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Today the Washington state Supreme Court denied Seattle’s petition that would require Attorney General Rob McKenna to withdraw from the Teabagger-inspired multistate lawsuit against the health care reform law. From the decision:

The people of the state of Washington have, by statute, vested the attorney general with broad authority, and Attorney General McKenna’s decision to sue to enjoin the enforcement of the (health care law) falls within that broad authority. As such, Attorney General McKenna has no mandatory duty to withdraw the State from the multistate litigation. The city of Seattle’s petition for a writ of mandamus must, accordingly, be denied.

Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes responded:

I respectfully disagree with the Supreme Court’s decision. Attorney General McKenna dragged Washington state into a Tea-Party-inspired lawsuit that will, if successful, prevent millions of Americans from obtaining the health care…. He did this against the express wishes of and without first consulting the Governor, the Insurance Commissioner, the House Speaker, and the Senate Majority Leader.

By any rational measure, Washington is a blue state. Of late we’ve elected Democrats for Governor, Democratic Senators; Democratic presidential nominees win our popular vote. As a people we are strong on the environment, pro-labor, pro-choice, pro-science, pro-safety, pro-health.

And now we have an Attorney General who defies the Governor and the people and unilaterally decides to join the teabaggery. McKenna has, singlehandedly, made us red-faced by painting us as a pack of pitchfork-wielding Teabaggers.

So please join me in offering Rob McKenna a great big FUCK YOU for fucking humiliating the fuck out of us before the nation…fuckwad!

– Republicans sure are Assholes.

– Who think they’re funny when they’re being assholes.

– Reuven Carlyle passes this on about 619 Western.

– So, when’s the rally to protest this outrageous waste and misuse of taxpayer’s money?

– Flying While Black & Reading Antique Aviation Books (h/t)

– An amazing looking moth.

The Podcast returns from a long vacation hibernation incarceration a coma the dead to tackle the big political issues of the day last many months. And freshen the sidebar.

The discussion starts with bold analyses of the recent election: the panel re-litigates The Tunnel (long after the topic is hip, relevant, or even interesting), and contemplates the meaning of the pro-tunnel vote for Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn. The discussion meanders into a referendum on Seattle itself (whereupon, Goldy briefly attempts to re-litigate the Chihuly Museum, long after the topic is hip, relevant, or even interesting).

Circling back to the election, the panel ponders the piss-poor performance of King County Councilmember Jane “37.9%” Hague, and the remarkable candidacy of challenger Richard Mitchell. Catalyzed by another lame-ass Seattle Times editorial, the Podcast closes on the topic of public employees, education and (of course) Seattle schools.

Goldy (The Stranger) was joined by Seattlepi.com’s Joel Connelly, and Horsesass’ Carl Ballard and me.

The show is 30:15, and is available here as an MP3.

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_aug_30_2011.mp3]

[Recorded live at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to Confab creators Gavin and Richard for hosting the Podcasting Liberally site.]

For the third consecutive month, Politico has ranked the 2012 Washington gubernatorial race as the most competitive gubernatorial race in the country.

The PI‘s Chris Grygiel comments:

Between them, McKenna and Inslee are expected to raise more than $20 million. And that’s not counting the many millions more outside interest groups will pour into the Evergreen State race.

Many millions in out-of-state money pouring into the state? Huh.

Chris must be assuming that Sen. Cantwell will face some serious competition….

One of the things that doesn’t get discussed enough in politics is the fact that we don’t know what the future will hold. I think we all know this in the general sense, but we tend to discount it when discussing policy making.

It struck me recently after the debt crisis. We were told the debt ceiling would have to be raised to avoid downgrading US debt and keep the stock market from going crazy. Well, the debt ceiling was raised and the debt was downgraded (by one agency) and the market went crazy. There were also all sorts of possibilities before the vote about what might happen if we had defaulted from it wouldn’t be so bad to it would have been horrible.

So who was right and who was wrong? Well, we know what happened after we passed the debt ceiling, obviously. But we don’t know what would have happened if a better deal had been reached or if we’d defaulted. We can make educated guesses, but in an unprecedented situation like a default, it’s only a guess.

