HorsesAss.Org

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E.

Once again I’m offering a free copy of Sen. Byron Dorgan’s new book, Take This Job and Ship It to the first person to show up with a functioning breathalyzer.

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	September 27
Kirkland:	Valhalla Bar & Grill, 8544 122nd Ave NE	Every Thursday, 7:00 pm onward	September 7
Monroe:	Eddie’s Trackside Bar and Grill, 214 N Lewis St	Second Wednesday of each month, 7:00 PM onward	September 13
Olympia:	The Tumwater Valley Bar and Grill, 4611 Tumwater Valley Drive South	First and third Monday of each month, 7:00-9:00 pm	September 18
Seattle:	Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Ave E	Every Tuesday, 8:00 pm onward	September 5
Spokane:	Red Lion BBQ & Pub, 126 N Division St	Every Wednesday, 7:00 pm	September 6
Tacoma:	Meconi’s Pub, 709 Pacific Ave	Every Wednesday, 8:00 pm onward	September 6
Tri-Cities:	Atomic Ale, 1015 Lee Blvd, Richland	Every Tuesday, 7:00 pm onward	September 5
Vancouver:	Hazel Dell Brew Pub, 8513 NE Highway 99	Second and fourth Tuesday of each month, 7:00 pm onward	September 12
Walla Walla:	The Green Lantern, 1606 E Isaacs Ave	First Friday of each month, 8:00 pm onward	October 6

Democratic challenger Peter Goldmark has outraised first term Republican incumbent Rep. Cathy McMorris for the second reporting period in a row, reporting over $300,000 raised during July and August compared to McMorris’s $161,000. Over the past five months Goldmark has now outraised McMorris nearly two-to-one, $510,000 to a paltry $286,000.

Goldmark is catching fire. The more money he raises the more people he reaches… and the more money he raises. At this point his biggest obstacle to an upset victory in November is no longer demographics or even an entrenched incumbent… it’s time.

Meanwhile the Spokane media is entirely missing one of the biggest political stories of the year, and it’s happening in their own backyard. McMorris won by a 60 – 40 margin two years ago against a well financed opponent, and yet Congressional Quarterly recently upgraded the race to the precarious “leans Republican” category. Reports from the campaign trail tell of enthusiastic crowds and easy converts amongst usually diehard Republicans, but you wouldn’t know that from watching the evening news or reading the Spokesman-Review because they’ve all but ignored the race. Yet with virtually zero press coverage Goldmark signs are popping up like wheat stalks throughout the economically struggling 5th Congressional District.

There’s gonna be an awful lot of red faces in the Spokane media come November if Goldmark merely makes this close, let alone wins.

Goldmark is a farmer and rancher with a gut-level understanding of the agricultural crisis that is decimating his district… indeed, that appears to be his primary motivation for jumping into politics. He brings to this race the same kind of mix of red state authenticity and economic populism that has made Brian Schweitzer and Jon Tester Democratic superstars in nearby Montana… and the same type of opportunity for Democrats to win back a seat that most Republicans take for granted.

If it were possible in this day and age for a Congressional candidate to triumph on word of mouth alone, Goldmark would win in a landslide. But let’s not put this thesis to the test. All Goldmark needs to fight this campaign on an even footing is another half million dollars between now and November. That’s chump change when control of the House may lie in the balance. So please give now.

And oh yeah, apparently Ed Murray has also endorsed Jamie Pedersen in the 43rd LD.

There’s some good news and some bad news for Republican US Senate wannabe Mike?™ McGavick. The good news is that the story about his 1993 DUI and his less than candid confession may have finally run its course. The bad news is that the DUI story could be replaced by a potentially bigger, badder and more damaging scandal.

Last Thursday the FBI raided the offices of six Alaska legislators, hauling out crates of documents concerning oil field services giant VECO Corp and the generous campaign contributions and consulting fees it lavishes on politicians.

Turns out, one of those politicians is Mike?™ McGavick.

As first uncovered by Natasha at Pacific Views, and then expanded on by Noemie over at WashBlog, FEC reports show that McGavick has received contributions of at least $12,000 from VECO’s top six executives, including VECO President Peter Leathard, who seems to be at the center of the investigation.

Why? Why would an Alaska oil field services company have all its top executives contribute to a candidate seeking to represent the state of Washington? Because Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens told them to, that’s why. That’s why McGavick is the only federal candidate outside of Alaska to whom Leathard has contributed during the current election cycle… and I suppose it also explains why he and VECO Chairman & CEO Bill Allen have each contributed an additional $25,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Hmm. I wonder where that money is supposed to be spent?

