Burbank was appointed as the district's "official" nominee by state Democratic Party chair Dwight Pelz, a longtime friend of his, after the 36th District Democrats declined to nominate either Burbank or Carlyle, citing their objection to the Democrats' sanctioned nominating process for this year's top-two primary, which only allowed precinct committee officers to vote.

In an email, Carlyle fumed that Burbank "was APPOINTED by his official beer drinking buddy, Dwight Pelz, as the nominee, not elected by voters, the district organization or any other entity of any sort."

Asked how his appointment by Pelz constituted elected experience, Burbank seemed a bit flummoxed, eventually responding, "That is the position of the Washington State Democratic Central Committee. If you go to their web site, you will see that their nominee for this position, Position One, is John Burbank. That’s me. ...[The voter guide statement] was approved by the Secretary of State, so if someone has an issue with it they should take it up with the Secretary of State."

Burbank added: "It's an odd thing that this is what it's come down to"--debates over party process, rather than discussions of the issues. That's a fair point, but in this case, the story isn't so much about the particulars of any internecine battle (if you really want to see interparty warfare, check out what's going on in the 46th) as it is about the top-two primary, which has pitted Democrat against Democrat in general-election battles in races that used to be decided in September.

In case you don't, I'll refresh your memory:

In case you hadn't realized, last week was anal sex week in Olympia.

That, at least, was the publicly proclaimed assessment of Lou Novak, a prominent apartment-building owner. Novak's eagerness to express his views within earshot of HIV-positive citizens, including two children, who traveled to the state capital last week to lobby for greater AIDS prevention and care funding not only provoked a confrontation that led to an investigation by Capitol security, but has also provoked a minor firestorm among legislators.

A handful of advocates were exiting the main legislative building when they say they passed a man who loudly offered his troglodytic opinion of their activities. The leader of the contingent, Susie Saxton, executive director of CareBearers, a hospice organization in Yakima, was wearing a red "AIDS Awareness Day" T-shirt. She was accompanied by two other adults, as well as a 13-year-old girl and a 16-year-old who had contracted HIV from his mother, who had herself become infected through a blood transfusion during kidney surgery in the late 1980s.

"Looks like its anal sex week," the man said as they passed him, according to Saxton.

Guess which politician he's maxed out to?

Dino Rossi.

Since December 2007, Novak has donated $3,200 to Rossi's gubernatorial campaign.

However, the donation shouldn't surprise anyone familiar with Rossi's record on gay rights.

In 2003, he voted against legislation that would have banned discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

In 2004 1996, he attacked an opponent, Kathleen Drew, by saying she had "sponsored a gay and lesbian art exhibit in the state capitol." The exhibit was meant to honor the late Sen. Cal Anderson.

He voted for the Defense of Marriage Act as a state legislator and supporting George W. Bush in his call for a US constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

Ultimately people will judge for themselves, but it provides a clear contrast between Doug and the opponent’s campaign. The documents show that even though he knew the political difficulty such allegations could cause, Doug’s first concern was for the woman who was made uncomfortable. The woman was asked what steps would help resolve the issue and Doug and DNR agreed to do all of those things.

In contrast, Doug’s opponent, his supporters and a liberal blog sent the information out without speaking with the woman or expressing concern that this might put her in a position she did not ask to be in – using a private matter as a political weapon in a campaign. Indeed, the Seattle Times noted that “She has not responded to interview requests.” Additionally, Goldmark’s supporters even went so far as to try and hide their involvement by arranging a deal that they not be identified by the media outlets to whom they leaked the documents.

The contrast between Doug’s efforts to address the mistake he made by being too informal and apologize and the unauthorized use of a personal matter by Doug’s opponent without considering the position it put the woman in, says a lot about why so many have expressed their support for Doug prior to this story and why so many have called to reiterate that support today.

Just to reiterate: The two incidents Sutherland glibly describes as "being too informal" involved, according to multiple eyewitnesses quoted in the documents Sutherland refers to, the lands commissioner running his hands all over the woman's back and waist, commenting that she had "great parts," and saying something to the effect that he was "just looking." "Informal" is one word for that.

In other Sutherland-related news, the Seattle Times has changed the headline on its Sutherland story, which managed to mention not one but five times in the story, headline, and subhead that Sutherland apologized for sexually harassing the woman. The old headline: "Washington public-lands commissioner apologized after complaint by employee." The new one: "WA official was subject of harassment complaint."

They took out four of the five references to Sutherland's apology, too—including the reference to the woman's decision to resign "despite [Sutherland's] formal apology."

