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Futurewise and SEIU 775 are filing a complaint in King County Superior Court this morning, asking the courts to block Tim Eyman’s I-960 from the ballot, on the grounds that it is outside the constitutional scope of the initiative process. And, well… I just gotta laugh.

I know what Timmy’s reaction will be. He’ll be outraged, he’ll tell us, at this cynical attempt to prevent the people from voting on a citizens initiative. This is insulting. It’s undemocratic. It’s unprecedented.

In fact, it is not unprecedented, and I can’t tell you how much I look forward to skewering Eyman and his sanctimonious supporters in the press and elsewhere who echo his self-righteous condemnations of the complainants and their attorneys. For if these hypocritical defenders of the status quo are truly outraged by the prospect of such pre-ballot review, they had every opportunity to speak their minds concerning a similar case four years ago, yet remained strangely silent. Indeed the most sanctimonious of the sanctimonious — the Seattle Times editorial board — actually urged the courts to bar an initiative from the ballot on just such a scope challenge.

Of course I’m talking about I-831, my private joke cum baptism in hardball politics, a constitutionally protected initiative seeking to proclaim Tim Eyman a horse’s ass, that was summarily barred from the ballot by a stick-up-his-ass Assistant AG and an angry judge.

The Times and others cheered the judge’s actions, but it was absolutely clear to me at the time the precedent he was setting. Indeed, the brief my attorney presented before the injunction hearing seems downright prescient in light of today’s news:

Many initiatives are presented to the people that are arguably unconstitutional or beyond the scope of the legislative power. For example, Tim Eyman’s Sound Transit Initiative would prevent Sound Transit from spending money on a “Link Light Rail” system. This proposed initiative is clearly beyond the scope of legislative power under Ruano v. Spellman and other cases holding that initiatives cannot seek to prohibit administrative actions. The Attorney General has done nothing to prevent Mr. Eyman from going forward with his initiative. Proposed Initiative 824 is a statement. The Attorney General has taken the position in the present case that statements are not legislative, yet nothing has been done to prevent Initiative 824 from going forward.

Allowing the Attorney General discretion to select initiatives for challenge based on their palatability would violate the First Amendment. If pre-ballot review is to be applied to some initiatives, it should be applied to all initiatives that are arguably unconstitutional or beyond the scope of legislative power.

We concluded our brief by demanding that if the court engages in pre-ballot review, a “writ of mandamus” should issue requiring the Attorney General to seek pre-ballot review of all initiatives that are “arguably unconstitutional or outside the scope of the initiative power.”

Eyman, the self-proclaimed champion of direct democracy, had every opportunity then to take a principled stand in defense of the initiative process, but he refused. So forgive me if four years later I shed no tears for the legal predicament in which he finds himself. That his own unconstitutional initiative should face a pre-ballot scope challenge is the logical, legal consequence of the court order that ended I-831. My only surprise is that it has taken this long for an enterprising attorney to build on the precedent.

“I-960 is not a valid initiative and it will never become the law, so we shouldn’t be wasting tax moneys counting signatures and placing it on the ballot. I-960 seeks to amend the constitution by initiative, which the Courts have repeatedly said you cannot do,” noted Knoll Lowney, lead attorney on the case.

Specifically, I-960 seeks to modify the referendum powers defined in the State Constitution by creating a mandatory non-binding referendum process for all tax and fee increases not already subject to constitutional referendum, and, it attempts to modify the constitutional process for enacting legislation, by requiring a two thirds majority for raising taxes. I-960 is arguably unconstitutional, and, since it intends to amend laws that cannot be amended, it is also arguably not “legislative,” and thus outside the scope of the initiative process.

Unlike the Times, I’m not going to urge the court to rule one way or the other. I’m not a judge. And much to my mother’s chagrin, I’m not an attorney.

