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The most disturbing tidbit from yesterday’s airplane terror attempt:

Although transportation officials had not announced new security measures yet, Air Canada said the Transportation Security Agency would make significant changes to the way passengers are able to move about on aircraft. During the final hour of flight, customers will have to remain seated, will not be allowed access to carry-on baggage and cannot have personal belongings or other items on their laps, according to a notice on Air Canada’s Web site.

In effect, that means passengers on flights of about 90 minutes or less will not be able to get out of their seats, since they are not allowed to move about while an airplane is climbing to its cruising altitude.

Air Canada also told its United States bound customers that they would be limited to a single carry-on item and that they would be subjected to personal and baggage searches at security check points and in the gate area. It said this would result in significant delays, canceled flights and missed connections.

As if passengers aren’t already terrorized enough by the airlines as it is.

Of course, the most effective air travel security measure is to discourage people from traveling by air, so I guess at least in that sense, such an over-reaction would be effective.

For quite some time, Darryl has been urging me to do something about longtime troll Marvin Stamn, who appeared to be spamming the open threads with links to right-wing sites. Well, today was the final straw, as Stamn essentially admitted to such:

34. Politically Incorrect spews:
Marvin,
Give it a rest.

Can’t. I’m making a couple extra bucks propagandizing today.

Well, no more. The purpose of the open threads is to give the HA community — even the hateful trolls — the opportunity to talk about whatever they want, without driving the other comment threads off topic. The purpose is not to provide a handy (and profitable) tool for upping the Google ranking of right-wing sites.

So Stamn, who has apparently been making more money off my blog than I have, has joined the execrable JCH as only the second commenter to be permanently banned, and we’re prepared to ban anybody else who routinely violates the letter or spirit of our comment policy.

To which, I suppose, I should add the following explicit addendum: no spam.

And if that policy strikes some as unfairly subjective… well… it’s my blog, so fuck you.

From Roll Call:

The Office of Congressional Ethics has closed its investigation into Reps. John Murtha (D-Pa.), Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) and Jim Moran (D-Va.) and their relationships to the lobbying firm PMA Group, and the OCE advised against a formal House ethics investigation, the lawmakers’ offices said Friday.

George Behan, Dicks’ chief of staff, said the OCE, which reviews potential rules violations and refers investigations to the House ethics committee, informed the Washington lawmaker on Dec. 2 that it had recommended the inquiry be dismissed.

“In his case, there was never anything there,” Behan said.

A couple weeks ago Lee put up a post attempting to extrapolate data on how Washington State might feel about reforming our marijuana laws from a national survey. As it turns out, I was at a meet and greet with the 36th legislative district legislators, and during Q&A someone asked Mary Lou Dickerson about her proposed law to legalize Marijuana, and after she said her piece, she asked a representative of the ACLU of Washington to say a few words, and she mentioned that they had conducted a poll a while ago.

The poll was taken in 2006 among 1200 registered voters in WA with a sampling error of +/- 2.8%. The question was asked at the beginning and end of the poll.

Some people think we should make marijuana legal for adults while others say we should not. In your view, should we a) continue to send adults to jail for marijuana possession, b) make marijuana possession a finable non-criminal offense, or c) make marijuana possession LEGAL for adults?

In the beginning the results were:

Continue to send adults to jail for marijuana possession………………………………….. 29%
Make marijuana possession a finable non-criminal offense ……………………………… 30%
Make marijuana possession LEGAL for adults ………………………………………………. 37%
Don’t know……………….4%

And at the end:

Continue to send adults to jail for marijuana possession………………………………….. 22%
Make marijuana possession a finable non-criminal offense ……………………………… 34%
Make marijuana possession LEGAL for adults ………………………………………………. 40%
Don’t know………………………….4%

More recently they asked just people in Puget Sound counties 2008. 500 registered voters +/- 4.5% and they only asked the question once.

Continue to send adults to jail for marijuana possession………………………………….. 26%
Make marijuana possession a finable non-criminal offense ……………………………… 33%
Make marijuana possession LEGAL for adults ………………………………………………. 32%
Don’t know……………………. 10%

So, a couple caveats: obviously the poll is for an organization that’s pushing specific policies. While I don’t think the Washington ACLU is in the business of deluding themselves, I wouldn’t have heard of it, and I don’t know if they’d have let me see it if there had been a lot of support for locking people up. Also, obviously, one statewide poll and one poll of a region in the state are hardly conclusive of how an initiative campaign or legislative session might play out.

…Argh. Insert not very funny posting while high joke here (although in reality worse, just sloppy writing, and poor editing and trying to rush it out). The polls got reversed in the original post, and this has been updated significantly for clarity and my being an idiot.

