Senator Ted Stevens—he of the Incredible Hulk tie!—has been indicted on seven counts relating to a recent corruption probe into his ties to Alaskan oil services company VECO. Details are still coming, but the early word from CBS News was as follows:

A federal grand jury in Washington has handed up the indictment against Stevens -- which the Justice Department is set to announce very shortly.

Stevens faces seven counts of false statements involving VECO, the oil services company in Alaska, and the renovations done on his home.

Stevens has been the subject of a wide-ranging investigation -- and with this announcement -- Stevens becomes the highest level politician charged in the department's crackdown on alleged corruption, CBS News reports.

If the name Ted Stevens sounds familiar to you, it should: While a long-time Alaska senator, he achieved his most visible media moment when explaining that the internet was a 'series of tubes!!!!', a concept which Senator Stevens so eloquently explains in the enclosed YouTube clip below.

The remix of which is really pretty neat:

Rumors have been swirling for almost a year that Stevens was trading government funding for VECO in exchange for the company making additions to his palatial Alaskan estate. The FBI raided his home last year searching for information on the deal, and the question of charges being filed has been less a question of 'if' rather than 'when' ever since.

The whole ugly story has been covered under the watchful and all-seeing eye of TPMuckraker since the beginning, the archives of which can be read here.

As I read the entries on Slog about the recent Critical Mass debacle, the thing that most struck me, besides the Rashomon aspect of the multiple versions of the story, was the blinding insight that Critical Mass doesn't accomplish much in terms of concrete improvements in cycling infrastructure. All Critical Mass really does, in my experience, is piss people off. Pissed off people tend not to support the political causes of the people who piss them off, so I've never signed on with CM's agenda.

What does get things done? Corrupt politicians.

So, the only solution to Seattle's endless Process regarding a cycling map (whoo-hoo! Cartography, however inaccurate, will serve!), inadequate bike lanes on appropriate streets and bike routes and so forth: trade Nickels for Daley.

Richard M. Daley, Chicago's Mayor-for-Life-or-Until-Indicted, is a recreational cyclist. And he is an absolute dictator who pretty much gets what he wants (he has appointed or directly got elected the majority of the City Council's Aldermen, either to replace Aldermen who died or were indicted). So Chicago has a comprehensive bicycle plan that actually, you know, gets done. You want bike racks outside your business or local El station? Contact the city and they'll install 'em. Roads appropriate for bike traffic get sharrows and those which are perfect get bike lanes. A new park is built downtown, put in a bike center, with lockers and showers for bike commuters. Keep expanding the lakefront path. Drivers endanger cyclists? Increase the fines and have cops out writing tickets for drivers who door cyclists or cut them off.

All of this has happened because Daley wanted it to happen and then made it happen, not because a bunch of gear-heads block traffic one Friday rush hour a month. No single businessman can call up the city and whine and get a street taken off the plan for bike lanes. No community meetings, no endless planning, just corruption (Daley's supporters make money on all the road work, for instance) and a bike-able city.

And you Critical Massers who are about to go to comments and tell me to go fuck myself, thanks in advance for your sentiments. You want to change people's minds about cycling in the city? Organize a ride which starts in twenty remote locations, and consists of several dozen cyclists from each location riding downtown, single file to allow cars to proceed, while obeying all traffic laws. This will demonstrate to drivers that cyclists and drivers can co-exist peacefully, instead of the unmitigated asshattery of taking over the whole street. Yeah, you can do it, but all you do is piss people off.

Democrats Gerry Pollet and Scott White, two candidates for state House from North Seattle's 46th legislative district, have received a dual endorsement from Seattle City Council Member Nick Licata and former council member Peter Steinbrueck, the Politicker is reporting. Both Licata and Steinbrueck endorsed White before Pollet got into the race.

And tomorrow night, the Seattle Municipal League is hosting a forum with the three candidates—Democrats Reuven Carlyle and John Burbank and Republican Leslie Bloss--who are seeking the state House seat in the 36th District. The forum is at 7 pm
at the Nordic Heritage Museum auditorium, 3014 NW 67th Street.

This morning it was S&M, the son of Sir Oswald Mosley, and a tabloid. This afternoon, it's anti-Semitism and R. Crumb.

Two British holocaust deniers are seeking political asylum in the U.S. after being convicted of publishing racially hateful material online. Simon Sheppard and Stephen Whittle skipped bail, flew to Los Angeles, and threw themselves at the mercy of immigration officials, beyond the reach of the British courts.

These men are odious, but so are the laws that would sentence them to prison for talking wicked nonsense. But should they be granted political asylum, since they're being sentenced under laws that violate American standards for free speech?

They're currently sitting in the Santa Ana City Jail, awaiting a hearing with the INS.

Bizarrely, one of the articles they've been convicted of publishing is a cartoon by R. Crumb.

(I won't link to their site, but you can see the Crumb cartoon—called "When the Goddamn Jews Take Over America"—here. And you can read Jen Graves's excellent review of the recent Crumb exhibit at the Frye Museum here.)

