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It’s disturbing to admit it, but on at least one subject, GOP state Sen. Don Benton and I think alike:

Washington state Sen. Don Benton says he doesn’t expect Republican Dino Rossi to enter the race for U.S. Senate this year, citing his personal friendship with the two-time gubernatorial candidate.

Benton, who has already entered the race against Sen. Patty Murray on the Republican side, told POLITICO Monday: “Dino’s a good friend of mine. I’ve talked to him many times. I don’t believe Dino would allow me to sacrifice my family time and my business if he was going to run for U.S. Senate. “

“If he had serious plans, I really believe he would have told me that,” Benton said. “I just don’t see it.”

Yeah, I know, the conventional wisdom is that Rossi wouldn’t be going through all this public preening if he weren’t at least seriously considering a run for the U.S. Senate, but like Benton, I  just don’t see it, and for many of the same reasons:

“He doesn’t have any money in the bank, he doesn’t have any money raised. He doesn’t have the foundation. The talent pool is pretty much committed for this election cycle. It’s too late for him to become a viable candidate in this race…”

Of course, with only $130,000 dollars in the bank, little statewide name ID, and almost zero support from his own party’s establishment, it’s pretty much “too late” for Benton to become a viable candidate as well, but that shouldn’t detract from his appraisal of Rossi’s own bleak senatorial prospects. Sen. Patty Murray would be a difficult target even in a red wave election, and while there’s no reason to suspect this won’t be a painful midterm for congressional Democrats, the generic polling just doesn’t show a tsunami on the horizon.

Yes, Rossi’s fundraising prowess and name ID could at least make this contest a race, hence the NRSC’s aggressive recruitment, but barring a double-dip recession or some other dramatic shift in the political climate, he’d still be little more than a sacrificial lamb. The NRSC is looking for a candidate who can draw Democratic money, energy and focus into Washington state and out of contests where Republicans have a better shot at making gains — the 50-state strategy, and all that — and Rossi would play that role well. But it’s not at all clear that Rossi is selfless enough to sacrifice his own political career for the greater good of his beloved Prefers GOP Party.

“I said, ‘Hey Dino, you know as long as you’re in limbo, it does make it a little more difficult for those of us out here doing this,’” Benton recalled. “He said, ‘I’m sorry for that, but I’m on nobody’s timetable but my own.’”

Not exactly the sentiment of a guy willing to take one for the team. And as for the “timetable” Rossi’s on, I’m still guessing it’s for an express bus to the 2012 gubernatorial campaign.

That would explain Rossi’s months-long political striptease, for while the clock’s quickly running out on a serious 2010 challenge, all this hemming and hawing only serves to keep Rossi’s name in the news and in front of voters in advance of one last shot at the governor’s mansion. And it would also account for Attorney General Rob McKenna’s inexplicable public lurch to the right, for how else to explain McKenna willfully ripping that carefully crafted mask of moderation from his face, if not to position himself for gubernatorial primary battle against Rossi?

Rossi ran for governor for nearly five years straight, and now he’s contemplating an impulse run for U.S. Senate? I don’t think so. He’s raised no money, he’s hired no consultants and he’s assembled no staff. In fact, his usual cast of staffers and advisors are already committed to other candidates and races. So a last minute run at Murray would just strike me as somewhat out of character.

And foolhardy. Murray is no pushover, and she not only enjoys enthusiastic support from our state’s Democratic majority, her well-earned reputation for both bringing home the bacon and defending our state’s economic interests has endeared her to business interests who more typically find themselves in the Republican camp. Hell… I even think Murray stands a good shot at winning the Seattle Times endorsement… even in a head to head with Rossi.

So yeah, I’m with Benton on this one. I just don’t see it.

State Senator Don Benton, R-Vancouver, has been talking to Drudgico:

Benton warned that Rossi might find the 2010 campaign a less hospitable environment than he expects.

“Democrats have already attacked Dino. He doesn’t have any money in the bank, he doesn’t have any money raised. He doesn’t have the foundation. The talent pool is pretty much committed for this election cycle. It’s too late for him to become a viable candidate in this race,” Benton said, adding: “I think he would make an excellent governor and hope he decides to run for governor again.”

Okay then, Benton has spoken, Dino. Your move!