But I’ve read the complaint and I’m familiar enough with the case law from my own legal adventures to understand that this is not a frivolous complaint, and that it should be taken very seriously by the courts. Pre-ballot scope challenges are permissible, and indeed, I would argue, are long overdue. In fact, even while defending my own initiative, I argued for “a statutory mechanism for reviewing the constitutional sufficiency of initiatives prior to the ballot.” All I wanted from the AG and the courts was that such pre-ballot review be conducted with fairness and consistency.

Still, consistency is not something we’ve seen from my friends in the media in terms of how they have routinely approached Eyman and his initiatives, and I don’t expect to see consistency now. I fully expect Eyman to cry outrage, and I fully expect the editorialists — eager to prove that they are not aligned against him — to join him in his hypocritical sanctimony.

So come on Seattle Times… I dare you to prove me wrong. Four years ago you editorialized against a joke initiative, urging the court to bar I-831 from the ballot simply because it offended your delicate sensibilities. Do you have the balls to stand by your defense of pre-ballot scope challenges as a legitimate legal exercise?

I don’t think so.

UPDATE:
Andrew has more at NW Progressive.

In the last several months I’ve talked to several people who are supporting Hillary Clinton for president primarily because she is a woman. Personally, I can’t overlook a candidate’s stand on the issues, but when female friends say they want to see a woman president in their lifetime, I don’t blame them.

But, why Hillary Clinton? I totally dig how she stirs up hate by the right-wing mental midgets who comment on this blog. That said, Clinton would be a continuation of her husband’s two terms in office. While I loved the 90’s, I think we need to move forward with some new blood. Contrary to conventional wisdom, there is at least one Democratic woman out there who will one day be on the national stage.

I’m talking about Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who is sticking it to President Bush:

For months, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas and other governors have warned that their state National Guards are ill-prepared for the next local disaster, be it a tornado a flash flood or a terrorist’s threat, because of large deployments of their soldiers and equipment in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Then, last Friday night, a deadly tornado all but cleared the small town of Greensburg off the Kansas map. With 80 square blocks of the small farming town destroyed, Ms. Sebelius said her fears had come true: The emergency response was too slow, she said, and there was only one reason.

“As you travel around Greensburg, you’ll see that city and county trucks have been destroyed,” Ms. Sebelius, a Democrat, said Monday. “The National Guard is one of our first responders. They don’t have the equipment they need to come in, and it just makes it that much slower.”

While the Governor and the White House have cooled the war of words, the issue still stands. When resources from states like Kansas are sent to the occupation in Iraq, our local authorities won’t have the ability to respond to disasters like they would if they were fully equipped. Sometimes this is unavoidable, but governors all over the country have been sounding the alarm for years now.

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius could be on the ticket in 2008. With good reason. She’s ready for prime time. Of all the women in politics today, she’s the toughest. Kansas tough. And whether it’s an incompetent president in DC or a tornado, she proves she can deal with anything.

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Join us for some hoppy beer and hopped up debate.

Join us for some yummy, gluten-free beer.

Not in Seattle? Liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities. A full listing of Washington’s eleven Drinking Liberally chapters is available here.

“FDA and USDA believe the likelihood of illness after eating such pork is extremely low.”
— USDA/FDA, 4/26/2007

“We have no reason to believe that any of those are currently in the human food supply as a direct ingredient.”
— USDA/FDA, 4/26/2007

“We have no reason to believe that anything other than the rice protein concentrate or the wheat gluten have been a problem in the United States recently.”
— USDA/FDA, 4/26/2007

“But overall, we believe the risk to be extremely low to humans.”
— USDA/FDA, 4/26/2007

“We believe that the likelihood of illness from such exposure is extremely low.”
— USDA/FDA, 5/1/2007

“One of the reasons we believe that this is very low in humans is due to the dilution effect.”
— USDA/FDA, 5/1/2007

“We believe the situation in the poultry is very much like that for the swine.”
— USDA/FDA, 5/1/2007

“We do not believe that there is any significant threat of human illness from consuming poultry.”
— USDA/FDA, 5/1/2007

“We believe the likelihood of illness to humans, including infants, is extremely small.”
— USDA/FDA, 5/3/2007

“We believe the likelihood of a human illness is very remote.”
— USDA/FDA, 5/3/2007

“We have no reason to believe those animals are any risk to the public.”
— USDA/FDA, 5/3/2007

—

“There’s no tolerance for any of these compounds, either melamine or cyanuric acid. […] We just don’t know when we get these mixtures together. So there is no, really no acceptable level.”
— USDA/FDA, 4/26/2007

I’m not a very spiritual person, but I’m having a crisis of faith.

