Former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner showed his overly enthusiastic embrace of the power of the Internet by sponsoring a lavish reception at June's YearlyKos Convention, the annual gathering of liberal bloggers and fans of the popular DailyKos blog.

This afternoon Warner, a Democrat considering a race for president in 2008, takes another deep step into the online world: He will appear in virtual reality to be interviewed in a computer game, Second Life, and to announce a "virtural-world town hall meeting" to be held later in the year.

Second Life, according to the site, is "an online society within a 3D world, where users can explore, build, socialize, and participate in their own economy." People also appear there as avatars, to live out another life in the digital world.

At 12:30 Wagner James Au will interview Warner's animated, digital replica. Au is listed as an "embedded reporter" in Second Life. He says on his blog:

But it's still a bit vertiginous to be in-world standing there in front of the avatar of a man that leading Democratic Party financier Chris Korge ... pronounced as, "[T]he one to watch as an outsider in this race. He seems presidential."

Mark Warner's avatar seems presidential, too — tall, stern, and statesman-like.

The event was the idea of Warner's political action committee, Forward Together, which says in a release about today's event:

Imagine a world where politicians tell the truth, focus on the future, and work together with their fellow citizens to solve problems. Forward Together PAC is working everyday to make that a reality. And it isn't stopping at the boundaries of physical space. Tomorrow Governor Warner will become the first American political leader to engage in the online virtual world, Second Life.

Warner, clearly playing to the uber-geek vote, says in a statement:

In Second Life, distances and time differences vanish. It will allow us to reach people through a whole new medium.

UPDATE: You can read a transcript of the interview and see screenshots of the virtual Warner here.

Last week Mike McGavick blogged about the news that someone in the U.S. Senate had a secret hold on a bill that would have created a searchable database of federal spending.

This is a sad state of affairs when a senator (or senators) secretly prevent legislation to remove secrecy. The American people have a right to know how their money is being spent. We need senators who are willing to hold their colleagues accountable for this sort of thing, regardless of party.

Well it turns out that that the secret senator is McGavick patron Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska. McGavick wrote yesterday afternoon:

It has been revealed that Senator Ted Stevens was behind the secret hold we blogged about last week. His hold stalled legislation to create a searchable online database of federal spending. We called it "sad state of affairs," and that is certainly true. This legislation would give taxpayers more insight into how their money would be spent than ever before, and that is something we should all welcome. With the identity of the holder revealed, we hope public pressure moves this bi-partisan legislation forward.

Maybe McGavick should write Stevens a letter. It worked before.

• Stranger editor Dan Savage doesn't like Mayor Nickels' proposed nightclub restrictions that he says are "as onerous as they are impractical" as a way to make club owners responsible for keeping their places free of drugs and guns.

  So I decided to conduct a little experiment: I would attempt to enter City Hall with drugs. If I got inside, I would use drugs in City Hall. If I used drugs in City Hall, I would offer drugs to other people in City Hall.

  
  And he did. And he brought a (fake) gun, too.

(UPDATE: At the Seattle Weekly, Philip Dawdy is not amused by Savage. He says the nightclub ordinance is dumb, but Savage is dumber.)

• On the Stranger blog, Josh Feit says Mike McGavick's admission of his DUI showed Democrats were asleep at the wheel, though he's finding it not so easy to get the records.

  All you ever hear from Democrats these days is: "Man, we gotta play hardball like the Republicans. We got to play mean and dirty. Man, if I had been running Kerry's race..." etc etc etc...

  Well, my question is: Why didn't the Cantwell campaign have this first?

• With the state's top-two primary ruled unconstitutional by the 9th Circuit, Krist Novoselic — from grunge pioneer to Grange activist — looks to the future of partisan voting. He says:

  Either the unpopular and flaccid Pick-A-Party primary stands (unlikely), or we take the party designation off the ballot to have only two candidates on the ballot each November. The current primary system is obviously broken and we already have non-partisan elections in many municipalities. Either way, there are no new ideas on the table. It's not hard to see that, like a tragic opera, our story is doomed to endure continued heartbreak and frustration.

  Novoselic hopes Pierce County's Amendment 3 passes this November. It would create instant runoff voting in county races and, he hopes, a model for a statewide system.

• In the King County Journal, Sen. Pam Roach is upset about the ranking she got from the Municipal League, in part, because one of her reviewers had a pierced nose. And multiple piercings at that. And we know Roach is not a fan of body art on kids today.

• Chris Mulick unveils his new community slogan in the Tri-City Herald:

  "The Tri-Cities: Come for the sunshine, stay for the discount political fundraisers."

Sound Politics has a new writer. He's former journalist Don Ward, known at Sound Politics and Horsesass.org as reporterward.

Unfortunately he's gotten off to a rough start with a post at Sound Politics that purports to be a journalism critique but falls short of even the most basic standards of reporting.

Ward writes about Mike McGavick's open letter to voters about his DUI arrest and other embarrassing regrets. In the simplest summation, Ward says it's a choice of either stupidity or cupidity. Either the media is lazy if it didn't already know about the DUI, or, if it did know, it is evil for holding the story in an attempt to influence public opinion.