The cartoon looks like satire—it concludes that honkies should initiate nuclear annihilation because "Our Lord Jesus Christ awaits us with open arms on the other side." But Sheppard and Whittle, and the British court, took it seriously.

So: Two Brits are seeking political asylum in the United States, partly for publishing an American cartoon on their dumb, racist website.

What do you guess Obama and McCain would say about that?

The Seattle Municipal League just announced its candidate ratings for the 2008 primary election, and, as always, they made some interesting and surprising choices.

• State Rep. Maralyn Chase (D-32), whom we've lauded for pushing smart environmental legislation year after year ("The Chase Agenda") received a rating of merely "good," probably because she was unable to participate in the League's interview.

• Only eight state legislators received the League's top rating of "outstanding": House Speaker Frank Chopp (D-43), state Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson (D-36), state Sen. Fred Jarrett (D-41), state Rep. Eric Pettigrew (D-37), state Rep. Skip Priest (R-30), state Rep. Lawrence Springer (D-45), state Rep. Pat Sullivan (D-47), and state Rep. Dave Upthegrove (D-33).

• In the two contested legislative races in Seattle, only one candidate—Reuven Carlyle, running for the open 36th District seat being vacated by Helen Sommers—received an "outstanding" rating. Carlyle's opponents, John Burbank and Leslie Bloss, were ranked "good" (the middle ranking, above "adequate" and "not qualified"); meanwhile, both candidates in the 46th District, Scott White and Gerry Pollet, received a "good" ranking.

• Both incumbent state Supreme Court judges running for reelection, Mary Fairhurst and Charles Johnson, received "outstanding" ratings.

• The Muni League gave Libertarian Ruth Bennett, running against Pettigrew, a surprisingly high rating of "good," despite the fact that the perennial candidate has a tendency to go off about things like her gun collection and PDA-based ridesharing programs as an alternative to light rail. Although Bennett didn't fill out a candidate questionnaire, here's what she had to say about her moderate opponent's safe Democratic seat during our endorsement interview: "You could be found lying in a gay bar with your pants around your ankles, raping nuns and babies, with a heroin needle in your arm and a McCain bumper sticker on your car—and your support would only go down from 95 to 90 percent."

The also-ran candidates' questionnaires always have a tendency to be AWESOME, and this year was no exception.

• Republican 36th District state Rep candidate Leslie Bloss Klein; see correction here) (ranking: "adequate"(??)), whose campaign principles include giving "the largest unrepresented, oppressed, suppressed, demonized, vilified and hated minority in my neighborhood, Republicans, someone that they can vote for," the theme "compassion for a Republican," and the statement, "I cannot win." Klein adds: "Everything I do and think is for the good of the universe with harm to none," and notes that his proudest accomplishment was "my ability to help a friend unlock her psychic abilities that had become blocked."

• Independent Margaret Wiggins, running for state Rep in the 32nd District, wants to lower gas taxes because they only reward bus riders while "hardly help[ing] the majority of working folks to get where they need to go. Her "greatest accomplishments," alas, "are not for public comment."

• 46th District state House candidate John Sweeney, a Republican, who is "currently working on rethinking the theology and 'niche' of the mainline denominational churches."

•KC Superior Court candidate Matthew Hale, who calls himself a "talented writer," is running because he has "an insatiable hunger for justice and a belief that justice should flow out of the courthouse like a mighty stream for all who enter its doors."

The Muni League is having a party to celebrate the release of its voters guide from 7:00 to 9:00 tonight, at Spitfire, 2219 Fourth Ave.

“John McCain is a great man.”

The speaker’s name was Bill Metzger, a retired captain dressed in a dowdy blue suit, his voice carrying over the crowd sternly. He knew John McCain was a great man because he had been a POW alongside him in Hanoi. He knew because, even as they both suffered daily from untreated injuries, John McCain had given up his chance for early release.

“John McCain has been tested. John McCain passed the test. I know, I was there.”

Up to this moment, as roughly fifty people gathered this morning in the Remembrance Garden outside of Benaroya Hall, for the kick-off rally of Washington Veterans for John McCain, Metzger had the crowd in the palm of his hand. It was the kind of ‘band of brothers’ rhapsodizing that drives grown men to tears.

And then he went off message.

John McCain running against Barack Obama was like “Ronald Reagan running against Fidel Castro.”

Oh well.

This event was held on the first day of ugly weather in recent memory and emceed by another member of the steering committee for Washington Veterans for McCain, former Navy captain Doug Roulstone. Roulstone was picked in 2006 to run against Congressman Rick Larsen and had been joined on the campaign trail by Dick Cheney. It went about as well for him as you’d expect.

Now Roulstone was declaring that this was “the first skirmish in a war! Become part of this McCain army!”

It brought cheers from a crowd that was a mixed bag of older veterans and younger servicemen. Shout-outs to McChord Airforce Base and Fort Lewis were big applause lines. Roulstone informed me that he intended to use that reservoir of veterans to flip Washington to McCain. “There are 640,000 veterans... There’s this huge demographic of military people potentially supporting McCain. We’re out here to build up that coalition.”