Sen. Stevens is known to have close ties to VECO, a subcontractor on one of the Senator’s infamous bridges to nowhere, and at $76,750 his number two career contributor. One of the offices raided last week was that of Sen. Stevens’ son, Alaska state Senate President Ben Stevens, to whom VECO is reported to have paid more than $240,000 in consulting fees — and while the FBI did not volunteer specifics, at least one of Thursday’s 20 search warrants was executed in Girdwood Alaska, where Ted Stevens keeps a home and office.

So ingrained is the culture of corruption in Alaska politics that the legislators in question actually jokingly refer to themselves as the Corrupt Bastards Club, and even printed up hats proudly emblazoned with the letters “CBC”.

That is the type of crowd McGavick is running with, though it really shouldn’t come as much of a surprise considering the fact that McGavick’s entire career path has run straight through the same revolving door between government and big business that, legally or not, has enriched the likes of Ben Stevens. McGavick started as a campaign aide to Sen. Slade Gorton, later becoming his campaign manager and chief of staff, before trading in his access and connections to become a highly paid insurance industry lobbyist. From there he quickly rose to occupy Safeco’s executive suites, and now having “earned” tens of millions of dollars, he seeks to return to the other Washington, this time as a US Senator charged with writing the laws that regulate his corporate benefactors.

It is this revolving door that lies at the heart of the culture of corruption that is eating away at our body politic in Congress, the White House and in state houses throughout the nation. It is a culture in which McGavick is steeped — in which he has achieved wealth beyond most of our wildest dreams — and so it is not surprising that he fails to see the Corrupt Bastards Club for what it is: a club for corrupt bastards.

But as the VECO scandal continues to unfold, I’m not so sure that this is a club in which Mike?™ McGavick wants to be seen to be a member.

Law enforcement agencies across the nation are joining forces to crack down on drunk driving this Labor Day weekend, typically the time of year with highest number of alcohol-related traffic accidents and fatalities.

It is important to note that interdiction and enforcement can achieve positive results. For example, year to date over 2,000 people have already been arrested for DUI’s in King County alone, and according to police reports and local news accounts, so far not a single incident has involved Mike McGavick. Keep up the good work Mike!™

UPDATE:
Michael at blatherWatch has 20 questions for Mike?™ McGavick.

From an article in yesterday’s NY Times about Karl Rove’s waning influence in the Republican Party, a tidbit that hints at what we should brace for here in our Washington over the next couple months:

They have determined that control of Congress is likely to be settled in as few as six states and have decided to focus most of the party’s resources there, said Republican officials who did not want to be identified discussing internal deliberations. Those states will likely include Connecticut, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington, though officials said the battle lines could shift in coming weeks.

If state Republicans seem blase about the tough races facing first term incumbent Representatives Dave Reichert and Cathy McMorris, and overly confident about their traction-less Senate nominee Mike?™ McGavick, that’s because they assume the RNC’s huge cash advantage will easily overwhelm and smother the electorate’s nascent unrest and distrust. And normally, that might be true.

But even though Democrats will be heavily outspent on both House races, and possibly even the Senate, there is a point of diminishing returns beyond which a blitz of advertising just becomes so much white noise. At least 3 to 4 million dollars will be spent on behalf of 8th CD challenger Darcy Burner, more than enough to get her name and message before voters, and if Peter Goldmark can meet his million dollar fundraising target while drawing in a modest amount of independent expenditures, that could be all he needs to catch fire in the less media saturated 5th CD. And as for the enigmatic Mike?™ McGavick, no amount of money is going to win him a Senate seat unless he manages to persuade voters exactly why they need to turn Sen. Maria Cantwell out… and exactly what legislative agenda he intends to pursue in her stead.

The important thing to take away from this tidbit is that Republicans intend to focus their resources on Washington state because they know their candidates here are vulnerable… they know that both Burner and Goldmark have a good shot at winning, and the RNC intends to crush their chances under a truckload of cash.

But don’t despair, because in this year, in this political climate and with these candidates, WA Dems don’t have to outspend their opponents to win, they just have to keep it relatively close. A challengers dollar simply buys more than that of an incumbent, thus the biggest thing you can do to contribute to Democratic chances to retake the House is to help our candidates get their message out by giving as much as you can afford to Burner and Goldmark.

The Republicans are willing to invest all they can in these races. Shouldn’t you?

