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BlueNC (via Postman) picks Rep. Adam Smith as the winner of the longshot category in the Democratic VP sweepstakes:

An early Obama backer and effective surrogate he’s shown he can handle himself well with the media.

Really? Postman should know better than to repeat speculation like this without reporting the fatal biographical detail that absolutely removes Rep. Smith for consideration for the VP slot: he’s authored a couple posts here on HA.

And as everybody knows, foul-mouthed amen bloggers like me and Rep. Smith simply cannot be taken seriously.

Somewhat confused by this morning’s Seattle Times editorial, “Expand GI benefits,” I sat down to pick apart its arguments, only to find… there aren’t any. At least none that adequately defend a central part of their thesis.

Let the fisking begin.

A VASTLY improved and expanded package of GI educational benefits is caught in an unseemly standoff between Congress and the White House. Both manage to come off as penny-pinching ingrates.

I think it fair to conclude from the lede that the Times has two theses: 1) expanding GI educational benefits is a good thing (a sentiment with which I heartily agree); and 2) the “ingrates” in both Congress and the White House are equally to blame. Now let’s see how they go about defending their theses.

The benefits have not been updated for a generation, and the expense of the 10-year package is $52 billion — about five months of fighting the Iraq war.

Chalk that up as an adequate argument in defense of Thesis 1. I haven’t double-checked their facts, but throwing caution to the wind, we’ll just take them at their word this time.

The federal government is bleeding red ink, but a mix of Republicans and Democrats has suddenly gotten fussy about how the benefits are dealt with in the budget.

Really? Do tell.

President Bush threatens a veto because he objects to the benefit being included with his request for extra money for the war.

And the Democratic Congress?

Bush and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., claim re-enlistment rates would suffer if the maximum benefits were available after three years.

And the Democratic Congress?

The GOP presidential nominee wants those with more years of service to receive full benefits. Others counter the expanded benefits will boost enlistments.

And the Democratic Congress?

The Democratic Congress passed the new GI Bill, against the Republican objections, and now President Bush threatens to veto it. And this makes the current Congress a bunch of “penny-pinching ingrates,” how?

Congress and the White House have shameful records of providing for the welfare of the men and women in the U.S. armed forces.

True, but Congress has mostly been in the hands of Republicans for the past decade or so, so it seems kinda odd to blame Democratic members of this current Congress—you know, the Congress that just passed the expanded GI benefits the Times wants—for the admittedly “shameful record” of members who came before them, both Democrats and Republicans alike.

They were sent to war lightly equipped and have returned home wounded in body and spirit to often inadequate care.

Absolutely true, but I understand that as a defense of Thesis 1, not Thesis 2.

Our leaders ask extraordinary things of our all-volunteer military. Multiple overseas tours are routine, rotation cycles have been sped up, tours were extended to 15 months, and exhausted troops shuttle between Iraq and Afghanistan.

Again, a reasonable defense of Thesis 1.

Let the pragmatic at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue call the new GI educational benefits a cost of doing business.

Can’t argue with that. But it might useful, for the sake of argument, if the Times would bother to explain what was so unpragmatic about Congress passing the exact benefits their editorial demands?

For the rest of the nation, these overdue improvements represent both a humble thank you for sacrifices made and a measure of tribute for keeping a universal military draft at bay.

Turns out, they’re not so bad at explicating that Thesis 1 stuff after all. But I’m still waiting for a defense of Thesis 2.

Congress and the White House ask a lot of the military, but are only too willing to show their appreciation with rhetoric.

Um… and I hate to sound like a broken record here, but… Congress passed the GI Bill. How is that just rhetoric?

I think—and given the muddled nature of the editorial I’m not exactly sure—that the Times is criticizing Congress for attaching the GI Bill to a supplemental defense appropriations bill. That’s one of President Bush’s own complaints, though he objects to it because it makes the measure harder to veto. Standing on its own, the GI Bill wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance of a veto override, so it seems odd that the Times would object to such a pragmatic political maneuver at the same time it bemoans the lack of pragmatism “at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.”

