HorsesAss.Org

The Senate just failed to close debate on the Defense Spending Bill, after the Democrats, led by Sen. Maria Cantwell, filibustered the cynical inclusion of a provision that would open the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. The motion failed 56 to 44; 60 votes were needed for cloture. Four Democrats voted yea, and three Republicans voted nay.

UPDATE:
The AP has a quote from the victorious Sen. Cantwell:

“This is nothing more than legislative blackmail,” fumed Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., an ardent opponent to opening the Alaska refuge to oil companies.

I hope Congress enjoys their holiday in session, courtesy of Alaska’s blackmailing Sen. Ted Stevens.

UPDATE, UPDATE:
The League of Conservation Voters has just issued a press release praising Cantwell’s leadership:

“We applaud Sen. Maria Cantwell for successfully leading the fight to reject this shameful political attempt to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.Today’s vote to protect the Arctic represents the triumph of democracy over greed. Cynical attempts to hold hostage funds to support our troops, offer relief to hurricane ravaged states and warm the cold, old and poor in order to benefit a select few failed before our eyes.

“In addition, Sen. Cantwell’s ongoing efforts to prevent unneeded and dirty drilling in our pristine wilderness areas is another example of her commitment to fighting for Washington families and standing up to the big oil companies

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It could be a very Merry Christmas Happy Holidays indeed for federal prosecutors, who are now negotiating a plea bargain with Republican uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff in exchange for his cooperation.

Mr. Abramoff is believed to have extensive knowledge of what prosecutors suspect is a wider pattern of corruption among lawmakers and Congressional staff members. One participant in the case who insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations described him as a “unique resource.”

Other people involved in the case or who have been officially briefed on it said the talks had reached a tense phase, with each side mindful of the date Jan. 9, when Mr. Abramoff is scheduled to stand trial in Miami in a separate prosecution.

What began as a limited inquiry into $82 million of Indian casino lobbying by Mr. Abramoff and his closest partner, Michael Scanlon, has broadened into a far-reaching corruption investigation of mainly Republican lawmakers and aides suspected of accepting favors in exchange for legislative work.
…
Prosecutors are also looking at how some former Congressional staff members landed their lucrative lobbying positions and at the role the wives of several lobbyists and lawmakers may have had in any influence scheme, a piece of the puzzle that investigators have begun referring to privately as the “wives’ club.”

There are a lot of very nervous people in nation’s Capitol this morning… and most of them have an “R” next to their name.

Hmm. It looks like the Discovery Institute’s efforts to overthrow the scientific method and “replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions” took a couple of steps backwards yesterday, when a federal judge ruled that it is unconstitutional to teach so-called “Intelligent Design” in public schools as science, calling it “creationism in disguise.”

“U.S. District Judge John E. Jones delivered a stinging attack on the Dover Area School Board, saying its first-in-the-nation decision in October 2004 to insert intelligent design into the science curriculum violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

The ruling was a major setback to the intelligent design movement, which is also waging battles in Georgia and Kansas. Intelligent design holds that living organisms are so complex that they must have been created by some kind of higher force.

Jones decried the “breathtaking inanity” of the Dover policy and accused several board members of lying to conceal their true motive, which he said was to promote religion.
…
“We find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board’s real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom,” he wrote in his 139-page opinion. […] “It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.”

Here’s a copy of the judge’s 139-page ruling (PDF) for all those interested, but at first glance it looks to be an overwhelming defeat for ID. The following passage is getting particular play in the media, and for good reason:

The weight of the evidence clearly demonstrates, as noted, that the systemic change from “creation” to “intelligent design” occurred sometime in 1987, after the Supreme Court’s important Edwards decision. This compelling evidence strongly supports Plaintiffs’ assertion that ID is creationism re-labeled.

The Discovery Institute has issued a scathing press release attacking Jones as an “activist federal judge,” but then, isn’t that the right’s usual response to losing a court case… attacking the judge? (Especially Republican, church-going judges like Jones?) The fact is, religious activists are getting ahead of Discovery’s marketing plan, and that’s beginning to hurt their cause.