Twice a week I sit in on the FDA’s media teleconference regarding our growing food safety crisis, and twice a week I come away struck by the difference between what officials believe and what they actually know. As a born agnostic and a fan of science, I can fully appreciate the FDA’s reluctance to express absolute certainty. But as a devoted father and pet owner, I can’t help but find their reassurances less than reassuring.

First we were told that none of the adulterated wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate had made its way into the human food supply, and then we were informed that a mere 6,000 hogs had eaten feed contaminated by “salvaged” pet food. Next it was chickens. 3 million of them. Slaughtered, butchered and eaten by unsuspecting Americans.

Then 20 million more chickens, and today another 50,000 hogs… not to mention the God-knows-how-many fish in the US and Canada raised on farms now known to have received Canadian fish meal manufactured from contaminated Chinese flours.

Still… not to worry, we are told, because large manufacturers are “unlikely to have exposed their animals to large amounts of the tainted pet products.”

Uh-oh. Qualified statements like that set off alarm bells, and every bell this scandal has rung thus far has been answered a few days later with another revelation. The practice of selling salvaged pet food for livestock feed is more widespread than previously acknowledged, encompassing nearly the entire US pet food manufacturing industry. Given what we know of these practices, and the nature of the livestock and feed industries, it is reasonable to speculate that hundreds of millions of U.S.-grown hogs, chickens and fish have been contaminated, dating back to November or July of 2006, or perhaps even further.

But not to worry, we are told, for even that only represents a small percentage of the 9 billion chickens raised in the U.S. annually, a number the FDA bizarrely considers to be “a small part of [our] overall diet.” Affected hogs and chickens “appear to be healthy.” Even if the boneless breast in your freezer does contain melamine, it’s only a tiny amount. And besides, we are told, “we have no reason to believe” this poses a risk to human health.

Uh-huh.

I know I sometimes come off as a tad alarmist, but before you dismiss my skepticism lets first review what we know versus what we believe.

What we know:

• Tainted pet food has killed or sickened tens of thousands of cats and dogs, some dropping dead within a meal or two of first ingesting melamine and related compounds such as cyanuric acid.
• Autopsies have discovered “plasticized” cat kidneys, clogged with crystals comprised of equal parts melamine and cyanuric acid.
• Laboratory tests have have reproduced the formation of these crystals in a test tube by mixing melamine and cyanuric acid in the presence of urine.
• Tainted pet food containing melamine and cyanuric acid was “salvaged,” and sold as livestock feed, contaminating untold millions of hogs and chickens.
• About three million chickens and several hundred hogs are known to have been slaughtered, butchered and presumably eaten. At least another 20 million chickens are known to have consumed contaminated feed.

What we believe:

• Tainted meat poses little risk to human health.

I would love to join my friends in the legacy media in reporting that our food supply is safe. I love food. I eat it every day. But I’m having trouble taking that leap of faith, not simply because of what we know, but because of what we don’t know. For example, we have no idea if melamine/cyanuric acid crystals bio-accumulate in human kidneys over time, and we’re not even sure exactly how long or how widely these toxins have contaminated our food supply.

And… despite USDA/FDA’s recent assurance that contaminated meat is safe to eat, this “most extreme risk assessment scenario” was conducted without ever bothering to test melamine and cyanuric acid levels in the meat of contaminated hogs and chickens.