Maybe another Moore poll, followed by a Rasmussen poll, followed by a Chris Grygiel post at Strange Bedfellows? You guys seem to have that all worked out, you might as well try it once again. It got Rossi to the brink of not running and having no money.

Gary Randall’s Faith and Freedom Network blasted an email to its list yesterday (essentially duplicating the content of this blog post), informing them of an important letter from the very official sounding “American College of Pediatricians”:

Out of concern for the health and well being of all youth, the American College of Pediatricians (ACP) has mailed a letter to the superintendents of all public schools in the country, expressing their concerns.

In the first paragraph of the letter, the ACP states, “We are increasingly concerned, however, that in many cases efforts to help students who exhibit same-sex attractions and/or gender confusion are based on incomplete or inaccurate information.”

They further state that when dealing with adolescents experiencing same-sex attractions, “It is essential to understand there is no scientific evidence that an individual is born ‘gay’ or ‘transgender’, in fact there is evidence that there are multiple factors—primarily social and familial, that predispose a child to homosexual attraction and/or gender confusion.”

The email goes on to guide readers to a new website set up by the ACP, FactsAboutYouth.com, purportedly “created by health professionals to provide policymakers, parents and youth with the most current medical and psychological facts about sexual development.”

So what is the ACP? If we call it astroturfing when a business or other special interest creates a puppet “grassroots” organization in order to create the appearance of popular support, what do we call it when they create a supposedly scholarly or professional organization in order to fake the appearance of expert authority? Ass-troturfing? Well, whatever, that’s what the ACP is.

The American College of Pediatricians was created in 2002 by 60 of the 60,000 members of the 75-year-old American Academy of Pediatrics, in response to the latter organization’s passage of a statement supporting second-parent adoptions by gay and lesbian parents.  In its own published history, the ACP states that it was founded by “a small group of pediatricians who vocally opposed the AAP’s support of homosexual parenting.”

Opposition to homosexual parenting was the guiding principle of the ACP’s founders, a group of self-described “Judeo-Christian, traditional-values” doctors who numbered barely one-tenth of one percent of the AAP’s national membership. But reading their website — or Gary Randall’s email — you’d think the ACP was some sort of respectable, scholarly professional association representing the mainstream of pediatrics rather than only a tiny, reactionary fringe. (You can read more on the ACP and their new website at the excellent Pam’s House Blend.)

How fringe? I was actually sitting in the waiting room of my daughter’s pediatrician yesterday when word of Randall’s email came across my iPhone, so I asked him if he’d every heard of the American College of Pediatricians. Um… “No.”

It is one thing for the Faith and Freedom crowd to push their religious views on their followers, but when they attempt to back it up with fringe science from some official sounding faux medical organization (and I say “faux” because the ACP was founded on religious principles, not medical ones), their misinformation does everybody a great disservice… but especially the unfortunate gay and lesbian teens who are sure to be tortured by parents and teachers following “medical” guidelines that 99.9% of pediatricians officially disavow.

From The Spokesman-Review:

Federal authorities are investigating the discovery 10 days ago of an improvised explosive device found next to the Thomas S. Foley U.S. Courthouse in downtown Spokane but had not alerted the public until today based upon a direct inquiry by The Spokesman-Review.

The device was located in the late evening of Sunday, March 28, said Tom Rice, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Washington.

The Feds won’t say much more than that at this point, because the investigation is apparently ongoing. Not much point in speculating, but coming the day after the arrest of the would-be Murray assassin, I think we owe a “thank you” to the federal agents who devote their professional careers to defending the Constitution and our democracy.

MORE–In comments at the S-R, a reporter seems to confirm that the newspaper started asking about this “IED” because of an article in the current issue of Newsweek about the Hutaree militia.

Less well publicized has been a string of other incidents. In recent weeks an improvised explosive device was discovered outside the federal courthouse in Spokane, Wash.; a man wielding four knives was arrested at the Daley Center in Chicago; and members of a militant white-supremacist group called the White Wolves were arrested for allegedly assembling explosive devices in southern Connecticut. “We’re seeing a continued escalation in threats,” says Michael Prout, assistant director of the U.S. Marshals Service. The FBI is especially concerned about “lone offenders,” who are hard to catch because they do not join known groups but are nonetheless moved to commit violent acts by the incendiary messages on extremist Web sites. The bureau has quietly set up a program aimed at identifying such characters by keeping a watch on Internet chat rooms and purchases of weapons and explosive devices.

