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In the wake of Rep. Randy Cunningham’s tearful confession to taking at least $2.4 million in bribes in exchange for lucrative military contracts, the NY Times editorial board takes the House Ethics Committee to task for its failure to… well… do anything.

It was a symbiosis between an ethically challenged lawmaker, who resigned on Monday, and easy-money boosters that might still be under way had San Diego newspapers not discovered a suspicious home sale by the congressman that concealed a payoff.

It was federal prosecutors – and certainly not any Congressional ethics monitors – who followed the rent-a-lawmaker trail. As Congress mulls over the larger lessons of the Duke’s demise, it should begin with the House’s ethics process, which has been shamefully locked into immobility for the past year while scandals have arisen as predictably as the new moon. The Republican majority has already seen its leader, Tom DeLay, indicted. The influence-peddling schemes attributed to the lobbyist Jack Abramoff are said to be unraveling, with prosecutors reported to be focusing on the dealings of at least a half-dozen lawmakers in both houses.

Where is Congress’s resolve to show the public that it can police itself? Something far better than passive denial was writ large in the first sentence of the Contract With America – the campaign tract that helped Republicans take power a decade ago – with its promise “to restore the bonds of trust between the people and their elected representatives.”

No doubt Delay elevated Rep. Doc Hastings (WA-4) to Chair the House Ethics Committee exactly for his well-earned reputation of doing nothing in Congress… and he hasn’t disappointed the Republican leadership. Under his control the Committee has sat in gridlock as scandal has erupted around them.

Common sense would dictate that it would be a waste of resources for Democrats to challenge Hastings in his bright red, Eastern WA district… but a profound aversion to political corruption is one issue that unites both Democrats and Republican voters alike, if not their respective party leaders. Hastings deserves to pay a price at home for his political toadyism in the other Washington, and we need to find a way to extract it.

2006 is already shaping up to be a disastrous year for the GOP. It’s possible we could be looking at the makings of a 1994-like shift, and if the Dems manage to field a credible challenger, Hastings could be vulnerable.

The WA state GOP continued its self-destructive lurch to the right today, when state Sen. Bill Finkbeiner announced that he was resigning his position as Senate Minority Leader. Amongst other reasons, Finkbeiner said he wanted to spend more time with his family. Uh-huh.

“Unfortunately, there are only 24 hours in a day,” said Finkbeiner, R-Kirkland. “There is a significant time commitment that comes along with the honor of representing your neighbors in the Legislature. When you add to that the tremendous time it requires to lead and represent a legislative caucus, there is sometimes little left over for other things that are equally or even more important, including work and family. To be honest, I was being pulled in many different directions and was stretched pretty thin.”

Mostly he was stretched between the interests of his relatively moderate constituency and the demands of the ultra-conservative Republican Senate Caucus. I’m sure Finkbeiner really does want to spend more time with his family, but in political talk, that’s usually just a face-saving euphemism. Finkbeiner barely survived a leadership challenge last spring, and he likely faced another tough battle before the coming session.

As far as Republicans go, Finkbeiner is one of those most in touch with mainstream WA voters… which means he’s totally out of touch with the mainstream of his own party’s leadership. First elected to the state House as a Democrat in 1992, he switched parties to run for the Senate in 1994, but his core ideology apparently never bothered to switch with him. Last session he angered many fellow Republicans by breaking ranks on a stem cell research bill and the controversial transportation improvement package (recently affirmed by voters in rejecting I-912.)

The transportation vote was one “I feel really good about,” he said. “We were able to keep that issue bipartisan.”

Which is exactly what the rest of the GOP didn’t want, and payback was inevitable.

Oh well. It’s not like a man with a “latte liberal”, environmentalist wife (and recent author of “The F Word: Feminism in Jeopardy“) was ever going to win the hearts and minds of the current WA GOP.

In the long run, I’m guessing Finkbeiner is better off politically disassociating himself from the right-wing of his party. Outside the leadership he can better serve a district that continues to trend Democratic, and enjoy the freedom to consistently vote his own conscience… both of which will serve him well if he ever wants to run for higher office. Indeed, 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) when it is reintroduced in the coming the Legislative session.

I look forward to following his political evolution, and remain hopeful that Finkbeiner can grow into the kind of Republican I can respect.

