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Over on Slog, Eli Sanders has been holding Rep. Dave Reichert’s feet to the fire (here and here) over the congressman’s flexuous ramblings on the subject of global warming. First “Doubting Dave” told the Seattle Times that he questions the existence of global warming:

“The problem is, you have some scientists who say it’s happening, and some who say it’s not happening. The problem is the Sierra Club says that every scientist says it is,” said Reichert, a member of the House Science Committee.

“I’m going to wait until all the facts are in. There were many scientists who used to say the world was flat.”

Um, actually, scientists never said the world was flat. Only anti-scientific, religious nutcases did. But I digress.

Reichert said global warming is a “possibility” but views the science with the same sense of skepticism he held as a homicide detective for the King County Sheriff’s Office.

“I will be convinced when I’m convinced,” he said. “As an investigator, I’ve not been conclusively convinced.”

Uh-huh. Just like the skepticism Reichert showed when he had the Green River Killer in custody, but let him go, only to nab him again a decade or so later when the Sheriff was “conclusively convinced” by the DNA evidence.

But wait… I’m not being fair to Reichert, because according to his folks, the papers got it all wrong! In fact, the papers got it so wrong that “Reichert campaign spokeswoman” Kimberly Cadena actually called up Sanders to ask for an interview, so she could set the record straight, informing Sanders that he read something into the Times piece that simply wasn’t there:

Reichert has never questioned the existence of global warming. […] He continues to investigate the cause of global warming. Global warming exists. That’s the reality.

That’s right, and I’m sure Reichert will eventually finger the perpetrator, oh, saaaaay, sometime around the year 2024… or maybe not until the Cascade snowpack runs dry and the Southcenter Mall lies under six feet of water?

Look, we all know that Reichert’s not the brightest bulb in the GOP caucus (and from recent events, that’s saying something) so we expect him to say stupid things he doesn’t really mean… to say in public. But if I was Sanders I’d be little insulted by Cadena, who clearly doesn’t respect him as a reporter. What… did she think? Sanders would just accept that explanation and print a retraction? No, he did exactly what you’d expect a self-respecting journalist to do… he asked Times reporter Jonathan Martin to clarify exactly what he asked the congressman, and exactly what the congressman answered. Martin said he asked a two-part question: does Reichert believe global warming exists, and if so, what does he believe is causing it?

I tried to be as clear as possible in asking the question in a two-part way. It’s possible he may have misunderstood the essence of my questions, but I went back on the issue with him at least twice during our interview. His position on global warming was crystal clear to me. He just hadn’t been convinced of its existence. I think that’s what the article says. […] He said the existence of global warming, and human’s role in it, was a possibility, but that he hadn’t seen conclusive evidence to satisfy him on either of the questions.

Hmm. Not really a position you want to take in such an environmentally conscious district like the 8th. Which I suppose is why Reichert staffers stopped letting him speak on the issue, instead sending in Cadena to do damage control. What this tells me is that Reichert’s folks don’t have much faith in their candidate’s ability to accurately explicate his own stance on the issue. (Or perhaps, maybe they’re afraid he will.) You know… they think he’s stupid. Or wrong. Or both.

But the Times’ David Postman is more charitable. He gives the campaign brownie points for aggressively pursuing this:

Good on Cadena, too, for making the effort with Sanders. The Stranger isn’t necessarily a friendly place for Reichert, and others might not have bothered.

Hmm. Only thing is, there’s something that both Postman and Sanders have missed. Cadena isn’t Reichert’s campaign spokesperson. She’s his Congressional office press secretary. (At least she was a couple of days ago.) And to have an office staffer doing campaign work like this is a real ethical and legal no-no.

And while I suppose it’s possible that by the time Cadena contacted Sanders she had taken a leave from the office and officially joined the campaign, that doesn’t excuse the press release she posted to Reichert’s congressional website “in response to media reports.”

To me, that’s a pretty damn clear use of a government website for campaign purposes. Though if I’ve got it wrong, I invite Cadena to give me a call and clear things up.

UPDATE:
In the comment thread, Cadena clarifies:

I’m pleased to clarify, David. I took a leave of absence from Congressman Reichert’s congressional office beginning on Saturday, September 30th. As of Tuesday, October 3rd, I officially assumed the role of campaign spokesperson on Congressman Reichert’s reelection campaign. The press was notified of the change. I hope that clarifies any question you had, David.