Ward says reporters should have discovered the DUI through "a little courthouse bloodhounding." Yes, that'd be great if we had already searched courthouses 3,000 miles away.

Yes, it happened very far from here, Don.

Ward wrote,

You'd have thought that at least The Olympian would have caught wind of this or the Associated Press' bureau in the state capitol. The incident did happen in their neck of the woods.

No, it happened close to the other Capitol. In every story I read it made it clear the incident was in Maryland.

Ward wrote, "So far I have not read any story from an editor or writer admitting one way or the other about their knowledge beforehand of this incident."

And that's important because it would help show whether the media was sitting on the story, as Ward wrote:

Because if the "media" was choosing to do this they'd be going from informing the public to trying to mold and influence public opinion; a behavior that is antithetical to any good journalist.

Here's what I wrote within an hour of McGavick's announcement:

I hadn't heard anything about his DUI before, but the rest of McGavick's list are not secrets and he certainly has gotten questions on all of them before.

The AP's Dave Ammons wrote, "Word of the DUI in 1993 was new, as was his overall decision to publicly discuss his shortcomings." The P-I wrote about McGavick: "He said that to his knowledge, no news media or political antagonists had been aware of the DUI charge."

And the McGavick campaign confirmed for me this morning that they had not heard anything about anybody — from the media or the opposition — knowing anything about the DUI.

The problems with Ward's post aren't really the factual errors. Anyone can make a mistake. But he set out to accuse the media of malfeasance or misfeasance and was not dissuaded by a lack of evidence to back up either claim. He said he wanted to write about the McGavick story because he was interested in the motives of the reporters who covered the news, who he suspected of "sniffing news ink." Maybe after seven years as a reporter Ward has yet to get the fumes out of his system.

Mike McGavick may have been catching a wave last week when he decided to "tell you directly the very worst and most embarrassing things in my life for you to know."

It's certainly a higher grade of personal admission than my favorite example: In the 1997 King County executive race the candidates were asked to name their greatest faults. Republican Suzette Cooke said she was too serious and intellectual. Democrat Ron Sims said he worked too hard. And they didn't care if everyone knew it.

Regret is suddenly everywhere.

Just today in the New York Times are two stories with examples that make McGavick's stories pale in comparison. And they begin the new Postman on Politics Campaign 2006 Apology and Personal Regret Watch.

Bill Clinton's is hard to top. He said he was sorry he didn't intervene to stop the Rwanda genocide. "The United States just blew it in Rwanda," he said.

And Michiko Kakutani's review of Jonathan Franzen's new memoir, The Discomfort Zone, makes it sound like a book-length apology for personal misdeeds. Or maybe a boast. Franzen says he was bugged by Katrina charity campaigns, once dropped a frog in a campfire to watch it burn and described his and his wife's favorite sport as "deploring other people."

Franzen and Clinton have set a high bar. But there's likely more to come.

I read in my paper today that "Cantwell ... hasn't apologized for any ads."

Does the senator have nothing to apologize for? And if not, why not?

Montana U.S. Senate candidate Jon Tester was in Seattle last night for a fundraiser. This is one of only a handful of states the Democrat has visited outside of Montana to raise money in his race against Republican Sen. Conrad Burns. The evening affair was at the swank offices of Ron Dotzauer's Strategies 360 firm on Westlake. Expected to arrive as I was leaving were Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana, and Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell.

Turns out Tester has plenty of Seattle connections. His media consultants are Laguens Hamburger Kully Klose, with offices here and in D.C. The ubiquitous Christian Sinderman is doing Tester's direct mail.

Both firms have been with Tester since he began what seemed like a long-shot campaign to face Burns, who has been engulfed in the Jack Abramoff scandal. When Tester won the primary, he said the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee and other national players were ready to sweep into Montana to take over. In an interview before heading to the buffet, he told me:

"We had more friends than we knew we ever had after the primary and we had a lot of folks who were wanting to run our campaign for us. ... You go with the ones that brought you there."

He said the biggest surprise in the campaign has been the realization of how much he has to delegate to staffers. But he says he's learned to put his full faith in the group that has surrounded him.

"Nobody has done anything to make me think they're trying to tomahawk me. They bitch at me, and I bitch at them. But it's cool."

Tester has an iconic connection to the city, too. He is friends with Jeff Ament, Pearl Jam's bass player. They're both from Big Sandy, Mont., population 700. When Ament was in high school, Tester was teaching junior high music to Ament's younger sisters. Ament's dad, George, was mayor, and the town barber, "and first endowed me with this haircut."

The haircut has become famous. The National Republican Senatorial Committee ran a TV ad that featured a barber who claimed Tester's trademark buzzcut was a way to hide his left-leaning ways, and came with the tag, "Jon Tester, conservative haircut, liberal values."

Tester's campaign responded with it's ad, "Creating a buzz," that showed Montanans getting their hair cut like Tester's, with its tag line that he will "make the Senate look a little more like Montana."

Tester and his wife Sharla are organic grain farmers. They still farm, even in the heat of the campaign. Sharla said yesterday she was on the tractor just two days ago listening to campaign commercials on the radio. Tester is president of the state Senate. He sounds more than a little like Mike McGavick when he says that he and Sharla almost decided against a run for the U.S. Senate because of the uncivil tone of campaigns these days.