Santa Claus and a cute little elf visted Mike McGavick’s campaign headquarters today to deliver an early Christmas present from the insurance industry to their favorite little boy: $14. 3 million in stock options. (FYI, I heard from an eavesdropping reindeer that the McGavick staffer in the photo yelled at Santa. Talk about a war on Christmas….)

I’d already reported the $4.5 million in accelerated vesting that Safeco is giving McGavick as a parting gift, but while he claimed he was leaving the company at the end of the year, now it turns out he plans to stay on the payroll through January 26… just in time to vest another $9.8 million in options.

And McGavick must have been a very good boy indeed, as he’s also still eligible for an undisclosed 2005 bonus.

All this makes me wonder… if the insurance industry wanted to skirt the campaign finance laws and make huge contributions directly to the McGavick campaign… wouldn’t this be exactly how they’d do it?

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

In honor of tonight’s one-year anniversary of the Seattle chapter, and as a tribute to the NSA’s monitoring of our phone calls, emails and blogs, our fearless leader Nick has declared this “Tin Foil Hat Night.” The first beer is free for anyone who shows up wearing a tinfoil hat. That’s great news for me, considering I rarely leave the lead-lined safe room in my basement without one.

King County Executive Ron Sims announced this morning his intention to move the county to all mail-in elections, as early as 2006. With over 1 million registered voters, KC would become the largest county in the nation to conduct elections entirely by mail.

Council members Bob Ferguson and Julia Patterson joined Sims at a morning press conference endorsing the plan. Sims is instructing elections director Dean Logan to study the proposal and recommend a plan for implementing the change.

Over 70 percent of voters in the 2005 general election cast their ballot by mail, with the number expected to substantially increase over the coming years. Several independent reviews of the county’s election processes have recommended moving to an all mail-in system to eliminate the cost and inefficiencies inherent in operating to two completely different election systems, however the final proposal may include a handful of regional voting centers where voters could drop off ballots or receive assistance on election day.

UPDATE:
I wanted to quickly get the breaking story out there, but now I’ll take a few moments for some commentary, and I thought I’d start by quoting myself from a post back in March:

I have voted in three cities

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King County Executive Ron Sims will be joined by council members Bob Ferguson and Julia Patterson at 10 AM to make a “major announcement about King County elections.”

Our friend Stefan over at (un)Sound Politics is so atwitter with anticipation — like a little kid on Christmas Holiday morning — that he’s already speculating as to what the announcement might be. Stefan’s first guess is a reasonable one: that KC will move to all mail-in voting. But his second guess strikes me as wishful thinking; pointing out the absence of Dean Logan from the press conference, he’s guessing that maybe Logan has resigned. Maybe. Though I called elections on an unrelated issue yesterday and was told Logan was out of town due to a death in the family.

Here’s my guess. Considering it was Ferguson and Patterson who pushed for hiring the Elections Center to conduct an independent audit… and considering that the primary and overwhelming recommendation of the post election report was to consolidate elections operations into a single building… perhaps they are announcing their support for Sims’ previously rejected proposal to spend $22.8 million to build a centralized elections headquarters on Rainier Ave. South?

Just a guess.

Republicans have cynically attached a provision to the defense spending bill that would open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling… and Sen. Maria Cantwell is threatening to filibuster.

Sen. Maria Cantwell vowed Monday to keep the Senate in session until the brink of Christmas to defeat legislation that would open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

“If this language is allowed to stand, one of our nation’s most pristine wildlife areas will be lost,” Cantwell, a Democrat said as she outlined plans by her party and its allies to defeat language offered by Alaska Republican Ted Stevens to open ANWR.

“This is nothing more than a sweetheart deal for Alaska and the oil companies,” Cantwell said. “That’s why I am prepared to use every procedural option available to me as a senator to prevent this language from moving forward.”

Hmm. Alaska’s nutcase Senator Ted Stevens may end up ruing the day he turned Sen. Cantwell into an enemy, for in so doing he not only gave her a visible issue popular with WA voters, he also gave her a real life villain to oppose. I know people who worked with Sen. Cantwell at Real Networks, and whatever she lacks in terms of retail politics, she more than makes up for in tenaciousness.

Cantwell said she’s willing to challenge Stevens, who is widely regarded as one of the fiercest fighters in the chamber.