The Podcast opens with a discussion of the proposed Chihuly “museum,” titled Chihuly at the Needle. The panel discusses whether a for-profit gallery of glass art is a suitable use of an urban space that is currently dedicated to family-oriented activities. Goldy outlines his Really Kick Ass Playground alternative, and (perhaps more importantly) suggests a realistic funding mechanism. The panel considers alternative sites for a Chihuly “museum”.

[29:50] The conversation then turns to the political news of the day: the arrest of Charles Alan Wilson for making death threats against Sen. Patty Murray. Was Mr. Wilson a lone nutcase? Or was he inspired by some larger cultural phenomena…like, say, the violent wingnut teabagger movement and their surrogates in hate-talk media (with an assist from the Republican party)? The panel explores the logical outcome of that second possibility.

Goldy was joined by Peace Tree Farm’s N in Seattle, Effin’ Unsound’s & Horsesass’s Carl Ballard, and me.

The show is 47:25, and is available here as an MP3:

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_apr_6_2010.mp3]

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

Charles Alan Wilson, the crazed, concealed-weapon-toting righty charged with threatening the life of U.S. Senator Patty Murray, apparently attended a Tea Party rally outside a Murray event in Yakima, only days before his arrest:

On April 1, the previous Thursday, over 100 tea party protesters rallied outside a Murray appearance at the Greater Yakima Chamber of Commerce, according to a report in the Yakima Herald-Republic.

In the April 4 message, Wilson allegedly said:

“Oh, you were in Yakima last week. How come you didn’t give a big speech to the people outside waiting to see you? Yeah, we were outside waiting for you, hopefully you would come out and explain to us how come this health-care bill that you rallied on so highly is going to create the biggest drain in American history.”

One can only imagine the tragedy had Murray addressed the small crowd of angry Teabaggers. “I do pack, and I will not blink when I’m confronted. … It’s not a threat, it’s a guarantee,” Wilson later told an undercover FBI agent.

The official Tea Party folks claim Wilson was never a member, and of course disavow his threats after the fact, but that’s not really the point. Condemning the actions of those inspired by one’s hate-filled, violent rhetoric, while continuing the rhetoric unchanged, is meaningless. Charles Alan Wilson is the logical product of the radio and TV hate-talkers, the Teabagger fervor and their sponsors in the Republican establishment. Wilson may be a malignant tumor on the Teabagger movement, but he’s their tumor.

I’ll save the bible study for Sunday morning, but my advice to Rob McKenna, Dino Rossi and other ambitious Republicans hoping the embrace of the Teabaggers might boost their electoral fortunes is to choose their friends wisely.

Last week I constructively proposed three alternate locations that might be better suited to a Chihuly museum than a couple acres of public land designated as open space, and in the comment thread HA readers offered several additional suggestions. But according to The Stranger’s Cienna Madrid, such reasonable conversation is apparently a nonstarter:

[Space Needle CEO Ron] Sevart insists that the Space Needle has not, and will not, consider another location for the project (although the Wright family could certainly afford it).

That’s because far from the “gift” to the city many Chihuly backers claim it to be, this project is first a foremost a for-profit venture, and there is undeniable synergy between the existing Space Needle businesses and what they are describing as “Chihuly at The Needle.”

As I’ve mentioned before, in addition to the overpriced/undercheffed restaurant at the top, the Wrights operate a bustling catering business out of the Skyline banquet facility, and the proposed Chihuly “museum” would instantly become one of the hottest catering halls in the city. But I’m sure the prospect of offering a “discounted” joint admission fee to both the Space Needle and the Chihuly museum would be lucrative as well. Rather than paying $17 for the Needle and $15 for Chihuly, $25 might get you in to see them both… and the Wrights up their average ticket by nearly 50% over what they’re getting now.

Sweet.

Meanwhile, Cienna and I aren’t the only “journalists” weighing in against the project, with Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat bucking his own editorial board, and calling out the proposed Chihuly “museum” for what it really is:

See the problem here, Seattle Center? Your Chihuly gallery is the anti-fireworks. It’s exclusive. The campaign for it is canned.