All of this (aside from the less-than-obvious parallels between Senator Obama and Fidel Castro) stayed close to the patriotic script, obviously passed down from McCain headquarters.

The real prize, for me, was an interview I got with a former Clinton supporter whose only problem with Barack Obama is “his lack of a clue.”

Her name is Brandy Fraser—“No ‘i’ and no ‘z’!”—and she had been waving a sign reading “Democrats for McCain” enthusiastically throughout the entire event. She smiled broadly, her eyebrows drawn on thickly.

“A lot of Hillary supporters cannot, in good conscience, support Obama,” Fraser told me, a small crowd of McCain supporters circling us. She was a “lifelong Democrat,” though admitted that she’d occasionally cross over to vote for a Republican. “I’m a candidate voter.”

The journey of Brandy Fraser started in the caucus in her native Monroe, where she had made the decision that she would never support Barack Obama for the presidency. She wouldn’t go into specifics, but his policies were, across the board, a turn-off for her. His books frightened her, hearing them read in his own voice frightened her more.

“I grew up in the Vietnam-era,” she explained. Wait, what?

Distinctly aware of the people listening in on our conversation, I asked her if she was pro-choice, and if she was aware that John McCain had said he would appoint judges that would overturn Roe v. Wade.

“I do have an issue with that. And I am willing to take that risk, for the benefit of the country on all the other issues… My choice is to look at the bigger picture.”

That bigger picture now encompasses voting for Dino Rossi as well, as Fraser said she wouldn't vote for Gregoire, "If she was the only one running."

The Democrats apparently have quite a hill to climb if they want Brandy Fraser's vote back.

Opponents to Tim Eyman's Initiative 985 (which would eliminate HOV lanes for most of the day, divert city, county and state funding toward road-building projects, eliminate a state-funded public art program, and redirect millions toward the state auditor's office) are running a smart campaign against the half-baked initiative. Instead of attacking it on environmental grounds (which might sell well in Seattle but still fail to win enough "no" votes to kill 985 statewide), they're highlighting the fact that the initiative would siphon $127 million a year from the state's general fund--a fund that pays, primarily, for education and health care. In a press release from the No! on I-985 Campaign, Bill LaBorde--state director for Environment Washington and a whip-smart environmental lobbyist--called I-985 "an initiative that promises everything for nothing."

Even if you buy the argument that we can build our way out of congestion, $127 million a year doesn't do much building but it sure takes lots of valuable funding away from kids and sick people. With that $127 million you could either educate more than 16,000 kids in our public schools, or you could add maybe a mile of new freeway in the Puget Sound area. You could provide health insurance coverage for 40,000 children, or you could build a ramp on a new interchange.

It's a smart strategy--pitting roads not against transit or conservation, but against kids and sick people without health insurance. Will it play in Eastern Washington? Hard to say, but it's a far smarter tactic than trying to get folks in Spokane to care about smog in Seattle.

Der Spiegel reports (and this helpful fellow translates/summarizes) that the authorities in Berlin are preparing for a crowd of up to one million people anxious to get a glimpse of Obama when his world tour touches down in Germany.

Authorities in Berlin are preparing for a million spectators, which would instantly make Obama's speech the biggest political event in that country since unification in 1990. There are even plans to close down the street, a mile long, and replicate the setup during the World Cup with massive projection screens. Inevitably with a political earthquake of this magnitude, there's some controversy stoked by conservatives.

After a short back-and-forth over whether it was appropriate for a candidate running for foreign office to speak in front of the iconic Brandenburg Gate (a stage that has been used, with immense impact, by Presidents Ronald Reagan and John Kennedy), the Obama campaign has settled on the the slightly-less-iconic-but-still-pretty-imposing Victory Column as the stage to address Germany.

It kind of becomes clear, with the concept of a foreign candidate for a foreign office expected to draw crowds that many German politicians could only dream of amassing, that the enormousness of what Barack Obama represents to the world is something he's going to have to carry on his back if he's elected. While the days of dignitaries worrying over accidentally running into mustacheod lunatic John Bolton in the United Nations men's room will be over, an Obama presidency is going to set a higher expectation in the eyes of the world than, "Well, at least he's better than Bush."

Even as he fights back against the concept that he's a blank slate on which people project their hopes, Barack Obama is looking that concept straight in the face in Germany; he's assumed to be something different from what America has done in the past, either Democrat or Republican. If he's elected, it's going to be a lot for one man to live up to.

As Slog readers know, the August 19 primary includes two seriously contested races for the state legislature--the 36th district, encompassing Ballard, Queen Anne, and Magnolia, and the 46th, which spans much of North Seattle. In each race, one candidate is attempting to paint the other as an "establishment" candidate beholden to big-business and lobby interests, and the other is trying to portray himself as an energetic young up-and-comer running against a tired relic of old Seattle.