"It just seems like every political campaign anymore gets nasty and they don't talk about the things that impact people. They just try to rip apart a person. But I think we're comfortable enough with our relationship and we're comfortable enough with knowing who we are and where we come from to put up with this stuff. You just have to hold your nose for the next nine weeks."

The campaign has taken on national implications in part because of Burns' ties to Abramoff. It's seen as one of the Democrats' better chances to pick up a seat. It's going to be an expensive campaign. Tester said that $20 million will likely be spent just by him, Burns, and their national parties. That doesn't count the groups that are sure to do independent campaigns. And that's for about 400,000 voters.

In Washington, probably a few million more than $20 million will be spent in the Senate race. That's to reach about 2.8 million voters. You have to feel sorry for those Montanans and the political deluge they face.

Here's an AP story that does a good job summarizing the race.

Former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey will headline the Washington State Republican Party's fall dinner. Armey was one of the architects of the Republicans' 1994 Contract with America. He is now chairman of Freedom Works, the group created from the merger of his Citizens for a Sound Economy and Jack Kemp's Empower America, and a lobbyist at DLA Piper, where Jennifer Dunn also works.

The Sept, 29 event at the airport Hilton also will honor former state party chairman Ken Eikenberry, who will get the Slade Gorton Lifetime Achievement Award.

The state Democratic Party will officially pick sides in an intra-party fight later this morning when it endorses Kyle Taylor Lucas over incumbent Sen. Tim Sheldon in the 35th District.

The party has never much liked Sheldon. The feeling is mutual. "I'm the infidel and won't do what they say, and they just can't stand it," Sheldon said earlier this summer.

This morning party chairman Dwight Pelz and Democratic leaders from the four counties in Sheldon's district will appear at Thurston County Democratic headquarters to endorse Lucas, former head of the Governor's Office of Indian Affairs.

Sheldon has raised about $142,000, compared to Lucas' $29,000.

UPDATE: Lucas' money numbers got a boost with $15,000 from the Thurston County Democratic Party. This from the Dems' press release from this morning's event:

"Tim Sheldon is the Joe Lieberman of Washington State politics," said Dwight Pelz, Chair of the Washington State Democratic Party. "He would kiss George Bush if he could," said Pelz, citing Sheldon's role as the leader of "Democrats for Bush" in the 2004 election.

Gov. Chris Gregoire has sent a proposed compromise to the state Board of Pharmacy that she hopes will be adopted Thursday in place of a draft approved in June that would have allowed pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for moral reasons.

In a letter to board chairman Dr. Assad Awan, Gregoire wrote yesterday:

I present this alternative rule as the most reasonable compromise. It clearly states that pharmacies have a duty to dispense lawfully prescribed drugs and recognizes the role of pharmacists in using their professional expertise to determine reasonable exceptions to that duty and maintain patient safety.

None of those exceptions in Gregoire's proposal covers refusal to prescribe medicine because of pharmacists' personally held moral beliefs. The proposal, which Gregoire says is backed by the Washington State Pharmacy Association and Planned Parenthood, says pharmacists must fill prescriptions except for these reasons:

(a) Potential drug therapy contraindications;
(b) National or state emergencies or guidelines affecting availability or supplies of drugs or devices;
(c) Lack of specialized equipment or expertise needed to safely produce, store, or dispense drugs or devices, such as certain drug compounding or storage for nuclear medicine;
(d) Potentially fraudulent prescriptions;
(e) Unavailability of drug or device despite good faith compliance with WAC 246-869-150;

At the heart of the debate have been concerns that the pharmacy board's proposed rule would make it difficult for women to get the "Plan B" emergency contraceptive. A Food and Drug Administration ruling last week will allow over-the-counter sales of Plan B, which is likely to reduce some of the controversy surrounding the issue.

Gregoire's letter said there were many hours of negotiations with board members, women's groups, pharmacy representatives and others. Board member Donna Dockter, who supported the board's draft rule in June, was part of those negotiations. But Gregoire says she was unable "to reach full accord" with Dockter on the compromise.

The board adopted its draft in June. Gregoire said the board had made a mistake and if they didn't correct it she would consider removing members from the board. In July the board postponed final action until this week.

Mike McGavick's announcement last week of his drunken driving arrest and other personal and business regrets was certainly unusual. It was interesting, a little risky I suppose, and generally well played by McGavick and his campaign. But was it courageous? An act so noble it stands out over a generation of American public life?

Sen. Elizabeth Dole thinks so. She wrote on her blog:

Yesterday, Mike made a brave, personal decision to discuss some of the past mistakes he has made in his life. And, friends, I have to say Mike's choice to openly talk about his past is one of most noble and courageous acts I have witnessed in my forty-plus years in public service.

If that's the ad absurdum defense of McGavick ... and it's got to be, because no would compare him to one of the world's great thinkers, would they? ... the far other side is staked out by David Goldstein at Horsesass.org. Goldstein is looking for volunteers to replicate the drinking McGavick would have had to do to blow a "0.17 percent blood-alcohol level, and a general idea of the associated level of impairment."