Kimberly Cadena
Spokesperson for the Reelect Dave Reichert Campaign

Thanks for being such an avid reader, Cadena. I suppose I should have asked her directly, but the campaign has been so unresponsive to my queries in the past that thought didn’t even occur to me. And like I said, it still doesn’t explain the press release.

And by the way, when campaigns shake up their staff just five weeks before an election, it’s usually an indicator that they’re a little nervous. I’m just saying.

October 4, 2006

Dear Rep. McMorris:

I have been disturbed and outraged by the news coming from Congress this past week. I believe I must take action to express the growing concerns of voters in the Fifth Congressional District.

With this letter, I am officially asking you to take a public stand in calling for the resignation of House Speaker Dennis Hastert. Hastert has apparently not only failed to protect House pages from further abuse by a member of the House, he also failed to hold that member accountable for his actions. His apparent willingness to suppress potentially criminal activity among House members makes him unfit for leadership.

I believe it is your duty to speak out on this matter at once to help cleanse Congress of a cloud of deep distrust.

Sincerely,

Peter Goldmark

My God was it busy at Drinking Liberally last night. So busy that we had to record the podcast in three separate segments. So busy, that Congressman Jim McDermott was in the house and we didn’t even manage to fit him in. So you’ll just have to settle for Congressman Jay Inslee talking about the Mark Foley scandal, and peace activist Cindy Sheehan living up to Podcasting Liberally’s high journalistic standards, and saying the word "fuck." And oh yeah, we talked about a couple statewide initiatives too.

Joining me in an inebriated, round-robin dialectic were Mollie, Lee, Carl, and Chad. In our first segment Rep. Inslee joined us to discuss the dramatic unraveling of the House Republican leadership in the wake of the Foley scandal. Then Sandeep Kaushik and 43rd LD shoe-in Jamie Pedersen sat down to argue against initiatives 920 and 933, respectively. And finally, Cindy sat down for an enlightenng and informal conversation about her accidental activism, and her new book "Peace Mom: a Mother’s Journey Through Heartache to Activism." And she said the word "fuck."

The show is 01:11:20, and is available here as a 53 MB MP3. Please visit PodcastingLiberally.com for complete archives and RSS feeds.

[Recorded live at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to Confab creators Gavin and Richard for producing the show.

Rep. Cathy McMorris is back in Spokane, facing a tougher reelection campaign than I’m sure she ever imagined.

Peter Goldmark signs are sprouting like wheat across farm country, and campaign sources tell me that he closed the third quarter $80,000 ahead of his fundraising target. Goldmark didn’t jump into the race until April, yet he’s on track to raise over $1 million by election day, the vast majority of it from individual donors. Meanwhile, I’m hearing whispers through the grapevine that some independent expenditures could be coming into the 5th CD, further leveling the playing field. If that’s not a sign of growing confidence in Goldmark’s surging candidacy, I don’t know what is.

Anybody who expects a McMorris cakewalk simply isn’t paying attention. Goldmark is perhaps the best Democratic challenger in decades, and there hasn’t been an anti-incumbent mood like this in the district since 1994. President Bush’s approval ratings are now negative and trending downward in Eastern Washington, a dramatic illustration of the political climate change that is impacting reliably Republican districts nationwide. And if all that weren’t tough enough, McMorris comes home with her party mired in the ever-widening Predatorgate scandal.

Don’t think the backlash to the House Leadership’s coddling of a sexual predator can reach all the way into the Goldmark/McMorris race? Well, it depends on how McMorris handles it. If she unequivocally calls for Hastert, Boehner, Reynolds and others who shielded Rep. Foley to immediately step down from their leadership roles — and pledges to support new leadership should she be reelected — then perhaps McMorris can immunize herself. But turning on the GOP leadership can be a difficult thing to do, especially for McMorris who has been widely touted as on the leadership track herself. Throwing her party leaders under a bus could flatten McMorris’s leadership prospects as well.

Predatorgate changes the entire tenor of the race. Voters are losing faith in the ability of GOP to lead our nation — even voters in reliably Republican Eastern WA — and McMorris’s close ties to the House leadership has been transformed from a strength into a weakness. Now, even seemingly innocuous comments and public statements can end up raising issues McMorris would prefer not to raise. For example, on September 28, one day before the Foley scandal broke wide open, McMorris issued a press release touting her law enforcement credentials, which included the following bullet point:

• Co-sponsored the Child Safety Act to protect children from sex offenders

Yeah… co-sponsored the Child Safety Act with Mark Foley. (And to be fair, 87 other House members, but you get the point.)