It's been interesting to watch the tactics of the two candidates in the former camp--John Burbank and Gerry Pollet, in the 36th and 46th, respectively—evolve. Each candidate began by portraying himself as the populist underdog in his race, refusing corporate contributions and demanding that his opponent accept contribution limits; but while Pollet has continued to run his class-warfare campaign, Burbank has all but abandoned that approach. Consider these two press releases sent out by the Pollet and Burbank campaigns, respectively, over the past week (edited for length as noted).

Pollet's:

Grassroots Support - Not Special Interest Corporate PAC Money

Dear friends,

Thank you again for your support and for making this a truly grassroots campaign. I am proud that my campaign has your support, and the support of so many other residents of the 46th District.

There is a clear difference in who supports this campaign and that of my opponent.

According to the Public Disclosure reports, since the beginning of June over 70 voters who live here in the district contributed to our campaign, compared to only 11 for my opponent. Yes, eleven. (All data from PDC filings are available on line.)

And among my donors, you will not find timber companies, the fireworks manufacturer's PAC, drug companies, or lobbyists representing the Maury Island gravel mine.

Because of my belief in campaign finance reform, I do not accept such special-interest corporate contributions, or money from their PACs.

My opponent, on the other hand, has received large maximum-allowable contributions from special interests and corporations, including Weyerhaeuser, and PACs for developers and the beverage and restaurant industry. And he's taken fireworks money whose agenda is expanding individual sales and defeating safety restrictions. [...]

Thank you for your commitment and support.

Sincerely,

Gerry

And Burbank's:

Burbank Raises More Than Double of All Other Opponents in June; Trend Continues in July. [...] Seattle, WA – John Burbank’s campaign announced today that it had raised over $42,600 in June, more than double any other candidate in the race. This is the second month in a row that Burbank has out-raised all other candidates in the race. This trend is continuing in July, with Burbank having raised another $10,000 as of July 16 and his competitors having raised less than $3,000 for the month combined. “I am very gratified by this outpouring of support for our campaign for public service,” said John Burbank. “It just shows how much voters want real change in Olympia and they see my proven experience as the best guarantee for working for our future and delivering results.”

Pollet is running against former 46th District Democratic chair Scott White for the seat formerly occupied by Jim McIntire, who is running for state treasurer; Burbank is running against software entrepreneur Reuven Carlyle for the seat formerly held by Helen Sommers, who is retiring after 36th years in office.

John Burbank, one of two Democrats running for state legislature from the 36th District (Ballard, Magnolia, and Queen Anne), is listing his status as the official Democratic Party nominee on his voter guide statement and boy, is his opponent, Reuven Carlyle, pissed.

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.

Remember Lou Novak, the landlord who had to resign his post as VP of the Rental Housing Association after he made a bigoted comment about the Lifelong AIDS Alliance?

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.

State lands commissioner Douglas Sutherland—the state official who sexually harassed a young female employee several years ago, a story the two Seattle daily papers knew about for four months but ignored—has issued a statement in response to the story, which David Goldstein broke on Horse's Ass two days ago. The statement essentially blames Sutherland's opponent in his race for reelection, Peter Goldmark, for allowing the story to come to light.

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."

Senator Elizabeth Dole has proposed naming an HIV/AIDS relief bill after... Jesse Helms.

A sign outside a Bait 'n Peaches store in Ruston, Louisiana.

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.

Last week was spent trying to find a new conventional wisdom on where Obama and McCain actually stand on Iraq and Afghanistan—with surrogates for both sides engaging in questions of whether Obama will weep under his desk as Iraq falls to Iranian troops and conjuring visions of a wild-eyed John McCain dropping from a B-52, whooping it up on a nuclear bomb bound for Tehran. Perhaps now some sanity is in order.

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.

As I mentioned below, several media outlets had documents outlining a sexual harassment complaint against Republican state lands commissioner Doug Sutherland before David Goldstein of Horse's Ass received the documents this week. In the documents, a female employee of the state Department of Natural Resources alleged that Sutherland had repeatedly stroked her back and waist and made inappropriate comments about her breasts in the presence of others--a story several of the young woman's colleagues corroborated in the documents. Again, as Goldy reported,

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.

I've got my hands full putting out this week's news section, but I wanted to call Slog readers' attention to a blockbuster story by David Goldstein on Horse's Ass about Republican state Commissioner of Public Lands Doug Sutherland. According to Goldy, a young woman who worked for the Department of Natural Resources resigned in 2005 after Sutherland repeatedly sexually harassed her. From HA:

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.

Scott White, one of two Democratic candidates for state legislature in the 46th district (North Seattle) told the Stranger Election Control Board during an interview last week that upon receiving a $500 contribution from Glacier Northwest lobbyist M.J. Durkan, he had "turned right around" and written a check for the same amount to an unspecified environmental group. (Glacier Northwest has a strip-mining operation on Maury Island and is generally considered an environmental bad guy.) The only trouble—as revealed by White's Democratic opponent, Gerry Pollet--was that there was no record of the donation in the state Public Disclosure Commission's records.

