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In a decision that could be a huge boon for Washington state’s wine industry, the U.S. Supreme Court today struck down laws in New York and Michigan banning direct shipments of wine from out of state. The 5-4 decision called such laws discriminatory and anticompetitive, and puts in doubt similar laws in 22 other states.

With over 300 wineries, 30,000 acres of vines, and $628 million in retail sales, Washington state now ranks as the number two producer of premium wines nationally, second only to California. The industry creates 11,250 full time jobs, and has an estimated $2.4 billion impact on Washington state’s economy.

The decision could be particularly advantageous to the state’s many small wineries, who do not have the distribution prowess of their larger competitors. Without an interstate ban on direct shipments, a functioning website and some good reviews could open the market to higher margin, direct, national sales.

It’s not often I get to be out in front of Frank Rich on an issue, but as usual, my favorite New York Times columnist, manages to make his point more eloquently and persuasively than I could ever hope to. [“Just How Gay Is the Right?“] Ah well, I suppose that’s why Rich is an Op-Ed columnist for the paper of record, whereas I’m… well… just some blogger.

Rich uses the DVD release of the 1962 political potboiler “Advise and Consent” as a springboard for discussing the right’s war on the judiciary and the violently anti-gay rhetoric that fuels it. The movie focuses on a McCarthy-era confirmation battle, and the gay secret of a conservative Senator from Utah. It depicts the gay-baiters as the real menace.

That message remains on target now. But in the years since, even as it has ceased to be a crime or necessarily a political career-breaker to be gay, unprincipled gay-baiting has mushroomed into a full-fledged political movement. It’s a virulent animosity toward gay people that really unites the leaders of the anti-“activist” judiciary crusade, not any intellectually coherent legal theory (they’re for judicial activism when it might benefit them in Florida). Their campaign menaces the country on a grander scale than Drury and Preminger ever could have imagined: it uses gay people as cannon fodder on the way to its greater goal of taking down a branch of government that is crucial to the constitutional checks and balances that “Advise and Consent” so powerfully extols.

Rich goes on to present a rogues gallery of right-wing notables “whipping up homophobia” including Jerry Falwell’s “Declaration of War” against homosexuality, Pat Robertson’s claim that activist judges are a greater threat than Al Qaeda, and former Alabama chief justice Roy Moore (of Ten Commandments monument fame) who has suggested the state has the power to prohibit homosexual conduct at penalty of death. And of course, Rich points out the irony that I have been somewhat dwelling on recently.

What adds a peculiar dynamic to this anti-gay juggernaut is the continued emergence of gay people within its ranks. Allen Drury would have been incredulous if gay-baiters hounding his Utah senator had turned out to be gay themselves, but this has been a consistent pattern throughout the 30-year war. Terry Dolan, a closeted gay man, ran the National Conservative Political Action Committee, which as far back as 1980 was putting out fund-raising letters that said, “Our nation’s moral fiber is being weakened by the growing homosexual movement and the fanatical E.R.A. pushers (many of whom publicly brag they are lesbians).” (Dolan recanted and endorsed gay rights before he died of AIDS in 1986.) The latest boldface name to marry his same-sex partner in Massachusetts is Arthur Finkelstein, the political operative behind the electoral success of Jesse Helms, a senator so homophobic he voted in the minority of the 97-to-3 reauthorization of the Ryan White act for AIDS funding and treatment in 1995.

But surely the most arresting recent case is James E. West, the powerful Republican mayor of Spokane, Wash., whose double life has just been exposed by the local paper, The Spokesman-Review. Mr. West’s long, successful political career has been distinguished by his attempts to ban gay men and lesbians from schools and day care centers, to fire gay state employees, to deny City Hall benefits to domestic partners and to stifle AIDS-prevention education. The Spokesman-Review caught him trolling gay Web sites for young men and trying to lure them with gifts and favors. (He has denied accusations of abusing boys when he was a Boy Scout leader some 25 years ago.) Not unlike the Roy Cohn of “Angels in America” – who describes himself as “a heterosexual man” who has sex “with guys” – Mr. West has said he had “relations with adult men” but doesn’t “characterize” himself as gay. This is more than hypocrisy – it’s pathology.