I suppose the Times’ editors might have some other gripes about Congress and its Democratic leaders’ course of action on the GI Bill, but they haven’t bothered to voice them in this particular editorial. Likewise lacking is any constructive suggestion as to how Congress might overcome the White House’s objections, or move effectively forward in the face of a Presidential veto.

So why would the Times go out of its way to assign equal blame to Congress as an institution (and in such an unsupported manner), when it is clear that it is the White House and its Republican allies on Capitol Hill who threaten to block the GI Bill? Because it relieves them of the burden of calling out Rep. Dave Reichert, who voted against the GI Bill on the grounds that it levied a 0.47 percent tax surcharge on the portion of household income above $1 million a year.

Of course, my thesis is pure supposition, but as such it is at least as well supported as those of the Times.

Late Friday afternoon I received the following email from TVW President Greg Lane:

Dear Mr. Goldstein:

As the President of TVW, Washington State’s Public Affairs Television Network, I am writing to inform you that we are contacting YouTube and requesting they remove video clips posted which violate our copyright.

Because our commitment is to “gavel-to-gavel” coverage of statewide public affairs, TVW does not allow editing of our programming, and our copyright generally requires prior approval before any use can be made.

TVW’s unique contribution to the public debate in our state is to bring the entirety of events such as debates, conventions and legislative proceedings before citizens. As a result, we do allow individuals to link to complete TVW events. For example, if you would like to link to the entire event you posted on your blog on June 4, you can find it here, and you are very welcome to link to the complete event. If you would like links to other events, you can find them by searching TVW’s website. Our staff is also available to provide assistance if needed.

Thank you for your cooperation. Please feel free to contact me if you have questions about our policy.

Regards,

Greg Lane
President

Notice that Lane (formerly Republican AG Rob McKenna’s chief of staff) didn’t ask me to remove the clip, he simply informed me that they were going straight to YouTube. Well, I wasn’t in a very good mood at the time, and was in a rush to head out the door, so I just quickly and curtly replied that if YouTube pulled the clip “I suppose I’ll just have to serve it myself and leave it to you to sue me.”

And that’s exactly what I intend to do, more or less… though I probably should have explicated my reasons so as not to come off as angry or impolite. My bad.

The clip in question consists of only 37 seconds out of an hour and five minutes of total coverage, and while I sympathize with TVW’s mission, if there is ever an example of the “fair use” doctrine, this is it. I have updated the original post to include a copyright notice and a link to the source video, and if I’m forced to repost I suppose I’ll try to edit the clip down to under 30 seconds. But that’s about as far as I’m willing to go without a court order.

TVW can write whatever it wants into its license agreement, but they can’t automatically impose more stringent copyright restrictions than provided by law. I signed no contract nor agreed to any license; I merely downloaded the WMV file from the TVW website (using perfectly legal software), excerpted a contiguous clip, and uploaded it to YouTube. My actions were both ethical and legal.

There are reasons why the courts have carved out, and Congress eventually codified, a fair use exemption for the purposes of news reporting and commentary, no doubt one of them being that an informed electorate, absolutely crucial to the functioning of our democracy, has needs that clearly trump the prerogatives of the copyright holder. And there is no better indication of the newsworthiness of Dave Reichert’s embarrassing speech within the context of the current election cycle than the fact that his campaign (or his party) has obviously prompted TVW to seek removal of this easily accessible clip, knowing full well that few voters will bother to sit through the entire hour-plus of tedious speechifying.

The disputed clip is far from the only TVW material on YouTube; hell, I’ve had another TVW clip in my publicly viewable YouTube gallery for over a year and a half! Clearly, TVW does not actively search YouTube for potential copyright violations—as far as I can tell they only go after those clips they’re pressured to go after.