Goldstein wasn't blogging in 2003, so he's off the hook here. But does anyone remember any concerns from the left about Supreme Court Justice Bobbe Bridge's ability to do her job after being even more drunk than McGavick? Gary Locke and Chris Gregoire came to Bridge's defense. Surely blood alcohol levels are not a partisan thing.

Lost in the novelty of McGavick's announcement and the hyperbole of the reaction is a blurring of the line between character attack and legitimate campaign inquiry. In his open letter, McGavick goes for a broad sweep, saying, "The candidates and the incumbents spend their time attacking each other's personal character instead of attacking the issues and problems that face our country and our families. ... In this campaign for example, my opponents have attacked my leadership in turning around Safeco."

But isn't his leadership at Safeco a legitimate campaign issue? Certainly Maria Cantwell's time at Real Networks was worthy of exploration when she ran in 2000. McGavick says one of his more embarrassing failings of his life was the way he handled layoffs at Safeco. That alone makes it important because carrying a burden like that shapes a man.

It's not just a business record that is fair game in a campaign. Character is an issue in American politics. Why wouldn't it be important to find out if someone was, for example, less than truthful? The standard is always changing about where the line is for legitimate inquiry, and for what voters are willing to accept in their politicians.

Maybe the question is not whether character is fair game, but what constitutes an "attack." The quote that got the most press from Friday's news wasn't McGavick's, but Democratic spokesman Kelly Steele who said, "From privatizing Social Security to drunk driving it becomes clearer every day that Mike McGavick and George Bush are cut from the same cloth."

That was a shrill attack that would have been better left unsaid.

Last night I was on 710 KIRO as a guest on the David Goldstein Show. As I said above, he wants to talk more about how much McGavick had to drink. On his show, though, Goldstein took several giant leaps into speculation about McGavick's behavior and character. I objected and he said, "Is that a character attack?" No doubt.

Both sides do it. But we shouldn't let the talk show or blog attacks confuse the issue when it comes to serious and substantive questions about character or candidate's background.

There's been lots said in the past few days about McGavick's open letter. Here's a roundup of some of it.

On Fox News' "The Beltway Boys," Fred Barnes and Mort Kondracke not surprisingly gave McGavick high marks.

KONDRACKE: Welcome back to "The Beltway Boys." Let's check out the "Ups and Downs" for the week.

Up: Republican Senate challenger Mike McGavick of Washington state. He's using a gutsy but risky campaign strategy in his race against incumbent Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell. In an open letter, McGavick preemptively confessed to several personal and political shortcomings, including a drunk-driving incident.

He said in the letter that was the — the most embarrassing and worst things that he'd ever done in his life. And that — you know, that they're rather — rather minor. There's the drunken-driving arrest. There's a — a dirty trick that he played when he was helping to run the Slade Gorton campaign. There was a — a business error that — that he made. And — and he wasn't — and he wasn't a good father to his — to his child. I mean, that — that's pretty minor stuff.

I think though that getting out preemptively is a good — is a good step, and it attracts a lot of publicity, and makes him look like a — like a — a clean citizen.

BARNES: Well, I agree with that, and probably all that stuff was going to come out anyway, and it will be hard for Maria Cantwell to attack him as a bad father. His son's going to the University of Virginia, by the way.

Locally, Eric Earling at Sound Politics is mostly pleased with how the media reacted.

Bradley Meacham at The Cascadia Report says the open letter makes McGavick look like "the honest, aw-shucks guy who most voters like to support."
He says the "chattering class" think McGavick made a mistake, but I think he's mostly talking about Danny Westneat.

The Sensible Mom says "I don't think it was a powerful event that shaped his life more than it was a powerful event that could have derailed his political career if not handled properly."

There's praise for Kelly Steele's zinger at Daily Kos, while the journalist and ventriloquist behind The Moderate Voice compares McGavick's confession to George Allen missteps.

And you can always rely on something thoughtful at Ridenbaugh Press, where Randy Stapilus says about McGavick:

There is also a certain amount of gruesome credibility in what he says here. At the end of his statement, he says, "My pledge to you is one of authenticity, civility and transparency."

U.S. Chamber of Commerce TV ads praising Congressman Dave Reichert for his support of a Medicare drug plan were paid for in part by the drug industry. That's what The Associated Press is reporting, though the chamber is refusing to say where it got the money for the campaign.

The ads have already been a problem for the Chamber around the country. In Ohio an ad was pulled because the congressman praised for his support actually voted against the measure. Three others, including one for Reichert, were changed after the Chamber realized that the incumbents were not in Congress when the bill was passed.

AP reports there are no legal problems with the drug company financing: "In political terms, though, the disclosure is likely to embolden Democratic critics of the Medicare drug program, who charge it amounts to a Republican-engineered windfall for drug companies."

Indeed. Democrats were quick to respond. Bill Burton, communications director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said in a statement:

There's a civics lesson here from the drug companies. They write checks to protect their GOP friends, and then they write the laws to benefit themselves, all the while doctors are writing prescriptions middle class Americans can't afford.

Coming to a theater near you tomorrow are 15 second commercials for Supreme Court candidate John Groen.

The ads are the first shot in the Building Industry Association of Washington's campaign to elect Groen and two others to the high court. The ads will run in 43 movie theaters throughout the state from tomorrow until the Sept. 19 primary.

