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Tonight there will be another fun-filled meeting of the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. I appeal to you to scooter on over and join us for an evening of politics under the influence. We meet at 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Pardon the pun, but it’s an easy commute.

Drinking Liberally’s Seattle hosts are Nick Beaudrot of Electoral Math and HorsesAss contributer TheHim (also at Blog Reload and EFFin’ Unsound).

If you find yourself in the Tri-Cities area, there is a Drinking Liberally for you—Jimmy will have the details.

The Drinking Liberally web site has dates and times for 210 chapters in 44 states (plus DC). And if you don’t find a chapter near you…start one!

Editor & Publisher summarizes today’s editorials slamming President Bush for commuting convicted felon Scooter Libby’s sentence.

Here are a couple of poignant ones:

From the [New York] Times’ Tuesday editorial: “Mr. Bush’s assertion that he respected the verdict but considered the sentence excessive only underscored the way this president is tough on crime when it’s committed by common folk …

“Within minutes of the Libby announcement, the same Republican commentators who fulminated when Paris Hilton got a few days knocked off her time in a county lockup were parroting Mr. Bush’s contention that a fine, probation and reputation damage were ‘harsh punishment’ enough for Mr. Libby.

“Presidents have the power to grant clemency and pardons. But in this case, Mr. Bush did not sound like a leader making tough decisions about justice. He sounded like a man worried about what a former loyalist might say when actually staring into a prison cell.”

Seattle Post-Intelligencer: “President Bush’s commutation of a pal’s prison sentence counts as a most shocking act of disrespect for the U.S. justice system. It’s the latest sign of the huge repairs to American concepts of the rule of law that await the next president.”

San Jose Mercury News: “Other presidents have doled out pardons and the like, usually on the way out of office. It’s never pretty. But few have placed themselves above the law as Bush, Cheney and friends repeatedly have done by trampling civil liberties and denying due process. Chalk up another point for freedom. Scooter’s, at least.”

Read the rest of ’em here.

(Story and photo via AmericaBlog.)

Republican hypocrisy was on full display today. The supposedly “tough on crime” President George W. Bush commuted part of Scooter Libby’s sentence. Literally, Bush gave Scooter a “get out of jail free card.”

Tough on crime my ass.

Libby is still a convicted felon, will have to pay $250,000 and will be on probation should his appeal fail. (The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Libby’s request to remain free on bail while his appeal is under way, so the writing is on the wall as to the persuasiveness of his rather unorthodox legal arguments.)

Apparently obstructing justice, committing perjury, and making false statements is not really so bad if you are a Republican…at least, not bad enough to spend time in prison over.

The hypocrisy is overwhelming. While Governor of Texas, George W. Bush oversaw the execution of over 100 people, including three people who were borderline mentally retarded. Apparently, death is the right sentence for criminals who lack the mental capacity to fully understand their crimes. But Libby, a lawyer who rose to an important position in the White House, who knew full well he was obstructing a very serious criminal investigation, and who presumably has an IQ greater than 70…he walks. Maybe “selective on crime” is a better tag line.

(On the other hand, maybe Bush does not have the mental capacity to understand what he has done? I mean, really, has George W. Bush ever done anything that would peg his I.Q. at over 70?)

Here is how Dubya tried to justify his soft-on-crime decision:

Mr. Libby was sentenced to thirty months of prison, two years of probation, and a $250,000 fine. In making the sentencing decision, the district court rejected the advice of the probation office, which recommended a lesser sentence and the consideration of factors that could have led to a sentence of home confinement or probation.

I respect the jury’s verdict. But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive.

Excessive? Umm…pardon my cynicism, but wasn’t Judge Reggie Walton appointed precisely because he had a no-nonsense, tough-on-crime attitude?

In the end, the hypocrisy should be overshadowed by the simple logic of what just went down. Libby took a bullet for Dick Cheney, who clearly orchestrated a smear campaign against Valerie Wilson. Libby is convicted (instead of Cheney). Bush takes the sting out of Libby’s sentence. Pure and shameless abuse of power. Mark my words…in the end, Bush will pardon Libby.

I mean, that’s just the way organized crime works.

The blog ate my homework edition:

I thought it might be a slow week in bullshit locally until Goldy decided to cover Dino Rossi’s bullshit non profit. Still no word from those guardians of electoral integrity over at (un)Sound Politics. Hmm.

