HorsesAss.Org

While GOPolitburo Chair Chris Vance was anointing Mike McGavick’s brow with oil, the party faithful were not necessarily celebrating his unchallenged ascension to thrown of presumptive nominee. Indeed, according to an article in The Hill, there’s not much rank-and-file consensus over the “consensus candidate” to challenge US Senator Maria Cantwell. [GOP grassroots say they’re getting mowed down in Washington state]

Conservative activists in Washington state say GOP leaders in the nation’s capital and at state party headquarters are trying to anoint a candidate, sidelining the poll workers, phone-bank volunteers and precinct canvassers who form the backbone of the Republican Party

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I am pleased to announce that I have worked out an arrangement to post the work of Andrew Wahl, the editorial cartoonist for the Wenatchee World. The arrangement is this: he has granted me non-exclusive rights to select from his portfolio of cartoons on national and local issues, and in return… I pay him absolutely nothing. Works for me.

Sometimes I’ll post his cartoons on their own, sometimes to illustrate a longer post… I’m not really sure. But I thought I’d lead off with one from a couple weeks ago, which I found particularly amusing… and disturbing. It’s also a touch timely again, what with more explosions today in London.

Gee, that quickie of a Supreme Court appointment really did a great job knocking “Rove-gate” out of the headlines, huh? Washington Post, page one, top of the fold:

A classified State Department memorandum central to a federal leak investigation contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked “(S)” for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified, according to current and former government officials.
…
The paragraph identifying her as the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was clearly marked to show that it contained classified material at the “secret” level, two sources said. The CIA classifies as “secret” the names of officers whose identities are covert, according to former senior agency officials.

Hmm. I wonder who leaked this memo to the WaPo? Kos has a suggestion:

It’s the CIA. Funny how those guys don’t like their covers blown.

I have sat by quietly over the past couple weeks as our friend Stefan over at (un)Sound Politics has tried to spin the tribulations of former King County Superintendent of Elections Julie Anne Kempf into some sort of Democratic conspiracy to silence a whistle blower. I have had several pleasant emails with Julie on unrelated subjects, and did not want to add on to her troubles. But when Stefan starts making his Zimbabwe comparisons again, he goes too far… and so I just can’t resist pointing out his intellectual dishonesty (or laziness… your pick.)

Stefan, who has previously slurred King County Executive Ron Sims by calling him “the Robert Mugabe of Washington politics” (thus comparing the most powerful African American elected official in the state to a brutal, African dictator), is now accusing Sims and Elections Director Dean Logan of having Kempf arrested on “trumped up” charges.

It appears that Kempf’s “arrest” … may have been timed to deflect from the bad news that the truly independent members of the task force are about to deliver.

Um… “trumped up” and “timed” by whom? Investigations like this are normally conducted by the Sheriff’s office under the direction of the County Prosecutor… but Prosecutor Norm Maleng (a Republican) was so concerned about any perceived conflict of interest, that he passed on control of the investigation to state Attorney General Rob McKenna (an uber-Republican.) So for this to be a conspiracy, you’d have to believe McKenna is now going around arresting innocents to protect his pals Ron and Dean.

Yeah… like that’s gonna happen.

The real question is, why is Stefan going out of his way to champion a long time Democratic operative? Why? Because during the election contest she refuted statements and assertions made by King County Elections officials… and Stefan finds that rhetorically useful. This is all about trying to impugn Sims and Logan at whatever cost… even the truth.

To imply that Ron Sims is behaving like an African dictator — arresting innocent people for political ends — is not only shameless and disgusting… given the facts, it’s totally nuts. And nobody but a hardcore, whacko nut-case should believe it.

I don’t often agree with the Seattle Times editorial board, but today’s editorial, “Try again to save Washington’s primary“… well… I don’t agree with that either. On the other hand, the guest column by regular Times contributor Floyd J. McKay, pretty much hits the issue right on the button: “It’s time for state’s voters to move on — to Montana.”