At least, that’s what they told me. FDA spokesperson Julie Zawisza explained that “identifying these compounds in high protein environments (eg, muscle/tissue) is not that simple” and that they “are still working on a valid test.”

Fair enough. So I asked Midwest Labs, a widely respected testing facility, if they could test “a pork chop or piece of chicken” as reliably as they could test, say, a can of dog food. Their response?

“We can certainly test a food item or a pet food item for melamine. Their is a bit of prep work involved in testing a food sample for melamine, but this is certainly not a problem. Testing muscle tissue will only give a different consistency to the prepped sample. Neither should be a problem.”

When USDA/FDA released contaminated animals from quarantine, and approved them for market, they did so without ever directly testing the meat, and with no restriction on the sale or consumption of organs such as liver or kidney, where the melamine/cyanuric acid crystals are known to accumulate… organ meat that millions of Americans do consume on a regular basis, sometimes knowingly.

USDA/FDA say they believe the melamine level in meat would be very low, but they haven’t bothered to test it. They say they believe melamine is nontoxic to humans, but then, a few months ago we believed it was nontoxic to dogs and cats too. They say they believe that there have been no human health problems due to eating tainted pork and chicken, but admit that the Centers for Disease Control has “limited ability to detect subtle problems due to melamine and melamine-related compounds.”

And while USDA/FDA have focused their efforts almost entirely on inspecting imports of vegetable protein concentrates, and on tracking contaminated product through the animal and human food supply, the import of processed foods, meat and farmed seafood products from China has continued unchecked and unabated, despite the obvious potential of contamination within China’s own, largely unregulated, agriculture and food industries.

According to recent studies, 81-percent of America’s seafood is imported, and about 40-percent of that is farmed. China is the world’s aquaculture leader, accounting for about 70-percent of global production. It is also a major U.S. supplier of farm-raised shrimp, catfish, tilapia, carp, clams, eel and other aquaculture products.

We now know that it is common practice in China to spike the nitrogen level of livestock feed by adulterating the product with both scrap melamine and scrap cyanuric acid. And it has also been widely reported that this contaminated feed is routinely used in China’s burgeoning aquaculture industry.

The chemical producers said it was common knowledge that for years cyanuric acid had been used in animal and fish feed. […] “Cyanuric acid scrap can be added to animal feed,” says Yu Luwei, general manager of Juancheng Ouya Chemical Company in Shandong Province. “I sell it to fish meal manufacturers and fish farmers. It can also be added to feed for other animals.”

Fish physiology can leave them particularly prone to bio-accumulating certain contaminants, and the nature of common aquaculture practices tends to exacerbate the problem. Farmed seafood raised on a steady diet of contaminated feed would surely retain some of the toxins in its flesh. But as far as we know, no imported, Chinese aquaculture products have yet been tested.

The fact is, due to greed, negligence and uncontrolled Chinese capitalism our food supply has been widely contaminated by melamine and related compounds, and USDA, FDA, CDC and other government agencies have no idea what the long term human health effects might be. Throughout this unfolding crisis, the regulatory agencies tasked with assuring the safety and purity of our food supply have consistently downplayed the risk to humans — a somewhat understandable attitude considering Chinese and American consumers have apparently been eating melamine-tainted food for months, if not years, with no known epidemiological impact. But given the harm to our pets, and the fact that kidney damage is cumulative and can remain asymptomatic until renal function is mostly lost, I wonder how many Americans would be willing to accept on blind faith USDA/FDA’s reassurances that products containing “low” levels of melamine are perfectly safe to feed to our children?

Personally, I find it hard to believe.

Via the General, a message from Tom Wales’ brother-in-law:

Anonymity is a fine thing. Many an evening I have rafted down the Internets Tubes, safe and secure in my anonymity: unafraid to speak up and unafraid of consequences. Toes have been stomped. Feathers ruffled (my tactfulness is not legendary). Well, mea culpa.

Today I risk nakedness, my fig leaf Googleable.