Some of my readers have criticized me for trying to tarnish the image of the far-right Christian movement by focusing on the personal hypocrisy of a few of its leaders, but as Rich points out, this is more than just the ironic tale of a handful of secretly-gay gay-bashers… it is politics, pure and simple.

A likely inspiration for the gay plot line in Drury’s “Advise and Consent” was the real-life story of a Wyoming Democrat, Lester Hunt, who shot himself in his Senate office in 1954 after the Republican Campaign Committee threatened to make an issue of his gay son’s arrest in Lafayette Park on “morals charges.” Those were the dark ages, but it isn’t entirely progress that we now have a wider war on gay people, thinly disguised as a debate over the filibuster, cloaked in religion, and counting among its shock troops politicians as utterly bereft of moral bearings as James West.

People have always hated gays, but anti-gay sentiment is now being politicized, much in the same way the Nazis politicized long standing anti-Jewish sentiment to help secure Hitler’s ambitions in the early 1930’s. So if you think I’ve just been writing about sex or religion or hypocrisy, you’ve missed the point entirely. I’ve been writing about the politics of hate, and warning about the dire consequences to our republic should it be allowed to triumph.

It’s not just fun to write about the sexual deviancy of the holier-than-thou religious far-right — and their not quite so religious political shills — it’s also instructive. For their self-righteous preaching against decadent secularism and its anything goes sexual mores makes perfect sense in a worldview guided by their own twisted fantasies, where indeed… anything goes.

It’s not just hypocrisy; it’s projection. Or at the very least, jealousy. Constrained by the unhealthy belief that “normal” sex should be mundane and pleasureless, their own secret desires bulge out in all directions like a water balloon squeezed between your fingers.

For example, there’s the tragio-comic story of Spokane’s soon-to-be-former Mayor Jim West, a man so ashamed by his own nature, that his otherwise healthy homosexual desires were apparently perverted into pedophilia. The knee-jerk liberal in me wants to be empathetic to West, for he is in many ways a victim of society’s cruel intolerance of gays… but the writer in me can’t help but find humor in the ironic details of the former gay-bashing state Senate Majority Leader’s sudden fall from grace. The Spokesman-Review has posted a transcript of an online chat session on Gay.com between West (jmselton) and a forensic computer consultant posing as a teenager (motobrock34); the following excerpt struck me as particularly amusing.

jmselton: if i thought i would marry again, i’d marry Cathy McMorris the congresswoman.
motobrock34: is she nice?
jmselton: very and cute
jmselton: sweet is more like it.

I’m sure Rep. McMorris is flattered. Though of course, as he typed this, West was actually masturbating at his computer, fantasizing about motobrock34, and how “we’ll rub our dicks together.” In the words of the Spokane mayor, which may someday be immortalized as a kind of gay chat room farewell speech:

jmselton: yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
jmselton: crap
jmselton: oh boy

Oh boy, indeed.

Of course, if you enjoy sheer ridicule, nothing compares to the story of Neil Horsley, the folksy, anti-abortion, anti-homosexual, pro-secessionist, nut-case activist, who admitted to Fox News Radio host Alan Colmes that while growing up on a farm in Georgia… he had sex with a mule. Really. But even more amazing, is the fact that Horsley actually came back onto The Alan Colmes Show this Thursday, to further explicate his unique views on human sexuality and, um… animal husbandry.

Alan replayed a clip in which Horsley frankly explained that growing up, you experiment sexually with anything that moves, saying “If it’s warm and it’s damp and it vibrates you might in fact have sex with it.” So of course, Alan took advantage of the second interview to ask the question that was surely on everybody’s mind:

AC: Have you ever had sex with a washing machine?
NH: Um, well… I’ve never really thought about it, but the fact of the matter is that if it shakes, and there have been times I’m sure when in reality, that would be an option.

I never knew cleaning your laundry could be so dirty.

At this point, the interview started to get a little too weird, even for Alan, and so he tried to shift the conversation towards normal sexual behavior — like homosexuality — but after admitting past or potential relationships with farm animals and large household appliances, Horsley hemmed and hawed about whether he ever had sex with a (gasp) human male. Eventually, Alan was able to pin him down.