The Times once again pines for the days of the blanket primary, a nominating system whose special place in the hearts of WA voters is derived, as far as I can tell, from the fact that that’s the way we’ve always done it.

Zilly’s ruling is another defeat for voters who want to choose among the best candidates, not between partisan extremes. Last year, the state Legislature approved a top-two primary to replace the blanket primary.

But former Gov. Gary Locke gutted it with a veto, leaving in place a primary where voters had to pick a partisan ballot for the first time in almost 70 years.

Voters disliked it so much, they approved the top-two primary initiative. But the state’s major political parties sued to seize the people’s primary for their own partisan ends.

Um… the state’s major political parties sued in federal court, and the top-two was ruled unconstitutional. The Times thinks Judge Zilly should not have the final word, and perhaps he won’t. In an interview on KUOW this afternoon, Assistant Secretary of State Steve Excell said the Montana primary will be used this fall, but that the ruling would likely be appealed. He sounded pretty passionate about it too.

Sure. Whatever. Change can be uncomfortable. But as McKay wisely points out in his column, “tradition is wonderful, but sometimes you just have to move on.”

I’ve never quite understood why some people get so angry at the thought of voting a partisan ballot in a partisan primary; it seems far from the greatest threat to our democracy. McKay agrees that it is the electorate, not the system, that determines the quality of our elected officials, and if we want better politicians then we all have to get more involved. He also zeros in on a truly worrisome trend:

Perhaps the most disturbing electoral development in Washington in the past few years is not the endless primary battle but the extent to which party leaders and bankrollers want to control the nomination process.

Saturday’s paper, announcing Judge Zilly’s ruling, also contained the news that Dino Rossi is out of the Republican race for U.S. Senate next year, and Safeco CEO Mike McGavick is “the first choice of party leaders.”

That’s fine; McGavick looks like an excellent candidate and party leaders certainly have the right to express an opinion. But what happened in the gubernatorial and Senate races in 2004 was wrong

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Okay, so yesterday President Bush appointed a very conservative justice to the Supreme Court, one who will probably rule to roll back environmental protections, consumer and civil rights, and of course, Roe v. Wade. But the only really big news there, is that Bush announced the appointment yesterday.

There’s no doubt that the announcement was timed to distract attention away from a White House on the verge of implosion over Karl Rove’s outing of a CIA operative. Their goal is to suck all the air out of the controversy, by exploiting the media’s OCD-like focus on one big story at a time, and the public’s ADD-like tendency to lose interest in an issue once the headlines get bumped off the front page. But I’m not going to fall for it.

We have at least five weeks until Senate hearings start, and hell if I’m going waste that time breathlessly covering a confirmation battle the Democrats simply can’t win (assuming we want to.) Besides, the public needs to learn that elections have consequences… that with Roberts on the bench, we will be one judge away from young women dying of sepsis and other gruesome complications from back-alley abortions. As far as I’m concerned, if he’s a qualified jurist (and by all accounts he is,) let the religious right have their anti-abortion justice — it will be a Pyrrhic victory if we can make the SCOTUS a major issue in 2006 and beyond.

The Roberts appointment is neither a surprise nor a scandal… that’s what you get when you elect a President who campaigned on overturning Roe. The scandal that we should all be focusing on is the way the White House lied our nation into war, and has lied its way through a cover-up.

Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and other high-ranking White House officials leaked Valerie Plame’s identity to the press in an attempt discredit and punish Ambassador Joe Wilson, and send a warning to others who might publicly challenge the administration. Through his spokesman, the President lied to the American public about Karl Rove’s involvement in the scandal, and directly lied when he said he would fire anybody found to be involved. And it seems increasingly likely that Rove and others face criminal indictments for the outing itself, and/or the ensuing cover-up. (If you think a judge is going to jail reporters over an investigation that is not likely to produce indictments, you’re living in Cloud Cuckoo Land.)