In testimony Thursday, James Comey, former #2 at the Department of Justice under Ashcroft, testified to the House Judiciary Committee (actually brought up first by Rep. Mel Watt (D-NC), while Watt was questioning him) that John McKay, one of the fired USA’s, got in hot water in 2005 for agitating with the bigwigs in DC for more resources in hunting the assassin of Tom Wales, an assistant DA in Seattle killed on October 11, 2001.

Tom was shot a half-dozen times in the neck and head with hollow-point bullets (aka “cop killers””) as he sat at his home computer, answering an email. Sitting as we do, now. He prosecuted white-collar crime in Washington State, and was also a visible and dedicated gun-control advocate. I watched him debate Wayne LaPierre once, on Good Morning America, and thought Tom ate Wayne’s lunch. He headed Washington Cease Fire until murdered with a handgun.

His slaying has never been solved.

The FBI has a team, permanently investigating…they’re on record as saying they know the killer. They released a letter to the press, purportedly from the suspect, and asked the public’s help in identifying him. The FBI has, they say, ruined the suspect’s life, and hassled many a gun owner.

Now I learn through these Internets Tubes that John McKay may have been fired for paying too much attention to the assassination of his fellow federal prosecutor, instead of filing bogus voter-fraud suits.

It appears the DOJ (who sent no reps to Tom’s memorial service, btw, even though he was the first active Federal DA to be murdered, and this just one month after 9/11) was directed to minimize the hunt for Tom’s killer because it would harm the Republican Party’s NRA base, and inflame gun-control advocates.

I don’t speak for the Wales family. Several of them still lose sleep when the case re-makes the news, fearful for the safety of Tom’s children, now grown. And I see their point, though the children are as brave as he.

But if the DOJ is now in the business of ignoring the murders of dedicated prosecutors who spent a career contributing to the community and standing up for the powerless to better win the next election, then it’s time to clean house. If I had been murdered, instead, and my case swept under the rug, Tom would have charged in like an angry wolf.

I married his sister, you see.

And so I ask you, gentle reader, to call or write your Congresspersons, especially if they sit on the Judiciary Committees; demand they ask each DOJ employee, parading through in this shameful affair, what they know or knew of reasons for McKay’s firing.

If this White House is willing to murder Justice for power, we should replace them. Now.

UPDATE:
Tom Wales’ brother-in-law has asked that I post the following correction and clarification:

Monday, I posted re: the unsolved Tom Wales case, and did so in anger. In allowing my anger and resurgent grief sway, I stupidly misstated details that upon reflection deserved more perfect accuracy. No matter the threats to it, or from whence they arise, justice and truth will win out; they must, eventually. I believe that, as Tom did and worked toward. The FBI, DOJ, and law enforcement are filled with public servants as dedicated to justice as Tom. I deeply regret putting my two cents in on a case already so difficult and emotional for so many of them.

To be more specific: the FBI is NOT on record as saying they have but one suspect; though it’s true they have one who is particularly a focus, and has been the subject of public appeals. Also, Mr. Comey only responded to Rep. Watt repeating earlier testimony, as noted in the link. I knew that, and simply erred.

My post showed insufficient respect to Mr. Comey, and to the FBI, and the rank and file at the DOJ, respect I continue to have. My deepest and heartfelt apology for any trouble or confusion I have caused.

It can be tough being both a liberal Democrat and a staunch supporter of the 2nd Amendment. The National Rifle Association doesn’t make this any easier. A group that once concerned itself primarily with gun safety, the NRA has taken a sharp turn to the right over the last twenty years. Sometimes, the position taken by the NRA defy all common sense.

The National Rifle Association is urging the Bush administration to withdraw its support of a bill that would prohibit suspected terrorists from buying firearms. Backed by the Justice Department, the measure would give the attorney general the discretion to block gun sales, licenses or permits to terror suspects.

In a letter this week to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, NRA executive director Chris Cox said the bill, offered last week by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., “would allow arbitrary denial of Second Amendment rights based on mere ‘suspicions’ of a terrorist threat.”

