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In a shock to no one, Bill O’Reilly’s latest book on Abraham Lincoln has a few errors:

On Friday I wrote about the decision of Ford’s Theatre not to offer Bill O’Reilly’s bestsetlling new book on the Lincoln assassination at its bookstore because an expert National Park Service reviewer found the work to be riddled with factual errors.

Now, in a review in a leading Civil War magazine, a second expert has flunked O’Reilly’s “Killing Lincoln,” calling it “somewhere between an authoritative account and strange fiction.”

The review (which is not online) appears in the November issue of North & South, the official magazine of the Civil War Society.

“The narrative contains numerous errors of people, place, and events,” writes reviewer Edward Steers Jr., author of more than five books on the Lincoln assassination. He goes on to list about 10 errors of fact in “Killing Lincoln,” which O’Reilly co-authored with Martin Dugard and which has been atop bestseller lists for weeks.

I’ve started up a hashtag on Twitter, #oreillyfactsaboutlincoln, for people to add their own creative “facts” about our 16th President…

Joel Connelly has a piece, the last half dealing with the rejection of Prop 1. Here’s the conclusion, and the only part that talks about the future:

The state can hopefully get on with transportation projects, using variable (rush hour) tolls as a constructive carrot-stick approach to relieve congestion.

The Sierra Club will, one hopes, go back to being a player in Northwest conservation rather than an instrument of the McGinn-O’Brien agenda. Bellevue plutocrat Kemper Freeman will, one trusts, think twice before blowing another $1.1 million on an Eyman initiative.

The Seattle City Council should have the sense to bring more cooks into the kitchen, and give its next transportation package a little more time in the oven. Voters don’t like spending hard-earned money on something half-baked.

For someone who has written repeatedly (including in the non-quoted part of this piece) that a big problem with the car tabs was that it was regressive, he seems to have forgotten to make any sort of push to the legislature to give us an MVET or some other progressive means of paying for it (a 1% high earner’s income tax would be even better, although I have no idea how much it raises).

Anyway, the only solutions by government agencies Joel mentions are the legislature should do something transit related and the city should talk to more people. But unless the state allows us to tax ourselves more fairly, the biggest problem will persist (and Olympia isn’t likely to act without people like Joel pushing them).

Finally, not to spend too much time on an aside, but the Sierra Club does a lot of conservation work. The first non-election thing on the Cascade Chapter’s website is logging trails, for instance.

In a unanimous decision issued in NEDC v. Brown, a case involving logging roads on Oregon State lands, the Ninth Circuit ruled that polluted stormwater generated by logging roads is subject to regulation under the Clean Water Act’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES). The August 2011 decision requires that logging roads meet the standards of the Clean Water Act that would protect our clean water and salmon and steelhead. We are stunned that Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna would join with very conservative states such as Arkansas in urging the Supreme Court to overturn this court decision.

“Mitch McConnell is the one who has had his foot on the neck of this country’s economy….And the polls are now showing that Americans understand that Republicans are willing to sacrifice the health of our economy to have political advantage.”

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA-07) to MSNBC’s Chris Jansing.

Okay…maybe they didn’t strike a blow directly to Rob Mckenna, but by upholding the “individual mandate” in last year’s health care reform bill today, the Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit has struck another serious blow against the multi-state lawsuit.

Today’s ruling makes the third Appeals Court to uphold the law and the controversial individual insurance mandate. (I reviewed the pending lawsuits and decisions through July here.) One court has ruled against the law: the 11th Circuit Court in Atlanta ruled 2-1 on August 11th against the insurance mandate provision in the law. This is the Teabagger-inspired lawsuit that Washington state AG Rob McKenna unilaterally joined against the will of the Governor, the Legislature, and the people. Mckenna takes credit for the instigating the lawsuit.

In today’s ruling the majority rejects the the Appellants’ central objection that, “Congress, for the first time, has actually commanded that all Americans purchase a product, health insurance”

We look first to the text of the Constitution. Article I, § 8,cl. 3, states: “The Congress shall have Power . . . To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.” (emphasis added). At the time the Constitution was fashioned, to “regulate” meant, as it does now, “[t]o adjust by rule or method,” as well as “[t]o direct.”