AC: Let’s get it on the record Neil. Before you found Jesus, you had sex with a man, right?
NH: Certainly. I’ve had sex with anything that would move. If we had a warm watermelon out in the field I might give it a name.

Graphic courtesy of the National Watermelon Promotion Board

Come to think of it, the one on the right looks kind of cute… sweet is more like it. Look at those full, sexy lips… yeahhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhh… oh boy!

Horsley continued to expand on his theory that we are all born in sin, and thus it is natural (if not normal) for a male to express his sexuality in any way possible, and that the only reason we don’t is that we are socialized to express it in more acceptable forms. Alan disagreed, saying that he personally never had any desire to have sex with farm animals or other men… and Horsley actually made fun of him, blaming his sexual hang-ups on his mother:

NH: What happened to you is that you got pussy-whipped at a very early age.

That’s right Neil… there’s something wrong with Alan. I suppose it’s no surprise that Horsley would eventually come to Jesus, considering he pretty much came to everything else. News Hounds has more coverage of the second interview, and you can listen to an excerpt yourself, courtesy of Fox News Radio.

Now I’m not suggesting that all anti-gay, anti-abortion, traditional-values Christians are closeted homosexuals like West, or somewhat-repentant vegephiles like Horsley. Some of them are just cruelly and sadistically heterosexual, like Dr. W. David Hager, a prominent obstetrician-gynecologist and Bush Administration appointee to the FDA’s Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs.

As some of you might know, the Advisory Committee voted 23-4 to make emergency contraception, known as Plan B, available over-the-counter, and it was Dr. Hager who was key in persuading the FDA to make the highly unusual decision to reject the recommendation. (A decision that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists called a “dark stain on the reputation of an evidence-based agency like the FDA.”) Dr. Hager recently delivered a sermon at his alma mater, Asbury College, a small evangelical Christian school in Wilmore, Kentucky, in which he warned that a war is being waged in this country against evangelical Christians like him, and that God had used him to stand in the breach. It was in this sermon that he revealed the role he played in the FDA’s controversial decision.

It was also this sermon that convinced Linda Davis, his former wife of thirty-two years, to break her silence about the sexual abuse and humiliation she suffered during their long marriage. As an article in The Nation reports, she was enraged by her ex-husband’s public moralizing on sexual matters: “It was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard.” Davis alleges that she was repeatedly sodomized without her consent.

“I probably wouldn’t have objected so much, or felt it was so abusive if he had just wanted normal [vaginal] sex all the time,” she explained to me. “But it was the painful, invasive, totally nonconsensual nature of the [anal] sex that was so horrible.”
…
“I would be asleep,” she recalls, “and since [the sodomy] was painful and threatening, I woke up. Sometimes I acquiesced once he had started, just to make it go faster, and sometimes I tried to push him off…. I would [confront] David later, and he would say, ‘You asked me to do that,’ and I would say, ‘No, I never asked for it.'”

As The Nation points out, Dr. Hager is no fringe character, but a well-credentialed and respected OB-Gyn and the author of six books on women’s health issues. (FYI, I highly recommend the General’s Amazon review of Hager’s As Jesus Cared for Women.) He doesn’t advocate faith as a substitute for medicine, but rather relies on his conservative Christian ideology as the basis for his paternalistic approach to women patients… a worldview in which men are expected to act as benevolent authority figures for the women in their lives.

At home, Dr. Hager apparently practiced what he preached… well, the authority part, not the benevolence. As Davis told The Nation….

Sex was always a source of conflict in the marriage. Though it wasn’t emotionally satisfying for her, Davis says she soon learned that sex could “buy” peace with Hager after a long day of arguing, or insure his forgiveness after she spent too much money. “Sex was coinage; it was a commodity,” she said. Sometimes Hager would blithely shift from vaginal to anal sex. Davis protested. “He would say, ‘Oh, I didn’t mean to have anal sex with you; I can’t feel the difference,'” Davis recalls incredulously. “And I would say, ‘Well then, you’re in the wrong business.'”

By the 1980s, according to Davis, Hager was pressuring her to let him videotape and photograph them having sex. She consented, and eventually she even let Hager pay her for sex that she wouldn’t have otherwise engaged in–for example, $2,000 for oral sex, “though that didn’t happen very often because I hated doing it so much. So though it was more painful, I would let him sodomize me, and he would leave a check on the dresser,” Davis admitted to me with some embarrassment. This exchange took place almost weekly for several years.