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

In honor of Lori Sotelo, I plan to be there tonight, challenging the drivers licenses of all those who attempt to order alcohol. I’m hoping maybe Andrew shows up, so that I can achieve as high a disqualification rate as she did.

I emailed Democratic attorney David McDonald for some comments on the outcome of the GOP’s voter registration challenge, and he cut straight to the point.

No matter how you cut it, this is incredibly sloppy work by Sotelo and her gang. About 80% of the challenges that they pursued to hearing in the last ten days were rejected [or withdrawn] for lack of adequate proof. On top of that are all the rest of the challenges that they withdrew before the hearing but after they forced the voter to use a challenged ballot.

They have consumed a lot of public money, time and employee resources with this wave of last minute challenges. It is unclear that the result is any different than if they had taken Dean Logan up on his offer to check any list that they gave him rather than filing mass challenges, other than they have spent much more taxpayer money.

Out of 1944 challenges filed with great fanfare just days before the November 8 election, only 58 ballots have been disqualified… less than 3 percent. Meanwhile, hundreds of legal voters have been wrongly inconvenienced and harassed, all so the GOP could make a political point.

And a cheap, weak political point it was… though of course, that didn’t stop state GOPolitburo chair Chris Vance from repeating it in the wake of their disastrous voter intimidation scheme:

“Even though our challenges have been formally rejected, we have achieved our objective,” he said. “The objective remains the same as it’s always been: to persuade King County to clean up its process and clean up its voter rolls.”

So let me just take a moment to say something that I’m sure a lot of people in the elections office and the Democratic Party are thinking, but that is too impolitic for most people to say out loud: Hey Chris… fuck you!

King County has been doing its job maintaining the voter rolls since long before Vance and Lori Sotelo filed their cynical, bogus challenges. That’s not just my conclusion… that’s the conclusion of the Republican Secretary of State’s office, and of every county auditor contacted for comment by the Seattle P-I.

Republican charges that the King County elections office doesn’t police voter-registration addresses closely enough are unreasonable, the state elections director says.

“It’s a pretty high burden to place on a county, especially a county the size of King,” Nick Handy said Monday.

Snohomish County doesn’t screen registrations for nonresidential addresses. Neither does Island County. And neither does Republican Chelan County.

Evelyn Arnold is the auditor in Chelan County, overseeing a little more than 36,000 registered voters (outside of King County, elected auditors run the county elections departments). A Republican, she testified in May as the leadoff witness for the GOP in its legal challenge to the 129-vote victory of Democrat Christine Gregoire in the 2004 governor’s race. […] Arnold said this week that her office does not systematically investigate residence addresses or other information on registration applications.

“When people come in to register, we take their word,” she said. “They have signed an affidavit (the registration form), and we take their word for it.

“We don’t cross-examine,” she said. “We can’t, really. We don’t have the authority to do that, in my opinion.”

If an employee in her office recognizes a residence address as bogus or if that information comes to her from outside, Arnold said, she’ll look into it — but she said she’s loath to eliminate a registration on that basis.

“We don’t want to disenfranchise any voter because their address is suspect,” she said.

Spokane did recently create a database to screen registrations, but only after they dealt with more important priorities. And according to Audtior Vicky Dalton, they only check addresses after voters have been placed on the rolls.

“We do not deny registration based on that address,” she said. “We take the registration, and then we work to clean it up.”

Why didn’t Vance and the GOP go after these other counties? And why, after all their efforts, were they able to disqualify such a small number of voters — otherwise eligible, and mostly due to technical errors in their registration? Because KCRE was doing its job as required by statute, and consistent with the procedures in every other county in the state.

The only thing this incident proves is that the state GOP, under Vance’s direction, is willing to do and say anything for a perceived political advantage… even if it means unfairly maligning innocent people, and disenfranchising legal voters.

Just thought I’d point out that of the 1944 voter registration challenges the GOP filed with much fanfare just days before the November 8 election, only 58 ballots have been disqualified. That’s a success rate of less than 3 percent.

Nice going, Lori.

The King County Canvassing Board voted today to reject over half two-thirds of the voter registration challenges brought by the GOP several days before the election. The rulings only concerned those challenged voters who cast a ballot in the November 8 election.