“Senator Stevens says he’s not holding up the process, but he is,” Cantwell said. “He knows very well that we could all go home today. We could pass these outstanding pieces of legislation regarding defense and other things and be gone. But he wants to stay here. If he wants to stay here, then we’ll stay here to fight.”

I think it’s gonna be one helluva fight. And my money’s on Cantwell.

So much to blog on, so little time. So I thought I’d do a little roundup post to point you to a handful of issues and articles that have piqued my interest.

MoveOn.org targets Reichert with anti-war ad
Our very own Rep. Dave Reichert is one of six vulnerable House Republicans being targeted by MoveOn.org with a TV ad campaign questioning their lack of support of an exit strategy from Iraq. 18 ads will run in Reichert’s 8th Congressional District this week on CNN.

“These are districts where the incumbent doesn’t support an exit strategy to bring the troops home and the challenger does,” said Tom Matzzie, MoveOn’s Washington director.

In other Reichert news, he just voted to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Evergreen Politics interview Gov. Gregoire
Lynn Allen of Evergreen Politics has posted another one of her excellent interviews, this time with Gov. Christine Gregoire. Lynn didn’t have as much time with the governor as she had hoped for, but she managed to get in some good questions, like the one addressing perceptions of Gov. Gregoire’s legitimacy:

CG: Well, they spent six months challenging the legitimacy of that election. The only result was a few more votes for me after lots of money spent on both sides. I believe we won that election from the beginning. With as much money as was spent to question the legitimacy of the election, I can see how people would be concerned and frustrated. We need to go beyond it now. I’m in office. We have a state to run. We need to run it. I think we’re getting phenomenal things done. I am looking forward to the new year. This issue will get behind us. I think that the citizens are concerned about what is important in their lives – health care, security, jobs, and education for their kids. These are difficult issues and I’m prepared to deal with them.

The citizen in me is happy to see the governor focused on her job… but the political strategist in my wishes she would pay more attention to correcting the public’s misconceptions about the 2004 election.

Onward Christian soldiers… to Olympia
State Rep. John Ahern (R-Spokane) was back on his Christmas Warhorse last Friday, attacking the blatantly offensive and anti-Christian phrase “Happy Holidays.” The Olympian has the story, and includes some good quotes from a prominent local blogger:

“It’s not a big deal. There’s nothing new this year,” said Goldstein, noting that the Capitol tree has been called the Kids Holiday Tree for more than a decade. “They are making something out of nothing right now, but with all the media tools they have at their disposal, people don’t realize it’s nothing.”

Goldstein said the danger of the debate is that it legitimizes intolerance of different religious groups, including Jews, Muslims and nonbelievers.

Man… that David Goldstein guy is sharp. Somebody should give him his own radio show.

Finkbeiner goes both ways
When Bill Finkbeiner was a state representative (and a Democrat) he twice voted in support of legislation extending state anti-discrimination laws to cover sexual orientation, but as state senate minority leader (and a Republican) last year, he held his caucus firm in opposing it. Now that he’s resigned his leadership position, the Seattle Times’ Andrew Garber speculates about which way Finkbeiner might vote when the bill is reintroduced in the coming session.

“The X factor will be Sen. Finkbeiner,” said state Sen. Erik Poulsen, D-Seattle, a key negotiator in the Senate last year for the bill, which would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation.
…
Supporters of the bill see him as the weakest link in what’s been an unwavering Senate GOP blockade of the measure since it was first introduced more than 20 years ago.

Of course, none of this should come as a surprise to my regular readers. In analyzing Finkbeiner’s resignation as minority leader, I wrote:

… freed of the burden of leadership, don’t be surprised to see him vote his conscience on HB 1515 (prohibiting discrimination based on sexual preference) ….

I think it is clear from his prior public statements that Finkbeiner does indeed support the legislation. If he chooses to stand up to his party leadership and vote his conscience, I expect at least two other Republican senators to join him.

Whenever I hear a Republican official or groupie talking about “restoring faith” in King County Elections, I have to laugh, for the state GOP has done everything in its power to destroy that public faith. Of course they couldn’t do it alone, and most of the damage has come at the hands of our mainstream media through its institutional fetish for reporting scandal over all else.