The cops are out in full force this Labor Day weekend looking for drunk drivers, so I suggest you follow Mike?™ McGavick’s example and just stay home, pull down the shades, pop open a 12-pack of Guinness and tune in to “The David Goldstein Show” on Newsradio 710-KIRO, tonight from 7PM to 10PM.

The lineup could change in response to breaking news, but here’s what I think I’ll be talking about tonight:

7PM: I was going to talk about Pastor Joe Fuiten and his efforts to evict a community of retired pastors, missionaries and lay people from the Cedar Springs Bible Camp. But apparently a peace offering has been made by Fuiten’s attorneys and I wouldn’t want to do anything to jeopardize a settlement that would allow the residents to live out their retirement in peace and security. So instead, I’ll just spend most of the hour slamming Mike?™ McGavick, who, as it turns out, may have a connection to the unfolding Alaska pipeline scandal.

8PM: Do I appease fascists? On Wednesday Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld compared critics of the war in Iraq to those who appeased Hitler, saying we suffer from “moral or intellectual confusion” for failing to recognize the rise of a “new type of fascism.” Hmm. I guess if anybody’s an expert on appeasing fascists, it’s Donald Rumsfeld.

Both Keith Olbermann and Frank Rich have spoken eloquently in response. I’ll attempt to stumble my way through a rebuttal too.

9PM: Sandeep Kaushik, spokesman for the No on I-920 campaign (and a Podcasting Liberally regular) joins me to talk about the initiative to repeal Washington’s estate tax, and what impact that might have on both the state and the nation. And you may not believe this, but it turns out I-920’s backers are shockingly selling the initiative with lies. Who’d a thunk?

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

A year ago yesterday, based on a tip from a regular reader, I posted a little biographical tidbit about former FEMA Director Mike Brown, revealing that during the decade prior to joining the agency, the man disastrously responsible for directing federal relief operations in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina had sharpened his emergency management skills as the “Judges and Stewards Commissioner” of the International Arabian Horse Association… a position from which he was forced to resign.

Up until that point my impact as a blogger, activist and political crackpot had largely been local, but the Arabian Horse story quickly spread through the national blogs, moved national headlines, and served to frame cronyism as a central theme in the national debate over the Bush administration’s failed response. The story also drove national attention to HA, both through hundreds of links to the original post, and through Brownie’s own Congressional testimony in which he directly blamed “HorseAss.org” by name for both his own downfall, and oddly, FEMA’s inability to respond to the crisis.

As a result of this flurry of attention, HA’s site traffic more than doubled from about 35,000 unique visits during the doldrums of August to over 75,000 visits in September of 2005, largely due to several large spikes in traffic, as many as 8000 visits in a single day. It occurred to me at the time that I could be witnessing the peak of my notoriety, and that HA might never see such traffic levels again.

Well… it’s been a pretty interesting year, a year in which I’m pleased and surprised to report that HA’s traffic has more than doubled from August to August — just shy of matching the level of last year’s extraordinary September, only this time without any one-time bumps or spikes. Sometime over the past few weeks HA recorded it’s 1 millionth visitor since joining Site Meter a little less than two years ago, and earlier this Summer HA served its 2 millionth page view.

Not bad considering I thought my original goal of eventually attracting a couple hundred regular readers was overly ambitious.

I devote an enormous amount of time and energy to HA, with virtually no financial remuneration, but the active participation of my readers makes it the most personally gratifying “job” I have ever had. It is also my steadily growing audience — the HA community — that helps make me relevant in the eyes of the traditional press, enabling me to have what impact I have on shaping local political coverage.

So while I am of course thankful to have characters like Tim Eyman, Mike Brown, David Irons and Mike?™ McGavick around to help make blogging easier, it is you, my readers, to whom I owe the biggest debt of gratitude. It’s always fun to see a big spike in traffic, but it’s much more satisfying to see readers come back for more.

So… thanks.

I’ve had my fun teasing insurance industry lobbyist cum executive cum candidate Mike!™ McGavick about the exclamation point typographically appended to his first name, but his recent fender-benders with the truth suggest that we’ve all been using the wrong punctuation. Indeed, now that the actual police report has been shown to contradict his supposedly “courageous,” “candid” and “Socratic” confession of a 1993 DUI, Mike?™ and his clever campaign consultants seem to be creating more questions than they answer.

There’s a lesson to be learned from Mike?™’s less-than-candid candor: never lie to reporters. Never. Never ever. It just plain pisses them off. And once you’ve blown your credibility, it’s hard as hell to earn it back.

(And oh yeah… lying is just plain wrong.)