To“direct,” in turn, included “[t]o prescribe certain measure[s]; to mark out a certain course,” and “[t]o order; to command.”28 In other words, to “regulate” can mean to require action, and nothing in the definition appears to limit that power only to those already active in relation to an interstate market. Nor was the term “commerce” limited to only existing commerce. There is therefore no textual support for appellants’ argument.

Of course, they then look to previous Supreme Court decisions. The bottom line: the Court rejects McKenna’s bullshit.

And my lunch break is over, so enjoy the rest of the opinion.

I’m going to delve into a bit of poll wonkery here, so if this kind of thing doesn’t trip your trigger, go check your email or something.

There are a lot of polls I’ll not bother to write about.

For example, the Zogby Interactive polls are pretty much bullshit because the samples don’t come close to approximating a random sample of eligible voters. Likewise, I usually ignore polls conducted on behalf of candidates or a party. In that case, the polls may use perfectly fine methods conducted to professional standards. The problem is that the results may be released strategically—that is, released if the findings are favorable to a candidate or party and kept private otherwise. In other words, the poll itself isn’t representative.

Yesterday I came across a new type of poll from SurveyAnalytics . Here are the sampling methods described in the top-lines:

SurveyAnalytics conducted an online survey of 2,001 voters in King County, including the City of Seattle. All of these voters were determined to be likely to vote in the November 2011 General Election. SurveyAnalytics recruited respondents from a voter list purchased from Labels & Lists, which included citizens who had voted in 2, 3 or 4 of the most recent General Elections. Respondents were contacted via e-mail following an e-mail matching process also conducted by Labels & Lists. Voters completed the survey online using SurveyAnalytics’ CityFeedback platform.

Okay…the methods sound interesting, although I don’t know how the “email matching process” works. Older folks are likely underrepresented because many still don’t have email addresses or computers. But traditional land-line polls under-represent young voters, who are more likely to have only a cell phone for a telephone.

SurveyAnalytics compares their sample to a SurveyUSA poll of King County taken in 2009, and they find very similar results for sex and ethnicity, as well as crudely categorized education and income variables. But the SurveyAnalytics sample is, as expected, slightly younger compared to SurveyUSA’s poll. An alternative interpretation is that the SurveyUSA sample—based on robocalling land-lines—was too old!

I cannot vouch for the representativeness of this poll. I do find the methods intriguing. With that…here are some results from their survey of 2,001 King County likely voters (MOE 2.24%) taken from October 29 to November 2:

• Obama 52%, Romney 24%, Neither 13%
• When asked for names of people running for Governor, McKenna’s name was given by 68%, Inslee’s by 57%
• A head-to-head match-up gives McKenna 36%, Inslee 35%
• Cantwell is at 54% to the sum of all other Republicans at 35%
• I-1183 (liquor privatization): 61% yes, 33% no
• I-1125 (Eyman/Freedman anti-tolls/anti-transit): 50% no, 38% yes
• I-1163 (background checks, training on long term care workers): 60% yes, 25% no

Again, keep in mind that these results are for King County only.

Out of curiosity, I’ve compared the SurveyAnalytics poll to the “Puget Sound” sample from the recent Washington Poll. I’m not sure what “Puget Sound” is defined as in the Washington Poll, but keep in mind that the samples in the two polls are not strictly comparable.

Obama does marginally well in King County by this poll at 52%. But the total of all Republican candidate percentages is only 24 36%, with Romney at 24%. The Washington Poll has an Obama—Romney match-up giving Obama 55% to Romney’s 37% in “Puget Sound”. The difference may largely be the number of undecideds, perhaps reflecting how the question was asked.

The most interesting finding is that McKenna and Inslee are practically tied in King County. This isn’t as bad as it looks for Inslee, as McKenna had an extra 10% of people who could say he was running. The Washington Poll found Inslee leading McKenna in “Puget Sound” 45% to 40%. As I mentioned earlier, Inslee probably does better relative to McKenna as more of the undecideds decide. And to win, he’ll have to do much better in King County in November 2012….