I have no idea what this means. It's inscrutable on so many levels.

Via Tech Master Brian G., who reports that the peaches were delicious.

Way back in March, Spencer Ackerman wrote a piece in The American Prospect assessing what an Obama foreign policy would actually look like. After rolling out the brightest minds—an odd mix of creaking Mandarins (Lee Hamilton), an activist-turned-counterinsurgency-expert (Sarah Sewall), and a mix of dogooder-leftwing-policy-types (Susan Rice)—he gets to the core of the 'new' philosophy:

This ability to see the world from different perspectives informs what the Obama team hopes will replace the Iraq War mind-set: something they call dignity promotion. "I don't think anyone in the foreign-policy community has as much an appreciation of the value of dignity as Obama does," says Samantha Power, a former key aide and author of the groundbreaking study of U.S. foreign policy and genocide, A Problem From Hell. "Dignity is a way to unite a lot of different strands [of foreign-policy thinking]," she says. "If you start with that, it explains why it's not enough to spend $3 billion on refugee camps in Darfur, because the way those people are living is not the way they want to live. It's not a human way to live. It's graceless—an affront to your sense of dignity." ...

What's typically neglected in these arguments is the simple insight that democracy does not fill stomachs, alleviate malaria, or protect neighborhoods from marauding bands of militiamen. Democracy, in other words, is valuable to people insofar as it allows them first to meet their basic needs. It is much harder to provide that sense of dignity than to hold an election in Baghdad or Gaza and declare oneself shocked when illiberal forces triumph. "Look at why the baddies win these elections," Power says. "It's because [populations are] living in climates of fear." U.S. policy, she continues, should be "about meeting people where they're at. Their fears of going hungry, or of the thug on the street. That's the swamp that needs draining. If we're to compete with extremism, we have to be able to provide these things that we're not [providing]."

This is why, Obama's advisers argue, national security depends in large part on dignity promotion. Without it, the U.S. will never be able to destroy al-Qaeda. Extremists will forever be able to demagogue conditions of misery, making continued U.S. involvement in asymmetric warfare an increasingly counterproductive exercise -- because killing one terrorist creates five more in his place. "It's about attacking pools of potential terrorism around the globe," Gration says. "Look at Africa, with 900 million people, half of whom are under 18. I'm concerned that unless you start creating jobs and livelihoods we will have real big problems on our hands in ten to fifteen years."

Or, in other words: If you have a home, a job, and enough to feed your family, the chances that you'll be swayed by a man who would like you to blow up both yourself and a bus full of strangers diminish greatly. If this sounds like familiar territory, it should—it was at the core of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program to end the social problems caused by poverty, and has been the foreign policy solution urged by the Chomsky-spectrum of the left for the better part of three decades. Isolated from their recruitment pool, extremists depend more and more on their own hardened ideologues, and become both less relevant to their home populations and easier to capture.

This is an insanely simplified version of Ackerman's essay, and it's a best case scenario that may never happen: Even since the writing of the piece, Obama has been forced into rhetoric that is far to the right of what it previously was in order to assuage fears that he's a secret Muslim terrorist. But what the piece does offer is a clear look at where Obama wants to take the world, and certainly the contrast to what a President McCain might propose.

Meetings were held, testimony taken, statements given, memos written, supervisors reassigned, counseling given, and reminders on appropriate workplace behavior sent department wide. According to notes from a January 24 meeting, it was determined that the incident was a violation of DNR policy, that disciplinary action was warranted, and that it was in fact sexual harassment… but that due to the fact that it was “isolated,” “not hostile,” and involved no “quid pro quo,” it did not rise to the level of “illegal” sexual harassment.

OK, so not "illegal" harassment... just harassment. And, assuming the several eyewitnesses' statements in the documents are true, some completely inappropriate behavior on the part of the lands commissioner, a statewide elected official. Despite all this, the local media, including the Seattle Times and the P-I, passed on the story. Earlier this afternoon, I wrote to both the Times and P-I to find out why they didn't think it was worth printing. When I got back to my desk this evening, the P-I's political assignments editor, Chris Grygiel, had responded.

The P-I got the documents in the spring. Sutherland and the woman had different accounts of what happened. A reporter interviewed female associates and political foes of Sutherland to look for a pattern of misconduct but found neither a pattern nor another complaint. The Human Resources Dept. the woman complained to, according to the documentation we received, determined the behavior wasn't sexual harassment but was inappropriate. The woman who complained wasn't identified and we were unable to contact her. According to the documents, Sutherland met with the woman at her request and followed through on other anti-harassment protocols she had suggested. When the matter was resolved no disciplinary action was taken and there was no payment of state funds in any settlement.