At first Mike?™’s preemptive mea culpa seemed to have achieved it’s desired end, airing the worst of his dirty laundry in the dead of August while earning the candidate brownie points for candor. The initial press coverage even prompted the fawning folks over at (un)Sound Politics to kvell that “McGavick’s civility theme is paying dividends while others keep playing politics as usual.”

Uh-huh.

The problem is, it was Mike?™ who was soon proven to be playing politics as usual with the airing of a radio ad that deliberately misrepresented Sen. Maria Cantwell’s position on the sales-tax deduction. Perhaps another candidate in another campaign may have gotten away with such all too typical tactics, but not “Mr. Civility” — and especially not after making such a show out of public regretting a similarly deceptive political ad he ran some 18 years ago.

This new misleading ad was swiftly and roundly condemned in the press, with even the presumptively pro-McGavick Seattle Times editorial board advising the candidate to “pull the ad” in no uncertain terms, calling it “an age-old political trick” and a “politician’s version of highway robbery.” My guess is that many journalists really wanted to believe Mike?™’s civility schtick, and that the Times editorial board’s disappointment is deep and genuine.

But perhaps no other local journalist’s reaction to last week’s events more clearly illustrates the credibility bridge Mike?™ has built and burned than that of Seattle P-I columnist Robert Jamieson, who all but swooned over McGavick’s “refreshing candor” in last Saturday’s column, only to eat his words in today’s:

A week ago, in this column, I praised him for coming clean about a 1993 DUI in Montgomery County, Md.

McGavick’s gesture, I wrote, showed that he had examined his life and talked with candor about personal successes and failures.

Boy, was I mistaken.

Who could have known that McGavick’s pre-emptive confession would blast open a Pandora’s box?

In the incident from 13 years ago, McGavick said he was driving when he “cut a yellow light” too closely.

It turns out the light was “steady red,” according to a Maryland police report first obtained this week by The Herald in Everett.

McGavick told my P-I colleague Neil Modie last week that during the DUI incident he received a citation — that’s it.

This turns out not to be the full truth. McGavick was cited — and arrested.

Now that’s a mea culpa I can accept at face value.

Mike?™ made a fool out of Jamieson and his colleagues, but they won’t so easily be fooled again. In fact it only makes sense that a candidate who campaigns on civility — on character — and who demands a higher standard of political discourse, be held to that higher standard himself.

And even though the candidate isn’t talking about his DUI anymore, it’s a standard that Mike?™’s campaign still refuses to live up to.

“There is no effort to hide anything,” McGavick spokesman Elliott Bundy told me Friday. “That was how Mike recalled it at the time. It was an event from 13 years ago.”

What about the traffic light?

“I don’t think that is a large discrepancy,” said Bundy, who called the color of the light “a distinction without a difference.”

The important thing was that McGavick offered a voluntary mea culpa to begin with.

“You said this yourself,” Bundy pointed out to me.

What about McGavick’s citation versus arrest?

“Maybe it’s a terminology issue,” Bundy hedged.

To hear it from the McGavick camp, it would seem facts are “fudgeable.”

The problem for Mike?™ is not that these were big lies on their own, but that he chose to frame his entire confession as an exercise in public candor. “Cutting a yellow” is not the same thing as “running a steady red” — it is a turn of phrase intentionally chosen to soften the offense. Neither is “citation” versus “arrest” merely an issue of terminology, and it’s hard to believe that a man who was arrested, handcuffed, read his rights, and booked could remember the experience as anything but.

For Bundy to attribute the discrepancies to the passage of time is simply laughable… although a more credible excuse — that Mike?™’s supposedly faulty memory is due to the cumulative impact of years of heavy drinking — is probably politically unpalatable.

And besides, the police report itself incontrovertibly documents at least one McGavick lie: when asked if he’d been drinking Mike?™ told the officer he had only “two, maybe three beers,” but his 0.17 blood-alcohol level an hour and a half after the stop suggests he consumed at least 8 or 9 drinks, and possibly more than a dozen.

If a man is going to lie to the police, what’s to stop him from lying to a reporter or a voter?

Apparently, nothing. Which is why news of the newly revealed police report and its contradiction of Mike?™’s supposedly candid confession has made headlines here, here, here, and here.

Sure, it’s the dead of August, the news of the police report breaking on a Friday before Labor Day weekend, perhaps the deadest news weekend of the year. So I guess in that regard, Mike?™’s strategy was a success.

But the campaign only going to get harder for Mike?™ from here on out. And so will the questions.