The I-1183 findings are more favorable at 62% Yes, 33% No compared to Washington Poll’s 52%, 42% split for “Puget Sound”.

Initiative 1125 loses by a whopping 50% to 38% in King County; the Washington Poll’s Puget Sound sample rejected the initiative by a more modest 43% to 42%.

It will be interesting to compare the actual vote in King County for the initiatives this election to these poll results, if only to assess whether this particular internet-based polling method is any good. And whether future polls of this type are worth our attention.

There were hints, and clues, and even outright claims, but now it’s official.

I mean, if you can believe hack journalist David “Goldy” Goldstein…Darcy Burner is running for Congress in Washington’s 1st congressional district.

For me that’s great news—I live in the 1st CD. Looking at the redistricting proposals, chances are excellent that Darcy Burner will be my next representative.

Darcy joins a somewhat crowded field of Democrats for the 1st CD, including State Rep. Roger Goodman, Former state Rep. Laura Ruderman, and State Rep. Marko Liias. I would be happy to be represented by any of these folks. (Okay…maybe not so much Ruderman, who seems to be great at fundraising, but what else? I simply don’t know.) Darcy, just by entering the race, becomes the front-runner.

This isn’t just my opinion. Remember the poll that Publicola got wind of (and that I mentioned here) a couple days ago? It shows Burner unquestionably in the lead.

If the redistricted 1st CD bears any resemblance to its old self, a Democratic candidate coming out of the primary will almost certainly win the general. Rep. Jay Inslee (who is vacating the seat to run for Governor) has held the district since 1999. The district has voted increasingly Democratic in recent presidential elections: Al Gore won by 53%, John Kerry won by 56%, and Barack Obama won by 62%.

On top of that, the Republicans have no candidates of any note running. Well…James Watkins, the guy who challenged Inslee in 2008, is running again.

I met Darcy during her first congressional run against Rep. Dave Reichert. I have interacted with her, perhaps, a dozen times since then, including doing one interview. My excitement at today’s announcement is genuine…I really want her to represent me! My reasons haven’t changed much from what I wrote back in 2006:

It was clear to me from that first meeting that Ms. Burner was an extraordinary individual—she struck me as smart, well-informed, articulate, disciplined, confident, and full of energy. I had no idea whether these attributes could translate into success in campaigning and politics, but I thought that Darcy exhibited many of the good attributes that I wanted in a political leader, and she didn’t seem afflicted with the negative attributes found in so many political leaders.

I couldn’t vote for Darcy in 2006 or 2008—my house is located a bit north of the 8th CD in the 1st CD. For the 2012 election cycle, I am most pleased to welcome Darcy to the 1st!

(You can contribute to Darcy Burner’s campaign here.)

Herman Cain makes more headlines this week.

Although he has a juicy campaign finance scandal brewing, and a bizarre gaffe about the Palestinian people, what people are really intrigued by is the revelations that Herman was, in the 1990s, accused of sexual harassment by two employees of the National Restaurant Association while Cain was the organization’s CEO.

The story has some potential…comedy potential, as in, “Herman, dude, hasn’t anyone ever told you that nein, nein, nein means NEIN?!?”

Other than that, this story stinks.

First, this is not going to help and might, quite possibly, hurt Cain’s chances at taking the nomination. And I don’t want anything to hurt Cain’s chances of being the Republican nominee for 2012. Seriously…if Obama has to go up against Romney or Cain, I’d much rather he go up against Cain. Besides the fact that Cain is the weaker of the two candidates, I like the gut-knotting turmoil it causes amongst the bigoted faction of Republicans.

It also sucks for a more important reason: because it feeds ugly bigotry, by reinforcing a negative stereotype of black men. “They’re stealing our women!”

And that is simply ugly.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not taking a stand on whether or not Cain sexually harassed those women. I’m not offering any excuses for sexual harassment, or making excuses for Cain if it turns out he did engage in that behavior. But the legal settlement prevents the women from talking about their complaint or the monetary settlement, so that there will always remain some uncertainty about what really happened. And the bigots will use that uncertainty to feed their ugly habit. Yuck.