And it gets even worse. In 1995 Davis was diagnosed with narcolepsy, and she says her husband took advantage of the disease, as an opportunity to regularly sodomize her.

Somehow, I don’t think this is how Jesus would have cared for a woman.

Dr. Hager’s term on the FDA panel expires this June, and he is widely expected to be reappointed, possibly to the panel’s chairmanship. That there would be such a stark contrast between his public and private life is not surprising — there are, of course, hypocrites on both sides of the political spectrum. But that this is the kind of person the Bush administration would seek to lead the FDA on women’s health issues is at the very least disappointing, if not frightening.

The aggressive overreaching by the religious right in their campaign to impose their own biblically inspired sexual mores on society as a whole, begs the question: what are they so afraid so?

And I think I know the answer: themselves.

Okay… so in case it wasn’t clear, let me explain again the concept of these Open Threads. I give you a thread here, to post whatever you want on whatever topic you want… and you agree to try to keep the other threads somewhat on topic. I don’t mind if the other threads organically stray off track, but if you have something entirely unrelated to say, this is the place to do it.

It makes me proud to be a Washingtonian — and a Jew — to know that our region boasts such a well-connected and influential rabbi as Daniel Lapin. Known locally mostly for his incredibly boring radio show (no wonder he’s forced to buy his own air time on KTTH) Lapin has recently gained national notoriety as the man who introduced disgraced uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff to disgraced House Majority Leader Tom Delay.

New York Times columnist Frank Rich called Lapin a “show rabbi” for the Christian right, and as the investigation deepens into the Delay/Abramoff corruption scandal, we’re beginning to learn more about Lapin’s role in the neo-theo movement, and about his own questionable business practices.

Rick Anderson has a great piece in the current Seattle Weekly (“Meet the Lapin Brothers“), and local talk radio blog blatherWatch has also been providing excellent coverage for weeks. Today’s installment (“Rabbi Daniel Lapin, a long look backward“) provides a fascinating look at Lapin’s personal blend of God, business and politics. It’s a must read.

So for those of you who think I focus unfairly on the schemes of right-wing Christian Evangelicals, I just want to make it clear that I’m an equal-opportunity, non-sectarian critic of fundamentalist extremists everywhere. Especially the corrupt, hypocritical kind.

For those of you on the right who constantly complain about the size of government — how much it costs us in tax dollars, and how it distorts our economy — you may be interested to learn that the U.S. military is Washington state’s single largest employer, with over 94,000 uniformed personnel and civilian workers.

Well, the latest round of base closings has been announced, and fortunately for our state economy, Washington has been spared any major losses. In fact, it looks like we’ll be picking up about 800 personnel statewide. This is big news for a state economy still struggling to recover from recession. Huge.

Still… I’ve always been uncomfortable with the way these base closures pit states against each other, and the ensuing battle between politics and logistics during the decision making process. For example, the Philadelphia area where I grew up, just got the bad news that it will lose yet another major installation, the Willow Grove Naval Air Station. Pennsylvania has lost over 16,500 military jobs in the four rounds of base closures since 1988, and the local economy was hit particularly hard by the shuttering of the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in 1991. If approved, this latest round of closures will cost Pennsylvania another 1,658 jobs.

“This is not good news, but I can tell you the entire congressional delegation, the governor, all of us will go to bat,” said U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum.

Yes, that is exactly what congressional delegations around the nation will be doing during the coming months, in one of the few D.C. rituals where a hate-filled, right-wing, partisan whacko like Santorum is actually willing to reach across the aisle to his Democratic Keystone State colleagues. So as we digest this good news, we all owe a big thanks and our continued support to Gov. Christine Gregoire and our congressional delegation for all their hard work in protecting our own, selfish, economic interests.

UPDATE:
In case you’re wondering, here are the base closures proposed for WA state. You can view the official BRAC list in its entirety here.

Washington:
1LT Richard H. Walker U.S. Army Reserve Center
Army National Guard Reserve Center, Everett
Navy-Marine Corps Reserve Center, Tacoma
U.S. Army Reserve Center, Fort Lawton
Vancouver Barracks

As the something for nothing folk get all excited at the prospect of repealing the recently passed gas tax hike, I’d just like to point out that this is the sort of thing that comes from allowing our transportation infrastructure to fall into disrepair.