On September 28 there was no downside to a boast like that. But since September 29 it raises the question of exactly what McMorris has really done to safeguard our nation’s children, that could possibly make up for her personal and professional support of the GOP House leaders who enabled Foley’s sexual predation?

Hastert, Boehner, Reynolds, Alexander and Shimkus all knew the rumors about Foley — that he was a closeted homosexual who indiscreetly showered attention on young, male pages — and they clearly understood his “overly friendly” emails in that context… for why else would they have attempted to cover them up? When push came to shove, the Republican leadership chose to stand by a sexual predator.

Now McMorris needs to tell her constituents whether she stands by her Republican leaders.

Mr. Vice President… I think your policies in Iraq are reprehensible. Hell, I think your policies in the U.S. are reprehensible. I think you are reprehensible. So there!

(Note to Secret Service: Please email me so I can give you directions to my house. And if it’s okay with you, I’d like to arrange a time for my arrest when you can handcuff me without my daughter being present. Thanks.)

From The Agonist:

A goodly portion of the reason gas prices have plunged lately, and a 38% decline meets my definition of a plunge, is due to the fact that Goldman Sachs tweaked the weighting on their commodity index. So what, right? Well, all the folks out their running managed futures funds, hedge funds and other various and sundry financial types, all had to go out and change their weighting of actual holdings in gasoline because that’s the benchmark their performance is measure by.

Here’s another analogy. The Dow 30 is composed of 30 stocks. There are a lot of mutual funds that own “the index” as we call it. All 30 stocks. But what happens when the Dow 30 changes the stocks that make up the index like they did in 2002. They removed AT&T, Kodak and International Paper and replaced them with AIG, Pfizer and Verizon. Now, all the stocks the index dumped took a dive, right? Because all the mutual funds, hedge funds and asset managers that hold the index dumped those stocks.

It’s the same with Goldman’s Commodities Index. If they reduce the percentage of gasoline in the index all the folks who follow the index’s weightings do the same and voila! Gas plunges.

Great timing too.

Which leads to three questions: what’s the economic rationale of making gasoline a smaller portion of overall commodoties in such a gasoline centric economy?

Why now?

And finally, who made the call to do so?

Might it have anything to do with the fact that the new Treasury Secretary used to be the Chairman of Goldman Sachs?

October 3, 2006

Congressman Dave Reichert
2737 78th Ave SE
Suite 202, Second Floor
Mercer Island, WA 98040

Dear Congressman Reichert,

I write to you today as a constituent and mother. We cannot compromise the safety of our children and the integrity of the House of Representatives, so we must set partisanship aside and stand together on principle.

The disgraceful acts committed by former Congressman Mark Foley are a black mark on the halls of the people’s House. The inaction of the House leadership in addressing the issue only makes it worse.

Today you released a statement in support of an investigation of this matter. An investigation is called for, but insufficient. An investigation is certainly in order, so is the immediate resignation of those House leaders who knew about Mark Foley’s grossly inappropriate communications with young pages.

Today the editorial board of the Washington Times called on Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert to resign. The paper writes “Either he was grossly negligent for not taking the red flags fully into account and ordering a swift investigation, for not even remembering the order of events leading up to last week’s revelations — or he deliberately looked the other way in hopes that a brewing scandal would simply blow away…. Mr. Hastert has forfeited the confidence of the public and his party, and he cannot preside over the necessary coming investigation, an investigation that must examine his own inept performance.”

Dennis Hastert’s ineffective handling of this issue follows numerous other scandals that have plagued our Congress under his watch, including the indictment of former House Speaker Tom DeLay, the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal and the conviction of Rep. Duke Cunningham. There’s no more room for excuses. We need a substantial change in the leadership of the House of Representatives.

I ask you to join me in calling for the resignation of Speaker Dennis Hastert.

Sincerely,
Darcy Burner

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. And oh man do we have a busy schedule tonight.

Aaron Toso and Sandeep Kaushik will be urging you to vote No on initiatives 933 (lying developers) and 920 (estate tax repeal)… but they’re sure to be overshadowed by Congressman Jay Inslee, who will be stopping by to plug I-937, the renewable energy initiative. Then later in the evening, after she’s finished speaking at Town Hall, nationally renowned anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan will be joining us for a nightcap and a little bit of chat on the podcast.