And the same holds true in international affairs. At the start of the Libya conflict, Lee wrote about the potential humanitarian catastrophe there, and “the possibility of a massacre that could’ve taken 100,000 lives” had we done nothing. Not to put any faith in Gaddafi, and certainly not to dismiss the possibility, but we don’t know if it would have been 100,000 or far fewer people. And while the war is hopefully reaching its end now, it was tough to know how it would end a few months ago. We also won’t know for some time how the administration’s arguments about the War Powers Act will be used by the next president.

The point here isn’t that we can’t make decisions or move forward. Of course we can. I just wish we’d acknowledge some uncertainty at the start.

Joni Balter has a column mostly arguing that McGinn should start doing things he’s been doing (and saying he shouldn’t have put the car tabs on the ballot, but I’m here to focus on her lecturing him to do the things he’s already done).

For example, McGinn could return more cops to the street. Budget woes stopped a five-year police hiring program, but any mayor can fund his priorities. He can and he should.

Return to the street implies there are fewer on the street now. It took me all of a couple minutes to find out that:

Despite the fact that SPD hasn’t hired any new officers for more than a year, it increased the number of patrol officers over the past year from 684 to 693.

Now you can argue that Joni meant that we should hire more police, or that trouble may be coming down the pike if we don’t hire police. But she used the phrase “on the street” so I think it’s fair to say she just doesn’t know. And can’t be bothered with a Google search or that pesky fact checking.

McGinn needs to ensure the Families and Education Levy passes. At least supporting schools and students are things most Seattleites can get their arms around.

Yes. The levy doubled in part because of his leadership. And now he is pushing for it.

At several stops, the mayor told neighbors that education was an important way to enhance public safety and that the levy would help ensure that every child in Seattle had an opportunity to learn and succeed. Staff said the mayor delayed a family vacation in Massachussetts so he could participate in the levy kick-off event.

Maybe it’s unfair to expect Joni Balter to know that. I mean who the hell reads The Seattle Times any more? Still, while the media (and Balter in particular) were bashing McGinn as a one issue mayor, he was actually doing other things.

I sent the following questions to all of the candidates for Seattle City Council. I’ll put the answers up in Tuesdays and Thursdays: Sept. 6 & 8 for position 1, Sept. 13 & 15 for position 3, Sept. 20 & 22 for position 5, Sept. 27 & 29 for position 7 and October 4 and 6 for position 9. First candidate to respond on Tuesday, second on Thursday. There is a good chance some of the candidates won’t respond, if that’s the case, I’ll probably make up snarky answers for them.

1) Crime is down in the city, but we’ve seen some horrible incidents with the police in recent years. How do we ensure public safety and not have those sorts of things happen in the future?

2) Now that the Viaduct is coming down, what should the waterfront look like?

3) As the great recession drags on, the city budget is still hurt. What do we need to cut, what do we need to keep, and do we need to raise more money via taxation?

4) With its budget shrunk at least until the end of the recession what should Seattle parks look like?

5) What is the Seattle’s role in education and public transportation given how important they are to the city, but that other agencies are tasked with them?

One of my favorite outcomes from Tuesday’s primary election was in the King County Council District 6 race.

Incumbent Jane Hague is in trouble.

Yesterday’s data dump shows Hague with 38.8% of the vote. Next is Democrat Richard E. Mitchell with 29.1% of the vote. Port Commissioner John Creighton is third with 24.6% of the vote, and Patsy Bonincontri took 7.2%.

(One reason I like this outcome is pure vanity. Political uberwonks Erica Barnett and Josh Feit predicted Hague and Creighton making it through. I predicted Hague and Mitchell. So there.)

We cannot generally read too much into a top-two primary result. But, holy shit, 38.8% for the incumbent? That cannot be considered positive. I see no way that Hague takes anything close to half the Creighton vote in the General. Many Creighton voters were making a statement—a protest against the incumbent.

The votes tallied yesterday were greatly skewed relative to the election night dump: Mitchell was within 2% of Hague.