Somebody complained to TVW, and it’s not hard to guess who or why. Reichert’s campaign wants to prevent us from easily comparing and contrasting his words before a gathering of the party elite, with his promises to voters, because these words are damaging. And the best way to hide Reichert’s public words from the public is to keep them buried 41 minutes into a 65 minute piece of insufferably boring streaming video.

Of course, if Reichert isn’t embarrassed to have his speech widely disseminated, he could always waive the extraordinary protections TVW is seeking on his behalf, and publicly urge them to grant reproduction without restriction, rather than privately nudging them to harass me for exercising my legal rights. But I’m not holding my breath.

So for now, enjoy Reichert promising to cut Medicare… while you can:

(©2006 TVW. View full source here.)

UPDATE:
YouTube finally pulled the clip, so I’ve uploaded it to LiveLeak. (I’m willing to play this game as long as TVW is.)

“The way to continue our fight now, to accomplish the goals for which we stand is to take our energy, our passion, our strength, and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama the next President of the United States. Today, as I suspend my campaign, I congratulate him on the victory he has won and the extraordinary race he has run. I endorse him and throw my full support behind him. And I ask all of you to join me in working as hard for Barack Obama as you have for me.

I have served in the Senate with him for four years, I have been in this campaign with him for sixteen months. I have stood on the stage and gone toe-to-toe with him in twenty-two debates. I’ve had a front row seat to his candidacy and I have seen his strength and determination, his grace and his grit. In his own life, Barack Obama has lived the American Dream. As a community organizer and State Senate and as a United States Senator, he has dedicated himself to insuring the dream is realized and in this campaign, he has inspired so many to become involved in the democratic process, and invested in our common future. Now when I started this race, I intended to win back the White House and make sure we have a President who puts our country back on the path to peace, prosperity and progress. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do by insuring that Barack Obama walks through the doors of the Oval Office on January 20, 2009.”

Ah well, so much for Republican dreams of a divided Democratic Party.  I guess Republicans will just have to run on their merits, rather than counting on the Democrats to self-destruct, thus electing McCain by default.

McCain in hot water over lobster rumor!

Democrats Work is bringing Gen. Wes Clark into one lucky congressional district to participate in a community service project, and today is your last day to vote for Darcy Burner and WA-08. I’m hearing rumors that she is neck in neck with Charlie Brown in CA-04, so if you haven’t already voted in this round, please vote for Darcy now, and bring Gen. Clark in WA-08!

Of course, you really can’t believe anything you see in this video, or anywhere else on HA, because I’m just one of those “amen bloggers.” So move along… nothing to see here.

You know it’s a bad political climate for Washington Republicans when even the man at the top of their state ticket has chosen to officially deny his affiliation with the party. Dino Rossi filed for governor this week, and under the bizarre rules of our new top-two primary has declared his affiliation as “Prefers G.O.P. Party.”

The G.O.P. Party…? What the hell is that? The “Grand Old Party Party” …?

State Attorney General Rob McKenna has declared that he “Prefers Republican Party,” as have Secretary of State Sam Reed and Commissioner of Public Lands Doug Southerland. And so have US Representatives Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Doc Hastings and Dave Reichert, as in fact has every other Republican declaring for federal or statewide office.

But Rossi, no, he’s too ashamed (or savvy) to have the Republican brand attached to his name. What a weasel.

(H/T Richard.)

UPDATE:
Just to be clear, Dino Rossi filed as a “Republican” in 2004, so it’s not like he doesn’t know how to spell the word.

The AP’s Gene Johnson has the story of a local Marine whose family has been kept in the dark about the circumstances of his non-combat death.

According to Jonathan Stein at Mother Jones, Cook Political Report has just changed their ratings on 10 House races, all of them with Republican incumbents, and all of them moving in the Democratic direction. And one of these, of course, is WA-08, where Darcy Burner looks increasingly well situated to unseat Dave Reichert.