It has been a banner week in prudishness from local people. Lou Guzzo doesn’t like that the federal government took over a legal brothel for a short time almost 2 decades ago after its ownership fell behind on their taxes. And Michael Medved saw a study that the kids are having s-e-x and kinda freaked out.

Some famous people came to town last week. Torture boy going anywhere but his impeachment hearing is bullshit. And when Howard Dean came to town, it inspired a bullshit press release from the state Republicans.

Nationally, Jonah Goldberg changed the name of his bullshit book. That he still has written, so there.

In thank God they aren’t in the majority any more news, Pete Domenici and Norm Coleman are trying to weaken the Violence Against Women Act.

Finally, the big piece of bullshit today is the Scooter Libby pardon not quite a pardon. By a man who once said, “I don’t believe my role [as governor] is to replace the verdict of a jury with my own, unless there are new facts or evidence of which a jury was unaware, or evidence that the trial was somehow unfair.” But those were just for people being killed by the state, not as big a deal as say his friend outing a CIA agent.

Shit. I hate it when I agree with the Seattle Times editorial board. (Actually, I kinda like it when I agree with Times, but it’s a lot more fun to trash them.)

The Times takes former real estate salesman Dino Rossi to task for his faux “nonprofit, nonpartisan” think tank, that’s really just a dodge for running his 2008 gubernatorial campaign without revealing its contributors.

Rossi’s group could well be legal, but falls in a gray area. The group is keeping Rossi’s potential gubernatorial candidacy alive through speeches and travel. […] The state Public Disclosure Commission is doing preliminary work before beginning an investigation on Rossi’s group and may not conduct a full investigation. It should decide whether such a group is legal under campaign laws or if such activities violate the spirit of our laws, which is more likely.

[…] Voters have a right to wonder why Rossi invented a group and pretends it is not part of a campaign.

The Times goes on to say that even if he technically managed to skirt our state’s public disclosure laws, “Rossi ought to announce contributors and the amounts donated.”

Yeah, fat chance. The Stranger’s Josh Feit talked with Forward Washington executive director Ted Dahlstrom today, who said: “We have not violated any rule. We have no plans to disclose our list.”

If anything, the Times’ admonishment was too reserved. Forward Washington is a ruse, and everybody knows it. It doesn’t just allow Rossi to hide the identity of his big money contributors, it also allows them to vastly exceed campaign contribution limits. And oh yeah… Rossi gets to draw a salary… expressly forbidden in a real campaign. Sweet.

Rossi ran in 2004 as an agent of change, promising to shake things up in Olympia after two decades of Democratic governors. Now we see the kind of change Rossi was talking about.

UPDATE:
You know what…? The more I think about it, even I was being too reserved:

I first posted this back on December 23 of 2004. In this Public Disclosure Commission filing, Rossi declares that he is running for governor in 2008, and if you look above his signature you’ll see that he certifies that this report is “true, complete and correct.” And he continued to file with PDC until February of 2006.

So then… what happened to the $324,000 he’d raised for his official 2008 campaign? What happened to the computers, office furniture and other assets his 2008 campaign bought? What happened to the $79,000 he had left over in the bank? Did he really shut down his campaign and start Forward Washington, or did he just hang a different shingle on the door?

Now Rossi claims that he was only raising money to pay for his lawsuit? Well, he was either lying to the PDC back in December of 2004… or he’s lying to the PDC (and the public) now.

There’s no question that Rossi is intentionally skirting the law, but if the PDC determines that this is technically legal, than he has laid out a roadmap for killing public disclosure and campaign contribution limits in Washington state. Every candidate can be “undeclared” or “undecided” until officially filing. Every candidate can run a shadow campaign, hiding contributors, and directly drawing a salary.

The public has a right to know: who is paying Dino Rossi’s bills? The only thing stopping this disclosure is Dino Rossi.

SeattleJew gave me the OK to post this up to the front. He wrote:

Crack and theft, not to mention more violent issues are commingled in the African American community, Can the cops be expected to separate these issues? I guess that would mean only arresting a suspected perp for jay walking? Am I being sarcastic? No. Capone was never charged with murder, etc. “We” the good guys got him for tax evasion. On a grander scale, Nixon was on the road to impeachment not for treason but largely for profanity. Libby, may he rot in jail, was caught for this cover up, How is this different than the cops arresting a pimp for possession of a few black crystals?