But most importantly, the President and Vice-President of United States, and other high ranking members of their administration, repeatedly betrayed the trust of the nation and the world in laying the grounds for invading Iraq. As a result of their lies, we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars to mire us in a war in which over 1,700 US soldiers have died, another 30,000 have been wounded or maimed, and tens of thousands Iraqi’s have lost their lives. We have pissed away post-9/11 goodwill, and turned Iraq into a breeding ground for terrorists, while failing to finish the job we started in Afghanistan. It is hard to argue that the American people are safer now than we were the day our President cynically alleged in his State of the Union Address that Iraq had attempted to acquire uranium from Africa… an allegation based on evidence our own intelligence community nearly unanimously considered to be false.

Yes, nothing would please me more than to see Rove hoisted with his own petard, but in focusing on Rove we are also focusing on a corrupt administration that took America to war on a lie… and then apparently broke the law while covering it up. Rove’s scandal is Bush’s scandal, and to allow it to be bumped out of the headlines just as the truth is finally coming to a head, would be to do a great disservice to the American people.

Bush appointed a conservative justice, putting Roe at risk. What… you’re surprised? Now let’s get back to the real news.

Um… like the headline said.

I’m away from my desk so I briefly hijacked another computer to make this post, just so you’ll have a thread in which to talk about it. I’ve been listening to NPR in my car for the last couple hours, and from what Nina Totenberg says, John Roberts is very smart, very well liked, and very conservative. And according to Nina, barring some type of unexpected revelation, his nomination is likely to sail through the Senate.

Of course, one of the interesting things about today’s announcement is how unexpected it was to have a nominee named so quickly. Hmmm… you don’t suppose Karl Rove was trying to distract media attention away from another story, do you?

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

I intend to stop by for an hour or so.

Careful Pam… keep up that animal rights rhetoric, and the FBI might label you a “terrorist.” It’s in the P-I:

Reports on an animal cruelty investigation at a farm near Enumclaw show Washington state needs a law against bestiality, state Sen. Pam Roach says.

Roach, R-Auburn, said Monday she plans to introduce legislation that would make it a Class C felony to have sex with an animal, punishable by as much as five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Hmm. I’m guessing Pam didn’t grow up on a farm in Georgia?

Of course, Pam has a long history of advocating against animal cruelty… which I suppose explains why a little more than two years after 63% of voters approved an initiative banning the cruel use of bait and hounds to hunt black bears and cougars, Pam testified in support of a House bill that would have allowed it. (Which, by the way, is yet another example of right-wing defenders of the initiative process honoring the “will of the people” only when the people agree with them.)

UPDATE:
Hey… nice catch by reader David, who noticed that HB 1012 included an emergency clause. Yeah, that’s right… hunting bears and cougars with bait and dogs was an emergency. What a bunch of hypocrites.

Big tip of the hat to Carl at Washington State Political Report for pointing us towards Randy Cohen’s The Ethicist column in this week’s NY Times Magazine:

I have always believed that an elected official’s private life is not a part of the public record. Before and after the Mayor Jim West episode, I have heard colleagues discuss outing legislators who oppose gay rights but are rumored to be gay. What are the ethics in this case? State Senator Ken Jacobsen, Seattle

Your colleagues may ethically out an official only if that official’s being gay is germane to his policy-making. A person who seeks elected office, voluntarily entering the public arena, does surrender some claims to privacy. (Financial disclosure comes to mind.) Some, but not all. An official’s private life should remain private unless he or she makes it relevant to a public position freely taken. A cross-dressing secretary of agriculture who voiced no opinion on the sexual high jinks of soybeans — do legumes engage in high jinks? — would not meet this standard; a gay state senator who opposed gay civil rights would.

I agree with Carl, both that Randy gives a good answer, and that in the current political and media climate, “any expectation of staying in the closet is a joke.”