BIAW Executive Vice President Tom McCabe said the ad buy cost less than $50,000. The spots will run before each movie. They are only on behalf of Groen, running against Chief Justice Gerry Alexander, and not the other BIAW-endorsed candidates, Justice Tom Chambers or Sen. Steve Johnson, who is challenging Justice Susan Owens.

"I'm not certain how effective this will be," McCabe told me. But he says that just like other advertisers, political groups need to find new ways to reach people through the burgeoning media saturation.

I don't know if anyone has run political ads in a movie theater here before. I've certainly never seen one. BIAW has tried different approaches before. In the parking lot of the group's Olympia office is slightly run-down ice cream truck - a relic from a decade-old campaign for Sen. Pam Roach that featured free ice cream for the kids and a Roach brochure for their parents.

As soon as I get a copy of the ad I'll post it here.

• John Groen political ads

On his campaign blog this afternoon Republican Senate candidate Mike McGavick posted an open letter to voters, saying, "I have lots of faults, and I have made some mistakes that I deeply regret."

The top two "great failures" are the failure of his first marriage and arrest for drunken driving.

The second terrible mistake, which was difficult to discuss with my teenage son, was that I was cited for DUI when I cut a yellow light too close in 1993. I was driving Gaelynn home from several celebrations honoring our new relationship and should not have gotten behind the wheel. Thankfully, there was no accident, but it still haunts me that I put other people at risk by driving while impaired. All in all, it was and remains a humbling and powerful event in my life.

McGavick also talks about professional failings, as CEO of Safeco and as Slade Gorton's campaign manager in 1988 when he backed an erroneous campaign attack against Democrat Mike Lowry.

MORE: McGavick has sent mixed signals in the past about the Lowry ad. It claimed, based on an old article in the UW student paper, that Lowry favored legalizing marijuana. When questions were raised about the accuracy, McGavick stuck by it.

In 2002 he said in a speech: "We clearly need to raise the level of civil discourse in our community. If I see one more of those negative 30-second ads, I'm going to throw up — and I used to make them!"

But he told he earlier this month: "I have to admit that's a little bit of an overstatement."

Now he says that ranks among his top two professional failures. His blog says today:

We let the ad finish its week-long run. Though we never raised it again, we should have pulled it once evidence mounted that the Daily article was not an accurate reflection of his views

(CLARIFICATION: I don't have this Lowry stuff quite right. When McGavick told me the line in the speech was an overstatement, he meant that he hadn't done the sort of character attacks that he says have now become a regular part of so many campaigns. When we talked about it earlier this month he did express regret for not pulling the Lowry ad.)

As for Safeco, McGavick says he regrets telling employees after a round of layoffs in 2001 "that I thought the worst was behind us."

This led to real and justified hope by my Safeco colleagues that there would be no more lay-offs. I was wrong to raise such hopes. Several months later, it became clear that we still were not competing effectively, and it was not until after another round of layoffs that we really were able to turn the ship and set the company on the course it is on today.

MORE: McGavick has chosen an unusual strategy in trying to protect himself from negative stories and attack ads. I hadn't heard anything about his DUI before, but the rest of McGavick's list are not secrets and he certainly has gotten questions on all of them before.

He clearly is making a preemptive move:

Still, I know that the character attacks against me will not stop. So, how about I just tell you directly the very worst and most embarrassing things in my life for you to know, and then I will get back to talking about how much the U.S. Senate needs a new direction.

I don't know if Democrats were on to the DUI or not. Wouldn't surprise me. And McGavick gets no points from the Democratic spokesman for coming clean on his own. Said Kelly Steele:

"From privatizing Social Security to drunk driving it becomes clearer every day that Mike McGavick and George Bush are cut from the same cloth."

MORE: McGavick will be on Fox News tonight at about 9:20 as Brit Hume does a piece on the Washington Senate race.

McGavick's confession is unusual in substance, but I think unheard of in how it was delivered. McGavick chose to make the announcement on his campaign blog, not in a press release or a press conference. Some reporters were alerted to the posting, but it certainly was a softer opening to the story than it would have been if a reporter had dug up the DUI charge.

It's also interesting to see how McGavick wrote the post. The DUI is the most explosive bit, and the only one previously unreported. It is the second item in the post; not the lead where it would have attracted more attention or at the bottom where it would have led people like me to say it was buried. (McGavick is making himself available for interviews so the blog post doesn't stand alone.)

In 2004, Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi volunteered to a Times reporter that he had been arrested for driving while drunk. He telephoned one day to say he had something to say. His arrest came when he was 18, and it never became any kind of issue in the campaign.

When Republican Congressional leaders cobbled together the "trifecta bill" earlier this month, they thought the something-for-everyone approach would be clever enough to win votes from both parties to eliminate the estate tax, raise the minimum wage and extend state sales tax deductions.

The strategy failed, of course, with potential swing vote Sen. Maria Cantwell voting against it. But the beauty of the bill is that there's still something for everyone in there to campaign on.

