You're going to be killing half your day reading all this good stuff. Some grad student will have to do a study soon on how Poliblog is affecting the local economy.
Jim Brunner reports that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton helped Sen. Patty Murray raise $400,000 at events in Seattle yesterday. This comes after President Bush raised $750,000 for Murray's opponent, Congressman George Nethercutt. Republican state chair Chris Vance says the visit proves how liberal Murray is and shows the Murray camp is getting afraid, very afraid.
Husband Bill is at Costco and later, at 8 tonight, Elliott Bay Books to sign copies of his 957 pager. Early reports from Beth Kaiman indicate huge crowds, with one man at Costco arriving at 5:30 a.m., only to be 750th in line.
The PI's Joel Connelly cashes in some chips and gets another interview with Hillary Clinton, who reveals...nothing.
Beth Kaiman reports on paid signature gatherers, people who stand outside supermarkets and ball games and try to get you to sign a petition to get an initiative on the ballot in November, like one to put slot machines in card rooms, or to create smoking areas at bars and bowling alleys. Paid volunteers is not really what progressive reformers of the early 20th century had in mind when they wanted to wrest politics and policy away from the monopolies and put it in the hands of the people. But this is what we got now.
Gubernatorial candidate Christine Gregoire won a small victory yesterday, The Times' Mike Carter reports: "A former staff lawyer who is suing Attorney General Christine Gregoire for more than a dozen claims of wrongful dismissal, defamation and discrimination was dealt a setback yesterday by a federal judge. 'I'm going to knock out some of your claims, for sure,' U.S. District Judge Thomas Zilly told the lawyer for Janet Capps. Formerly an assistant attorney general in the Torts Division, Capps claims Gregoire and other supervisors wrongly blamed and vilified her for missing a deadline that cost the state a chance to fight a record $17.8 million verdict."
The judge sent the two sides back to the negotiating table.
The Times' Ralph Thomas reports on the governor's race, as all three major candidates roll out, unveil, unleash and announce policy proposals: "The race for governor - thus far mostly a behind-the-scenes fund-raising contest - is taking a turn to the issues this week as the three major candidates roll out key pieces of their agendas. Democrat Christine Gregoire yesterday unveiled her plan for improving Washington's education system and attacking what she called a "dropout crisis." Meanwhile, her main Democratic opponent, King County Executive Ron Sims, today plans to start a new Web site that will give voters an interactive look at what has become the cornerstone of his campaign: overhauling the state's tax system. And Republican Dino Rossi today is scheduled to announce his plan for boosting the state's business climate by streamlining government regulations."
Andrew Garber reports in The Times that everybody is getting ready for the initiative deadline, Friday: "At least a half-dozen initiative campaigns plan to turn in signatures by Friday's deadline to qualify measures for the November ballot. Tim Eyman went first, turning in what he said were more than 238,000 signatures Monday in hopes of qualifying Initiative 892 for the ballot. The measure, funded by the gaming industry, would make electronic slot machines more widely available and use the taxes on the new gambling profits to lower state property taxes....Organizers must collect 197,734 valid signatures. They generally turn in tens of thousands of additional signatures in case some are illegible or invalid." The story goes on to explain some of the measures:
Jim Camden of The Spokesman Review reports on the Constitution Party candidate for President, who was in Spokane last night: "Supporters of Constitution Party presidential nominee Michael Peroutka acknowledge it will take a miracle for him to win the White House. But for a party that believes in recognizing God as the source of American government, that's not necessarily a criticism. Peroutka, a Maryland lawyer nominated last week at the Constitution Party's national convention, was in Spokane on Tuesday seeking support for his bid to be added to the Washington state ballot."
Another story on issues in the gubernatorial race, this time education:
The Bremerton Sun reports people are traveling from afar to see "Fahrenheit 9/11" in Lynwood:
Distributors say the movie is selling well in the red states, meaning those that supported President Bush in 2000, and now this would seem to indicate people are willing to travel if they can't see it in their hometown. This means the movie really is selling to red state folks, or that blue state folks live amidst red state folks and are traveling to see the movie. Either way, if true, it punctures the red state-blue state stereotypes and polarization theory being peddled these days by the likes of David Brooks in The New York Times. Brooks says we're segregating ourselves (though, segregation has a long history in America) along political and cultural lines, evangelicals less and less likely to have contact with crunchy urban professionals, for example. The resulting dynamic of mutual misunderstanding has created the current political environment of vitriol. So says Brooks.
National
John Kerry is appealing to African-American voters, whose turnout he'll need, especially in Florida, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan.
But he's got a big mess on his hands if Boston can't come to terms with the police union. There's a contract dispute. If they don't come to a deal, that could mean picketers at the Democratic convention next month. Throw in a mediocre VP candidate, and Kerry's month could turn sour very fast.
Also on Kerry, he lent his campaign a bunch of money last winter when it was in the death throes, and now he has to decide whether to pay himself back with campaign funds, or to eat it.
Bill Buckley, godfather of the American right, founder of its most important journal, National Review, is stepping down from the magazine. The polymath and renaissance man (harpist, sailor, novelist, political columnist, magazine editor, PBS host) is as influential as just about any American of the last half century, and listening to him speak is a true, uh, felicity, as he might say.
For some perspective, it's worth looking at some old National Review editorials, via Atrios.blogspot. These aren't to embarrass the man in his moment, only to give some perspective on where the conservative movement was as opposed to where it is now. There's a lot of liberal hand-wringing, and conservative triumphalism about the current moment, not all warranted. Warning, you will be -- or should be -- offended.
"Why the South Must Prevail," August 24, 1957
"The central question that emerges . . . is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not prevail numerically? The sobering answer is Yes - the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists."
"National Review believes that the South's premises are correct. . . . It is more important for the community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority."
"The South confronts one grave moral challenge. It must not exploit the fact of Negro backwardness to preserve the Negro as a servile class. . . . Let the South never permit itself to do this. So long as it is merely asserting the right to impose superior mores for whatever period it takes to effect a genuine cultural equality between the races, and so long as it does so by humane and charitable means, the South is in step with civilization, as is the Congress that permits it to function."
From June 2, 1964:
"But whatever the exact net result in the restricted field of school desegregation, what a price we are paying for Brown! It would be ridiculous to hold the Supreme Court solely to blame for the ludicrously named 'civil rights movement' - that is, the Negro revolt . . . . But the Court carries its share of the blame. Its decrees, beginning with Brown, have on the one hand encouraged the least responsible of the Negro leaders in the course of extra-legal and illegal struggle that we now witness around us. . . .
"Brown, as National Review declared many years ago, was bad law and bad sociology. We are now tasting its bitter fruits. Race relations in the country are ten times worse than in 1954."
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