I too have had sources feed me unsolicited allegations of closeted gay legislators voting against gay rights legislation, and for a variety of reasons, have chosen not run with them. Even politicians deserve a little privacy, and I do not relish the thought of inflicting pain on anyone’s family. Besides, sexual preference is a private matter, and I think it is counterproductive to treat being gay as a scandal.

But I will not promise that my very real misgivings cannot be overcome, and I do not believe that I am alone amongst bloggers in admitting that, given reasonably reliable information — and political relevance — I would reluctantly consider outing a closeted politician. For example, the anti-discrimination bill, HB 1515, failed in the state senate by a single vote; it will surely come to floor again next session, and I’m told there is at least one senator who should think twice before casting another hypocritical vote in opposition.

That Sen. Jacobsen should ask his question in such a blunt and public manner should be viewed as a clear, if subtle, warning shot across the bow of those of his colleagues who know who they are. There are closeted politicians who have strongly opposed HB 1515 and other legislation that would have extended civil rights to the gay community, and if they continue to pander to the religious zealots on the far right, they risk being revealed for what these zealots hate the most: a homosexual.

Personally, I hope it doesn’t come to that. The state GOP leadership could protect its caucus from the personal and political consequences of a high-profile outing by simply arranging for HB 1515 to pass. Indeed, I would hope that Senate Minority Leader Bill Finkbeiner would show some true leadership, and cast the deciding vote himself… a vote, by the way, that would be consistent with the sentiments of his own district. I understand that such a move might cost him his leadership position, but his fellow Republicans should be made to understand that failure to pass HB 1515 could cost some in their caucus even more.

While such threats might represent a coarsening of the public debate, it would be cynical to argue that the decision to out a closeted gay legislator comes anywhere near the moral and ethical dilemma posed by the outing of an undercover CIA operative. It is safe to say that when it comes to the politics of personal destruction, nobody leads the way more boldly than President Bush… and thus Republicans nationwide should be prepared to reap what they have sown.

In a press release issued today, Safeco CEO Mike McGavick announced that he will resign his post at the end of August.

“This decision allows me to give full consideration to the possibility of public service.”

Uh-huh. Public service. You mean like challenging Sen. Maria Cantwell’s reelection in 2006?

Consider this an official announcement of his candidacy. McGavick wouldn’t be leaving an eight figure a year job if he wasn’t damn well confident he’s going to be the GOP’s anointed nominee. Yeah, that’s right… eight figures.

In 2001, a year his company lost more than $1 billion and laid off 1,200 people, he got paid $10.8 million. Last year, while he was deciding to close that Redmond campus, he raked in another $13.3 million and is now holding almost $25 million more in stock options. Even today, when his company is earning “record profits,” he continues to cut jobs and outsource his IT work overseas (offensively calling it “SmartSource”).

It’s hard to imagine how the Republicans are going to present a multi-millionaire insurance company executive who proudly advocates shipping jobs overseas, as a “man of the people.” But you know they’re going to try.

I hear some righties snidely claim that they’re going to force Cantwell to run on her record. Well I hate to burst their bubble, but McGavick has a record too, and it ain’t gonna look so pretty by the time November, 2006 comes around.

UPDATE:
I’m told that state Attorney General Rob McKenna has endorsed McGavick for senator, though I haven’t seen confirmation yet. So much for my dark horse candidate theory. (Though that doesn’t necessarily mean McKenna wasn’t considering a run.)

On September 29, 2003, when asked whether administration officials were involved in the outing of Valerie Plame, White House press secretary Scott McClellan had this definitive answer:

“The President has set high standards, the highest of standards for people in his administration. He’s made it very clear to people in his administration that he expects them to adhere to the highest standards of conduct. If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration.”

Well apparently, when it comes to a conscienceless bastard like Karl Rove, those “high standards” just got lowered a couple notches by presidential fiat. When asked today if he would fire anyone who helped unmask a CIA officer, Bush clearly lowered the bar:

“If someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration.”