Brad Shannon has an article focusing on Denny Heck, the former legislator and founder of TVW. Heck is giving serious consideration to running for the seat to be vacated by Rep. Brian Baird, D- Wash. (WA-03), at the end of the term.

“I am doing a bunch to get myself ready so I can hit the ground running. Having said that, I have not pulled the trigger,’’ Heck said Wednesday. “This is a big, big, big decision and it bears serious deliberation. I’ve set a hard deadline of this weekend, and I will stick by that deadline” for deciding.

As Shannon notes, Heck has “fronted” $100,000 of his own money for a potential run.

The district certainly has the potential to be one of the top targets in the country, so large sums of money flowing into the district are a certainty. A candidate who can fund some of the expense himself is going to get attention. As to how much the race will cost, numbers like $3-$5 million per general election candidate seem likely. It’s great news for the companies that own Portland tee-vee and radio stations.

The announced big names on the Democratic side are state Rep. Deb Wallace, D-Vancouver (18th LD,) and state Sen. Craig Pridemore, D-Vancouver (49th LD.) Some other folks have made a little noise, including state Sen. Brian Hatfield, D-Raymond (19th LD,) and former state Sen. Mark Doumit, a Democrat from Cathlamet who now works for the Washington Forest Protection Association. While it pains me to say it, having once lived in Longview, the latter two would face an uphill climb in the district trying to get attention in Clark County with Pridemore and Wallace both from Clark. Olympia activist Cheryl Crist, who received just shy of 13% in the 2008 top-two primary, has also declared she is in the race for 2010.

If Heck gets in, there would be at least four Democrats running, three of them with a decent chance of moving through to the general. Heck justifiably seems to have a lot of people who admire him, and has more recently spent time in the private sector. Personally I think he’d also have an uphill climb against two sitting Legislators who currently reside in Clark County, but I’m biased. (As I’ve stated from the outset, I am supporting Pridemore.) Then again, money talks, as they say.

On the Republican side, so far you have state Rep. Jaime Herrera, R-Ridgefield (18th LD,) former Bush administration official and current private sector financial adviser David Castillo of the Olympia area, Washougal city council member Jon Russell and yelling Marine guy David Hedrick. While Herrera, a former staffer for U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash. (WA-05,) was parachuted in to take the 18th LD state House seat vacated after the Richard Curtis sex scandal, she’s only in her first full term and is pretty young by political standards at 31.

Castillo seems to bring a serious campaign style, and good communication skills, and I wouldn’t discount him.

Russell failed to get the endorsement of evangelical leader Joe Fuiten, who went with Castillo, even though Russell is a Faith and Freedom guy. Hedrick is, well, Hedrick.

So, at this point, if the Democratic field turns out to be:

Wallace
Pridemore
Heck
Crist

And the Republicans wind up being:

Castillo
Herrera
Russell
Hedrick

I think I would like our chances a lot.

From The Columbian:

“I’ve never been so fired up for a campaign in my life,” said Pridemore, D-Vancouver, who is serving his second term in the state Senate. “It’s 320 days to Election Day, and the clock has started.”

Pridemore said he has assembled a strong campaign team and will begin raising money immediately, even as he prepares for a grueling 60-day legislative session in January.

So there you have it.

Cherisse Luxa has passed away. I didn’t know Cherisse, but others did. Condolences to her family.

Andrew at NPI:

This morning, Washington’s netroots community lost one of its most wonderful and spirited activists when Cherisse Luxa, the founder of Burien Drinking Liberally, succumbed to stomach cancer. Cherisse was sixty two. She resided in the 34th LD, known for its strong and vibrant Democratic Party organization.

Cafecito at Daily Kos:

If you have ever attended Drinking Liberally, you almost certainly know of Cherisse’s incredible energy and her unstoppable drive to make our community a better place. From her decades as a King County Sheriff’s Deputy to her impressive track record as an activist an advocate, Cherisse made a huge difference, both for Burien and for the broader community.

Cherisse, like many of us, got religion with Howard Dean’s run.

Cherisse touched thousands of lives and was a role model for many of us. We will sorely miss her.

Barbara Coombs Lee has a follow-up diary at Daily Kos on the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ directive that mandates that Catholic health care facilities employ feeding tubes and other life-prolonging measures even when an individual’s living will specifically prohibits it. When I last posted on this, I’d sent out an email to a number of Catholic hospitals and hospices across the state to see if any of them were planning to ignore the directive.