We decided to pass on the story. People can certainly second guess our decision but that was the reasoning at the time.

Of course, any public official--any person, period--charged with sexual harassment is going to have a different story than the purported victim. That's the nature of harassment allegations, true or false. However, the fact that several of the woman's colleagues backed up her statements about what happened--and the fact that a statewide elected official was found to have behaved "inappropriately" toward a recent college graduate in her first-ever job—makes this story seem pretty newsworthy to me.

On January 15, 2005, a young, female employee, recently hired by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), was introduced to Commissioner Sutherland at a state meeting in Pacific, WA. Following is a description of the initial encounter, as transcribed from the woman’s handwritten notes:

Jon introduces me to the commissioner. “Doug, this is [REDACTED], the new public use forester.”

I shake his hand. [REDACTED] great to meet you.”

We resume to positions in tight circle.

Commissioner reaches across circle (& Doug M.) w/ his hand & grabs my left shoulder. Feels it, then twists me around so that my back is facing him & he holds me w/ one hand & feels my back (open palmed) from my neck down to my waist, shoulders, etc. Says something about “just looking.”

I am incredulous & half-smiling w/lack of reaction & blush v. red.

Doug Mc[Clelland, a division head at DNR and Sutherland aide]. (I made eye contact wi/ him @ some point during the inappropriate touching) & he made a comment like “We hire them strong.” or “Strong back.”

When commissioner returned to his position in the circle he said “Could have felt… up front” or “could have felt the other side”

“Wouldn’t be right.”

No, it wouldn’t have been right for the then 68-year-old Sutherland to feel this young woman’s breasts, but then, in the unanimous opinion of those who witnessed his actions, it clearly wasn’t right for him to rub her neck, shoulder, back and waist either. And for those who might question the recall of a young woman who at times appears teetering on the edge of shock, her contemporaneous notes are not only corroborated by various eyewitnesses, but at times elaborated on in ways that make Sutherland’s behavior appear all the more more inexcusable.

According to the young woman's notes, she was then told by her supervisor that Sutherland was "just being a regular guy," and asked not to get so upset. Subsequently, according to McClelland's account, the supervisor used the incident as a "teachable moment" to tell her she should button her shirt up.

After another similar incident involving the commissioner (according to the woman's notes, he "placed his right hand on the right side of my lower waist & ran his hand across my waist"), the woman resigned, filing a sexual harassment complaint against Sutherland. Goldy writes:

This was no minor incident, the victim’s complaint throwing DNR into a frenzy of damage control. Meetings were held, testimony taken, statements given, memos written, supervisors reassigned, counseling given, and reminders on appropriate workplace behavior sent department wide. According to notes from a January 24 meeting, it was determined that the incident was a violation of DNR policy, that disciplinary action was warranted, and that it was in fact sexual harassment… but that due to the fact that it was “isolated,” “not hostile,” and involved no “quid pro quo,” it did not rise to the level of “illegal” sexual harassment.

Well, maybe. I discussed the case with a former county prosecutor who insisted that had their executive been involved in an incident like this, they would have settled in a heartbeat rather than risk going to trial. Whatever. The victim never filed suit, so we’ll never know.

What we do know is that the shockingly inappropriate behavior of Commissioner Sutherland led directly to the resignation of a young female employee, and the disruption and distraction of a number of managers who otherwise might have carried out the actual business of DNR… you know, trivial things like preventing timber companies from clearcutting unstable slopes.

According to Goldstein, four major media outlets have been sitting on this information, including the woman's notes and corroborating testimony, for at least four months, but chose to do nothing with it. Why are news outlets protecting Sutherland from these explosive charges? They certainly had no problem bringing up former Democratic Gov. Mike Lowry's sexual-harassment case when he ran against Sutherland in 2000. Goldstein wouldn't tell me which news sources they were, but I'm guessing the Times (which has repeatedly endorsed Sutherland) and P-I are among them.

Now, granted, Pollet is obsessed about this stuff. (He sued to get White kicked out of the race after the county elections office claimed it didn't find White's withdrawal form until after the deadline for pulling out, conveniently annulling White's attempted withdrawal after he decided he wanted to stay in the race.) And granted, it's $500—a tiny, tiny percentage of what's shaping up to be one of the most expensive legislative races in state history. But there's already been so much weirdness around this race—from the botched withdrawal to the fact that White sent the form from his county office to the question of whether he paid the county $1.50 before or after he sent the fax--that at this point nothing really seems out of the question.