Ignoring the fact that I have no idea what drug he’s referring to with the term “black crystals”, is he lying when he later says this?

As for the word Pimp, I did not use it esp. for anyone of any race.

Discuss.

UPDATE: More fun with SeattleJew. He also writes to me:

You seem to have some sort of similar problem with seeing others as racist. Could I call it, “Blogging while disagreeing with Lee?” This is why I warned you of McCarthyism. Throwing words like racist around is too easy.

I agree. Here’s something fun everyone can do. Open up the post where this comment appears and do a Ctrl-F. Type in the word “racist” and click Find Next. Was it in my lengthy post calling for Chief Kerlikowske to resign? Nope, it’s in the first full sentence of the first comment. Written by who?

SeattleJew. Strange that.

There’s a lot of speculation going on as to why Mariner’s manager Mike Hargrove would quit the team in the midst of a promising season and an eight-game winning streak. Well I’ve got my own theory: al-Qaeda.

And in the face of such an imminent threat there’s only one thing the Mariner’s can do if they want to save their season. We must bomb Iran. And Pakistan. Preferably with nuclear weapons.

Destroy “America’s pastime” and you destroy America. It is time for an preemptive strike.

Tonight on “The David Goldstein Show”, 7PM to 10PM on Newsradio 710-KIRO:

7PM: Are you afraid?
The headlines keep screaming about “massive car bombs” in London and Glasgow, but fifty gallons of gas, a propane tank and some nails is no Oklahoma City. Are you willing to give up your civil liberties and commit to “The Long War” to battle threats like this? Is the greatest economic, political and military power in the history of the world really threatened by attacks such as these?

8PM: Is the Clinton Obama nomination inevitable?
Hilary Clinton was long assumed the inevitable Democratic candidate for President, but the second quarter fundraising results suggest it won’t be quite that easy. While Clinton estimates about $27 million raised for the previous quarter, Barack Obama will raise a record $32 million, for a total of $56 million from an astounding 256,000 contributors over the past six months. Is President Obama inevitable?

9PM: Do we have the Will to fix our transportation problems?
Fellow HA blogger Will Kelley-Kamp joins me in the studio to share some unconventional wisdom on the upcoming Sound Transit II/RTID proposal. Are we willing to tax ourselves to build 50 new miles of light rail? And will our grandchildren forgive us if we don’t?

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

Well, HA is still pretty fucked up. Posts keep disappearing. Then reappearing. Then disappearing again. A moment ago, the site loaded back on the old server. And now we’re back on the new, technically challenged one.

I’m not sure I’ll get this addressed until the real support staff come in on Monday morning. So please bear with me.

With the discovery of Mike Webb’s badly decomposed body today, the mystery surrounding the former 710-KIRO host only deepens. His body was found under a tarp, stuffed in the crawl space of his Seattle home, weeks after being reported missing. The King County Medical Examiner’s office has determined that Webb died of multiple stab wounds. The talk-radio blog Blatherwatch is providing ongoing coverage.

I introduce each hour of my weekend show, proudly announcing that I am “bringing liberal political talk back to Newsradio 710-KIRO.” I always emphasize the word “back,” and in doing so, I’m always referring to Mike Webb, who sat in front of that very same microphone, infuriating local conservatives for nearly a decade.

But while I’m proud to carry on Webb’s legacy of speaking truth to power, I must confess that I rarely listened to his show. So Saturday night during the 8PM hour of my show, I’ll play a few clips of Webb at work, and unable to present a fitting tribute of my own, I’ll ask his friends and fans to call in with their own remembrances of Webb and his radio career.

It’s not a good week to be Mitt Romney. The story of how he once drove across New England with his dog on the roof of his car is getting some serious attention, but that’s actually pretty minor compared to what two of his close associates have been involved with:

As The Hill noted last week, 133 plaintiffs filed a civil suit against Romney’s Utah finance co-chair, Robert Lichfield, and his various business entities involved in residential treatment programs for adolescents. The umbrella group for his organization is the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASPS, sometimes known as WWASP) and Lichfield is its founder and is on its board of directors.

The suit alleges that teens were locked in outdoor dog cages, exercised to exhaustion, deprived of food and sleep, exposed to extreme temperatures without adequate clothing or water, severely beaten, emotionally brutalized, and sexually abused and humiliated. Some were even made to eat their own vomit.