If we’re going to have a museum, can we at least broaden it beyond the overexposed Chihuly? And with a money-raising effort, make it free to enter, a la the Olympic Sculpture Park?

Or how about, instead, putting in a giant playground? Or even just trees and grass?

A giant playground! Or maybe even a giant, kick-ass one! What a great idea! Now that’s a proposal I could get behind.

Why? Because Seattle is a city desperately in need of more family-friendly amenities, something, apart from Danny, the Seattle Times doesn’t seem to recognize, but which, apparently, the New York Times does:

The Kids and Families Congress is to take place at the Seattle Center, the site of the Space Needle and the 1962 World’s Fair. The center itself has become a topic of debate, over the future of five acres of asphalt at the foot of the needle that for decades has been home to the Fun Forest, an aging amusement park.

The Fun Forest is set to close for good at summer’s end and the site’s private owners have proposed replacing it with a private museum featuring the work of Dale Chihuly, the Northwest glass artist. Critics say that sends a wrong signal about Seattle’s priorities. A private glass museum, some argue, would not necessarily be regarded as family friendly.

“It’s not just symbolic,” said Sally Bagshaw, who is chairwoman of the City Council parks committee. “It’s very much at the heart of what I’m talking about: how do we keep families here? We want to make Seattle a place where people come because it is the best place in the world for your kids.”

And ask any kid what they’d rather visit, a really kick-ass playground or a museum of glass, and I’m guessing most would choose the former.

The folks at The Stranger have been doing yeoman’s work exposing the process by which the proposed Chihuly “museum” is being foisted upon the city, and the ham-fisted public relations campaign by which the backers are attempting to fake some glass-roots street cred. What we’ve learned so far:

The committee considering bids for the Fun Forest site appears likely to be stacked in favor of the Chihuly proposal:

The problem is, certain members of the Seattle Center Advisory Commission and the Century 21 Committee have already publicly spoken out in favor of the Chihuly Museum project. For example, Jan Levy spoke for the Chihuly Museum at Tuesday’s meeting and she is Century 21 Committee co-chair; her fellow co-chair is Jeffrey Wright, owner of the Space Needle. Wright is financially backing the Chihuly Museum. Levy also serves on the Seattle Center Advisory Commission.Robert Nellums, director of the Seattle Center, also spoke in favor of the project at Tuesday’s public meeting—even though he was moderating the meeting. Representatives from Seattle International Film Festival, the Pacific Northwest Ballet, Intiman Theater, and other vested Seattle Center interests all stumped for the Chihuly Museum.

And speaking of Space Needle/Chihuly “museum” owner Jeffrey Wright, it turns out that he’s a big contributor to Republican candidates and causes — over $50,000 worth in recent years. Not that this in itself says anything about the virtues of a Chihuly museum, but as Dominic Holden astutely points out:

The company behind the Space Needle is the entity that wants to build and would profit from the Chihuly glass museum. Asked if Wright would personally make money from the Chihuly museum, Space Needle spokeswoman Mary Bacarella says, “Well he’s the owner. It’s a for-profit [business].”

[…] Building the Chihuly museum would help line the pockets of someone who donates heavily to political causes and candidates that clash with most Seattle residents. And now he’s trying to use public land, owned by those people, to make his profits.

I guess this is what many of the project’s well-heeled backers meant when they repeatedly referred to it as “a gift.”

And while “museum” backers both dis the notion of open space being essential to the Seattle Center while insisting that no other proposals for the site have been made, Cienna Madrid reports otherwise:

John Sutherland, an administrator at the University of Washington, submitted a proposal to Seattle Center director Robert Nellums in 2007. Sutherland proposed demolishing the covered pavilion and creating a greenbelt/picnic area, adding new rides in the kids area, and introducing six new major amusement park rides, including a roller coaster. Sutherland’s plan also called for a kid’s public playground and a water play area.

When Sutherland was submitting his proposal, the Seattle Center master planning process (formally called the Century 21 Master Plan) was just beginning. He attended “at least 60 different meetings,” he says, during which officials and the public made it clear that what the people wanted was more green space. In the end, Sutherland says, Nellums told him that the proposal was not going to happen. “And I thought that was fair,” says Sutherland. “Even though my proposal incorporated green space, I thought we lost fair and square. It wasn’t what the people wanted.”