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).

Just one judicial candidate out of 15 running for state supreme court and appeals court positions --supreme court candidate C.F. (Frank) Vulliet—has refused to sign a pledge proposed by the Washington Committee for Ethical Judicial Campaigns to run a clean, fair campaign.

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."

...but according to Gaywired.com (citing PerezHilton.com):

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 36th District Democrats issued no endorsement in the legislative race between Reuven Carlyle and John Burbank last night. After a vote for a dual endorsement went down in flames, a vote to give Burbank the sole endorsement fell just short of the required two-thirds majority. Earlier this year, state Democratic Party chair Dwight Pelz awarded Burbank the party's official nomination, after the district itself declined to pick a nominee. Meanwhile, the Sierra Club and Washington Conservation voters both awarded their sole nominations to Carlyle.

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.

G8 summit edition:

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.

Yenemsvelt is Yiddish for nowheresville.

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.

Continue reading "Al Qaeda in Yenemsvelt" »

Please peruse this clause from John McCain’s plan to balance the federal budget by 2013, and see if you can spot the part that doesn't seem to make any sense:

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.

Or, you know, not.

Via HA.

The original, death-pact, version:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Today's revised, promoting security of the fatherland homeland, version:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized, unless the President unilaterally decides otherwise."

You know why I don't feel safer. At least I will not feel guilt for not serving in an Obama-led NSA. And I feel better for sticking with Qwest's shitty DSL; Qwest told the NSA to shove it, when presented with warrantless wiretaps.

I keep waiting to see where the commas taken from the second amendment will land.

I was just perusing the Discovery Institute's main blog to see their response to potential veep Bobby Jindal signing the newest stealth creationist legislation in Louisiana. Lots of crowing, of course. I particularly enjoyed the mention of Discovery Institute fellow John G. West's article on National Review Online, as it gives me opportunity to mention today's Discovery Institute slapdown on NRO's The Corner, care of John Derbyshire.

But here's what really set my blood boiling. Check out this pathetic attempt to harness Thomas Jefferson as an intelligent design proponent:

Next time someone tells you intelligent design is “based on religion,” you might point him to American Founder Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence. As I explain in a special July 4th edition of ID the Future, Jefferson not only believed in intelligent design, he insisted it was based on the plain evidence of nature, not religion.

Ironically, the critics of intelligent design often think they are defending the principles of Jefferson. The National Council for the Social Studies, for example, claims that intelligent design is religion and then cites Jefferson’s famous Letter to the Danbury Baptists calling for a “wall of separation” between church and state. The clear implication is that Thomas Jefferson would agree with them that intelligent design is religion. A writer for Irregular Times goes even further, insisting that “the case of Thomas Jefferson makes it quite clear that there was not a consensus of support among the authors of the Constitution to allow for the mixing of religion and government to support theological doctrines such as intelligent design.”

In reality, Jefferson did not believe that intelligent design was a religious doctrine. In a letter to John Adams on April 11, 1823, he declared:

I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe, in its parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of its composition.

(emphasis added)

By insisting that his defense of intelligent design was made “without appeal to revelation,” Jefferson clearly was arguing that the idea had a basis other than religion. What was that basis? He went on to explain:

The movements of the heavenly bodies, so exactly held in their course by the balance of centrifugal and centripetal forces, the structure of our earth itself, with its distribution of lands, waters and atmosphere, animal and vegetable bodies, examined in all their minutest particles, insects mere atoms of life, yet as perfectly organised as man or mammoth, the mineral substances, their generation and uses, it is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is, in all this, design, cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of all things from matter and motion, their preserver and regulator while permitted to exist in their present forms, and their regenerator into new and other forms.

In sum, Jefferson believed that empirical data from nature itself proved intelligent design by showing the natural world’s intricate organization from the level of plants and insects all the way up to the revolution of the planets.

Wow. As a graduate of the University of Virginia (so frequently referred to as Thomas Jefferson's University that the radio station call letters are WTJU), I am well acquainted with the deployment of quotations from Mr. Jefferson to support nearly any point of view. However, this goes too far. Jefferson died in 1826, 33 years before Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species. Intelligent design borrows heavily from dusty old natural theologian William Paley, but it is in essence a repudiation of Darwin's theory of natural selection. Jefferson was not a critic of evolution because he had no knowledge of evolution.

In fact, he thought extinction did not exist and that there were likely still mastodons roaming the Pacific Northwest. But he shouldn't be blamed for not knowing or discovering a scientific theory on his own. After all, he also said this, as he petitioned Congress for the repeal of a duty on imported books:

That the value of science to a republican people; the security it gives to liberty, by enlightening the minds of its citizens; the protection it affords against foreign power; the virtues it inculcates; the just emulation of the distinction it confers on nations foremost in it; in short, its identification with power, morals, order, and happiness, (which merits to it premiums of encouragement rather than repressive taxes,) are topics, which your petitioners do not permit themselves to urge on the wisdom of Congress, before whose minds these considerations are always present, and bearing with their just weight.