“As many of our friends in law enforcement have rightly pointed out, the word ‘suspect’ has no legal meaning, particularly when it comes to denying constitutional liberties,” Cox wrote.

NRA flacks like Cox turn into civil libertarians whenever guns are involved. But other constitutional rights? Silence from the gun rights lobby.

Dan Savage:

Gun nuts talk and talk about needing guns to protect the rights and freedoms that all Americans enjoy, but when the rights and freedoms of Americans are under siege, guns nuts are nowhere to be found. I don’t recall seeing any NRA members, for example, ever protesting an assault on the free speech rights of Americans by the feds—or the federal government’s successful efforts to undermine our constitutional protections against government surveillance and unreasonable searches, their attempts to regulate speech on the Internet, limit abortion rights…

So while gun owners are always saying that owning guns is about defending freedom, the only freedom gun owners seem interested in defending with their guns is the freedom to defend their freedom to own guns.

Pro-gun politicians who defend ALL constitutional rights can be hard to find. The only two I know are both from Montana- Gov. Brian Schweitzer and Sen. Jon Tester. Tester, who is totally pro-gun, also favors repealing the Patriot Act. Schweitzer just signed a bill that tells the federal government to go to hell over Real ID.

I’m certain the NRA will continue to be a Republican puppet organization for years to come, but with Democrats like Schweitzer and Tester on the forefront, real civil libertarians can sleep easier.

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

Come join us for some hopped up conversation and hoppy beer.

Not in Seattle? Liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities. A full listing of Washington’s eleven Drinking Liberally chapters is available here.

A gigantic tanker blew up on a San Fransisco area freeway interchange the other day. Gridlock was predicted for Monday’s commute. But…

It didn’t happen.

I’ll let Dan Savage explain:

How was the disaster averted? Mass transit got a boost—more trains were running, more ferries crisscrossed San Francisco Bay, and some folks opted to telecommute. Now the same people that predicted disaster today are warning us that the disaster—the chaos! oh, the humanity!—will surely come tomorrow. Or Wednesday. Or Thursday. It’s likelier, however, that disaster won’t come because drivers will do what drivers do only when they must: adjust. Find other ways around, switch to mass transit, telecommute, ride a ferry.

But once again freeway addicts deprived of a freeway predicted disaster and disaster failed to materialize.

Tear down the viaduct now.

While I’m not quite ready to tear down the viaduct, Dan has a point. We are often convinced we need the things we have, only to realize that, perhaps, we can live without them. I’m certain the destroyed section of freeway will be repaired, but it goes to show you just how flexible commuters can be if they have options.

NOTE BY GOLDY:
How naive can you be Will? Don’t you know that Seattle is different, and that transit can’t possibly work here? And while other major cities have torn down waterfront freeways, and commuters have managed to adapt, don’t you understand that this just won’t work in Seattle, because… well… um… it just won’t?

Drop a backpack in a garbage can on a Washington State ferry, and you will shut down the system for hours, as officials evacuate the ship and X-ray the suspicious bag for explosives. So what happens when you leave a 40-foot shipping container, unattended by a highway overpass?

This is a Hyundai container, destined either to or from Terminal 5, but is not going anywhere. There is no semi-tractor in sight, and the container is parked next to the highway 99 overpass, just a few hundred feet from the West Seattle bridge, which are two main highways that connect all of south and west Seattle, to downtown via the Viaduct. I find these things from time to time stretching along the main drags that run through Georgetown. This container is sitting on a patch of gravel across the street from Terminal 25 on East Marginal Way, just a stone’s throw from their gate security office.

Perhaps this is the real Port scandal… the 95-percent of containers that go uninspected, and the lax security and lack of accountability throughout our entire shipping and trucking industry?

Over a month ago, I said this about the race among Democrats to take on Reichert in the 8th CD:

Unlike Goldy, I’m not committed to supporting a single candidate. At least not yet.