A crew from a highly respected national TV news program will be in Seattle on Monday, filming a segment on youth gambling. They are looking for teenage gamblers to interview.

If you know of any teenager who is a frequent gambler, or has experienced symptoms of problem gambling, who is willing to talk on camera, please contact me, so I can forward the information.

Tuesday, Gov. Christine Gregoire signed model legislation that creates treatment and prevention programs for our state’s growing number of problem gamblers. While other states fund similar programs, Washington is the first to legislate a permanent funding source, thus avoiding a biennial appropriations battle.

The legislation is modest in that it only budgets $750,000 a year through fees on commercial gaming operators, a fraction of the amount needed to meet current demand; by comparison, Oregon, with roughly half our population, spends $3.5 million a year. Washington Tribes have agreed to kick in an additional $450,000 to help fill the gap, but the commitment is neither permanent, nor nearly large enough to be commensurate with the size of the tribal gaming industry.

Still, anybody who has ever tried to push a bill through the legislature — especially one that raises taxes or fees — knows that even this watered down bill is an accomplishment. Many deserve credit for its passage, but as Peter Callaghan observed last week in The News Tribune, probably none more so than WA’s leading advocate for problem gamblers, Jennifer McCausland.

Jennifer McCausland, who joined the fight in memory of her son Ben, whose death was indirectly caused by his gambling addiction, believes the program is too timid. She opposed the final bill.

“I’m so terribly disappointed that I couldn’t activate any legislator’s sense of obligation to do more than the very minimum,” she wrote in an e-mail. “After all these years of neglect of the problem and overt willingness to have both hands in the pockets of gamblers, this was the best they could do?”

But McCausland doesn’t give herself enough credit. Her advocacy put a human face on the issue. And her scolding pushed legislators into doing the right thing.

I first met Jennifer last spring, when I was looking for ammunition to battle Tim Eyman’s gambling industry backed effort to legalize slot machines, the incredibly selfish and stupid Initiative 892. Jennifer is a passionate and persuasive advocate on behalf of compulsive gamblers and their families, and while I had hoped to recruit her to the fight against I-892, it was she who quickly converted me to her cause.

She taught me that gambling could be just as addictive as drugs and alcohol, and the consequences at least as devastating, destroying businesses, families, and lives. And I learned that problem gamblers were not merely an unfortunate by-product of the gambling industry, but rather, its core business… with over 50% of industry profits coming from 5% of its customers. Indeed, the science of slot machine design is the science of creating compulsion.

I spoke with Jennifer shortly after the bill signing, and she was perhaps a bit more philosophical with me than in her email to Peter Callaghan. While still disappointed over the amount of money allocated, she recognizes the accomplishment, and hopes it is only the first step. She told me that Olympia created a public health crisis by allowing a massive expansion of legalized gambling with little thought to the consequences, but that legislators were about to get their “eyes opened” to how big this problem really is.

“Once the program is fully implemented and legislators see how far demand for treatment outstrips supply,” Jennifer predicted, “it will be harder for them to ignore the need for adequate funding.”

Given the size of both our population and gambling industry, Jennifer believes the proper funding level should be at least $3.5 million a year, and possibly twice that. She also strongly believes that the tribal casinos must become a permanent part of the solution. But despite her resoluteness, she does not plan to lobby this issue full time, and has turned much of her advocacy efforts towards youth gambling, an issue she believes is dangerously ignored, not just in WA state, but nationwide.

She has converted me to that cause as well, and I will continue to support her efforts as best I can.

U.S. Senator George Voinovich (R-Ohio) slammed President Bush’s nominee for U.N. Ambassador today, as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee began deliberation.

“This administration can do better than that,” Voinovich said in the first big battle of President Bush’s second term

Voinovich said he could not vote for the nomination, but would agree to send it to the floor without a recommendation of approval or disapproval.

Republicans hold a 10-8 advantage on the committee. Without Voinovich’s support, any vote to send the nomination to the floor would deadlock, and thus fail.