As an aside, even Obama isn’t immune from this stereotype.

Remember last year when Newt Gingrich made headlines about Dinesh D’Souza “stunning insight” into Obama?

…the “most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama.”

“What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?” Gingrich asks. “That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior.”

“This is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president,” Gingrich tells us.

What was D’Souza “profound insight” in this article that so inspired Gingrich? The article concludes:

But instead of readying us for the challenge, our President is trapped in his father’s time machine. Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation’s agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son makes it happen, but he candidly admits he is only living out his father’s dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done.

Ahh, yes…if Obama doesn’t fit the bigot’s stereotype directly, lash him to that post by his genes.

As for Cain, at least the sexual harassment issue will divert people from some other, probably more serious, “issues” of the Cain campaign.

UPDATE: I spoke to some folks at Fuse today and they’ve now updated their guide and removed the reference to the study in question. I have to commend them for responding to this the way organizations should.

Original post follows…..

Last night on Twitter, I saw that Fuse Washington was promoting their Progressive Voters Guide. Concerning the liquor initiative, I-1183, they wrote [emphasis mine]:

Big grocery chains and liquor distributors are back with another dangerous initiative to deregulate liquor sales in our communities. Based on an initiative that voters solidly rejected last year, I-1183 would authorize as many as five times as many retailers to sell hard liquor. As a result, our communities would see a 48 percent increase in liquor consumption and an even larger increase in problem drinking.

That’s quite a statistic, and one that I had trouble believing, so I asked them for the source. It turns out that it comes from an independent task force set up by the CDC called the “Community Guide”. And thankfully, I didn’t have to do a lot of work to demonstrate the many problems with this study, because Erik Smith at the Washington State Wire already took care of that:

The task force released a three-page report earlier this year that recommended against privatization. It wasn’t a study. It was a “finding” based on a review of 21 studies.

The finding was “based on strong evidence that privatization results in increased per-capita alcohol consumption,” the report said.

And it contained a striking statistic. In those studies, alcohol sales jumped by a whopping median figure of 48 percent after privatization.

The thing is, most of those studies had nothing to do with hard liquor. Fifteen dealt with the privatization of wine sales in the U.S. and Canada, a big push in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Two of them had to do with beer sales in Scandinavia. Only four dealt with hard liquor. And the results were all over the map, ranging from an 8 percent decrease to a 305 percent increase – never mind the type of alcohol.

The way that 48 percent figure was calculated was by lumping everything together, as if all forms of alcohol are the same, in all countries, in all time periods.

The better way to try to understand the likely consequences of moving from a state-run model for selling hard liquor to a private model is to look at other states that have done just that. As Smith writes:

There’s an easier way of looking at the question – by looking at actual government statistics. For instance, you can compare alcohol consumption in Washington with that of California, where sales are wide-open and there are eight times the number of liquor outlets per capita.

According to the National Institutes of Health, in 2007 the average Washington resident consumed 2.35 gallons of alcohol and the average Californian 2.34. No real difference at all.

There’s also the experience of Iowa and West Virginia, the two most recent states to privatize hard liquor, in 1988 and 1990. Liquor consumption remained flat after booze showed up in supermarkets. Lately it has been on the increase, just as it has been across the country. But privatization didn’t drive the states to drink.

I don’t even have that strong of an opinion on this measure. I’m voting for it, but there are definitely some good reasons not to. But it really annoys me to see an organization like Fuse – that arose in big part to counter bullshit propaganda from the right – deciding that it’s ok for them to throw out their own transparent bullshit as well.

It’s seems like an epidemic among Republicans these days. Earlier this week it was Rep. Jamie Herrera Beutler (R-WA-3). Today we have ourselves another cowardly Republican on full display.

This time it’s Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA-7) cowering at the thought of appearing before an un-screened crowd:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) is abruptly pulling out of a scheduled Friday lecture on income equality at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School, according to the school.

[…] According to Cantor’s office, the Congressman pulled out after discovering that the speech would be open to the public and seeing reports that the university was allowing protestors to gather on the campus itself.