As it turns out, White did make the donation--at least according to Washington Conservation Voters executive director Kurt Fritts, who sent White an email today acknowledging that he gave the group $500 on May 15.

On the other hand, that's hardly "turning right around": Durkan made the contribution back in February, something Pollet is sure to seize on as the battle for the 46th drags on into August, then November. And the fact that White took the money in the first place has given Pollet political fodder. "The right thing, of course, would have been to refuse" the money, Pollet says. "Taking it and making a contribution to an environmental group is like allowing a polluter to make a contribution as part of the penalty for polluting."

Pollet says he will not take money from "special interests" such as insurance companies, timber companies, drug companies, and fireworks manufacturers. White says he has a similar policy that extends to companies like payday lenders, Wal-Mart, and tobacco companies, but adds that he is "not going to categorically say I won't take money from business, because people work for businesses. Businesses provide jobs."

White has taken contributions from Weyerhauser ($800), Eli Lilly ($700) Qwest ($700), and the Consumer Fireworks Safety Association ($500), a fireworks industry PAC, among several hundred other individuals and organizations. Pollet's contributors are mostly individuals, with a few notable exceptions including the Amalgamated Transit Union ($500), the American Federation of Teachers union ($150) and Babcock Services, Inc., a Hanford cleanup consultant ($800).

The pledge, which states that the signer "will not take any action
during the campaign which will harm the public faith in the integrity of the judicial system in Washington," was prompted by a surprisingly ugly state supreme court race in 2006, when the Building Industry Alliance of Washington (the same guys who bought billboards for Dino Rossi accusing Gov. Christine Gregoire and "Seattle" of stealing the 2004 election) ran smear ads attacking judge Gerry Alexander as too old for the job, raising questions about his character, and criticizing him for speaking sympathetically of a fellow justice who was arrested for drunk driving.

In a seven-page letter replete with references to the First Amendment and studded with legalese, Vulliet lays out his reasons for refusing to sign the pledge. "While the efforts of WCEJC may be well-intentioned, the pledge conflicts with both the right and duty to inform voters of vital matters affecting the courts, and their right to have as much information as available on which to make their choice. In the longer term, the restriction on discussing negative material conflicts with its purpose: to instill and maintain public confidence in those same courts," the letter says.

I'm not saying Vulliet's going to run a dirty campaign--hell, I know next to nothing about the guy. But I sure hope the BIAW's smear tactics aren't what he's referring to when he talks about "vital matters affecting the courts."

Alabama Attorney General Troy King, a conservative Republican Christian who has called homosexuality the 'downfall of society,' has been caught with his pants down--literally--in a gay sex scandal. King was reportedly nabbed having sex with a male assistant by his wife, Paige King, in the couple’s own bed.

This could be a hoax. It's been hours since this hit the web and none of the newspapers in Alabama have anything. Then again, King's record, ethics-wise, isn't spotless. And, you know, he's a Republican.

The Stranger Election Control Board (SECB) will be endorsing in the 36th and all the other races later this month. We met with Carlyle and Burbank a few days ago. The interview was pretty tense, but well in hand, for a good hour--until I asked Burbank about a rumor I'd heard that he was telling people in the district that Carlyle only put his four kids in public schools because he's running for office. That set them both off like a shot. Burbank denied ever saying anything of the sort. Carlyle, agitated, cut him off: "Stop lying! I’ve heard this from four people. I’m asking you to have the courage and integrity to stop lying about this!" To prove his point, Carlyle then pulled out a signed statement from a voter who said Burbank had come to his door and said just that. "I've got the signatures from the voters saying that you're going around and lying!" Carlyle boomed.

Burbank pointed out that Carlyle's claim that, if elected, he'll be the only state rep with kids in Seattle public schools isn't entirely accurate--Gerry Pollet, running in the 46th, is making the same claim. Then Burbank attempted a gotcha, calling Carlyle out for putting one of his kids in private school during kindergarten and first grade. (That would be two years out of what will be 52 years total, assuming Carlyle's kids all go to kindergarten and graduate on time, for those following along). Carlyle responded: "I'm not saying Gerry's not running. I'm saying you're lying about my kids!"