Today, I announce that I will be supporting Darcy Burner for Congress.

Democrats need an energetic new voice in Washington. We need a voice from Seattle’s Eastside that will advocate for fiscal restraint and personal responsibility. We need someone who understands not only the high-tech businesses of Bellevue and Redmond, but also the VFW halls of Auburn and Buckley. Darcy Burner meets or exceeds all of these requirements.

While some folks question whether Darcy is the candidate who will lead Democrats to victory, I don’t. Darcy fell just 8,000 votes short of victory in 2006. In New Hampshire, Paul Hodes lost to Rep. Charlie Bass by 20 points in 2004. Two years later, Hodes won, 52-45. The truth is, Darcy is much closer to victory in ’08 than many candidates who are giving it second try.

Darcy Burner isn’t the anointed candidate; if there are challengers, she’ll have to beat them. If Dwight Pelz does what Paul Berendt did in 2004 by finding a celebrity candidate to run in the 8th, Darcy will have to beat that candidate, too. No one is owed a seat in Congress, or even a party’s nomination.

Darcy has learned much from her first campaign, and I see no reason why she can’t get another 10,000 votes somewhere in the 8th District.

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

Come joins us for some hopped up conversation and hoppy beer.

Not in Seattle? Liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities and Vancouver. A full listing of Washington’s eleven Drinking Liberally chapters is available here.

Ivan Weiss, chair of the 34th District Democrats (and my biggest fan) takes aim at “fair elections” advocates who are working with extremist right wing think tanks.

Rep. Peter DeFazio is out. He won’t challenge GOP Sen. Gordon Smith (OR), who is getting some serious love from Crosscut.

This Sunday, riding the bus will be free. Why? It’s Earth Day. (Or as George W. Bush calls it, “Sunday”) Dan Savage isn’t a fan of the free bus plan:

Earth to Ron Sims: Riding the bus sucks. Earth day, non-earth days (?), free, $1.25—the fucking bus sucks. There’s nothing celebratory about being stuck on a fucking bus.

People don’t ride public transit to be altruistic, do-gooders. They ride public transit to get from Point A to Point B. To compete with cars, Ron, public transit has to be faster, easier, and more reliable than driving. There’s a tiny number of smug, stupid assholes out there that will get on a bus because they get to say, “Hey, look at me! I’m saving the planet!” to themselves. And most of those assholes are already on the bus, content to sit in a pool of urine left on their seat by some bum that got on and off the bus in the downtown “ride free/rolling homeless shelter zone.”

Melamine-tainted corn gluten, imported from China, has been confirmed in South African pet food:

Johannesburg – Tests have confirmed that Vets Choice and Royal Canin dog and cat dry pet-food products contained corn gluten contaminated with melamine, says the manufacturer.

The contaminated corn gluten was delivered to Royal Canin by a South African third-party supplier and appears to have originated from China.

Once again the rumors prove right, and FDA denials prove wrong. On Tuesday, April 17, I informed the FDA that “the word […] is that corn gluten and rice protein concentrate are being recalled” — information they firmly denied.

What we have here is a pattern, and there is absolutely no reason to assume that it is limited to the pet food and animal feed markets. Wheat gluten, corn gluten and rice protein concentrate are all used to supplement the protein content of both animal and human food, and all three have now been found to be contaminated with melamine. Three different Chinese manufactures have now apparently been implicated.

Given the facts, it is now reasonable to assume either massive, industry-wide negligence, or intentional contamination, and that all Chinese produced high-protein food additives are now suspect. Steve Pickman, a VP at MGP Ingredients, the largest U.S. producer of wheat gluten, explores the most likely theory:

“It is my understanding, but certainly unheard of in our experience, that melamine could increase the measurable nitrogen of gluten and then be mathematically converted to protein. The effect could create the appearance or illusion of raising the gluten’s protein level. Understandably, any acts or practices such as this are barred in the U.S. How the U.S. can or cannot monitor and prevent these types of situations from occurring in other parts of the world is the overriding question.”