Hmm. I suppose that means tried and convicted of a crime. So I’m guessing if Rove receives a presidential pardon before trial, his job is secure.

Sen. Maria Cantwell and Maj. Gen. Timothy Lowenberg of the Washington National Guard held a joint press conference today to attack the Pentagon’s decision to transfer an F-15 fighter unit out of Portland, OR. The move, proposed by the Base Realignment and Closure commission (BRAC), would leave only two F-15s to defend the entire Pacific Northwest.

The move would leave the Northwest with fewer air defenses than the rest of the country, said Cantwell, making the region more vulnerable to enemy attack. “That’s unacceptable,” she said at a news conference at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.

As it turns out, that’s not the only BRAC decision that poses a threat to the security of our region. In a recent post on Pacific Views, Natasha warns that the proposed realignment would leave six western states with no airlift capability.

If the BRAC sticks with the Pentagon recommendations, the governor of Washington State, along with governors of Idaho, Montana and Oregon will have no airlift capacity at their immediate disposal in case of emergency. At least 18 other states will be in a similar situation, but the entire continous northwest is out in the cold. And because Nevada and both of the Dakotas will also have no permanent airlift capacity, the airlift units in Wyoming, Utah and California will be the closest available to cover the whole region.

Natasha has posted the entire BRAC testimony of Gen. Frank Scoggins of the Washington Air National Guard… and some of it is quite alarming in terms of our region’s ability to respond to natural disaster or enemy attack.

Since September 11, 2001, many National Guard capabilities have been developed in order to support civil authorities in time of crisis. Those assets require air transportation in many instances. The impact of removing unit equipped KC-135s from the Washington Air National Guard and of C-130 aircraft from the Idaho Air National Guard will totally delete the Northwest Governors’ emergency capability to respond to Homeland Security events within the region.

I guess us “blue states” just aren’t worth defending.

David Ammons, the dean of WA’s Capitol press corp, has a piece today on the initiative process, and the newly established state chapter of the Initiative and Referendum Institute: “National Group Takes Up Initiative Watch Here.” (Kitsap Sun, free subscription required.)

The Institute claims its role is to protect the initiative process; its state director, Shawn Newman warns that power brokers in Olympia would like to abolish the initiative process entirely. But this rhetoric merely echoes the typically hyperbolic sentiments of professional initiative sponsor Tim Eyman:

“Legislators are always going to be looking for an opportunity to undermine the initiative process, so you have to be ever vigilant.”

What a load of crap. The initiative process is safely ensconced in our state constitution, and there’s absolutely no way to significantly reform it without a two-thirds vote in both houses, and a simple majority at the polls… thus the Institute’s stated mission is a red herring. Indeed, Ammons quotes one notable critic, who points out that the biggest threat to the initiative process is Eyman himself:

“We don’t need a mindless cheerleader for this process,” says David Goldstein, a Seattle blogger who watches initiatives closely. He dismisses Newman’s worry about the process being under attack and says, “The No. 1 thing that undermines the initiative is the way it is overused and misused, particularly in the western states.

“It is a complete end run around representative government. We elect these people to the Legislature and if you don’t like their decisions, you throw them out. Nothing could be more democratic than that.”

Initiatives are largely anti-government and have been taken over by wealthy individuals and special interests, Goldstein says.

That Goldstein guy really knows what he’s talking about.

The fact is, the initiative process has long ceased to be the populist safety-valve that was intended. Initiative sponsors like to tell voters that this is the only way to “send a message” to Olympia, but the message the sponsors send to voters is that government is the enemy. In that sense, even the most progressive initiative can work against the broader progressive agenda, as the very act of filing an initiative is commonly perceived as an indictment of our elected officials.