And if that lineup’s not enough of a draw, the folks from Foolproof will be stopping by to raffle off a dozen free tickets to the big show Saturday night at Town Hall, in which Jeanine Garofalo, Atrios, the Seattle Times’ David Postman and I will be talking about politics and the press. That’s right… FREE TICKETS. Can’t beat that.

Not in Seattle? Washington liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities. Here’s a full run down of WA’s ten Drinking Liberally chapters:

	Where:	When:	Next Meeting:
Burien:	Mick Kelly’s Irish Pub, 435 SW 152nd St	Fourth Wednesday of each month, 7:00 pm onward	October 25
Kirkland:	Valhalla Bar & Grill, 8544 122nd Ave NE	Every Thursday, 7:00 pm onward	October 5
Monroe:	Eddie’s Trackside Bar and Grill, 214 N Lewis St	Second Wednesday of each month, 7:00 PM onward	October 11
Olympia:	The Tumwater Valley Bar and Grill, 4611 Tumwater Valley Drive South	First and third Monday of each month, 7:00-9:00 pm	October 16
Seattle:	Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Ave E	Every Tuesday, 8:00 pm onward	October 3
Spokane:	Red Lion BBQ & Pub, 126 N Division St	Every Wednesday, 7:00 pm	October 4
Tacoma:	Meconi’s Pub, 709 Pacific Ave	Every Wednesday, 8:00 pm onward	October 4
Tri-Cities:	Atomic Ale, 1015 Lee Blvd, Richland	Every Tuesday, 7:00 pm onward	October 3
Vancouver:	Hazel Dell Brew Pub, 8513 NE Highway 99	Second and fourth Tuesday of each month, 7:00 pm onward	October 10
Walla Walla:	The Green Lantern, 1606 E Isaacs Ave	First Friday of each month, 8:00 pm onward	October 6

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued its much anticipated “Kentucky River Decision” today, and it pretty much went exactly as expected. Voting along party lines, the Republican dominated NLRB gutted long-time federal labor laws by allowing employers to reclassify up to 8 million workers as “supervisors,” thus prohibiting them from forming unions.

That’s right, millions of American workers have just lost their fundamental right to organize. Lost it. Completely. It will now be illegal for them to join unions.

I could spend pages wonkishly boring you with the legal details, but why bother reinventing the wheel when Stephen Colbert has already done such a fine job of summarizing the larger issue?

The labor movement is directly responsible for winning American workers the rights and standards we all enjoy today… you know, little things like a living wage (well, some of us,) workplace safety, the 40-hour work week, um… the weekend. In fact, many historians would argue that the labor movement played a pivotal role in saving our nation from the threat of Communism during the 1930’s — certainly, many Communist historians might argue this, seeing as one of the first thing totalitarian regimes do is ban independent labor unions. (Remember how Solidarity helped bring down the Polish government, and led the way for the rest of the Eastern Block? That’s what they’re afraid of.)

No wonder then that Human Rights Watch lists the US alongside many Third World nations as a violator of basic human rights, due to the degree to which we restrict the freedom of association and the freedom to form unions.

Each year thousands of workers in the United States are spied on, harassed, pressured, threatened, suspended, fired, deported or otherwise victimized by employers in reprisal for their exercise of the right to freedom of association. In the 1950’s, victims numbered in the hundreds each year. In 1969, the number was more than 6,000. By the 1990’s, more than 20,000 workers each year were dismissed or otherwise victims of discrimination serious enough for the government-appointed National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to issue a reinstatement and “back-pay” or other remedial order…

Loophole-ridden laws, paralyzing delays, and feeble enforcement have created a culture of impunity in many areas of U.S. labor law and practice. Employers intent on resisting workers’ self-organization can drag out legal proceedings for years, fearing little more than an order to post a written notice in the workplace promising not to repeat unlawful conduct.

Human Rights Watch found that millions of workers, including farm workers, household domestic workers, and low-level supervisors, were expressly excluded from protection under the law guaranteeing the right of workers to organize. In Washington and North Carolina, Human Rights Watch found evidence of campaigns of intimidation against migrant workers.

Other findings included: one-sided rules for union organizing that unfairly favor employers over workers, allowing such tactics as “captive-audience meetings” where managers predict workplace closures if workers vote for union representation; workers being caught up in a web of labor contracting and subcontracting that effectively denied them the right to organize and bargain with the employers holding the real power over their jobs and working conditions; employers having the legal power to permanently replace workers who exercise the right to strike; and harsh rules against “secondary boycotts” that frustrate worker solidarity efforts.