The moronic fad by which the husks of pseudo-celebrities present themselves as political candidates has almost no novelty left to it. And yet it still fascinates: The overt positioning that turned Schwarzenegger into a governor and Al Franken into a serious Senate candidate, the kind of tidal-wave-of-stupid that saw a publicity-starved creature like Gary Coleman declare himself a candidate for Governor of California.

All of which puts me in something of a bind, because the greatest B-actor of his generation is currently seeking a Senate seat from Kentucky, and I don’t know if I can oppose him. His name is Sonny Landham, and you may remember him as ‘Billy’ from the movie The Predator.

I don’t know if I can stress enough that The Predator is one of the greatest films ever made, and that Landham’s character was one of the most perfect images to ever be projected onto a screen. ‘Billy’ was some kind of hyper-stereotype of a Native-American, whose keen tracking instincts let him detect the murderous, invisible alien, on the wind. And then he challenged the Predator to a knife fight, and died horribly somewhere off camera. It was the role he was probably born to play.

I think I saw the movie for the fist time when I was about seven—thanks Dad!—and it’s still one of the defining, dumb moments in my life.

Landham is running as a Libertarian in a race that is pitting arch-conservative Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell against long-shot former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bruce Lunsford. Landham has yet to file the necessary signatures to get his name on the ballot, but the Libertarian Party of Kentucky is bullish on his chances.

The Landham platform is totally inconsequential (especially given that he appears not to have a campaign website), but it has something to do with getting us out of Iraq and a pledge to “Say what you mean, and mean what you say.” I think I'd be remiss if I didn't note that the last time he said what he meant and did what he said, he went to prison for making threatening phone calls to his ex-wife.

Barack Obama? The Fourth of July? A delicious combination, bursting with patriotic flavor! And if you, like me, have been wondering exactly how the hell OFBP (“Our First Black President”) plans to celebrate the holiday, wonder the hell no more! Barack Obama plans to spend his Fourth marching for my own dear old mom and dad! Check it out (from yesterday’s Montana Standard):

Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, will participate in Butte’s Fourth of July parade Friday, officials have confirmed.

Yes, they are talking about Butte (Pronounced: Bee-yoot), Montana, that weird little city that I barely admit to being from. Listen:

Mollie Kirk, Butte Celebrations organizer, told The Montana Standard she is expecting a call from the Secret Service about parade logistics.

“He’ll be up front, marching with the Democratic Party,” Kirk said Monday. Gov. Brian Schweitzer will possibly accompany Obama, who will either walk or ride in the parade.

Butte is, if I may quote myself (and I may), “a small, mean, dusty old mining town.” My mother, my father, one sister, and my nieces all still live there. Generations of my family are buried there. (My high school job? You guessed it: The Montana fucking Standard.)

Butte has an itsy-bitsy population of about 22,000 (mostly very old) people and a sordid history twice as colorful as a rutting baboon’s butt sack (I won't get into it). The tragic part is that all the good stuff happened decades ago, long before anyone who is alive now was even born, and Butte has stewed in dusty malaise and small town bluster for a century. The biggest thing to happen there in the last eighty years was a big hole, and the second biggest was a big hole, also.

Weirdly enough, Barack and Hillary both did visit Butte last April, driven blindly by the mad heat of their campaigns--and lady, THAT was earthshaking news. EARTHSHAKING! But this? Barack Obama leading Butte’s Fourth of July Parade? It is going to destroy these people. DESTROY THEM! Especially if he, you know, becomes president.

Well, when he becomes president, I mean. When, dammit!

The best part of it all, for many reasons, is that I grew up in Butte, and I don’t think I even laid eyes on a real black person until I was circa 14 years old. That wasn’t, well, from television. The irony is crushing.

But, you know. Yay, progress!

I’ll be sure to have exclusive photos from the event, courtesy of mom.

Because if I didn't have both the Times and P-I, I wouldn't have seen this credulous AP story about Tim Eyman's "congestion relief" initiative TWICE.

The AP reports that Eyman's initiative "aims to smooth traffic jams and head off open-ended tolls on state road projects" by sending "portions of the money flowing from vehicle sales taxes, certain tolls, red-light cameras and other state transportation projects into a 'Reduce Traffic Congestion Account.'"

What the AP report doesn't tell you is that Eyman's initiative would take approximately $127 million a year out of the state's already-tapped-out general fund. That means $127 million less every year for health care and education, which together make up 80 percent of the state's general-fund expenditures.

The story, which appears to have just one source (Eyman) manages to pack in three references to the initiative's miraculous ability to "ease traffic jams," but fails to mention several other salient facts about Eyman's proposal:

• It would open up carpool lanes to all traffic except weekdays between 6 and 9 a.m. and 3 and 6 p.m. Because "rush hours" now last most of the day, that will mean more traffic congestion (and less carpooling). It will also make transit, which relies on HOV lanes, much less reliable than it already is.