CA-04 — OPEN (Doolittle) — Solid Republican to Likely Republican
CO-04 — Marilyn Musgrave — Lean Republican to Toss Up
CT-04 — Chris Shays — Lean Republican to Toss Up
IL-10 — Mark Kirk — Lean Republican to Toss Up
NM-02 — OPEN (Pearce) — Likely Republican to Lean Republican
NY-29 — Randy Kuhl — Lean Republican to Toss Up
NC-08 — Robin Hayes — Lean Republican to Toss Up
OH-01 — Steve Chabot — Lean Republican to Toss Up
VA-02 — Thelma Drake — Likely Republican to Lean Republican
WA-08 — Dave Reichert — Lean Republican to Toss Up

Both Cook and CQ have now upgraded WA-08 from “leans Republican” to “toss up” and “no clear favorite” respectively. I’m guessing Rothenberg will follow shortly.

UPDATE:
Here’s the summary analysis from Cook:

WA-08 Dave Reichert
Lean Republican to Toss Up
This high-tech, upper-income district in the Seattle suburbs is prototypical Obama terrain. Although it is likely Reichert’s reputation as a law-and-order moderate will allow him to outperform McCain by a handful of points, it simply may not be enough. Even if she is slightly to the district’s left, Democrat Darcy Burner is running a more focused campaign than she ran in 2006 and still lacks a record to attack. Reichert, who will not be able to spend Burner and the DCCC dollar-for-dollar this time, will look more like an underdog this time around – which is not a terrible image to possess in this climate. This race appears headed to another photo finish.

So… Joni Balter kinda-sorta admits that Washington is not a battleground state… and then expends 740 words pretending it is. And we learned what from this column?

You know, the main downside to reading the Seattle Times online for free, is that I can’t demand a refund or threaten to cancel my subscription.

Matthew Yglesias makes an astute observation:

In some ways, I think McCain himself doesn’t quite realize how Bush-esque he is. He clearly doesn’t like Bush, and has been disliking him for a long time. But that kind of personalized, overblown disdain for Bush-the-man can wind up leading you to overestimate Bush-the-grand-strategist. To McCain, Bush’s policies have failed because of Bush. Replace Bush with McCain and shift tactics around the margins, and the same basic ideas should work out fine. It’s a nice theory, but I don’t think it’s a true theory.

McCain has a tendency to say things on the campaign trail that simply aren’t true, such as his claim Tuesday night that he “strongly disagreed with the Bush administration’s mismanagement of the war in Iraq…” a claim clearly contradicted by many prior public statements.

It could be, as Yglesias suggests, that McCain has conflated his personal dislike for Bush with his personal evaluation of the administration’s strategies and tactics—McCain may actually believe he opposed Bush, despite his near-lockstep support for the President’s policies. Or perhaps he simply doesn’t remember critical facts about key policies and issues. Or maybe he’s just lying.

Whatever. McCain himself may believe he is a “maverick,” but over the past few years both his Senate voting record and his record of public statements say otherwise. These are contradictions of which voters will be made well aware over the coming months.

George Friedman at Stratfor, a publication by current and retired intelligence officials, lays out the stark reality of what’s happening in Mexico right now, warning of that country’s potential to become a failed state. The root of the crisis is the growing influence of the cartels who operate an approximately $40 billion a year industry in illegal drugs, nearly all of which is consumed in the United States. Friedman sees a possibility that the cartels, who already dominate most of northern Mexico, could soon become powerful enough to usurp the power of the elected government in Mexico City as well.

The recent violence from Mexico has been staggering. Over a thousand people, including hundreds of police, have already been killed this year in fighting between federal officials and the cartels. The cartels operate with such impunity in parts of the country that they’re able to publicly advertise for recruits. Some Mexican police officers in the border region are even attempting to flee to the United States.

Friedman makes the appropriate comparison to 1920s alcohol prohibition, reminding us that during that time, the city of Chicago had a failed government. And had Al Capone and his men become powerful enough to defeat the federal agents, America could have become a failed state. Thankfully, America only allowed its doomed experiment in alcohol prohibition to last for just over a decade. Our current prohibition, however, has been going on for several decades now and has turned all of Mexico into an even more extreme version of 1920s Chicago with modern weapons.

