it costs to put up this sign on a prominent billboard in downtown Seattle, and then anonymously launch an anonymous fund drive to pay for it.

I made it out to last night’s debate between Goldy and Grover Norquist at the South Lake Union Outback Steakhouse. The event was videotaped by the Evergreen Freedom Foundation (EFF) and will be available sometime next week. I was hoping to live-blog as it was happening, but there was no available wi-fi for me to use. So instead I drank some Toohey’s and enjoyed the spectacle.

My take on the debate was that Goldy had an advantage in that he knows Norquist much better than Norquist knows Goldy (and Washington State politics). Goldy used this edge to provide some local examples of why Norquist’s ideas of taxation being antithetical to freedom don’t quite match up with the history of this region, while Norquist could only respond with some lame strawman arguments and occasional outbursts of yelling that gave his appearance an unhinged quality at times.

I imagine the EFF folks who were in attendance saw things differently, but Norquist looked bored and annoyed while Goldy generally made his points and easily responded to the wild accusations from Norquist that people on the left are parasites.

Probably the most striking point that Goldy made was pointing out that Norquist’s support for having government provide money to families to use towards school choice seemed to fly in the face of his overall opposition of wealth re-distribution. Even following the debate, a group of EFF members continued to argue this point, totally unable to grasp it. One man in his twenties finally tried to make the point that educating kids could conceivably be a matter of national security. Thankfully, none of the EFF people stuck around long enough to ride that train of thought to its logical conclusion and watch their entire ideology unravel in front of them.

Norquist was also there to plug his new book “Leave Us Alone.” The title of his book certainly sounds like a political sentiment I can go along with. I strongly feel that government at all levels in this country has gotten too big and has accrued far too much power for its own good. I worry that we don’t exercise enough oversight over how government spends our money and that we’re starting to believe in false choices between security and freedom that will end up with us having neither. But Norquist sees both demons and virtue where none of either exist. It’s hard to take seriously a man who helped elevate the current Bush Administration into power but is still convinced that the threat of big government is unique to the political left.

Even during the debate, there were a number of issues that Norquist brought up that I agreed with (and even Goldy made it clear that he agrees with Norquist on our sugar policy), but by seeing those on the left as “parasites,” he remains lost in a world that exists only in his own mind. Yes, there are unions backed by the left that don’t act in the best interest of the greater public and screw taxpayers. But there are corporations backed by the right who do it as well. And in recent years, corporations that have acted irresponsibly have screwed taxpayers out of far greater sums of money that every single welfare recipient in the country combined.

Both sides of the political divide in this country are driven by interests that – when left unchecked – can end up with attempts to curtail our freedom or to divert taxpayer money towards foolish or dangerous things. Believing that a desire to use taxpayer money in the first place is inherently foolish is the false notion that leads Norquist (and not to mention Jonah Goldberg in his recent laughable book) to conclusions that fall far outside the realm of common sense. Norquist wants to equate the desire for 51% of the population to enact a levy to the desire for 51% of the population to strip individuals of a particular moral choice or to subjugate a subset of the population. When it comes to regulating an economic system that everyone must share, the system’s rules must be determined by the aggregate of the population’s moral outlook, whether that means more government involvement or less. However, when it comes to individual liberty, that should never be subject to a “tyranny of the majority.”

This distinction is crucial for understanding why those, like Norquist, who view taxation as being akin to prison, seem unconcerned and oblivious to the fact that the people who’ve been promising lower taxes for years have now built up the largest prison system in the world. I’m sure he’s convinced himself that the people being locked up are just parasites and need to be taken out of society. When one believes that only the other side is a threat to our freedom, it just makes it easier for his side to become the greater threat to our freedom. This is Norquist’s legacy, and it’s why he’s gone from being a key political player in this country to getting slapped around by a local blogger in a small room at the Outback Steakhouse.

The BIAW plans to spend a shitload of cash, circumventing campaign finance laws in an attempt to open up a second front against Gov. Chris Gregoire’s re-election campaign. But don’t take it from me:

If you’ve listened to drive-time radio in recent weeks, you’ve doubtless heard an anti-Gov. Chris Gregoire radio spot sponsored by an outfit called “ChangePAC.” It’s really the BIAW in disguise.

On a June 2 report, ChangePAC reported a $245,000 donation from the BIAW, enough to more than pay for a radio campaign that to date has totaled just over $200,000.

The BIAW has since brought that number up to $500,000. That’s a half million in radio ads in June. I haven’t heard much about this from the legacy media; I know that “pointing things out” and “drawing conclusions” is icky icky blogger stuff, but when a special interest group flaunts campaign finance rules, I expect to read about it. You know, in the paper.

Yesterday I was driving back to Seattle from the Eastside. I hopped on SR-520 at north Bellevue, and immediately took my place in the line of cars waiting to cross the bridge. The freeway was at a total standstill.

Without AC, my ’88 Chevy POS was getting hotter and hotter. At the same time, I was getting more and more pissed off. I never got this pissed off when riding the commuter bus across the lake. The longer I waited in traffic, the more my mind started to wander.

Right-wingers see transit as an attempt by the “elite” to “force” people into making choices they wouldn’t otherwise make. In the Puget Sound region, our two options are bus or car (or commuter train, for some people). Since our transit system is built on buses which get stuck in traffic, there is little incentive to leave your car at home. Because of this, I’ve been “socially engineered” back into my Chevy. So it’s really the anti-transit folks who take away my choices, and limit my freedom.

We lose productivity and efficiency when we have people in hour-long backups on our freeways. The absence of real alternatives to driving takes away freedom from hardworking folks. Looking at the Sound Transit maps of East Link, I would have been 3/4 of a mile away from a train station, easily in walking distance from my Eastside starting point. Studies show that people will walk much further to a train station than they will a bus stop. From that still-only-on-paper light rail station, it would have been a scant 20 minutes to downtown Seattle.

When we spend big bucks on transit infrastructure, we increase freedom, not decrease it. And you know who understands this better than any Seattle lefty? Try a born-again culture warrior:

Various free market think tanks state that Americans love their automobiles and do not desire rail systems as an alternative. Really?

Each year Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), D.C.’s subway and bus system, reaches a new high in ridership. I have an employee who drove to work. He often was upset upon his arrival. He now lives less than one block from a Metrorail station. He comes to work smiling and continually points to the virtues of the Metrorail system. Metrorail carries close to 600,000 riders per day. Some are tourists but most are workers. If these riders were stranded on the streets of Washington there would be gridlock beyond comprehension.

Many of Free Congress Foundation’s visitors live in the suburbs and take Metrorail and Metrobus. They sing the praises of mass transit. Sure, Americans love their cars. But cars are only good when they are moving.

I’m heading down to Vancouver for a day, and hope to use the train ride to write up a few observations on last night’s debate with Grover Norquist. No doubt my co-bloggers will help fill the void during my travels.

UPDATE:
BlatherWatch has a review of last night’s debate.