I’ve known fellow blogger Lynn Allen of Evergreen Politics for well over a year, but though we have spent many hours in deep conversation I never knew until now that she was at Ground Zero on 9/11.

Our reaction to the events of 9/11 is very personal for me. Five years ago, I was at Ground Zero, teaching a class in the Marriott Hotel, WTC 3, the third building on the World Trade Center Plaza.

After what felt like a huge earthquake, we were ushered out of the building by the Marriott staff and stood watching in fascination the fire burning in the upper reaches of WTC 1. It was hard to believe the story that was circulating: A helicopter had crashed into the building on this very clear morning. Then we saw the second plane come in, belly angled slightly toward us, and crash into WTC 2. This was a terrorist attack! We bought water and talked strategies for survival. We decided to head toward the Brooklyn Bridge and began making our way through the people running in every direction.

Just as we began going up the ramp to the bridge, WTC 2 collapsed, sending clouds of debris and hundreds of screaming people in our direction. We continued on, single file, covered in a fine, gray dust, like refugees in a war zone. Eventually, we reached Brooklyn and sunshine, and the beginning of a new phase in our personal and national history.

Lynn has an excellent guest column in the Sunday, September 3 edition of the Seattle P-I [“Is more violence and less safety what we want?“], in which she muses on an alternative way we could have responded to the tragedy of 9/11… a path in which we fought to bring the world closer together instead of tearing it apart.

Read the whole thing.

In a desperate attempt to stay relevant by keeping up with the savvy new management over at the Seattle Weekly, I announced last week a new regular HA feature: Ask a Secular Jew Who Married a Shiksa and Lives Near Two Orthodox Synagogues. Welcome to the first installment.

Dear Secular Jew,

I’m a goy married to a JAP, I need your help. She says that the midrash says that the toilet seat must be down. Is that true?

Harry

Harry… your wife is wrong. Stretching the limits of my Reformed Judaism education, I believe the midrash is actually an irritating fungal infection most frequently caught by inadvertently sitting on the rim of a dirty toilet. (As opposed to a footrash or a headrash.) So I guess in practice, your wife is right: keep the toilet seat down.

Dear Secular Jew,

How come Jewish Guilt Complexes are so, so much funnier than Catholic Guilt Complexes, which are really just kind of sad/scary?

CB

CB… you’re asking the right guy — as a secular Jew who married an Irish Catholic shiksa, I’m a bona-fide expert on guilt.

Indeed the Jews and the Catholics are both very guilty people, the difference being that while Catholic guilt is based on sin, Jewish guilt is based on shame. Sin is derived from God, while shame is derived from… your mother.

For example, take sex. When we first started sleeping together my shiksa and I both felt incredibly guilty about sex. The difference was that she felt guilty because she thought it was wrong, whereas I felt guilty because I thought I was doing it wrong.

So in answer to your question, let me ask you… which one of us really has the sadder/scarier guilt complex?

Hey Secular Jew,

Who do I have to sleep with to get a good bagel in this town?

BL

BL… it doesn’t really matter who you sleep with, as long as the bed is in New York City.

[If you have a question about Jews or Judaism, and you think a secular Jew who married a shiksa and lives near two orthodox synagogues might have the answer, just ask your question in the comment thread of this post. Remember, I will not answer simple, Jew-baiting death rights — it must be posed in the form of a question.]

Jerry Cornfield of the Everett Herald gets the prize for being the first to unearth the police report from Mike!™ McGavick’s 1993 DUI, and it doesn’t paint a pretty picture. And surprise… it also catches Mike!™ in a couple of Lies!™.

Lie number one comes from his misty-eyed mea culpa, where he remorseful explains: “I was cited for DUI when I cut a yellow light too close in 1993.”

Cut a yellow light too close… yeah, right. We all just assumed that was merely a feeble and disingenuous way of saying that he ran a red. (You know, a lie.) Well, now we know that he ran a red light, and a steady one at that.

The police report states the officer observed a car “drive through a steady red signal” at an intersection a couple miles north of the District of Columbia, where McGavick, then 35, worked for the American Insurance Association.

Of course, his defenders might argue that you can’t expect Mike!™ to remember all the details because it happened thirteen years ago and, well… he was Drunk!™. But according to the police report, it turns out Mike!™ has a history of lying about drunk driving.

When McGavick rolled the window down on his white Mazda Miata, a strong odor of alcohol greeted the officer, according to the report. McGavick told the officer he had “two, maybe three beers” during the previous five hours.