It’s been five days, and I haven’t heard any responses from any of the 10 contacts I was able to find. In the comments of the original post on this, Joel Connelly claimed to have spoken with an administrator who says her facility will ignore the directive. I got that person’s name from Connelly today and emailed her directly. I’m still waiting for a reply.

UPDATE: Joel Connelly is up to some more shenanigans in the comments. He writes:

After asking for my assistance today, you deliberately distort what I heard up at the Bellingham City Club forum.

Absolutely not. I’ve distorted nothing. Here’s what you said to me, with a link to the comment:

As one with a living will, I’ve been told several times by Catholic hospital administrators that my wish not to be kept alive by artificial means would be fully respected.

I emailed you today with the following request:

I emailed as many Catholic hospitals and hospices as I could find contact emails for and not a single one has emailed me back saying that they will ignore the end-of-life instructions given to them by the bishops. If you have contact info for the person or persons who told you so, please forward that on to me.

You wrote back with the name of the person I then emailed. Either you’re not following what you’re saying to me or you’re deliberately trying to lie. Which is it?

I just received a news release announcing that state Rep. Deb Wallace, D-Vancouver (17th LD,) is definitely running for Congress for the third district seat that will be vacated at the end of the term by U.S. Rep. Brian Baird, D-Wash. Here’s a sample quote.

“From day one, I’ve been committed to being open and accessible to my constituents and being responsive to their needs. My focus has been investing prudently and in a fiscally responsible manner to improve education, modernize our transportation network, encourage economic development and job growth and ensuring public safety. I’ve always believed that government should live within its means, just like our families do and I will bring that same approach to Congress,” added Wallace.

Wallace would seem to be a strong candidate and potentially a good fit for the district. Her resume would stack up well against Republican state Rep. Jaime Herrera, R-Ridgefield (18th LD,) who announced her candidacy yesterday within hours of Baird’s announcement that he will not run again.

Wallace’s 17th LD is definitely the most swing district in Clark County. Encompassing the sprawling eastern areas, the other legislators are Rep. Tim Probst, D-Vancouver, and Sen. Don Benton, R-Vancouver. It’s an area high in strip malls, low information voters, and some amount of far right nutballs, although it’s nothing like the 18th LD in that regard. One can make a reasonable argument that the ability to win in the 17th is a decent credential for trying to win district-wide.

While there have been plenty of names other than Wallace floating around the rumor-sphere on the Democratic side, Wallace has moved the fastest, and apparently has hired a consulting firm, based on the where the news release came from.

UPDATE ON THE GOP SIDE—State Rep. Jaime Herrera, R-Ridgefield (18th LD,) told The Columbian that she will make an official announcement next week. She might just be getting her ducks in a row, but this appears to be a step back from yesterday’s news that she was definitely running.

Herrera, R-Ridgefield, announced this morning that she will give the idea “serious consideration” and make an official announcement about her plans next week.

I suppose someone should tell Politico.

Columbian editor emeritus Tom Koenninger serves up a stinking dung bowl of war on Christmas bullshit in an opinion articled headlined, “Despite PC Crowd, Merry Christmas!”

If you want to view a school Christmas program this year, you may have to go to the Inchelium School District on the Colville Indian Reservation. That’s 90 miles north of Spokane. You won’t find such a program in Clark County’s public schools, at least not by that title.

Santa and Christmas are banned in the schools because they are politically incorrect. The legal beagles declare they are constitutionally incorrect, a violation of church and state separation, even though the American Center for Law and Justice pointed out in 2004: “It is important to note that nothing in the U.S. Constitution prohibits students in public schools from exercising their constitutional rights to express their religious beliefs, especially during the Christmas season.” That goes for the public square, too, they maintain.

Or if you wanted to see a Christmas play at a school you could go see one at a local Christian school, there are over eight thousand of them in Clark County alone. Bet Tom never considered that basic fact, or more accurately, he deliberately chose to bitch and moan about not being able to shove his religion down my kids’ throats.

So to his “Merry Christmas” I issue a cheerful, “Go Fuck Yourself with a Holly Branch, Tom.” Pass the eggnog.

As for the “legal beagles” Koenninger laments, I think they’re called “The Supreme Court of the United States.” The dirty fucking hippies have to live by any horrid decision they make, like Bush v. Gore, but somehow upholding the separation of church and state is worthy of contempt. There are fine distinctions to be made, but that may be why the place is made out of marble I guess.

Koenninger goes on to complain about various examples of how poor, poor picked-upon Christians have to deal with things like sorting out whether a Christmas tree should be in a public school. Granted, there are reasonable positions to discuss, but that would require some small attempt at empathy, something always in short supply for righties this time of year.