How many times over the past year were we treated to front page headlines screaming about “felon voters” or the vastly misunderstood and overstated, so-called ballot “discrepancy”…? See, that’s a juicy story that gets Dean Logan stuttering, Chris Vance foaming at the mouth, and readers riled up in outrage and disgust. But what kind of front page coverage does KC Elections get for a job well done? Zilch. Nada. Bupkis. For example, the non-profit, non-partisan Election Center — a national association of elections officials — just issued a glowing report on KC Elections’ performance during the Nov. 8 election… and I didn’t see front page coverage anywhere.

Nothing to see here folks. Move along.

I guess the Seattle Times just doesn’t find this newsworthy, and while the Seattle P-I did cover the report somewhere in today’s paper, it certainly wasn’t mentioned anywhere near the front page. The report’s conclusion?

“We observed a good election, conducted under extremely difficult circumstances — multiple facilities, a changing work force and intense public scrutiny,” the three-member team said. “The (King County) elections section has reason to be proud of the progress that has been made.”

Of course, government employees doing their job right shouldn’t ordinarily be front page news… but in the context of the intense (and sometimes misleading) coverage of problems encountered during the 2004 election, it is totally irresponsible to leave voters unaware of the improvements that have been made. Yes, a clean and accurate election does not make for a sexy headline, but considering how Logan and his crew have been publicly ridiculed and vilified over the past year, aren’t they owed a little bit of that balance the MSM likes to brag about so much?

Just thought I’d ask.

Man… am I a trendsetter, or what? Just the other day I post a Christmas Happy Holiday carol parody, and today James Vesely publishes a song parody of his own in the Seattle Times: “I’ve got those 2005 blues.”

As a bit of a lyricist myself (I’ve got an Off-Broadway musical flop to my credit), I thought Vesely did an okay job. He was a bit loosey-goosey with the rhyme and meter, but you can get away with that with the blues. Still, he’s no Ira Gershwin, and I suggest he stick to prose if he wants to keep his day job.

There is one verse in particular on which I have a few comments though….

Eyman and Sims,
not exactly twins
each got a kiss,
not always bliss
From the mainstream
media.
Which now consists
of bloggers who twist,
in their own
schizophrenia.

First… rhyming “media” and “schizophrenia”…? Ouch. That may be a good enough lyric for an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, but no self-respecting lyricist would touch that one with a ten foot pole. I know a place where you can get a really great rhyming dictionary.

Second… are you suggesting that us bloggers are now part of the mainstream media? Is that meant as a compliment or an insult? And if I am now MSM… can I have a job?

Finally… we all know who you’re really talking about here, and I just have to say that I think it terribly rude and inappropriate to describe our friend Stefan as a schizophrenic. The more accurate diagnosis would be a paranoid delusional. (Perhaps with a bit of bipolar disorder thrown in.)

I was forwarded a couple precinct maps showing the vote on Initiative 912, and I thought the excerpt above was somewhat interesting. This map (PDF) shows those precincts which voted 70% or greater against I-912. Of course, the initiative was strongly opposed in Seattle, but look how poorly it did in Mercer Island, Bellevue and much of the Eastside.

I-912 — the love child of conservative KVI talk hosts John Carlson and Kirby Wilbur — was officially endorsed by the state GOP and many prominent Republicans… yet it went down big in traditionally Republican precincts. You might not know it yet by looking at the composition of the city councils, but these former GOP strongholds are steadily trending blue.

A year ago, in my post election analysis (“Subdivide and conquer: a strategy for a new Democratic majority“), I pointed towards this trend as one of the few hopeful signs coming out of the disappointing 2004 election:

Just like the Democrats lost their base in the South with their support of civil rights legislation in the sixties, the GOP risks alienating their moderate, suburban base by abandoning fiscal conservatism to focus on right-wing social issues at home, and military and economic imperialism abroad. The neo-cons may dominate the national Republican leadership, but they do not represent the majority of suburban voters.

Families move to places like Mercer Island for better public schools, cleaner streets, safer neighborhoods, and all the other public services that a higher property tax base provides. These are people who believe in government because they benefit from it every day, and they routinely tax themselves to pay for the services they want.

