Republicans in the state’s congressional delegation want Democrats to join them in protesting Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s move to put off a vote on a Colombia free trade agreement.

A letter to Pelosi was circulated among the delegation by Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Auburn, just back from a weekend trip to Colombia. Republicans Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Doc Hastings signed the letter that says:

Free trade is critical to our state’s economy and workers. We represent the most trade-dependent state in the nation. … Delaying free trade agreements signals to our allies that America is closed for trade, and encourages our rivals to exploit new markets. This is unequivocally the wrong message to send in this time of economic uncertainty.

Many times when Republicans were in the majority, my colleagues would call on me to go to my leadership to help the state, for instance when we learned of language that would allow supertankers onto Puget Sound. Today, I urge all of my colleagues in the Washington delegation - including Governor Gregoire - to join together and reject the Speaker’s effort to shelve this vital measure.

President George Bush has been pushing Congress to approve the deal. And as recently as last week, it appeared a vote could be taken soon in the House.

I am moderating a panel discussion next week that looks to be an interesting mix of politics, business and technology. It will be next Wednesday night, the 16th, and is sponsored by the MIT Enterprise Forum of the Northwest. That’s a non-profit group that is affiliated with alumni group of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

They’re calling the dinner and discussion event: Campaign Technology 2.0: Today's Tools, Tomorrow's Opportunities. On the panel will be consultants Cathy Allen and Christian Sinderman, Newsvine CEO Mike Davidson, and Trace Anderson, founder of BlueUtopia. (It’s a Democratic group this time. For future reference, please send me the names of local Republican tech-savvy operators.)

The event is in Bellevue and begins at 5 p.m. You can get all the details here.

If theater is more your style, TVW founder and former governor’s chief of staff Denny Heck is making three appearances around western Washington in his one-man play, Our Times. The play is set in the future and is about an elderly Heck responding to a student’s question about major Washington state political events and people during Heck’s time in Olympia.

He sold out five performances in Olympia earlier this year. You can read a review here. All the proceeds go to charity. You can get tickets by contacting Heck at this e-mail address.

The performances are Sunday April 13, Seattle’s ACT Theatre at 2 p.m.; Wednesday April 16 at Olympia’s Capitol Playhouse at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday April 26th at Vancouver’s Columbia River High School at 7:30 p.m. You can call the Vancouver School District Foundation for tickets at the Vancouver show only at 360-313-4730.

One of the participants in David Goldstein’s podcast and Nazi jokefest last week says I seriously mischaracterized part of the discussion at last week’s Drinking Liberally. I said the panelists were asked if they agreed with Goldstein’s theory that the Building Industry of Washington’s criticism of mainstream environmentalists’ reaction to the Street of Dreams arson was projection “because the builders had done the arson themselves.”

I listened to the podcast again this morning and Rosenberg has a point. After Goldstein spells out his theory - which he told me later was meant as a parody - that the BIAW set the fires in Snohomish County, he says:

I want to go around the table; yes or no on this one. The BIAW accusing environmentalists of Nazism; projection?

The answers were “yes,” “nein,” “yeah, probably,” “yeah, a little,” and from Goldstein, “It’s projection. They are a bunch of Nazis.”

I stand corrected. The panelists were not asked if they thought the BIAW were arsonists. They were asked if they thought the BIAW were Nazis.

Rosenberg repeats some of what Goldstein said here last week about the inherent parody and satire I missed. But he also thinks there’s a serious point to be made. He writes at EFFin’ Unsound:

This was obviously meant to be funny, but I do think there’s a certain amount of truth to looking at the question in that light. If you’re going to have some basis for determining who the real “Nazis” are in a society, the best way is to see which people are more able to tolerate injustices against other subsets of the population. I have trouble believing that the BIAW would care in the slightest if they were profiting from something that was wholly unjust. Maybe they have examples from their past that would prove me wrong, but from what I’ve seen, I doubt it. It may or may not be projection (which was why I gave kind of a “sort of” answer to Goldy’s question), but the BIAW certainly has an odd persecution complex that quite transparently leads to inclinations to persecute others.