But the link to teen abuse goes far higher up in the Romney campaign. Romney’s national finance co-chair is a man named Mel Sembler. A long time friend of the Bushes, Sembler was campaign finance chair for the Republican party during the first election of George W. Bush, and a major fundraiser for his father.

Like Lichfield, Sembler also founded a nationwide network of treatment programs for troubled youth. Known as Straight Inc., from 1976 to 1993, it variously operated nine programs in seven states. At all of Straight’s facilities, state investigators and/or civil lawsuits documented scores of abuses including teens being beaten, deprived of food and sleep for days, restrained by fellow youth for hours, bound, sexually humiliated, abused and spat upon.

According to the L.A. Times, California investigators said that at Straight teens were “subjected to unusual punishment, infliction of pain, humiliation, intimidation, ridicule, coercion, threats, mental abuse… and interference with daily living functions such as eating, sleeping and toileting.”

You can read more about the history of Mel Sembler’s “rehab” centers here and here. A compendium of links can be found here (a lot of the stories are not for the weak of stomach). When Romney says he wants to double Guantanamo, I believe him. He’ll need the extra room if he thinks we should be sending our kids there too.

The site was down, sorta, for I don’t know how long, or exactly why. Apparently, most people could still access the site via Internet Explorer, but not via Safari or Firefox, and nobody could leave comments. Odd.

Anyway, dealing with this has killed my morning. Talk amongst yourselves.

UPDATE:
My hosting company claims it made no changes one way or the other, so apparently, HA magically fixed itself… you know… just the way free markets do.

Netroots favorite Darcy Burner may yet face a challenger for the Democratic nomination in Washington’s 8th Congressional District, but she’s already reinforced her standing as the primary front runner, hiring Dan Kully of Laguens, Hamburger, Kully, Klose to produce TV and radio spots for her 2008 campaign.

And man does he work fast.

Widely acclaimed for his work on U.S. Sen. Jon Tester’s high profile win in Montana — including the memorable hair cut ad — Kully has become one of the hottest properties in the business. And, after an impressive, come-from-nowhere 2006 campaign that brought her within a couple points of the Republican incumbent, Burner found herself aggressively courted by some of the nation’s top media firms.

That Burner and Kully chose each other, says a lot about the kind of campaign we can expect to see in 2008. From this blogger’s perspective, it’s a “you got peanut butter in my chocolate” kinda fit.

Burner is likable, funny, quirky and damn smart — qualities that never fully came across in her well-produced but run-of-the-mill TV spots. Sure she’s young, and a bit of a geek, but those should be pluses in a district that’s home to Microsoft and many of our nation’s high tech leaders.

Kully’s genius is at communicating a candidate’s strengths, even if they’re not quite the strengths the inside the Beltway crowd typically focuses on. He’s creative, aggressive, incisive and not afraid to flout convention. And as a huge bonus, he’s local, heading up LHKK’s Seattle office. Not only does Kully know the region and the state — he did the highly effective media for the No campaigns that helped defeat I-912 (gas tax repeal) and I-933 (takings) — he’s geographically situated to give Burner the attention she needs as the campaign unfolds.

The spot above, the first fruit of the Burner/Kully collaboration, is a good indicator of where this campaign intends to go… and where it should have gone in the final months of the 2006 season. It is a parody of Dave Reichert’s derisively sexist “job interview” ad, and hits back hard at the congressman’s own poor performance in office. If Burner’s biggest perceived weakness is lack of experience in public office, it is also one of her greatest assets, especially with Reichert continuing to carry water for an unpopular President on many of our nation’s most pressing issues. Burner is put forth as an agent of change, a role for which political outsiders are particularly well suited.

The spot also displays a willingness to be as creative as the candidate, and that’s a welcome change from the focus-grouped messaging of the 2006 campaign, and the paint-by-numbers look-and-feel of its media.

Burner is in the process of putting together a team that should strike fear into the heart of Reichert’s handlers, and reason into the minds of potential Democratic challengers. Burner is also on track to come out of the quarter as one of the top candidates nationwide, but she’s still about $20,000 shy of her target. So if you want Burner to be the candidate in 2008, send a message now by sending her some money.

It’s gonna be a helluva a campaign.

When Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels decided to start signing up US cities in the fight against global warming, I don’t think he ever though he’d be this successful:

Mayor Greg Nickels welcomed 52 more cities to Seattle’s climate protection campaign bringing the total to 592 as an influential organization of mayors unanimously supported a national goal of reducing climate pollution 80 percent by 2050.