While the proceedings were still ongoing when I left, a pattern quickly emerged. Dan Satterberg (representing County Prosecuting Attorney Norm Maleng, a Republican) voted to accept all the registration challenges, arguing that mailbox businesses could never be used as a registration address, whereas Elections Director Dean Logan and Democratic Councilman Dow Constantine only accepted those challenges for which “clear and convincing evidence” was provided either by the GOP or the voters themselves, that this was not their actual residence.

This party line split is not like to satisfy either side, for while it establishes a precedent by which challengers must meet a high standard in order to prevail, it does nothing to discourage the GOP from filing similar speculative, poorly researched challenges in the future. And the lack of unanimity will only feed into partisan tensions.

Ironically, the Democrats’ willingness to accept a challenge, even though the challenger failed to meet the statutory requirement of providing evidence of the voter’s actual address, created the odd situation in which those voters who actively defended their ballots were those most likely to be disqualified. Logan and Constantine voted to accept the challenge of those voters whose testimony in person or via affidavit provided an alternate address. For those who did not testify and for which the GOP could not prove another residence, the challenge was rejected.

The philosophical difference between Constantine and Logan on the one side, and Satterberg on the other was best illustrated by the case of David Combs, a homeless man, registered at a UPS mailbox store, who testified that the owner actually gave him a key so that he could sleep inside the store on cold nights and use the facilities.

Constantine cited this as an example that “the challenger’s assertion that certain classes of property could not be used as a residence was not acceptable,” and that the board “cannot conclude as a matter of law” that all such mailbox registrations are invalid. Satterberg nonetheless repeated his interpretation that a mailbox facility could never be a valid residence, regardless of the circumstances.

I’ll provide my thoughts and analysis in a separate post, once the final tally is in.

UPDATE:
Unofficial tally: 57 challenges accepted, 132 challenges rejected.

UPDATE, UPDATE:
WashBlog’s mysterious Anonym has more on today’s hearing, but be sure to link on over to his cross-post at Daily Kos and recommend the diary, so this important local story gets maximum national exposure.

The Seattle Times has an interesting piece on an unusual political split:

The Washington Association of Realtors has launched a $1 million campaign aimed at squashing a proposed tax increase on real-estate sales.
…
The group has started running TV, radio and newspaper ads warning that the tax increase would cost homeowners thousands of dollars in “hard-earned equity” when they go to sell.

But in their fight, the Realtors face an unlikely foe: the typically anti-tax Building Industry Association of Washington (BIAW).

The homebuilders group, which

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“Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.”

— Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

A couple weeks ago I quipped:

What do Judy Miller and Stefan Sharkansky have in common? They’ve both been booted from their respective papers.

Truth is, I hadn’t bothered to look into the circumstances surrounding Stefan’s departure from The Stranger… my unsupported insinuation was just a little friendly dig, mostly intended to serve as a springboard for linking to the Judy Miller story.

But a couple of “the Shark’s” sycophants expressed displeasure in my comment thread, so in the interest of fairness, I thought I’d point you towards BlatherWatch, where Michael has the inside scoop on the sudden end to Stefan’s strange tenure at The Stranger.

This came to a halt, we’re told by someone inside The Stranger, when Sharkansky attended a pair of press conferences wearing a different hat to each.
…
According to our source, Sharkansky attended the Republicans’ press conference first, where he was hailed as a hero; invited to stand up in front, got the “googly eyes from Kathy Lambert” (not that hard to get, actually, if you’re of the male species) and perhaps even spoke to them. Then shoving his Republican political operative hat back in his pocket, he donned his journalist hat, (made with duct tape and Superglue on PhotoShop, no doubt) and as a Stranger reporter, went to the Elections Department presser, where he presumably asked searing questions ala Mike Wallace.

That a reporter would stand as a party operative, and then be a reporter on the same afternoon would embarrass any news organization. Feit was not amused to say the least, according to our source. He decided then and there to kick him off the paper after the election.

So, apparently Stefan was dumped by The Stranger. Lucky guess.

But gee… I sure hope I had something to do with it when I wrote about his fake press conference back on 10/13.

But perhaps the most embarrassing detail for Irons and his GOP comrades is that they seemed unembarrassed to stand there side by side with WA state’s most famous conspiracy theorist, our friend Stefan of (un)Sound Politics, whose tireless efforts to find patterns of fraud in KC’s voter databases borders on numerology, and whose aluminum-hat-analyses have earned him every last drop of incredulity he enjoys. Stefan actually had the temerity to stand before the assembled media throng and claim he was one of them, ignoring the fact that real journalists cover press conferences… they don’t conduct them.