Clearly, class is a huge point of tension between these two candidates. Earlier in the interview, Carlyle accused Burbank of "running on class warfare" by portraying Carlyle as a richie-rich yuppie with a fancy motorcycle and a big house on Queen Anne Hill. While all that is certainly true, Carlyle is also a former foster child who grew up with a single, working-class mom. More to the point, does any of this stuff matter? Personally, I think there are more important issues--like tax reform, the Democrats' failure to flex their supermajority in the House, and the influence of the BIAW on the legislature--than whether our citizen legislators are well-off or merely middle-class.

UPDATE: This post has been edited to reflect the fact that Carlyle was not the beneficiary of an inheritance. That assertion was based on inaccurate information from another source; Carlyle wrote me over the weekend to correct the error.

The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: ‘Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.’ He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.

Mr Bush, whose second and final term as President ends at the end of the year, then left the meeting at the Windsor Hotel in Hokkaido where the leaders of the world's richest nations had been discussing new targets to cut carbon emissions.

Via Wonkette.

The Right needs Al Qaeda to be an ominous threat to justify Bush's combat-heavy foreign policy. The Left needs Al Qaeda to be an ominous threat to proclaim that Bush has failed.

They're both wrong. Despite the scary Afghanistan 2000/Western Pakistan 2008 analogy, Al Qeada is on the run, sequestered in the hinterlands of Pakistan while the rest of that country just voted for the secular Pakistan People's Party to take the majority position in parliament.

Al Qaeda's set up in nowheresville is a metaphor. Remember: The Viet Cong had massive urban support (hello Tet offfensive), while Al Qaeda throws tantrums—suicide bombings—from the hinterlands.

I'm trying to say this: Let's stop fetishizing Al Qaeda to the point where it's sucking up billions of dollars and pushing us—the Left—to launch an attack on Pakistan. We need to think more about containment (and Al Qaeda's making that choice easier for us by sequestering themselves in southern Somalia and Western Pakistan) while we delegitimize them with political and financial support for the democratic alternatives in Pakistan and Afghanistan—places that are already weary of and intimidated by Taliban-style operations.

I'm stealing all of this. There's a great mind-shifting essay in Newsweek which belittles Bush's eight years of hot war thinking as the problem (although does give him credit for derailing Al Qaeda through the more conventional counterterrorism-style maneuvers) and should serve to ward the Left away from its now-fashionable chest-beating anti-Qaeda belligerence.

From the lead:

It is by now overwhelmingly clear that Al Qaeda and its philosophy are not the worldwide leviathan that they were once portrayed to be. Both have been losing support over the last seven years. The terrorist organization's ability to plan large-scale operations has crumbled, their funding streams are smaller and more closely tracked. Of course, small groups of people can still cause great havoc, but is this movement an "existential threat" to the United States or the Western world? No, because it is fundamentally weak. Al Qaeda and its ilk comprise a few thousand jihadists, with no country as a base, almost no territory and limited funds. Most crucially, they lack an ideology that has mass appeal. They are fighting not just America but the vast majority of the Muslim world. In fact, they are fighting modernity itself.

In fact, the article is worth quoting at length. I've done so below the jump.

The McCain administration would reserve all savings from victory in the Iraq and Afghanistan operations in the fight against Islamic extremists for reducing the deficit. Since all their costs were financed with deficit spending, all their savings must go to deficit reduction.

Forget that, as Slate reports, it’s assured that the logistics of a gradual withdrawal from Iraq will actually cost us more money in the short term, certainly with an effect that will be felt up to McCain’s 2013 deadline.

John McCain’s plan to get us out of our budget spiral is hinged on the idea that he’s going to kick so much ass in Iraq and Afghanistan that he’ll be able to use it as a platform from which to slash the federal budget. It would be like him announcing that his plan for social services involved “whooping its ass!”, or that he’d solve the conflict in Palestine with “his bare hands and his will to win!” He’s instituted his insane tough-guy rhetoric as an actual arm of government policy.

But it gets way, way worse: His plan "Jobs For America" (.pdf warning!) is actually just a huge, numberless, gaping position paper filled with “fight’n!” slogans. He calls for “strong” economic growth as part of his strategy, but doesn’t put a numerical percentage on how “strong” it would have to be to zero out the budget. His plan to “Eliminate Wasteful Spending” calls for “leadership, courage, and choices,” yet fails to mention a single specific program that he’d curtail or disband. Some of the only specifics in the entire plan come from his stillborn energy policy, the Lexington Project, which spawned the off-shore drilling craze and the $300 million dollar jackpot for building the better car battery.

It's not even policy. It’s economics-as-middle-school-pep-rally.