Occasionally, we see some intelligent discussion of this growing problem in the traditional media (like this column from Neal Peirce in the Seattle Times last week). But in the political realm, there are no solutions on the horizon. The only thing being proposed is the Merida Initiative, a laughable effort to provide Mexico with $1.4 billion that the Mexican government might even turn down because of the strings attached.

I’m sure that much will be made over the disagreements between the Democrats and the Republicans in Congress over the Merida Initiative, but neither party has the political courage to do what Friedman explains is the only realistic solution:

One way to deal with the problem would be ending the artificial price of drugs by legalizing them. This would rapidly lower the price of drugs and vastly reduce the money to be made in smuggling them. Nothing hurt the American cartels more than the repeal of Prohibition, and nothing helped them more than Prohibition itself. Nevertheless, from an objective point of view, drug legalization isn’t going to happen. There is no visible political coalition of substantial size advocating this solution. Therefore, U.S. drug policy will continue to raise the price of drugs artificially, effective interdiction will be impossible, and the Mexican cartels will prosper and make war on each other and on the Mexican state.

I’ve been asked recently why I focus so much on the topic of drug policy when most of the country still considers it a political minefield. It’s because even though it’s a political minefield, that doesn’t mean it’s any less urgent to fix. Our current approach to dealing with the drug trade in Mexico is piñata policy, put on a blindfold and swing a big stick hoping that you hit something and a bunch of candy falls out. Many people think that we can do this forever, just pretending that it’s the best way while allowing us to keep from breaking free from the drug war mindset. They’re wrong. And the damage in Mexico (not to mention Afghanistan, Colombia, and in our inner cities) is the proof that they’re wrong. The millions of refugees from this war who have already fled to the United States from Mexico should be a good indication of that.

This country needs to develop a viable constituency that demands from the next American administration that we start dismantling the international drug war and to deal with the problem of drug addiction in a way that doesn’t bring a country of 100 million people to the verge of becoming a failed state. Yeah, I talk about the drug war a lot. I do it because we can’t afford not to any more.

[h/t to Transform for the link]

As I’ve posted previously, there’s more to Dave Reichert’s abusive franking practices than simply a flagrant waste of taxpayer money, for it is not just the medium that is at question here, but the message itself.

Yesterday I contrasted two franked mail pieces, one in which Reichert promises “bold” earmark reform, and the other in which he brags about the amount of earmarked bacon he brought home to his district. You can’t get much more hypocritical than that.

Or can you?

In a widely distributed franked mail piece from 2007 headlined “Issue Alert: Medicare Cuts,” Reichert touts his opposition to “devastating cuts” in senior benefits:

In this taxpayer funded mailer, Reichert promises to “uphold my pledge to protect Medicare,” from, you know, all those social service slashing Democrats in Congress.

And what kind of pledge exactly is Reichert talking about? Well, judging from this clip from May of 2006, back when he thought he and his fellow Republicans would still control Congress in the coming session, it wasn’t much of one:

Yup, when Reichert talks about taking a “closer look at government waste,” the first place he looks is Medicare and Medicaid, because “you get the biggest bang for the buck when you cut those programs.”

Wow. That’s some pledge.

Reichert has sent out over one million pieces of franked mail since winning reelection in November, 2006—none of them fact checked by media truth squads, none of them rebutted by the opposition, and all of them paid for with taxpayer money. He uses his franking privileges to create a demonstrably false impression about his votes in Congress and his stance on the issues.

And as far as I can tell, our local editorialists and columnists just don’t seem to care.

UPDATE:
The video clip above is ©2006 by TVW. You can view full coverage of Reichert’s speech here.

UPDATE, UPDATE:
YouTube has pulled the clip at TVW’s request, so exercising my rights under the fair use exemption, I have reposted the clip using a different service.