• Far from "heading off open-ended tolls," it would restrict the use of tolls to building roads. In fact, the explicit purposes of Eyman's "Reduce Traffic Congestion Account" is "expanding road capacity and general purpose use."

• It also contains new restrictions on the use of money from red-light cameras, siphoning those funds into Eyman's road-building account as well.

• And it bans tolls on I-90--a virtual guarantee that tolls on 520 won't work, and that traffic will back up on the "free" cross-lake bridge.

Sweating like pigs, signature gatherers for the Death With Dignity initiative were swarming at the Gay Pride Parade on Sunday. The measure would allow alert yet terminally ill patients to self administer life-ending medication. But one volunteer I spoke to said she was having a hard time getting signatures—everyone at Pride had already signed it.

Tomorrow afternoon, according to campaign spokeswoman Anne Martens, supporters of Initiative 1000 will submit the last of about 300,000 signatures to the Secretary of State's office and rally on the Capitol steps in Olympia. To qualify for the November ballot, the campaign needs to turn in 225,000 valid signatures.

The question, as always, is whether petition signers at Gay Pride represent the kind of momentum the measure will need to win the rest of the state in November. The last time a right-to-die law was on Washington’s ballot, in 1991, it lost by an 8-point spread. But 2008 is a better year to run the measure. Presidential races draw a younger, more progressive electorate, and studies have shown that a similar measure passed in Oregon 10 years ago hasn’t been abused.

But the measure is also facing a counter-campaign. No On Assisted Suicide, as the name suggests, is trying to frame this as a sanctity-of-life issue, arguing that the measure lacks safeguards for doctor accountability, that HMOs could pressure people to die instead of recover, and that it doesn’t require psychological evaluations to determine that the terminally ill aren’t just depressed. (Um, it’s absurd to think that someone severely debilitated with a terminal illness would have be chipper to prove they are ready to die.) Campaign spokeswoman Carrie Herring says, “It’s not a moral issue, it’s a public policy issue.”

Sure it’s not a moral issue. Although Herring’s camp has raised only $87,000 compared to the "yes" camp’s $1.1 million, the "no" campaign has the unofficial backing of the Catholic Church. The Washington State Catholic Conference hasn’t replied to requests for comment, but they do make their case online. And it’s as “moral” as a debate can get: “This initiative is contrary to Catholic teaching that life is sacred and that God alone is the true sovereign over life.”

The conflict between her Catholic faith and politics was no big deal for Gov. Gregoire in 2004, when she was the attorney general. But now, she's not taking a win for granted and is taking a stance against I-1000 as she makes a more cautious run against Dino Rossi, who is likely to oppose the measure.

“The opposition is bent on spreading misinformation,” says Martens. “They know that the only way for them to be convincing is to mislead voters.” Indeed, the anti-assisted-suicide campaign cites "research" (without providing a source) that the physicians in the Netherlands off 1000 patients per year without any request from the patients. Meanwhile, the "yes" crowd cites a report from the Oregon Department of Human recourses that shows the law was used by the terminally ill, not the vulnerable. Says Marten: “The parade of horribles that our opponents claim will happen simply hasn't happened.”

Gov. Christine Gregoire is leading Republican challenger Dino Rossi 47 to 39 percent in the latest Elway poll, released today. Darryl at Horse's Ass has done an analysis of Gregoire's lead and found that she has "something approaching a 96.9% chance of beating Rossi (if the election were held now)." Predictably, the vast majority of Democrats (81 percent) planned to vote for Gregoire; 78 percent of Republicans planned to vote for Rossi. Perhaps less predictably, 35 percent of voters under 35 did not know whom they planned to vote for.

Required reading...

The solemn defenders of public civility at the Seattle Times editorial board spank the WA Dems today, arguing that “Ethnic slurs have no place in political advertising in our state.”

I don’t really disagree, and had the Dems called Dino Rossi a wop or a dago or a greaseball or a guinea or a spaghetti nigger, well, that would have been offensive, and clearly out of bounds. But they didn’t. They merely soundtracked a web video with the theme song to The Sopranos—a critically acclaimed TV show—because the tune was catchy, energetic and a well-paced fit to the accompanying footage… and I can only assume, because they wanted to highlight the fact that the political thugs at the BIAW are about as close as we come to mobsters in this state, at least in attitude, short of the actual Colacurcio crime family and their consiglieri (and proud Italian Club of Seattle member) Albert Rosellini.

Oops! Did I cross a line there by suggesting that former Gov. Rosellini has known mob connections? Does that constitute an ethnic slur, despite the supporting evidence, simply because Rosellini is Italian? (Apparently yes, judging from the way our local media gingerly dances around Rosellini’s connections to the Colacurcios and their mob activities out of fear of offending Italian-Americans… or, perhaps, getting whacked.)

Indeed, the very same day the Dems released their video, Rossi gave a stump speech in which he directly compared Gov. Gregoire’s policies to that of Tony Soprano, by name, and yet the Times didn’t find that slur “sleazy” because, I guess, Gregoire is of Irish descent. So by the Times’ standards, it is acceptable public discourse to groundlessly accuse Rossi of being a whiskey swilling drunk, but not Gregoire, whereas mob related epithets are okay when launched at our Irish-American governor, but not Rossi...