The Kentucky River Decision is a direct assault on the right to organize that will have an immediate impact on workers nationwide, and will likely lead to disruptive, wildcat strikes. Locally, Virginia Mason has already announced plans to reclassify its 600 registered nurses as “supervisors,” effectively busting the state nurses union. Nationally, as many as 300,000 nurses face a similar fate.

While this is what surely comes from the Republicans’ relentless efforts to permanently tilt the playing field to the advantage of their corporatist sponsors, their primary motivation is actually much simpler.

Democrats, already at a distinct fundraising disadvantage, heavily rely on Labor money to support their issues and candidates. Destroy labor and you defund the Democratic Party. Defund the Democratic Party and you effectively buy yourself a one-party state. To the Republicans on the NLRB, Kentucky River isn’t about workers’ rights, it’s about political domination.

Majorities matter.

Not since the 1919 Black Sox have we seen a more determined effort to throw a game than that of the current Republican leadership. The Keystone Cops routine performed by Hastert, Reynolds and Shimkus seems designed to exacerbate and extend the Foley scandal as much and as long as possible, while the stupidly self-destructive deflections of White House Press Secretary Tony “Naughty Emails” Snow and GOP surrogate blowhard Matt Drudge (blaming Foley’s downfall on “these 16 and 17 year-old beasts”) couldn’t have been more outrageously scripted by the satirical mind of Jesus’ General.

If the GOP wants to ensure a Democratic sweep in November, this is exactly how to do it.

Yet apparently, political ambition knows no bounds, for even in the midst of this unrelenting firestorm, the title of Republican Idiot King continues to draw stiff competition, most notably today from outgoing Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a man who has made a hobby of repeatedly dashing his presidential hopes on the rocks of his own political mediocrity.

Speaking at a U.S. military base in southern Afghanistan, Frist warned that the Taliban guerrillas will never be defeated militarily, arguing that “you need to bring them into a more transparent type of government.”

“Approaching counterinsurgency by winning hearts and minds will ultimately be the answer,” Frist said. “Military versus insurgency one-to-one doesn’t sound like it can be won. It sounds to me … that the Taliban is everywhere.”

That’s the Republicans for you: the party of cut-and-run.

It is quite possible that Frist’s assessment is basically correct — that at this point in the conflict, after the Taliban has been allowed to regroup and rearm while President Bush committed our forces to his personal grudge with Saddam Hussein — that a military solution is no longer feasible in Afghanistan… if it ever was. But that’s besides the point.

The point is that the GOP’s number one man in the Senate could possibly be so stunningly, politically tone deaf.

With the leaked National Intelligence Estimate report suggesting that our war in Iraq has only increased the terrorist threat, and with Watergate “hero” Bob Woodward making headlines by finally joining sixty percent of his fellow Americans in understanding the Bush administration to be delusional, disorganized and fundamentally dishonest, this is exactly the wrong time for “Leader” Frist to tell the American people that the greatest military power in the history of the world cannot defeat the ragged extremists who harbored our al-Qaeda attackers.

Unless, of course, your goal is to convince the American people that the Republican Party is simply incapable of leading: incapable of winning the war in Iraq or in Afghanistan, incapable of fighting the war on terror… even incapable of what should be the relatively routine task of protecting House pages from being groped by a congressman in a Capitol Hill restroom.

It is hard to believe that this is in fact the Republican leadership’s goal… that the people who have “led” our nation for the past six years really want to lose the November election. But the alternative explanation is even more disturbing.

Yesterday I stumbled upon a link on Rep. Dave Reichert’s official website of him and Honeywell CEO Dave Cote gladhanding it with disgraced Rep. Mark Foley of Florida. But I was kinda busy, and thought I’d wait until today to post on it.

http://www.house.gov/reichert/photogallery/Honeywell.CEO.shtml

But, oh no… when I went back to the link today, the page was gone!

For some strange reason, the Reichert camp would apparently prefer that the public not see photos of the smiling congressman rubbing shoulders with a respected colleague known pedophile. Hmm. I wonder why?

Good thing then that Reichert’s staff is about as competent as the House Republican leadership, for while they deleted the index page they forgot to delete the actual JPEGs from their server. Fortunately, I still had the URLs cached in my browser, so here for the public record are links (here and here) to the two pictures Reichert doesn’t want the public to see.

Or, if you want to save time, here’s the moneyshot:

UPDATE:
Apparently, it wasn’t just the URLs that were stored in my browser’s cache, but the JPEGs themselves. So my apologies to Rep. Reichert’s staff — you did a great job of scrubbing the congressman’s website of these embarrassing photos. You just did it about 12 hours too late.