Striving for the PC Christmas, a lot of self-proclaimed do-gooders have done silly things. Last week, an elementary school principal in Ashland, Ore., removed an artificial Christmas “giving tree,” which held tags requesting gifts for needy children, after a family complained it was a religious symbol. Dozens of parents were upset, noting the tree was not a religious symbol but a way to celebrate the season and help those in need. Last year, the director of Seattle Schools Department of Equity and Race, Caprice D. Hollins, distributed a letter suggesting Thanksgiving is a difficult time for “many of our Native students.” She referred staff to a Web site that declared the holiday “is a bitter reminder of 500 years of betrayal returned for friendship.” Oh, those rotten Pilgrims!

Those rotten liberals, asking people to do unto others as they would have done unto them, it’s offensive.

The War on Christmas idiots complain endlessly about some vague threat against Christmas, but Christmas is everywhere you look right now. I was taught it’s in the heart, but I guess that’s not good enough for some people.

Hell, some of us might be tempted to come back to the organized religion if it weren’t for petty, narrow-minded fools like Koennigner. That’s about the last thing I need on Sunday morning, listening to some self-righteous prick tell me the difference between good and evil, knowing that the prick’s newspaper works tirelessly to fuck regular working people over the other six days of the week.

If someone gets cancer without health care they’ll be comforted if they can watch second graders sing “Silent Night” on public school grounds, because nothing is more comforting than the tribal culture war against liberals. People may go bankrupt, lose their houses and lives, but it’s all worth it just to generate animosity towards those who try to defend Constitutional principles that conservatives find troublesome, ie all the ones that don’t involve guns.

I say we put a Hindu “giving cow” on top of the new Columbian building and see what folks say. Well, we’d have to ask the bank that actually owns the new Columbian building first I suppose. Nobody could have predicted…

Yesterday, I once again made the argument for legalizing marijuana and taxing the hell out of it. Today, Publicola reports that Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson is collecting co-sponsors on a bill that would do exactly that.

How’s this for a magical pot of revenue to help fix the state’s $2.6 billion shortfall? Seattle state Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson (D-36) is collecting co-sponsors for a bill that would legalize marijuana. And tax it.

This is not a fringe proposal folks, and it’s past time to seriously debate it.

UPDATE [Lee]: The bill can be read here. I’ll be posting more about it later this week.

The Washington State Bar Association has endorsed a bill that would decriminalize simple marijuana possession, reducing the maximum punishment from the current $1000 fine and 90 days in jail, to a $100 ticket.

Well… um… yawn.

It’s not that I don’t support the WSBA’s resolution, it’s just that it’s hard to get excited about a half-measure that’s at least twenty years behind the times, and fails to take full advantage of a budget crisis that could force legislators to take a new and creative look at our state’s antiquated drug policies. For as I’ve previously argued, it’s time to fully legalize marijuana, and sell it through our state stores.

Other states may be further along the political path toward de facto legalization, but no other state, with the exception of my native Pennsylvania, has a more robust system already in place for effectively executing it. Washington already heavily regulates the in-state manufacture of wine, beer and distilled spirits, and maintains an extensive statewide network of retail stores and distribution centers for the sole purpose of operating its exclusive monopoly on the retail sale of liquor. A similar monopoly on the legal sale of marijuana would not only be easily implemented, but highly profitable for taxpayers and state farmers alike.

At an estimated street value of over $1 billion a year, marijuana is already Washington’s number two cash crop, second only to apples, and consistently ranking us among the top five pot-producing states.  By legalizing and regulating a crop that is already being grown, the state could impose standards of consistency and quality on the product, and by setting prices as the only legal buyer for the crop, farmers could be assured a stable, legal income for their efforts.

And considering the existing federal ban on marijuana, and the federal government’s constitutional authority over interstate commerce, Washington’s State Stores, by necessity, would initially only be able to buy and sell state-grown product, thus nurturing a nascent hemp industry that would eventually produce a valuable export commodity once the ban is lifted nationally, perhaps even dominating the market.

According to the Office of Financial Management, decriminalizing marijuana could save state and local authorities as much as $16 million a year in law enforcement resources. But regulated growing, and a State Store monopoly, could contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to state and local coffers, with plenty left over to dramatically expand our treatment and prevention programs.

As Lee has extensively documented here on HA, our nation’s war on pot is an abject failure. It’s time for our nation to accept the reality that tens of millions of Americans choose to enjoy the recreational use of marijuana. And what better place to start than here in Washington state?

Of all the tidbits from last’s night’s post-mayoral-election consultancy tell-all, the conversation about McGinn’s tunnel “flip-flop” was the one I was looking forward to the most:

Just two weeks before the Nov. 3 election, McGinn shocked many by saying he would no longer oppose the controversial, $4.2 billion tunnel replacement. McGinn made his announcement immediately after a City Council vote to move forward with the project.