Voinovich called Bolton “the poster child of what someone in the diplomatic corps should not be,” and accused him of being “arrogant” and “bullying.”

What he didn’t accuse Bolton of was being a “sexual pervert.” That accusation was left to somebody with expertise in subject, Hustler publisher and outspoken civil libertarian Larry Flynt. According to a press release on his website, Flynt alleges that Bolton’s first wife fled the couple’s home while he was traveling abroad in 1982, after being forced by her husband to engage in group sex. (She also took all the furniture.)

Corroborated allegations that Mr. Bolton’s first wife, Christina Bolton, was forced to engage in group sex have not been refuted by the State Department despite inquires posed by Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt concerning the allegations. Mr. Flynt has obtained information from numerous sources that Mr. Bolton participated in paid visits to Plato’s Retreat, the popular swingers club that operated in New York City in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

“The first Mrs. Bolton’s conduct raises the presumption that she fled out of fear for her safety or, at a minimum, it demonstrates that Mr. Bolton’s established inability to communicate or work respectfully with others extended to his intimate family relations,” said Mr. Flynt. “The court records alone provide sufficient basis for further investigation of nominee Bolton by the Senate.” Mr. Flynt continued, “The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations must be free of any potential source of disrepute or blackmail.”

Okay… perhaps Flynt isn’t the most unimpeachable source, but he has a long history of successfully defending himself against slander suits… and it is hard to argue with his reasoning that these charges deserve further investigation.

UPDATE:
In an unusual — but expected — move, the Foreign Relations Committee has sent Bolton’s nomination to the Senate floor, but without an endorsement. The Committee’s vote was 10-8, along party lines.

… but not Goldy free radio. I’ll be on the Kirby Wilbur Show again this morning, shortly after 8am, bringing a rare smattering of truth (well… at least, perspective) to KVI-570.

On previous appearances, Kirby and I have enjoyed a really respectful, friendly banter on the subject of Dino Rossi’s futile election contest. So perhaps I’ll spice things up by throwing in a few words about the gas tax.

UPDATE:
Well… late to bed, early to rise, makes a man groggy. But once I knocked the cobwebs out, I thought today’s exchange was a bit more entertaining. We actually got to respectfully disagree a few times.

For those who missed it (I’m assuming that’s most of you,) I suggested to Kirby that if his No New Gas Tax initiative qualifies for the ballot, he and John Carlson should follow Dave Ross’s lead, and take a leave of absence through the election. I graciously offered to fill in for him during that time.

UPDATE, UPDATE:
Missed the show? Listen to an MP3 audio clip.

Listening to it, I realized I missed a couple points. First, I didn’t hear Kirby respond to my offer to sub for him by saying he wanted a show to come back to. Missed a chance to give him a dig back in return.

Second, I failed to explain the biggest reason why talk of rail is a red herring when discussing Kirby and John’s initiative. The initiative will only rescind the gas tax portion of the transportation bill… about $5.5 billion. But the rail projects are funded by vehicle weight fees, which would not be rescinded. The state Constitution requires gas taxes to go only to roads, bridges and ferries… so it couldn’t possibly be spent on rail.

Okay… this doozy from David Sirota is all over the liberal blogosphere already, so many of you may have already seen it, but this is just too good to hide from my many righty readers.

“Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are [a] few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”
– President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 11/8/54

Hmmm… stupid Texas oil millionaires seeking to undermine social security, labor laws and farm programs. We should be on the lookout for dangerous folk like that.

Of course, it’s not like we’ve heeded any of Ike’s other warnings, like this familiar one from his Farewell Address:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.

A man who once threatened the life of the BIAW’s Tom McCabe, can’t be all bad… so I’ve tried to keep some perspective on the sad (yet comic) story of Spokane’s gay-bashing/gay-banging soon-to-be-former mayor, Jim West. The charges of child molestation, while heinous, will never be proven short of a personal confession, and apart from the disturbing image of the mayor, pants down, jacking-off at his City Hall computer, his admission of legal, consensual sex with other men (however young) is scandalous mostly in its stunning hypocrisy.