In grading the quality of these food additives, the protein content is usually extrapolated from measured nitrogen levels. It now seems likely that unscrupulous manufacturers, in an effort to up the grade and price of their product, are intentionally spiking nitrogen levels with melamine, an industrial chemical used in China as a slow-release nitrogen fertilizer.

One would expect the FDA to test this theory by directly measuring protein levels in melamine-contaminated samples to see if they otherwise fall below grade. One would also expect the FDA to release the names of all importers, distributors and manufacturers who are suspected of handling contaminated product. But then, one would expect a lot of things from the FDA that they have thus far failed to deliver.

The truth might be a good place to start.

UPDATE:
During a conference call today, the FDA confirmed that melamine-tainted pet food was reprocessed and fed to hogs. People eat hogs. Figure it out for yourself.

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

Come joins us for some good beer and spicy politics. Tonight we’ll celebrate the opening of the 200th chapter of Drinking Liberally, with the arrival of the Pagosa Springs, Colorado chapter.

Not in Seattle? Liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities and Vancouver. A full listing of Washington’s eleven Drinking Liberally chapters is available here.

On April 10, after failing to get ahold of anybody who could answer my questions by phone, I sent the following email to a number of contacts at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration:

Do you have any information regarding the report in the Marin Independent Journal that three varieties of Nutro Max cat food, not currently on the recall list, have tested positive for melamine by an independent lab?

http://www.marinij.com/marin/ci_5630208

Is the FDA aware of this information, is further testing being performed, and do you expect the recall to expand? Does this suggest that the universe of recalled food will be expanded beyond these additional Nutro varieties?

And yesterday, April 16, I finally received the following succinct reply:

We do not have this information at this time.
**************************************
Veronica Castro
Office of Public Affairs
FDA

Um… which is curious, because only hours after I sent my query, the FDA issued a press release expanding the recall to include the Nutro Max varieties and other products. Hmm. Yet six days after recalling the products in question, the Office of Public Affairs still tells me that “we do not have this information at this time.”

Doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

I once mocked former FEMA director Mike Brown for suggesting that his agency’s catastrophic failure in the wake of Hurricane Katrina was largely, well, my fault. “In the middle of trying to respond to that,” Brown complained during Congressional testimony on the massive hurricane, “FEMA’s press office became bombarded with requests to respond immediately to false statements about my resume and my background.”

As if the most critical element of any disaster relief effort comes from the press office.

But all snark aside, the press office does play an important role in crisis management, by getting accurate information out through the media and to the public — information that can save lives. And throughout this entire pet food recall the FDA and the pet food industry have repeatedly failed to adequately perform this crucial function.

It was on March 2 that Menu Foods learned that the first of its test animals had died. By March 8, Menu Foods, ChemNutra and the FDA knew that imported wheat gluten was the culprit, knew the name of the Chinese manufacturer printed on the side of the 25 kg sacks, and knew that the gluten was imported and distributed as human food grade. The initial recall wasn’t issued until March 17, and the name of the Chinese manufacturer wasn’t revealed until March 30, prompting three more pet food companies to issue recalls within hours. On April 3, 26 days after first being notified that its gluten was killing animals, ChemNutra finally issued a nationwide recall.

Throughout this unfolding crisis, consumers were consistently reassured that the remaining pet food supply was safe, even as the recall expanded day by day. So I guess it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise when the FDA’s own Public Affairs Office claims to be totally unaware of a week-old recall.

This scandal will surely prompt Congressional hearings focusing on the safety of the food supply, but the FDA’s failure to provide the public with accurate, timely information is as inexcusable as its failure to adequately safeguard our food. We not only have the right to know what the FDA knows — and when they know it — we have the need. For when it comes to both our pets and ourselves, it is far better to avoid products out of unconfirmed fear, than it is to consume unsafe products out of ignorance.

The FDA and the pet food industry had an obligation to inform the public. They failed.