These are people with whom urban Democrats have common ground, and we have an opportunity to exploit the wedge the neo-cons have provided, to expand our base politically and geographically. For in addition to a shared belief that good government is necessary to maintaining a high quality of life, suburban and city voters have a mutual interest in maintaining an economically and culturally vibrant urban core.

One shouldn’t read too much into the precinct maps from a single election, but the vote on I-912 certainly does nothing to counter the trend we’ve been seeing for years. Even as Democrats have lost ground in Eastern WA and other rural areas, we have gradually become the majority party in many populous, close-in suburbs.

But my sense is that this shift is as much a result of what the GOP has done wrong as it is what the Democrats have done right (or even, simple demographics.) I’m constantly hearing from self-described moderate Republicans who complain that their party has left them, rather than the other way around. The challenge for Democrats is to convince these suburban voters to change their party identification, not just their votes, much the same way the GOP eventually accommodated and absorbed the old southern Dixiecrats.

This process could take decades, so if you’re a Democrat, I’d take the map above with a grain of salt. But if you are Republican, I advise you to take it with a couple of aspirins and fifth of whiskey, for there’s nothing about these trends that looks good for your party’s prospects.

Yesterday’s dramatic vote, in which the Senate failed to extend the Patriot Act, was a huge defeat for the GOP leadership and the ever weakening Bush administration. But though it is tempting to dwell on the inside politics, that would only serve to distract from the crucial issue at hand… whether the very basic human liberties we are supposedly defending against terrorists can survive our so-called “War on Terror.”

The Patriot Act had been hastily passed during the understandable hysteria that followed 9/11, with few legislators actually having the time to read the actual bill. But recognizing the importance of protecting the civil liberties that have made our nation the envy of all others, Congress wisely set an expiration date on the Act, so that it’s provisions could be more carefully reconsidered at a later time. Unable to get more protections into the reauthorization, Senate Democrats, along with several key conservative Republican Senators, threatened filibuster. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist needed 60 votes to close debate, but could only garner 52.

WA Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell both voted against cloture. Sen. Cantwell, who rushed back from observing the elections in Iraq to cast her vote, had this to say about her reasoning:

“The federal government has a responsibility to protect our nation from those who may bring terror into our homes. It also has a responsibility to respect our rights and honor our privacy. These principles are not mutually exclusive: we can and must achieve both.”

That is the type of balance we desperately need to maintain if we are really going to protect our freedom. And that is the type of balance we risk losing should we replace Sen. Cantwell and provide President Bush with another reliable Republican vote in the Senate.

UPDATE:
Ken gave a link to this article in the comment threads, and I thought it was worth adding it to the post.

A senior at UMass Dartmouth was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung’s tome on Communism called “The Little Red Book.”

The student had requested the book via an inter-library loan; he was told by agents that the book was on a “watch list” and that his background, which included significant time abroad, triggered an investigation. So what’s the harm, you righties might ask?

Dr. Williams said in his research, he regularly contacts people in Afghanistan, Chechnya and other Muslim hot spots, and suspects that some of his calls are monitored.

“My instinct is that there is a lot more monitoring than we think,” he said.

Dr. Williams said he had been planning to offer a course on terrorism next semester, but is reconsidering, because it might put his students at risk.

“I shudder to think of all the students I’ve had monitoring al-Qaeda Web sites, what the government must think of that,” he said. “Mao Tse-Tung is completely harmless.”

Of course, I suppose there are some on the right who might view this chilling effect as a happy little bonus.

Here’s your weekly sandbox. Poop away.

Wing-nuts roasting on an open fire,
Jack boots stomping through the snow,
Yuletide pundits join the paranoid choir
That claims that Christmas has a foe.

Bill O’Reilly knows this turkey of a president
Needs an enemy to fight,
So the ACLU, and George Soros too
Now find it hard to sleep at night.

They know the boobs who watch Fox News
Will blame the “War on Christmas” on the liberal Jews.
And every mother’s child will look in scorn,
To see if Soros really has devil’s horns.

And so I’m offering this simple phrase
To wing-nuts, one to ninety-two,
Although you’d prefer it be said different ways:
Happy Holidays… fuck you!

(With apologies to Mel Torme and Bob Wells… and nobody else.)