Whatever.

It was bound to end sometime. Stefan was never a very good fit at The Stranger, not so much for his politics, but because he’s such an extraordinarily godawful boring writer. The Stranger’s hip cultural coverage is totally lost on me (I’m hip-challenged), and I occasionally find their political analysis a tad annoying, but Dan Savage has certainly populated the staff with gifted and entertaining writers… and, well… Stefan… not so much.

So am I happy to see Stefan lose his weekly soapbox? Hell yeah. And is it unprofessional of me to rub salt in his wounds this way? Yeah, sure… I suppose. But then, unlike Stefan, I’ve never pretended to be a professional journalist.

UPDATE:
In the comment thread, Dan Savage (or at least, somebody claiming to be Dan Savage… how should I know?) claims that Stefan was not in fact dumped for the “two hats” incident. I suppose Dan (if it is Dan) would know.

Whatever. The Stranger is still better off without him.

I just flew in from Philadelphia… and boy are my arms tired.

Unable to achieve their agenda through the legislative process, the BIAW and other conservative groups are attempting to pack the bench by spending huge sums on low-profile judicial races:

For the first time in this state, a political action committee has been formed to help elect candidates to the state Supreme Court and Court of Appeals. The Constitutional Law PAC has a right-of-center orientation.

The development alarms some court observers, who say an agenda-driven PAC for judicial elections could threaten the independence and impartiality of the state’s judiciary, and that the emergence of one will lead to other, countervailing PACs.
…
It’s especially troubling, he said, since Washington is one of only four states that elect judges but have no finance limits on their campaigns. Contributions to candidates for other statewide offices are limited to $1,350 per donor. A bill to place that limit on judicial candidates passed the state House this year but died in the Senate.

This development makes it clear that we absolutely need to pass legislation applying campaign limits to judicial races; if we can’t get it through the Legislature, we need to (gasp) run an initiative. These races have already been heavily politicized, and we simply cannot continue to allow wealthy special interests to pack the bench with judges that favor their agenda.

It also makes it clear that progressives need to create their own version of the BIAW… a blatantly self-interested, partisan organization that exploits a loophole in the state workers compensation system’s “retro rebate” program, to fund candidates and causes.

What we need is a Progressive Industry Association of Washington, that hires away a retro manager from one of the other groups, and competes for business and influence on an even playing field. If we can’t change the rules to make them more fair, then we need to start competing using the rules in place.

Last week I mentioned that the list of 1944 voters who had their registration challenged by Lori Sotelo and the GOP included a prominent local musician. Well, WashBlog’s coverage of Wednesday’s hearing revealed him to be former Soundgarden lead guitarist, Kim Thayil.

Thayil spoke in his own defense:

“I am concerned about people in my situation

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On this Thanksgiving Day — as on all days — I am thankful for the greatest run-on sentence in human history:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

There is nothing more American than dissent.

Once again, WashBlog’s got great coverage of the voter registration challenge hearings, with a firsthand account of last night’s session. Anonym’s cross-post to Daily Kos is currently sitting in the recommended list, but please recommend it yourself so that this story can get as much exposure as possible. The rest of the nation needs to know the kind of underhanded bullshit the GOP is trying to get away with here.

As WashBlog reports, some of the same Democratic attorney’s who kicked Dino Rossi’s ass in his doomed election contest trial are playing tag-team on behalf of challenged voters. On Monday, Kevin Hamilton took Lori Sotelo and the GOP to the mat, and last night it was David McDonald’s turn:

McDonald: Do you have any personal knowledge that Ms. Harriet can’t vote?
Sotelo: I won’t answer that question.

McDonald: Do you have any personal knowledge about Ms. Harriet’s age, which could affect her ability to vote?
Sotelo: I won’t answer that question.

McDonald: Do you have any personal knowledge about Ms. Harriet’s status as a United States citizen that could affect her ability to vote?
Sotelo: I won’t answer that question.

McDonald: Do you have any personal knowledge that Ms. Harriet doesn’t meet any of the exceptions laid out in the Washington State Constitution in regards to her voting registration?
Sotelo: I won’t answer that question.

McDonald: Do you know where in this storage facility the resident manager lives?
Sotelo: I won’t answer that question.