Five hundred and ninety-two? To think, this whole thing started a few years ago.

“It’s time for the federal government to follow the lead of mayors across this country and begin taking action to address the growing threat of global warming,” Nickels said. “Everyone has a role to play in saving our planet from the effects of climate change. Cities have rolled up their sleeves and now it is time for the federal government to do the same.”

The 52 cities joining the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement come from just two states, Florida and Iowa. The announcement means 596 cities across America have now joined the Seattle-led effort to cut greenhouse gas pollution.

While conservatives extol the virtues of “local control”, that creed goes out the door when it comes to global warming. Righties mocked Nickels for his DIY approach, saying it wouldn’t add up to much. Hundreds of cities later, their apologies aren’t forthcoming. (I’m sure their congratulatory emails are just stuck in the “tubes”)

Meanwhile, the full U.S. Conference of Mayors today endorsed a resolution sponsored by Nickels that calls on federal leaders to approve aggressive climate pollution reductions as part of an ambitious, five-point climate-protection plan.

Co-sponsored by the mayors of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, Miami and 24 other cities, Nickels’ resolution calls on the 110th Congress and the White House to set a national greenhouse gas reduction target of 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, a threshold most scientists say is necessary to stabilize the climate. Coupled with the target is a call for a flexible national cap and trade system and incentives to reward energy conservation and development of clean energy technologies.

The conventional wisdom on global warming is that the American people aren’t ready to makes the changes necessary. With so many mayors signing on to needed legislation, why is Congress so gutless? Folks are ready for the kind of inventive free-market solutions to global warming. It’s just the guy in the White House who doesn’t get it.

Since dropping its racial tiebreaker in the face of a lawsuit by parents, Seattle’s high schools have grown dramatically less integrated. And now that the U.S. Supreme Court has issued a sweeping, 5-4 decision ruling Seattle’s racial tiebreaker unconstitutional, school districts across the nation will swiftly re-segregate.

Indeed, but for some caveats in Justice Anthony Kennedy’s concurring opinion, the Roberts Court has all but overturned the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision that led to desegregation throughout the South and the rest of the nation. Writing in dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer warns that this is a decision we will all regret.

Finally, what of the hope and promise of Brown? For much of this Nation’s history, the races remained divided. It was not long ago that people of different races drank from separate fountains, rode on separate buses, and studied in separate schools. In this Court’s finest hour, Brown v. Board of Education challenged this history and helped to change it. For Brown held out a promise. It was a promise embodied in three Amendments designed to make citizens of slaves. It was the promise of true racial equality.not as a matter of fine words on paper, but as a matter of everyday life in the Nation’s cities and schools. It was about the nature of a democracy that must work for all Americans. It sought one law, one Nation, one people, not simply as a matter of legal principle but in terms of how we actually live.

Not everyone welcomed this Court’s decision in Brown. Three years after that decision was handed down, the Governor of Arkansas ordered state militia to block the doors of a white schoolhouse so that black children could not enter. The President of the United States dispatched the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, Arkansas, and federal troops were needed to enforce a desegregation decree. See Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U. S. 1 (1958). Today, almost 50 years later, attitudes toward race in this Nation have changed dramatically. Many parents, white and black alike, want their children to attend schools with children of different races. Indeed, the very school districts that once spurned integration now strive for it. The long history of their efforts reveals the complexities and difficulties they have faced. And in light of those challenges, they have asked us not to take from their hands the instruments they have used to rid their schools of racial segregation, instruments that they believe are needed to overcome the problems of cities divided by race and poverty. The plurality would decline their modest request.

The plurality is wrong to do so. The last half-century has witnessed great strides toward racial equality, but we have not yet realized the promise of Brown. To invalidate the plans under review is to threaten the promise of Brown. The plurality’s position, I fear, would break that promise. This is a decision that the Court and the Nation will come to regret.

Seattle is gradually becoming a segregated school district. Those on the right who cheer this decision, and who cheer their success at establishing a rigidly ideological majority on the bench that has no use for the doctrine of stare decisis and no respect for the wisdom of those justices who came before them, will be held politically accountable for the consequences of their agenda. Unfortunately, politics will come four years too late to save our nation from the Roberts Court.

Republicans should beware. This is a court, that should it live up to its principles, will overturn Roe v. Wade. And that disaster would surely lead to the unraveling of the Republican Party, if not its permanent destruction.