So when Sutherland made his family-friendly proposal, the Century 21 Committee, which Wright co-chaired, dismissed it as not providing enough green space. And now Wright himself is proposing constructing a for-profit, paid-admission gallery/gift shop/cafe/catering hall on the site. Huh.

Oh. And from the Credit Where Credit Is Due Department, after credulously reporting “overwhelming support” for the project the morning after the sham hearing, the Seattle Times at least comes back with a report on the expensive PR offensive the backers have launched:

Representatives of the Space Needle went two hours early to a public meeting about their proposed Dale Chihuly exhibit at Seattle Center to make sure their supporters would be first on the list to speak.

They filled in the first 60-or-so speaking slots. It was clear from the handwriting that some people had signed up multiple people…

Yup. That’s why the respectable folk got to speak at 6:30 PM, while I didn’t get to the podium until almost 9.

Heard enough? The folks at Slog have conveniently compiled a list of phone numbers and email addresses of Seattle City Council members and other players for you to contact and voice your opinion. Or you can conveniently mass email them here.

What are the pinheads on the right going to lecture us about if the economy turns around? Things aren’t clear yet, but this is encouraging.

U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-CA), the chair of the House Education and Labor Committee, issued the following statement today after the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that 162,000 jobs were created in March, the largest monthly job gain in three years. Excluding the expected bump in temporary census hiring, private sector hiring was still the highest last month since the recession began.

“Today’s news that our nation created the most jobs in three years is a sign that our efforts are helping to move our economy in the right direction. When President Obama first inherited this crisis, our economy was losing around 700,000 jobs a month. Today’s figures reflect what private sector economists have told us: that the Recovery Act has increased economic activity and is helping to restore confidence in families and businesses.

If this keeps up the Fox Noise apparatus will have to come up with some phony, manufactured outrage over a trivial issue that only inflames emotions and plays to people’s worst instincts.

That’s a tall order for them, I know, but they’ll find a way. They pretty much have to, because they don’t have any meaningful ideas to offer the American people, just a grab bag of resentments. Certainly nobody on our side should count any chickens right now, because the economy is still struggling, and the perils of self-delusion have been demonstrated by the noise machine for some decades. Keep calm and carry on, as it were.

What Robert Reich says:

The Fed has finally came clean. It now admits it bailed out Bear Stearns – taking on tens of billions of dollars of the bank’s bad loans – in order to smooth Bear Stearns’ takeover by JPMorgan Chase. The secret Fed bailout came months before Congress authorized the government to spend up to $700 billion of taxpayer dollars bailing out the banks, even months before Lehman Brothers collapsed. The Fed also took on billions of dollars worth of AIG securities, also before the official government-sanctioned bailout.

As Reich points out, we have an un-elected, nearly unaccountable organization choosing winners and losers in our “capitalist” system. Keep in mind this happened in 2008, while George W. Bush was still president and Hank Paulson was Secretary of the Treasury. Ben Bernanke is still chairman of the Federal Reserve itself, and Tim Geithner, who was New York Fed chair when this “bailout” occurred, is now ensconced at Treasury. As always, Reich’s post is very much worth reading.

There were not any Tea People in late 2008, and it seems to be forgotten that the use of the Boston Tea Party as a symbol was first thrown out by CNBC hack Rick Santelli in a a possibly pre-planned and infamous rant in early 2009. Now that we know the Fed was operating as an unelected shadow government, the specter of Santelli yelling about not wanting to pay the mortgages of “losers” is even more insidious.

Divide and conquer is a very old concept, and that’s what is happening to this country. I can’t help but think that as the Tea People bitch and moan about a health care reform law that holds the promise of modest but very real improvements in things like pre-existing conditions bans and such, they are missing the actual economic tyranny that is so clear to anyone who chooses to look.

Republicans could have participated in the reform process, but instead they decided to lie endlessly and fan popular resentments that should be directed at their benefactors, namely the corporate barons of this country, and re-direct them using classic disinformation techniques like conspiracy theories, racism and anti-intellectualism.