McDonald: I move for dismissal. Her statement that she has a “reasonable idea of where she (Ms. Harriet) lives” doesn’t meet the requirements laid out in the statute. These “drive by challenges” will enormously burden the public. If you let these challenges to forward, then you’ll be allowing future fishing expeditions.

McDonald received an ovation when he returned to his seat.

All this should make fascinating viewing, thanks to the camera the Democrats brought to tape the proceedings… despite strenuous objections from GOP Attorney Diane Tebelius. According to one observer, the Republican table totally “freaked out” when they saw the camera being set up, and demanded that cameras be barred from the hearing room.

Hmm. They didn’t seem to mind the camera our good friend Stefan brought to snap pictures of the infidels for the illustrated purge list he’s working on. And they didn’t seem to mind all the TV cameras that showed up at the hearing last Thursday. But then, that was before they knew how badly the hearings would go for the GOP, and how terrible their ill prepared, erroneous and extra-legal challenges would look to the general public.

When KCRE representative Bobbie Egan defended the Democrat’s right to tape the event by saying it was a public hearing, Tebelius demanded to know what part of the RCW allows cameras in the hearing room. Of course, perhaps if she had done her legal homework, Tebelius might have been able to tell us what part of the RCW bans camera. (Hint: that’s the part of the RCW that doesn’t exist.)

In any case, the GOP’s PR disaster continues, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see clips of Sotelo’s legal undressing in future Democratic campaign ads, for as McDonald made clear, Sotelo had no personal knowledge about the residences of any of the voters she challenged… despite the fact that she testified to such knowledge on her surreptitiously altered challenge affidavits.

Whether this rises to the level of perjury or not, I’m not sure (technically, the blame may lie on the auto-pen that was apparently used to put an identical signature on all 1944 affidavits), but the charges certainly deserve at least as thorough an investigation as she is demanding of the challenged voters.

Sotelo and the GOP are seeking to disenfranchise (even prosecute) otherwise eligible voters based on poorly supported allegations of errors in their voter registrations. Yet Sotelo herself has failed to follow the statute in filing these challenges, and has knowingly misled elections officials as to her personal knowledge.

And so I urge all of you to sign a petition to King County Prosecuting Attorney Norm Maleng, asking him to investigate Sotelo’s actions, and prosecute her if warranted. At last count, 72 people had already signed the petition… it would be nice to collect at least 1944 signatures before turning it in.

Sunday’s tragic shooting spree at the Tacoma Mall prompted exactly the type of response you’d expect from the ardent Second Amendment Libertarians on the right. The solution to gun violence? More guns.

As Michael reported over on BlatherWatch, right-wing talk radio was all aflutter with the lessons to be learned from this tragedy.

… one caller told Carlson (who agreed) that the whole darn thing would have never happened if one out of three citizens in the mall was carrying a firearm.

Well, as it turns out, at least one citizen in the mall was armed that day.

The man who was critically wounded during Sunday’s shooting rampage at Tacoma Mall drew a pistol and confronted the gunman before he was cut down by gunfire, his family said Tuesday.
…
Witnesses told McKown’s family that he was shot after he pulled his own handgun during the shooting.

“Our understanding is that Dan drew his weapon and confronted the gunman,” his stepmother, Beverly McKown, said during a news conference Tuesday at Tacoma General Hospital.

McKown is the only one of the six victims to be critically wounded. He was shot twice in the abdomen and may suffer permanent paralysis due to spinal damage.

Now I don’t mean to necessarily criticize McKown for choosing to draw his weapon; it may have been a courageous, selfless act. But it certainly didn’t end up making him any safer.

In fact, statistics consistently show that the number one risk factor for death by handgun is owning one. A gun in the home increases household members risk of homicide by 3 times, and the risk of suicide by 5 times. Indeed, of our nation’s 30,242 gun deaths in 2002, 56 percent were suicides.

I myself know how to handle a weapon — taught by Quakers, oddly enough — but choose not to own one for exactly these reasons. Guns tend to make their owners less safe, not more. (Though I suppose arming myself might slightly decrease my risk of harm from right-wing death squads, so perhaps I should reconsider?)

So if there is any lesson to be learned from the tragedy in Tacoma, it is certainly not that more citizens should be armed. If your concern is personal safety, knowing exactly how and when to use a handgun is much more important than simply carrying one.

[Cross-posted to Daily Kos]