Cantwell and Mike McGavick are both running ads pegged to the vote. In this great piece of Rashomon politics, McGavick is running a radio spot that focuses on the part of the bill that would have extended the sales tax deduction for state's like Washington, saying, "Maria Cantwell voted with her party, against our deduction and against our families."

Cantwell's TV ad focuses on the tip credit provision that would have eaten into the state's guaranteed minimum wage, saying, "My parents struggled and I worked as a waitress so I know people count on us getting these things right."

You can listen to McGavick's radio spot here and read the script here.

Cantwell's TV spot can be seen here and the script is here.

Neither ad tells anything even approaching the full story of the trifecta bill. (Not that anyone should expect anything different. These are political ads after all, not Frontline.) The candidates cherry pick the legislation to make their points. In fact, it just so happens they use it to make the central points of their campaigns: Cantwell voted against the bill because she sticks up for the little guy, and McGavick says the incumbent's vote is just another example of the "partisan nonsense" that infects D.C.

A few observations:

I would have thought the estate tax vote would have been campaign fodder for one side or both. But it hasn't merited a mention yet.

McGavick's ad shows the difficulty in taking a hard shot at an opponent while sticking to a civility pledge. His ad uses an announcer to say, "Maria Cantwell voted with her party, against our deduction and against our families."

All the negative words come from the disembodied, anonymous announcer. McGavick remains avuncular. He's not angry, you see, but disappointed and surprised: "I really thought that Sen. Cantwell would vote to keep this deduction in place."

The announcer says Cantwell refused to talk about a compromise on the bill. But then McGavick says, "This isn't really about Sen. Cantwell. D.C is so caught up in this partisan nonsense that people are called to vote against their own state's interests. "

Cantwell does most of the speaking in her ad. She sits in a restaurant, mentions that her parents struggled and that she worked as a waitress. She's clearly using the ad not just to inoculate herself against criticism for the trifecta vote, but to portray herself as the product of a hard-scrabble upbringing. That's a better contrast to McGavick, the millionaire former insurance executive, than Cantwell's profile as career politician and high-tech millionaire.

Cantwell says in her ad, "Republican leaders tried to cut Washington state's minimum wage." It is fair to say there are varying interpretations of the local effect of the tip credit, though the intent was to, at the very least, cut the growth of the state's minimum wage. But the state Legislature could have fixed the problem, according to the state Department of Labor and Industries.

TO BE CLEAR: What Labor and Industries said was that if Congress passed the bill, the Legislature would have the power to fix the problem.

It doesn't look like Mike McGavick's $2 million loan to his campaign will mean campaign donation limits will be lifted for Maria Cantwell.

The Federal Elections Commission says in a draft of an advisory opinion that the "Millionaires' Amendment" applies only to McGavick's opposing candidates in the Republican primary, not the incumbent Democratic senator.

The millionaires' clause sets a formula that lifts campaign donation limits for a candidate facing a candidate who self-finances a campaign. Cantwell's campaign argued that McGavick's loan should have meant that Cantwell donors now limited to $4,200 could give $25,200 instead.

The draft says:

The Commission concludes that Mr. McGavick is not Senator Cantwell's "opposing candidate" in the primary election, so Mr. McGavick's expenditures from personal funds made before the primary election will not trigger the provisions of the Millionaires' Amendment for Senator Cantwell or Cantwell 2006. However, any personal funds that were contributed by Senator Cantwell or Mr. McGavick to either of their respective authorized committees before the primary election, and that are retained by either committee for use in the general election campaign, will be expenditures from personal funds in connection with the general election.

So, if McGavick has any of that $2 million left over after the primary that could trigger the Millionaires' Amendment. The draft opinion will be considered by the FEC Aug. 29.

UPDATE: In Arizona, it's the Republican incumbent senator looking to get the "Millionaires'" boost in the primary, according to the Arizona Republic.

No candidate running in Washington state this year has as much support from liberal bloggers as Darcy Burner, the Democrat running against Congressman Dave Reichert in the 8th District. Some are downright giddy about her.

But a provocative liberal critique of her first TV ad points out a big gap between Burner's almost pop-star like appeal among the left and the lack of any progressive message in the spot.

The commercial is a bio piece to introduce Burner to voters. Matt Stoller, writing at the popular liberal blog MyDD, asks:

Notice anything missing? I-R-A-Q.

Notice anything else missing? Well if you saw this ad, you wouldn't know whether Darcy is a Democrat or a Republican. (That is a failure to take advantage of the "Republicans Control Congress" message, which is that when voters know who controls Congress, they vote for the other party.)

Notice anything else missing? Bush.

In other words, this ad is a complete failure.

Stoller refers in his post to MyDD's analysis of the special election in California's 50th District and a strategy memo he and others wrote afterward on the lessons there for Democratic congressional candidates. It is a tough-guy strategy that includes:

Pick a fight, any fight. Voters need to be convinced that Democrats can credibly challenge Bush. Whether the fight is over de-funding Cheney's personal staff, attacking John Bolton's confirmation, impeachment hearings, or stopping war profiteering with a new "Truman Commission," Democratic candidates must demonstrate strength through aggressive confrontation where the term "accountability" is more than just an abstraction or corporate lingo. It must be made real through a fight you plan to pick.