Read the rest here.

The state Democratic Party chose its Political Leaders and Elected Officials (PLEO) delegates to the national party convention in Denver earlier this week. The process works like this: PLEO delegates to the state convention campaign to move forward to the national convention. After a round of speeches and such, the PLEO delegates pick a slate of national delegates from among their peers.

The list of delegates for Obama (seven in all) includes Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, State Rep. Dave Upthegrove, and state Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles. Notably absent from that list are state Senate majority leader Lisa Brown and state Sen. Ed Murray, who says he did not actively campaign for PLEO spot. (Rep. Dave Upthegrove, another Obama PLEO delegate, gives a detailed, and somewhat different, account of the day's events on his MySpace blog). "I was a delegate four years ago and it was rather a torturous experience," Murray said. "We were on the floor for hours and hours and there weren’t enough seats, so you couldn't even get up and get a glass of water."

Although state party chair Dwight Pelz (who did not want to talk about the selection process) had hoped to see another Obama PLEO, Matt Bergman, elected as a delegate to the convention, the elected officials and other bigwigs who chose the delegates actually decided on a Clinton delegate instead--Dr. Victor Collymore, a physician at Group Health who gave what Clinton PLEO Linda Mitchell called "an amazing, moving speech" on Clinton's behalf. Mitchell says delegates also felt that Collymore, who is African-American, "rounded out" the Washington state delegation.

A new Service Employees International Union-backed PAC has just launched a new (non-Sopranos-themed) ad campaign targeting Dino Rossi, and a web site, dontknowdino.com, to go with it. (Via Postman). The ads and web site focus on health-care-related votes that Rossi took as a state senator—including a budget that eliminated health care for 40,000 children, a vote against legislation that would help the state negotiate for lower drug prices, and the Patients Bill of Rights—and lay out the tens of thousands Rossi has received from big drug companies like Glaxo SmithKline, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, and Eli Lilly, and from insurance companies like Regence Blue Shield, Premera Blue Cross, and Aetna.

Earlier this week, the state Dems removed the Sopranos theme from an anti-Rossi ad after the Italian Club of Seattle called it racist. I thought Democratic spokesman Kelly Steele handled the blowup well--immediately pulling the ad but getting a few digs in at Rossi at the same time. In a statement, he said the video was

in no way meant to allege or imply that Republican Dino Rossi or his extremist, right-wing developer allies have ties to the mafia or organized crime. It's a catchy song, which we thought jibed stylistically with our communication about Rossi's designated attack squad -- the BIAW -- who continue to pour millions into false and misleading attack ads against Gov. Gregoire. That being said, we’d like to apologize to Rossi’s friend Mr. DiJulio, his organization, and anyone else we may have inadvertently offended. The video will be replaced shortly with an identical message regarding Rossi and the BIAW’s sleazy attack campaign, using a different song.

Although maybe calling Rossi "sleazy" went a little far.

Why is it racist when Christine Gregoire uses the Sopranos theme song in an anti-Dino Rossi ad... but totally NO BIG DEAL when Rossi actually refers to Gregoire as "Tony Soprano" in his stump speech?

Republican candidate John McCain, chuckling, tells the Las Vegas Sun he "stopped beating my wife just a couple of weeks ago."

Oh, John, you big ironist! What a kidder!

Hey, it's not too late to get two free tacos at Jack in the Box today! But there's a hitch: You have to fill your car with gas. Hey, what's not to like about a promotion that pushes unhealthy, high-fat food (and promotes neighborhood dead zones with its drive-through restaurants) by incentivizing a practice that destroys the environment? Meanwhile, people who use food stamps--a demographic that disproportionately eats at places like Jack in the Box--are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet as food prices head ever higher.

Meanwhile in Utah...

Utah Republican says he's happy he lost primary

U.S. Rep. Chris Cannon, a conservative Republican who lost his primary to an opponent who accused him of not being conservative enough, said Wednesday that his defeat frees him to move on to pursue other opportunities.

Here's hoping scores of additional Republican members of Congress are similarly pleased at being freed to pursue other opportunities come November.

Check out this ad that GOP incumbent Norm Coleman is running against his Dem challenger Al Franken:

ZOMG! Al Franken lived in New York City! And he's a liberal—which means he drinks them fancy latte things! And like all them liberals Franken likes them really complicated lattes that take ages and ages to order!

Do Republican politicians and campaign consultants ever actually go to the heartland they never shut up about? I travel a fair bit and there are Starbucks literally everywhere you go—big towns, small towns, college towns, blue-collar towns. And do you know why that is? Because lattes are popular all over! And the further you get from a major urban area—the farther away you are from, say, 99 Riverside Drive—the more complicated latte orders become.

Lattes that takes ten minutes to describe are ordered way more often in small town America—in our diabetic "heartland"—than they are in New York City, Norm.