As we have learned again from the saga of I-872, initiatives are typically poorly crafted, and often downright unconstitutional. But when the courts do their job and toss out an illegal initiative, the sponsors cynically use that too to fan the flames of anti-government fervor. Look at some of our state’s most profligate initiative sponsors — Tim Eyman, John Carlson, the BIAW, the gambling industry — these are all people and organizations with a radical vision of a dramatically smaller and weaker government, with little taxing power and even less regulatory authority. Outside the mainstream of political opinion, they cloak their agenda in populist clothing, while often appealing to our basest, most selfish instincts.

That the initiative process needs watching is a given… that it needs protection is a joke. And in the Institute’s case, it is also a lie. They understand full well that by it’s very nature the initiative process is a handy tool for turning the people against their government. And that is the overarching agenda of many on the right who support the process most.

“I am saying that if anyone was involved in that type of activity which I referred to, they would not be working here.”
– Ron Ziegler, press secretary to Richard Nixon, defending the presidential aide Dwight Chapin on Oct. 18, 1972. Chapin was convicted in April 1974 of perjury in connection with his relationship to the political saboteur Donald Segretti.

“Any individual who works here at the White House has the confidence of the president. They wouldn’t be working here at the White House if they didn’t have the president’s confidence.”
– Scott McClellan, press secretary to George W. Bush, defending Karl Rove on Tuesday.

Sometimes I think I should stop blogging on national issues, and just provide a permanent link to Frank Rich’s columns in the NY Times. He’s not only one of the finest writers in the business, he also has a unique talent for using historical and cultural references to hack through the thicket of “facts” and “opinions” that tend to obscure most major news storys. In his latest piece, “Follow the Uranium,” Rich once again makes an ironic comparison to Watergate to illustrate that the “cover-up” is not the core issue in the outing of Valerie Plame. Rich sweeps away the “subplots,” and gets to the heart of the matter:

This case is about Iraq, not Niger. The real victims are the American people, not the Wilsons. The real culprit – the big enchilada, to borrow a 1973 John Ehrlichman phrase from the Nixon tapes – is not Mr. Rove but the gang that sent American sons and daughters to war on trumped-up grounds and in so doing diverted finite resources, human and otherwise, from fighting the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. That’s why the stakes are so high: this scandal is about the unmasking of an ill-conceived war, not the unmasking of a C.I.A. operative who posed for Vanity Fair.

Yes, Rich acknowledges, “of course, Karl Rove did it.” Time Magazine reporter Matt Cooper is now talking about his grand jury testimony, and he not only names vice presidential chief of staff Lewis Libby as his second source, he also apparently contradicts Rove’s testimony. It was Rove who told Cooper about Plame, and that she was a CIA operative… and in so doing, perhaps even Rove knew that he was crossing a line:

“Although it’s not reflected in my notes or subsequent e-mails, I have a distinct memory of Rove ending the call by saying, “I’ve already said too much.” This could have meant he was worried about being indiscreet, or it could have meant he was late for a meeting or something else. I don’t know, but that sign-off has been in my memory for two years.”

While unmasking Plame may not in the end prove to be a prosecutable offense, it is clear that Rove’s goal was to trash the Wilsons the way he has previously trashed John and Cindy McCain or Ann Richards or any number of other political adversaries. And maybe Rove perjured himself, maybe he didn’t… but as Rich points out, to focus on Rove is no more illuminating than to focus on Judy Miller or Matt Cooper or Robert Novak.

This scandal is not about them in the end, any more than Watergate was about Dwight Chapin and Donald Segretti or Woodward and Bernstein. It is about the president of the United States. It is about a plot that was hatched at the top of the administration and in which everyone else, Mr. Rove included, are at most secondary players.

Libby and Rove and other White House henchmen and surrogates went after Wilson — destroying his wife’s career — because he dared to ask a single question:

Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq?

As we’ve subsequently learned from the Downing Street Memo, and from our own post-invasion intelligence on the ground in Iraq itself… the answer is yes.

Follow the uranium, as Rich suggests, and we can come to only one conclusion: the President of the United States led us into war under false pretenses. That is the scandal that makes this affair worse than Watergate.