As Republicans try to make liberal bloggers a campaign issue by portraying them as an arm of the Democratic Party, it'll be interesting to see what happens this fall if blogger-backed candidates fail to follow the netroots-approved strategy. Burner is one of the Democratic challengers who can raise money from the backing of Kos and others. Will that be harder to do if her campaign continues to steer away from Iraq and the sort of attack on Bush that fuels the liberal blogosphere? Will it be seen as more important to win, or to win with the "right" message.

There are times I wonder if partisan bloggers exaggerate their influence on politics and campaigns. But could there be any better validation of the increasingly important role they play than the attack the Republican National Committee launched this morning against the man behind the popular and influential liberal blog Daily Kos?

The RNC sends out regular missives compiling quotes and news clips to attack opponents, or less frequently, boost their own candidates. Democrats do the same. But few pack the punch or are as long as this morning's RNC release: "WHO IS MARKOS MOULITSAS ZUNIGA? A Partisan 'Nutroot' Who Turned His Hate-Filled Blog Daily Kos Into A Leadership Post In The Democrat Party."

Republicans spend 2,800 words on Moulitsas, the co-author of his recent book, and Daily Kos diarists. Among the RNC attack points: "Moulitsas Has Plans To Take Over The Party," "Moulitsas Makes An 'Excellent Living,' "Moulitsas Vehemently Opposed DLC Member Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT) In Democrat Primary," "Moulitsas Also Provides Liberal Bloggers A Venue To Promote Their Own Extreme Messages And Ideologies," and the damning claim, "Daily Kos Blogger Markos Moulitsas Zuniga Back From 'Relaxing' Vacation." Republicans also say Moulitsas holds radical positions on the war on terror, including his position that, "The French Are Right."

Moulitsas practices politics not journalism. And the RNC is right that he is becoming increasingly influential within Democratic Party politics. Bloggers who play behind-the-scenes roles in politics deserve scrutiny and should strive for transparency.

The Republican attack on Daily Kos is reminiscent of Democrats trying to tie the GOP to their backers among conservative talk radio hosts. Neither attack is about trying to get the parties to distance themselves from the controversial figures. They are about trying to make party members seem out of step with the mainstream by playing up the influence of people like Moulitsas or, in the past, Rush Limbaugh.

And while this morning's RNC release seems shrill, almost comic in places, it is sure to do the intended job and boost Moulitsas' standing among Democrats. Daily Kos will probably be selling "The French Are Right" T-shirts by the end of the day.

Two of the state's biggest business lobbying groups have broken off with the sponsor of the estate tax repeal initiative, forming a separate group to campaign for Initiative 920.

The Association of Washington Business and the National Federation of Independent Business/Washington formed the "Yes on 920 — Keeping Washington Family Business Alive" committee. The groups said in a statement they "wanted a campaign focused solely on family-owned businesses."

The official 920 campaign is run by Dennis Falk, a former Seattle police officer now living on Fox Island. He has raised more than $1 million to get the initiative on the fall ballot. Most of that came from developer Martin Selig.

It seems like an odd move to have business groups break off from Falk. Falk is unconcerned, telling my colleague Andrew Garber:

"I'm still the parent campaign. More groups and more organizations that come forward to help to get rid of the death tax the better. I don't see any problem with it."

The opposition campaign sees something more Machiavellian behind the splinter group. Sandeep Kaushik, communications director for the No on I-920 campaign said in a release:

Apparently, they are desperately scrambling to disassociate themselves from Dennis Falk and his sordid history of radical fringe politics. They are trying to clean themselves up for the big local and national donors they hope will contribute to the estate tax repeal effort, but the taint is not going to be so easy to wash off.

Kaushik calls Falk the "controversial I-920 mastermind." Falk was a long-time member and leader of the ultra-conservative John Birch Society and in 1978 worked with another fellow Seattle police officer to sponsor a city initiative that would have done away with anti-discrimination laws protecting gays.

During that campaign Falk was involved with a controversial shooting of a mentally retarded man. The shooting was ruled "reasonable under the circumstances" and the prosecutor's office reviewed the shooting but said there was insufficient evidence to sustain charges. The P-I reported that Falk "once boasted of having worn lead-lined leather gloves to gain 'respect' on The Ave until the mayor ordered him transferred off the beat."

Carolyn Logue, state NFIB director, said today that there was no falling out between the business groups and Falk. Were there concerns about Falk or the way he's run things?

"We're not going to comment on that," Logue said.

Some tough talk and a questionable pitch for money disappeared from Supreme Court Justice Tom Chambers' campaign blog last week. The whole Web site is down this morning, so I can't tell if Chambers edited the entry and reposted it, which is what he told me Friday he planned to do.

When I talked to Chambers he said he wasn't exactly sure what led his campaign team to decide the post should be removed. He said he was distracted by other things last week when the issue came up.

The post — which I have a printed copy of but can't find on the Internet Archive — was headlined "The Name Game" and talked about the issue of court candidates with similar names to incumbents or other challengers. And the tone is unlike what you normally hear in a judicial election:

The name game; there ought to be a law against it. I'm pumped. I'm stoked. I'm ready to drive a stake through some undeserving political careers.