But when it comes to right-wing moralists, West is far from the most stunning hypocrite. For example, there is militant, anti-abortion activist Neal Horsley.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, Horsley leads the Creator’s Rights Party, whose website gathers personal information on abortion providers — pictures, addresses, license-plate and social security numbers, etc — essentially creating a target list for assassination. It also includes an article by Horsley entitled “Arresting Homosexuals (for their own good)“, which cites the Matthew Shepard murder as evidence that gays should be locked up because they inspire revulsion in the general populace.

And so it was with some disbelief that I read on News Hounds the bizarre transcript of a recent interview Horsley gave Fox radio-host Alan Colmes. Colmes asked about an Esquire Magazine interview, in which Horsley reportedly admitted to engaging in homosexual sex… and even bestiality.

NH: “Hey, Alan, if you want to accuse me of having sex when I was a fool, I did everything that crossed my mind that looked like I…”

AC: “You had sex with animals?”

NH: “Absolutely. I was a fool. When you grow up on a farm in Georgia, your first girlfriend is a mule.”

AC: “I’m not so sure that that is so.”

NH: “You didn’t grow up on a farm in Georgia, did you?”

AC: “Are you suggesting that everybody who grows up on a farm in Georgia has a mule as a girlfriend?”

NH: It has historically been the case. You people are so far removed from the reality… Welcome to domestic life on the farm…”

Um… I don’t want to come off as some out-of-touch, liberal, elitist city-slicker… but if this sort of thing is typical of rural, “red state” America… I don’t think I want to be in touch.

You can’t make this kind of stuff up! But just in case you think I did, and that this is some sort of vicious fraud perpetrated by liberal blogs, here’s a link to a source I’m sure you can trust, the Alan Colmes Show page on FoxNews.com, where you can actually listen to an excerpt for yourself. (And while you’re at it, listen to Randi Rhodes’ take on the story, and her amusing use of sound effects.)

Horsley has described gays as “faggots who will burn in Hell”, and who are part of “Satan’s plan”… and this from a man who believes that fucking farm animals is all a part of growing up in rural America. As he so eloquently explained to Colmes:

“You experiment with anything that moves when you are growing up sexually. […] If it’s warm and it’s damp and it vibrates you might in fact have sex with it.”

Yeah sure… if you’re a fucking pervert!

Now I’m not suggesting that all right-wing, gay-bashing evangelical extremists are porking pigs — or even just having your average, run-of-the-mill, boring, missionary-style gay sex — but apparently, some are. So when I hear the likes of U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum or Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, talking about the slippery slope from gay marriage to perversions like bestiality, I just think it’s worth pointing out that they’re figuratively and literally, closing the barn door after the horse has bolted.

And if I were the horse, I’d bolt too.

(A big thanks to HA reader DanW for tipping me off to this important news story.)

GOPolitburo Chair Chris Vance issued a typically defiant press release today.

(Sound of crickets chirping.)

The Republicans, whose aggressive PR campaign so successfully pushed the news cycle for months, now appear on the defensive… and while Vance’s recent statements have been characteristically dishonest, this one is particularly lame. I was talking to Andrew over at Pacific NW Portal, and he suggested we really need to roast Vance for this press release after Dino Rossi loses his case. But my acute sense of chivalry compels me to make fun of him now… particularly for this amusingly bold proclamation:

“With 13 days left until the trial, we are more confident then [sic] ever that we will win this case,” Vance concluded.

Which leads me to conclude that either they were never really all that confident to begin with, and/or that Vance and his attorneys are really, really stupid. Or perhaps that Vance is (gasp) lying. This quote is kind of like saying that “we are more confident than ever that we’ll find WMDs in Iraq,” or that “Crisco is part of a heart-healthy diet.” It’s time to move on Chris… if you don’t admit the lie, we’ll only spank you harder.

But if you really are more confident than ever, prove it… I want to hear these words coming out of Rossi’s mouth.

UPDATE:
Vance’s press release was in response to former Gov. Gary Locke’s public appeal to Dino Rossi to drop his lawsuit. So of course our good friend Stefan over at (u)SP picks up Vance’s “Desperate Democrats” theme, and questions Locke’s timing.