Ooops. I guess that counts as lie number two, especially when you consider the fact that in interviews after his surprise revelation Mike!™ admitted that he knew he shouldn’t have been behind the wheel the minute he saw the flashing lights pulling him over. So, either he lied to reporters that he knew he shouldn’t have been driving, or he lied to the police when he said he’d only had “two, maybe three beers” during the previous five hours.

Uh-huh.

As it turns out, he probably had at least a dozen drinks that night as the police report shows he blew a stunning 0.17 at the police station, a full 90-minutes after he was pulled over. That suggests his blood-alcohol level was likely in excess of .20 at the time he climbed staggered behind the wheel.

How Drunk!™ was Mike!™?

When McGavick rolled the window down on his white Mazda Miata, a strong odor of alcohol greeted the officer, according to the report. […] The officer had McGavick get out of the car for sobriety tests. The report described McGavick as having a flushed face, slurred speech and a swaying body. His demeanor was described as polite, cooperative and sleepy.

McGavick failed sobriety tests in which the officer moved his finger side to side and up and down. McGavick did better when he was asked to walk heel-to-toe on a line and stand on one leg.

After the tests, the officer handcuffed McGavick and drove him to the Bethesda, Md., police station. McGavick fell asleep while waiting to have his blood alcohol level measured, according to the police report.

I would imagine that if I were being arrested and processed, I’d be pretty stresed out. But Mike!™ actually fell asleep. Man… that’s pretty damn Drunk!™

Looks like the only thing with more spin than his calculated, preemptive confession, was Mike!™’s head that drunken evening back in 1993.

UPDATE:
Here’s a PDF of the police report courtesy the Rich Roesler and the Spokesman-Review.

Sources have confirmed to HA that Safeco Insurance is indeed the unnamed “Firm 1” in a Washington Insurance Commissioner’s Office study of the abusive use of credit scoring to cancel auto-insurance policies. As first reported in the Seattle Times, Safeco has asked the Thurston County Superior Court to block release of the information.

According to sources familiar with the investigation, the controversial practice was initially pioneered in WA state by Progressive Insurance. Sources say that Safeco was actually late to embrace the practice, but did so aggressively under former CEO Mike!™ McGavick’s leadership, far and quickly exceeding the scope and impact of its competition. As the Times initially reported:

The study cited “Firm 1” for relying on credit scoring to cancel auto policies, as opposed to simply raising rates, which the other companies did. It said Firm 1’s decisions disproportionately impacted minorities, divorced women and low-income residents.

Many of those terminated by Firm 1 had clean driving records.

“Over one-quarter of those cancelled for low credit scores” by Firm 1 “had no ‘incidents’ in the insurer’s records, though some had been with the insurer for more than 10 years,” the 2003 study said.

“Seventeen percent of apparently accident-free cancelled policyholders were minorities.”

When the story first broke Monday I thought it would be easy to find a cooperative source inside an office Democrats have held for years, but extracting relevant information turned out to be harder than squeezing blood from a stone. Commissioner Mike Kreidler has called credit scoring “a form of redlining” and thinks it “should have been banned,” yet he has adamantly refused to disclose the identity of the firms in question until the legal issues are resolved.

This has apparently led to much consternation in and outside his office by those who complain that Kreidler is not doing enough to help fellow Democrats. But while I personally wouldn’t mind if Kreidler were a bit more partisan, I fully admire the respect he has shown for his office, and am somewhat reminded of similar complaints from GOP stalwarts who attacked Secretary of State Sam Reed for not doing more to help fellow Republican Dino Rossi come out on top of our excruciatingly close 2004 gubernatorial election.

Still, this was a study conducted by a public agency, paid for with taxpayer dollars, and so the public has a right to know its details. Thus if you are one of those Insurance Office insiders who think Kreidler should be more partisan, I urge you to act on your convictions and please leak me any relevant documents. I promise to maintain your anonymity, and once again affirm my pledge to go to jail before ever revealing a source.

Perhaps you’ve heard about it, but if you haven’t yet seen Keith Olbermann’s commentary yesterday on Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, watch it now.

And about Mr. Rumsfeld’s other main assertion, that this country faces a “new type of fascism.”

As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that — though probably not in the way he thought he meant it.

This country faces a new type of fascism – indeed.

Finally, a journalist with a large national audience courageous enough to say out loud what many of us have been warning for years. It’s almost enough to make me call up Comcast and order cable. Almost.

Instead, I sent an email to MSNBC thanking them for putting Olbermann’s Countdown on the air.