Why the shift in the later ballots?

Mitchell’s campaign offers the explanation:

“Undecideds clearly are breaking for Richard because they’re tired of the personal and legal drama of the other opponents. That is clearly reflected in the numbers,” [Mitchell’s political consultant, Jason] Bennett said.

Maybe. Bennett offers another possibility:

[Hague] may have suffered from a backlash by Tim Eyman and other anti-tax conservatives over Hague’s decision to vote for an annual $20 car-tab fee to maintain Metro bus service.

This seems less plausible. First, as Goldy points out in this must read piece featuring Goldy defending Hague, King county rejected Eyman’s most recent “Thou shalt have $30 car tabs” initiative by a 60-40 margin.

Secondly, the anti-government nut jobs that would actually change their vote in response to Tim Eyman’s apoplectic screeds against Hague would most likely throw their vote behind the politically androgynous Creighton before Mitchell, who told The Stranger Election Control Board that

…he would approve a $20 car-tab fee to avert a devastating 17 percent cut in Metro bus service and believes in a minor sales tax bump to rescue the county’s underfunded criminal-justice system.

(As an aside, Eyman produced a:

wanted poster-style enemies list that pictures and labels four County Council members. The word “Liar!” appears below mug shots of Jane Hague and Kathy Lambert.

Does Tim “Biggest Lie of my Life” Eyman really want to go there?)

My hunch is that some folks who mailed their ballots at the last minute simply did a little on-line research. Mitchell looks great when investigated on-line. Hague…not so much. Like here.

Michelle Bachmann will be awful for the country. The fact that she’s even in contention is worrying. Her policies will be bad for working people, bad for the environment, bad basic decency. She may be the worst person to run for president with any chance of winning in my lifetime. A lifetime that includes Pat Robertson’s George W. Bush’s Newt Gingrich’s run and many other horrible people. Please don’t vote for her. Believe me when I say that I hate the fact that I’ll be defending her for the rest of this post.

I somehow missed a lot of the Newsweek cover when it came out. So I didn’t comment on it. But it’s still pretty awful. Then during the last GOP debate I noted that she was asked a sexist question. And now this! Seriously, everybody, stop with the sexist bullshit.

Let’s start with the pictures. Everybody takes bad pictures and good pictures. And there’s nothing inherently sexist about choosing an unflattering picture. We’ve all seen men politicians with bad pictures taken of them. The main problem with Newsweek is that it was a studio shoot. Generally in those they pick better pictures of the subject. Newsweek chose that picture to look strange in a way that I can’t recall them doing to a man in a cover shoot.

In the picture of her eating a corn dog, well if you can’t spot what’s wrong with it, perhaps I won’t explain it here on a nice family blog. I’ll just say that I don’t recall similar pictures of men on the campaign trail.

Finally, the question York asked at the Republican debate:

In 2006, when you were running for Congress, you described a moment in your life when your husband said you should study for a degree in tax law. You said you hated the idea. And then you explained, “But the Lord said, ‘Be submissive. Wives, you are to be submissive to your husbands.’”

As president, would you be submissive to your husband?

Seriously, what does that even mean in context of the presidency? One time your husband said you should go to law school and you did, therefore will he decide the cabinet? What treaties to sign? There’s no evidence whatsoever in her time in the MN legislature or Congress that she’d submit her public policy decisions to her husband. And while I don’t think women should submit to their husbands in their personal lives, I don’t see how that’s relevant to her qualifications for office, nor do I see this sort of question being asked of a man.

All of this isn’t to say you can’t criticize her on a whole range of things. Nobody’s above criticism and she’s got a particularly awful track record. Just let’s try to keep sexism out of our criticism.

The Washington Post’s Jonathan Bernstein makes a couple of good points today. First:

Here’s what you need to know about the Republican candidate field: this is it. No one starts running for president in August, less than six months before the voters start getting involved in Iowa and New Hampshire, and has any chance at all. At least, it’s never happened since the modern process has been fully in place (say, by 1980).