McGinn campaign guru Bill Broadhead said his candidate made his statement after what he said was a surprise council vote, and McGinn wanted to emphasize he [would] “honor agreements.”

“He didn’t flip,” Broadhead said.

McGinn did flip, and he flipped his way into the mayor’s office, Neuman said.

“It was a brilliant move, genius,” said Neuman, who added she initially thought McGinn’s “flip/flop” would hurt him. “For the first five minutes, I thought, ‘yep, this is my Christmas present.’ Five minutes later, I thought, ‘oh, fill in the blank with your favorite four-letter word.’ This could really work for him. Flip-flopping is an inside baseball game. And Mike McGinn is no John Kerry, he can articulate things very well.”

Huh.

And what did I write at the time?

McGinn’s admission that a 9-0 council vote (not to mention the pro-tunnel stance of the governor and the legislature) is not something a mayor is likely to overcome shows a pragmatic side that I wasn’t sure he had coming into this campaign, and should help assuage the concerns of some who feared a vote for McGinn would be a vote for gridlock, both figuratively and literally.

I’d previously argued that McGinn had “overestimated the breadth and depth of popular opposition to the tunnel,” and that if he ended up losing, this was the issue that might have done him in. So I’m feeling kinda smart right about now.

I think the tunnel has always been a much more nuanced issue than it is usually made out to be. And in the end, voters turned out to be pretty damn nuanced as well. Who’d a thunk?

HA contributors were unusually busy over the weekend, a typically slow time of the week when both posting and traffic generally dips, so here’s a brief summary of the posts you might have missed.

Even business guys befuddled about Baird’s vote
Spiraling healthcare costs is the number one issue for small businesses here and nationwide, which according to Jon, has even U.S. Rep. Brian Baird’s constituents in the business community puzzled over his vote against healthcare reform.

Post-Election Analysis Heresy
In which I make the downright heretical suggestion that, campaign strategery aside, perhaps the results of our recent election indicate that local voters are for the most part satisfied with the performance of our local government, and think both King County and Seattle are headed in the right direction.

The Great Mystery of Afghanistan in 2005-2006
Rather than a long, slow decline into chaos, the situation on the ground in Afghanistan didn’t start to take a sharp turn for the worse until 2005-2006. What changed at that time? Not surprisingly, Lee focuses in on our futilely misguided War on Drugs.

Packing Irony
Wouldn’t it be ironic, I mused, if the guy packing a pistol into the West Seattle Community Center had been shot in the process by another gun-toting civilian? (Because guns make us safer, you know.)

Another Domino Falls
Lee reports that even the stodgy, old American Medical Association has adopted recommendations encouraging the Federal government to reclassify marijuana away from being a Schedule I drug.

Grandstanding Reichert really shows them
Jon reports on U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert’s expanding war on old people, and the congressman’s failed efforts to have the AARP regulated as an insurance company in retribution for their endorsement of healthcare reform.

Times ed board outsources ideas to South Carolina
The anti-union/pro-Republican editors at the Seattle Times absurdly advise organized labor as to what’s good for workers and the general welfare of the Democratic Party. I, of course, make fun of the Times in response.

Bird’s Eye View Contest
Lee’s weekly aerial photo puzzle, which I personally don’t really get, but apparently has a loyal following. Go figure.

Rep. Dave Reichert, R-WA-08, is “just getting started” in his jihad against AARP. From The News-Tribune:

In e-mails to the office of Washington’s insurance commissioner, Reichert’s staff wanted to know if AARP needed to be regulated under state insurance laws. An official in the insurance commissioner’s office, Gayle Pasero, company licensing manager, responded that AARP didn’t qualify as an insurance company covered by state law.

Wow. Just wow. AARP is now cowering under its covers at the mighty wrath of Dave, who called the state insurance commissioner, and was rejected. EPIC—well, you know.

Next up: Davey turns his back on AARP when it wants to play, staring at the ceiling and pretending not to notice AARP wagging its tail.

I also notice via Think Progress that Grandpa John McCain supposedly wants seniors to cut up their AARP cards to protest the group’s support of health care insurance reform. Yeah, like they’re going to give up those 5% discounts at RV parks, sure.

This is still the fundamental problem with Republicans: they don’t live in the real world. Gun owners may loudly proclaim that some undetermined, mythical entity will have to pry their guns from their “cold, dead fingers,” but try taking away a twenty five cent ketchup coupon from an AARP member. You’ll pull back a stump.