Anyway, I’ve uploaded the photos to my server (here and here) for your viewing pleasure.

UPDATE, UPDATE:
An enterprising commenter offers the Google cache of Rep. Reichert’s deleted web page.

Oy.

I’ll write more on this later — much more — but I just wanted to go out on a limb and say that if the GOP was not guaranteed of losing control of the House of Representatives before Rep. Mark Foley’s sudden resignation, the scandal erupting in the wake of his departure will almost certainly seal the deal. This scandal is big. Big, big, BIG. The repercussions will be felt nationally… and by that I of course mean locally.

As Josh Marshall has already pointed out over on Talking Points Memo, the Page Boy Scandal has effectively “decapitated” the House Republican leadership.

What do I mean by decapitated? […] Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY) is in a tight race for reelection and he’s chairman of the NRCC, the Republican House campaign committee. He’s in charge of the effort to keep the majority.

What’s the number one thing on his mind right now? I doubt it’s the NRCC or even his race for reelection. I think Reynolds is, to put it mildly, distracted right now.

How about Denny Hastert and John Boehner? I don’t see them going on shows or making any public appearances for a while. They’ll get asked awkward and possibly unanswerable questions about Foleygate. I’d say they’re out of commission for fundraisers too.

And pretty much any campaign joust or jab at the Democrats from one of these guys, on whatever issue, will be instantly transformed into some sex-with-pages snark. “How can we trust them to protect America when they can’t even protect the summer interns on Capitol Hill.”

[…]

The simple fact is that to the extant campaigning determines the outcomes of elections, the race goes to the side that can remain on the offensive most consistently and define the national debate on its own terms. Foleygate has made it very hard for the leaders of the House GOP to go on the offensive on anything relevant to the election. For political purposes they’re basically out of commission. And they’ve given Democratic challengers in every district around the country a slew of questions with which to pummel GOP incumbents or any Republican, for that matter, who puts his head up on television. This is in the context of an election that was already going very badly for House Republicans. Foleygate has now made them all but politically defenseless in the final stretch of the campaign. And that is a very big deal.

It certainly is.

And as always… it’s the coverup, stupid.

Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan will be speaking at Town Hall tomorrow night, and afterwards she’s going to stop by Drinking Liberally and join us on our weekly podcast. We’ll save her a seat next to Congressman Jay Inslee, who will also be joining us for the evening.

Wow. What a jam-packed evening. First, Cindy Sheehan at Town Hall (Tues., Oct. 3, 7:30 PM… tickets only $5 bucks,) then Sheehan and Inslee at Drinking Liberally (8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E.) Hope to see you all there.

If the current House Page Scandal isn’t enough to convince you that the GOP leadership values its own political fortunes over the welfare of the nation (let alone the youth placed directly in their charge,) take a look at this article in today’s Washington Post about how our legislative agenda was gerrymandered in the interests of vulnerable incumbents just weeks before the November election.

The effort to achieve such successes went to extraordinary lengths last week, even almost bringing down a major defense policy bill. House and Senate negotiators nearly failed to reach agreement on the defense bill, not because of issues such as the prohibition on torture that held up the bill last year, but because of an issue that had nothing to do with national defense — a measure to clamp down on illegal immigrant gangs.

During a rare news conference, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) publicly challenged Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.), saying he would not bring the defense policy bill to the House floor without the gang provision. Asked why Hastert had singled out the gang measure for his stand, one senior House leadership aide pointed to the person standing next to the speaker: freshman Rep. David G. Reichert (R-Wash.), the provision’s author, who is running neck-and-neck with Microsoft executive Darcy Burner.

In the end, Hastert relented, but he offered Reichert a promise to be used on the campaign trail. The gang measure will be one of the first revisited when Congress returns after the election.

Yeah, that’s right. Reichert is so vulnerable that he and Hastert were willing to hold hostage a major defense policy bill in a cynical effort to throw Reichert a campaign bone. Nice priorities.

Of course, the uncomfortably well-biceped Reichert didn’t even have the political muscle to get the bone he so desperately needed, and Hastert doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of delivering on his promise. Regardless of Reichert’s reelection prospects (getting dimmer every day,) Hastert will be out of the Speaker’s chair by the start of the new session, if not the end of the month… and that’s a prediction I invite the folks at (u)SP to tease me about come January.