He does suggest that Sarah Palin could be a quasi-exception, because she has been running for President—in her quirky, Wasillaly way. (I think she started her Presidential bid in September of 2008, after realizing that there would never be a President McCain.)

So if you are a Republican, don’t hold out for a savior in Rudy Giuliani, Chris Christie, Paul Ryan, The Donald or even John Bolton’s mustache.

The second point:

What you’re upset with isn’t the candidate — it’s the party. It’s inconceivable that anyone could get the Republican nomination while using anything but solid Tea Party rhetoric on pretty much every issue. They’re all going to claim that taxes should never, ever, ever be raised no matter what, that half of what the government does is evil or unconstitutional or whatever, that the scientific consensus on climate is some sort of crazed conspiracy, and so on down the line.

In other words, the Republican Party has vacated the center for the fringes. The party hasn’t really moved to the traditional right-wing, fiscal and social conservative fringes. Rather they seem to have moved to some fringe in another dimension: a fringe in which validation and proof comes from the emotional reaction an idea evokes; a fringe where facts that don’t pass the “feels good” test are dismissed; a fringe that is largely divorced from the everyday wants and needs of Americans.

Frankly, the only candidate that stands out from the fringe is Mitt Romney—a candidate who is seriously flawed by his numerous position reversals, and a candidate that comes of as totally disingenuous every time he spews a talking point. Even with these flaws, chances seem high that Mitt will succumb, first and foremost, to right-wing religious bigotry….

Exodus 32:27-29
Then he said to them, “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’” The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. Then Moses said, “You have been set apart to the LORD today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day.”

Exodus 20:13
Thou shalt not kill.

Discuss.

Yesterday CNN’s Don Lemon was roughed up by Michele Bachmann’s thugs. And the “thugs” included Michele’s totally not gay husband Marcus:

“She came out, after speaking for just a couple minutes,” Lemon said. “There were other reporters and cameras there. And I asked her very respectful questions: ‘How do you think you did in the debate last night?’ and ‘How do you think you’re going to end up in the Ames Straw Poll?’ And her two campaign aides started elbowing me.”

Lemon continued: “I told them, asked them not to elbow me. And then her husband Marcus started doing the same thing. And then he elbowed me into the cart. And I said, ‘You just pushed me into the cart.’ And he goes, ‘No, you did it yourself.’

“It was just, I don’t know, why they would choose to do that. We weren’t asking any ‘gotcha’ questions,” Lemon added.

Why, indeed!

I’m left wondering…is Don Lemon blacklisted by the Bachmann campaign? And if so, is it because he is gay? Or because he is black? Or both?

Either way, Don Lemon just needs to cool off and accept personal responsibility for their actions….

The other day when Patty Murray was appointed to the Superduperextraspecialcommittee, I noted that the choice of words calling her a co-chairwoman was potentially off.

Also, one other thing. The Caucus piece linked above refers to her as the future “co-chairwoman” of the committee. I assume that means the Republican co-chair will also be a woman. Otherwise, let’s hear it for gender neutral language in the future.

Well, sad to say, she won’t even be the co-woman on the panel. Yes, that’s right, our government has decided that a population underrepresented in Congress should be even underrepresenteder in the Awesomesaucepeachykeancommittee.

Asked by PubliCola whether Murray felt the makeup of the committee is fair or representative, Murray’s spokesman Eli Zupnick responded: “Senator Murray would always like to see more women at the table, but as the only one on this Committee she will be in there fighting for those women who don’t have a voice at the table—as well as for everyone who is counting on her and her colleagues to come together with a balanced plan that works for families across the country.”

Some other things Rob McKenna could use a special session to pass:

• The budget
• Transportation projects
• A repeal of the cost overrun provision
• A repeal of drug war legislation
• Marriage equality
• Universal healthcare
• K-12 funding
• Higher Ed Funding
• A progressive income tax

Now you may say, “Carl, isn’t that just stuff you’d like to see in the regular session?” Yes, yes it is.

Luke 19:29-34
As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it.’”

Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?”

They replied, “The Lord needs it.”

Exodus 20:15
Thou shalt not steal.

Discuss.