At least with health care reform there will be democratic elections, and if a majority of citizens choose to punish Democrats for enacting the reform, they will do so. Not so with the Fed and the nation’s gigantic financial institutions, who are accountable to nobody but themselves. As long as moral hazard and the picking of winners and losers stands, talk from the Tea People about “free markets” and “smaller government” is nothing but a cruel and absurd joke. They accuse us of wanting socialism, an asinine claim when their puppet masters are running an organized criminal enterprise.

As it turns out, they are the mob. Just not in the way they thought.

With all of the focus on how terrible a newspaper the Seattle Times is, I temporarily forgot how terrible a newspaper the Tacoma News-Tribune is. To be fair, I’ve seen far more incoherent anti-drug editorials than the one in that link, but it ends up completely missing the larger point behind the corruption within the medical marijuana community. The recent violence against members of that community has intensified a few pre-existing rifts, but it also turns out to be a good example of why moderation within that group is as important as ever if we’re to overcome the outdated stereotypes about marijuana and close the curtain on a truly destructive social policy – and why creating a legal and regulated market remains the smartest solution to the problem.

That editorial is a good springboard for tackling various aspects of those topics, so I’ll take it piece by piece:

[Read more…]

Oregon Attorney General John Kroger, a Democrat, is the first state AG to announce he will file a brief supporting the new health care law. From KATU-TV in Portland:

In an interview with KATU News reporter Anna Song Kroger said, “I think if you look at the Supreme Court’s cases on the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution over the last 70 years, it clearly suggests that the government has the power to regulate insurance and indeed to require people to either buy insurance or to pay additional taxes to help pay for insurance.”

As you more than likely know, Washington AG Rob McKenna, a Republican, has joined up with about twelve other AG’s to support a Florida-based lawsuit against the law.

If you go to the KATU link above and click on the “video” tab, you can watch about a ten minute interview with Kroger. It’s not the greatest interview, because the reporter seems to have only a rudimentary grasp of the constitutional issues at stake, but since Kroger is a professor and constitutional scholar you kind of figure he can write a good brief. He kept making the point that it’s important the courts hear from states who hold the law is constitutional, perhaps an indication that there will be others doing the same as Kroger.

I really don’t think Rob McKenna and Bill McCollum (and the rest) have any idea what is going to hit them. The best constitutional minds in the country are lining up against them. All Rob McKenna can do now is double down with the Tea People and The Seattle Times, which right now is advertising a “live chat” with McKenna scheduled for 12:45 pm tomorrow. That would be tomorrow, April 1. Yeah, I know. It would be funny if it weren’t so damn transparent and pathetic.

Yet another disgruntled ex-reader cancels their subscription to the Seattle Times:

Editor
Seattle Times

By this email I am canceling my subscription to the Seattle Times. Your endorsement of Rob McKenna’s self-serving challenge to the constitutionality of the health insurance reform bill argues that the suit is a challenge to Big Insurance that progressives should approve. The idea that the Seattle Times supports the challenge out of a concern for the power of corporations in American life lacks any credible evidence in the editorial positions historically taken by the Times.

The Times has every right to support McKenna’s efforts to tack the gubernatorial shoals of Tea Parties and Clubs for Growth, but doing it with a lecture about what liberals should believe grates one last time too many on me. Lawsuits are supposed to be filed in a good faith belief in the positions advanced. Unless he is dumb and, therefore not qualified to be Governor, McKenna cannot believe that this lawsuit has merit. When McKenna files and the Times endorses a suit against corporate personhood to overturn Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad, I’ll re-subscribe.

I’ve learned to live without the PI. Living without the Times will be like noticing it’s not raining.

Jan Bianchi
Attorney at Law

Nearly 19,000 citizens have joined the “Washington Tax Payers OPT OUT of Rob McKenna’s Lawsuit” Facebook group over the past week, yet the Times dismisses our opposition as a mere “politically orchestrated hiss.”

So if you’re sick and tired of being disrespected by Frank Blethen and his cronies, cancel your subscription and send a copy of your correspondence to me, and I’ll be happy to post it to HA, with or without attribution.