I cannot substantiate the rumor that instead of giving the speech, Cantor held a meeting with Herrera Beutler and Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA-8) to draft the bylaws of the G.O.P. Coward’s Club.

– As a liberal guy, I’ll say, this is fucked up (Also, wow) .

– The Abacus sign and a sign from Occupy Olympia.

– Handbills and posters for the weekend events at Occupy Seattle.

– During the 2008 Democratic primary, I was always quick to point out that it wasn’t particularly nasty as primary fights go. Certainly nobody was grabbing anybody.

– Of course, the title itself creates high hopes for Master Cantrall’s article, promising to fall right in line with the current wingnut weltanschauung that everything is socialist. Obama is a socialist. Public schools are socialist. Freeways are socialist. Stoplights are socialist. Glazed doughnuts are socialist. The 3-D version of “The Lion King” is socialist.

– It won’t get anywhere for now, but the GOP effort to ban discussion of abortion over the Internet is brazen even for Jim DeMint.

– When the machines take over, they won’t kill us outright. They’ll just program our GPS’s to make us drive around in circles.

Freshman Rep. Jamie Herrera Beutler (R-WA-3) got a little attention today from the national press. And, um…it wasn’t exactly a profile in political courage.

The original story comes from The Columbian (my emphasis):

Who should be informed of the opportunity to meet with their elected officials? Who decides how that should happen? According to U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Camas, she does.
[…]

On Friday The Chronicle in Centralia received a phone call from Herrera Beutler staffer and Communications Director Casey Bowman informing the newspaper of the meeting. Bowman asked that a meeting announcement not be placed in the paper. However, he did invite the paper to cover the event.

The Chronicle refused his request and published an announcement in Saturday’s paper.

The reason for not publishing an advance notice of the meeting was the fear that people from outside the immediate area could come and “just yell” at the congresswoman “whatever’s on their minds,” Bowman said Friday.

Perhaps Herrera Beutler can get together with Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA-8) and charter a G.O.P. Coward’s Club.

– Several cities have shifted to smart cards for transit purchases, so adding the ability to use your smart card to pay for parking would be fantastic.

– Every military operation we take on has legitimate criticism. Rush Limbaugh is clearly not the one to provide it though.

– Well, in news that will shock exactly no one, at least one of the images featured on Erickson’s tumblr is fake.

– Some signs from Westlake.

– How many galaxies are in the universe?

Publicola announces the Friday Jolt winner of the day:

Anyone who’s thinking of running against US Rep. Dave Reichert.

US Rep. Dave Reichert tainted his reputation as a green Republican—one of the Democrats’ big problems when taking him on—by voting for a coal bill today that will weaken coal ash regulations and take the EPA completely out of the picture.

Reichert goes from a pale green to ashen….

– it’s wrong-headed to think that voting down a fee will somehow make driving affordable.

– Maybe now we can raise taxes on the richest members of society.

– You see a certain amount of commentary complaining that the young people involved in the Occupy Wall Street protests should put down their signs carping about student loans and big banks and go get a job. What the commentators don’t say is that no one is willing to hire them.

– The freeloaders who don’t pay federal income taxes.

– This sort of vigilante justice will probably become more common in the Internet age, so let’s at least try to get the right people.

– It was especially nice to see the handful of cartoonists pretending to care so very much about [Steve Jobs] , but just not enough to know he’d been a Buddhist for decades and in fact made several speeches about how it guided his life and career and how imagining he’d be in front of St. Peter

Obama on Tuesday (via The Washington Post):

“Folks go around saying ‘Obamacare.’ That’s right — I care,” the president said at a fundraising luncheon in Dallas on Tuesday. He added of Republicans: “That’s their main agenda? That’s your plank? Is making sure 30 million people don’t have health insurance?”

Indeed. But Obama just scratches the surface. The Republican agenda includes elimination of Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, welfare, the insurance and security components of social security, public education, student loan and financial aid programs, abortion, environmental protections, food protections, safety standards, and, of course, unions.

Oh yeah…and the middle class.

Taken altogether, the Republican “utopia” seems like something out of a Mad Max movie.