The timing is interesting. The trial is set to start in less than two weeks. At this point, Rossi is obviously not going to concede, especially when the call comes from a prominent Democrat. By making such an appeal, Gary Locke makes himself look more than a little bit foolish. If the case for Rossi is as hopeless as the Democrat lawyers (speaking through their official spokesman) want you to believe, why would Gary Locke bother to make a fool of himself with such a lame appeal? Why wouldn’t he just wait quietly and bide his time knowing that the Republican case will self-destruct in court anyway? The only reason I can imagine that Locke would speak out now and risk looking like a dope, is if he were convinced that the Democrat case was in serious trouble and he wanted to rally his own party faithful.

First, I’d just like to point out how amusing it is, that after aping yet another GOP press release, Stefan ironically labels me the Democrat lawyers’ “official spokesman.” If that’s true, then the Dems owe me for an awful lot of billable hours. Hmm… perhaps Stefan can help me out on what the going hourly rate is these days for propagandistic shilling?

Second… well… what a bizzaro-world piece of twisted, ass-backwards logic. Turtles are better known for sticking their necks out than our former governor, so if you want conclusive evidence that the train has reached the station, look no further than Locke climbing onboard and announcing its imminent arrival. Don’t get me wrong, I always felt Locke was an honest, well-meaning, competent administrator… but bold leadership isn’t exactly his schtick. If, as Stefan fantasizes, Locke thought the Democrats’ case was in trouble, the last thing he would do is “risk looking like a dope” by calling for Rossi to drop his case.

And of course, to Stefan, his political opponents are never just ceaselessly devious, they are also criminal… or at the very least, unethical:

How would Gary Locke be in a position to know how the trial was shaping up? Curiously, he was brought on as a partner at Davis Wright Tremaine, the firm which is representing the Republicans in the election contest.

I suspect that Gary Locke got a peek at the case his partners’ are preparing, had an “oh, shit!” moment, and felt a desperate urge to throw cold water on Dino Rossi.

That’s a pretty pathetic thing for Locke to do, especially since he has a fiduciary duty to all of his firm’s clients, not just the ones whose politics he shares.

Hey, speaking of “fiduciary duty”… here’s an idea Stefan: maybe Locke is asking Rossi to stop his lawsuit now, because he fears the GOP may be unable to their $3 million (and growing) legal bill? As a partner, such a default would hit Locke squarely in the wallet, and there’s no sense throwing good money after bad.

Hey, I almost forgot… today is my one-year blogoversary.

A year ago today, I posted my first blog entry: “Comedy is easy, politics is hard.” Re-reading it, I obviously had no idea what I was getting myself into.

Truth is, I hadn’t really been following the blogosphere much, and looked to the relaunched HA mostly as an exercise in forcing myself to write every day. I had read an article on blogging in the New York Times that made the amusing observation that never before had so much been written, by so many, for so few readers. And so with modest expectations, I set a relatively ambitious target of 200 daily readers after 12 months.

Nobody is more surprised than me to have overshot that target by about a thousand readers a day.

As I type this, at about 5 p.m., HA has already logged over 1,100 unique IPs for the day. I don’t generally like to reveal my site stats, and I have no plans to publish them on a regular basis, but for the curious, here are some excerpts from my current weekly Site Meter report:

VISITS:
  Average Per Day          1,162
  Average Visit Length      6:08
PAGE VIEWS:
  Average Per Day          3,151
  Average Per Visit          2.7

While I haven’t done much research, I’m pretty sure this makes HA the most widely read liberal blog covering WA state politics. Indeed, it probably makes HA the number two local political blog, second only to the much hyped (un)Sound Politics.

I am particularly gratified by the amount of time my readers spend on HA. I don’t know of another blog whose visit-length and page-per-visit stats even come close… and while I’m not sure if these statistics are significant, the raucous, lively comment threads certainly are. During my first few months, I was lucky to get a single comment per post, but now my threads routinely reach triple digits, and often number several hundred a day. My threads are a bizarre place, where useful information is exchanged despite the insults and obscenities flying in all directions. Unlike the sterile, troll-less threads one typically finds elsewhere, we encourage comments from those on the other side… even the really, really stupid ones. So thank you all for participating. (Well… most of you.)

Anyway, perhaps I’ll gather my thoughts and post some more insightful observations on my first year blogging when I have some more time. But I just wanted to acknowledge before the day passes, that without all of you, I’d just be typing into the ether.

So… thanks.