Just a provide even more of an exclamation point on Rob McKenna’s hypocrisy over the Commerce Clause, here’s a page that the Marijuana Policy Project put up shortly after the Gonzales v. Raich decision came down. In Gonzales v. Raich, the Supreme Court ruled that the Commerce Clause gives the federal government the right to arrest people who are following their state’s medical marijuana law. This decision (which was agreed upon by both the more liberal members of the court and Scalia) is why most legal experts believe that the challenge to the health care reform bill’s mandates will rejected.

What’s interesting about that page is that, of the 10 states that had medical marijuana laws at the time of the decision, all but two of the respective state Attorney Generals publicly affirmed that their state medical marijuana laws were still valid despite the ruling. One of the two who sat silent was Rob McKenna. In fact, I can’t find a single public statement from McKenna at that time standing up for the Washington voters who’d voted overwhelmingly to allow marijuana use among seriously ill individuals. This is why the Seattle Times editorial claiming that McKenna’s opposition is somehow rooted in his deep convictions about the Constitution is such a joke.

Instead, Josh Feit gets this one exactly right:

I’ll tell you exactly what Rob McKenna was thinking: Charlie Crist.

Sure McKenna may have jeopardized his shot at winning the governor’s race in 2012, but he has to make it through the primary to even have a chance. And even in a top-two primary (or especially in a top two primary), he needs the Republican base.

Feit thinks that McKenna’s gamble could work and get him to the Governor’s Mansion. I’m not so sure. But for the Seattle Times not to be able to see through his transparent bullshit – well, that’s pretty much what we’ve come to expect from them.

I couldn’t make it down there myself, but I’m told a healthy media contingent showed up to watch the protesters drop off petitions at the Attorney General’s office, presumably on the off chance that there might be a little drama.

I’d say that was well played on my part, but, you know, one can only go to that particular well so many times.

When several thousand health care reform backers packed into Westlake Park last September the rally earned relatively little media coverage and absolutely zero ink in the Seattle Times. Yet when maybe a hundred or so Teabaggers gathered on a street corner to mark the anniversary of their so-called “movement,” the Times deemed that worthy of a reporter, a photographer and twenty column inches.

Why? Media bias, of course, though not necessarily of the kind you might think.

Yeah, sure, our media’s corporate owners are biased toward the right-wing agenda and away from ours, but outside of, say, Fox News and handful of other ridiculously partisan media outlets, that only explains a small part of the disproportionate coverage the Teabaggers have enjoyed. No, what the media is really institutionally biased toward is a good story. And the angry, crazy, froth-at-mouth Teabaggers are nothing if not a good story.

Peacefully dropping off a bunch of petitions on the other hand, not so much… not at least unless you’re Tim Eyman prancing about in a rented costume, and spouting off his usual anti-tax/anti-government sound bites. But up the ante a little — provoke the AG’s office into ordering a lockdown, for example — and voila… three TV cameras show up. You know, just in case.

Am I proud that it took turning up the angry rhetoric a couple notches to spark some attention? Not particularly, but neither am I ashamed. I’ve been at this too long not to know how this game is played.

In my emails today with AG communications director Janelle Guthrie, she wrote: “It doesn’t have to be as ugly and contentious as you seem to like to make it. Reasonable people can have reasonable discussions.”

Yeah, well, reasonable people can have reasonable discussions, but apparently, if you want the media to pay attention, it does unfortunately have to be a little ugly and contentious. After all, my long time readers know that at my core, I’m a policy wonk who often digresses into lengthy, technical policy discussions, only to be completely ignored by the legacy press. But break a bit of dirty muckraking — or vaguely threaten to vaguely threaten a public disturbance — and that catches the media’s attention.

I’m a smart critic, an entertaining writer and a damn fine analyst with long track record of getting stuff right, but honestly, I know what my main role is: publicly saying the things respectable folk wish they could publicly say, if they weren’t so cautious and polite. That’s why folks read me, because I’m willing to call a spade a fuckin’ spade. And there’s something naturally cathartic in that.

But like I said, one can only go to that particular well so many times before it runs dry, and if I’m the only person around here expressing any real emotion, the media will continue to largely ignore our side of the story while heaping outsized coverage on the handful of loud, angry wingnuts across the street.

And for those in the media who take issue with my assessment of what it takes to manipulate you, well, actions speak louder than words. (Or at least, actions would speak louder than words, if only there was anybody around to report on them.)