Question: Who are these people anyway? Answer: My name is Smith or Johnson or I have lost so many political campaigns that I have great name familiarity. I think it's just like the lottery. I pay a filing fee and hope the voters confuse me with someone else or are just so plain stupid that they will elect me. Whoopee!! I always wanted to be on the Supreme Court.

Chambers wrote that his opponent, former King County Superior Court Judge Jeanette Burrage, is playing on her name recognition from many unsuccessful campaigns.

What is her best quality? Her name is Burrage which rimes (sic) with courage. I think it takes a lot of courage to go to your friends and family again, and again, and again asking for support to run for political offices.

His post also included this appeal:

I need your help more than ever now. I need your money and your boots on the sidewalks.

Judges and judicial candidates aren't supposed to personally solicit money, according to the Code of Judicial Conduct.

Chambers said that on top of the tone, the fundraising pitch also could have been why it was suggested he retool the blog post.

UPDATE: Chambers has rewritten his blog post.

• Votingforjudges.org is a new Web site to help people figure out how to vote on judicial elections. There's a long list of groups that are sponsoring the site, including the Association of Washington Business and the Washington State Trial Lawyers Association. You can find information about campaign donations. An announcement says, "No candidate is favored over another and ratings and endorsements by diverse groups are provided." It seems like it'd be pretty helpful to the many voters who often skip judicial elections.

• At Sound Politics, Stefan Sharkansky fact-checks Darcy Burner's Gas Pump Man Web site. He says the claim there that Rep. Dave Reichert gave away $14 billion to the oil and gas industry exaggerates Reichert's role and the amount of energy industry tax breaks.

  Reasonable people can debate whether this was the best possible energy bill. But Dave Reichert is hardly the only Congressman who deserves credit for it. Washington Democrats Norm Dicks and Rick Larsen voted for the final version, as did 25 of 42 Senate Democrats — including Sen. Maria Cantwell

  .

• Here's one way for bloggers to get their phone calls returned. The other morning, at 11:54 to be exact, Dan Savage slogged about the Connecticut senate race and wondered why Sen. Patty Murray hadn't come out in support of Lamont yet.

  So, Patty, whose side are you on? I'm know I'm curious.

  And then he gave Murray's phone number and Web address for others who also might be curious. Within three hours, Murray's spokeswoman told Savage that Murray was in China but had sent word that she was indeed backing Lamont.

• And completely off topic, I found this in the archives of Coolhunting.com and think it would make an excellent weekend project. Hope you have a good one.

I'm starting to think Mike McGavick has the pitch-perfect position on the war. I'm not exactly sure what it is. But it's money.

On Monday, McGavick showed he and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist had differing views on Iraq. The troop withdrawal debate that Frist thought showed Democrats weak on national security, McGavick saw as meaningless political gamesmanship. McGavick also said he wouldn't have voted for the initial war resolution knowing what he knows today about WMDs and Frist said he wouldn't have done anything different.

McGavick hasn't been clear and or consistent about the way he talks about the war. You can see Josh Feit's attempts to straighten it out here. Josh seems to be picking on me as much as McGavick, though, saying I "took the bait" on what was a "campaign stunt" that netted McGavick a "nifty headline" in the Times. In the end, his tag-team deconstructing with the McGavick campaign does little to clarify the situation.

McGavik has been clear and consistent about one thing when talking about the war: He says his position on the war is substantively indistinguishable from Maria Cantwell's.

Talking about Iraq Monday at the Frist event, McGavick said, "I would have voted to go to war as did Senator Cantwell based on what we thought we knew at the time," and, "I would have supported the war in the same way Senator Cantwell has supported the war."

Somebody needs to alert the Rightroots. That's a group of conservative bloggers raising money for a select few GOP candidates. The group's pitch says:

What if you could make Charlie Rangel quit, stop the Dems from Pelosifying America, and keep the left from cutting and running in Iraq? Well, you can make all those things happen by donating to 18 blogger endorsed candidates in key races the GOP needs to hold on to Congress.

McGavick is one of four endorsed Senate candidates. But it is not the Mike McGavick who sells his position on Iraq as indistinguishable from Maria Cantwell's. This is a much more hawkish McGavick. This from My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy:

Unlike Maria Cantwell, who supports immediately beginning to bring the troops home and a complete withdrawal from Iraq regardless of the situation on the ground, Mike McGavick supports VICTORY in Iraq through stability.

And from Right Wing News:

McGavick talked about a variety of issues, but what he said about the war on terrorism was really spot-on.

He said it's vitally important for us to give the Iraqi government an opportunity to defend itself. We're seeing a transition from our troops to their troops, but they need a little more time. If we do take off from Iraq, and leave a civil war in our wake, we're going to encourage the terrorists and give them a potential base to use against us.

Pretty good deal to have a position on the war that allows you to raise money as a hawk, look as much anti-war as the Democratic candidate and, as a bonus, probably tick off the left-wing by reminding them they never really much liked Cantwell's stance on the war.

Speaking of Cantwell, largely lost in the talk about McGavick's comments about the war this week was the reaction from anti-war Democrats to Cantwell's similar comments.

Several people have asked for the full statement from Cantwell. Here's what I got Monday night:

"If the Congress knew then what we know today, even the Republican leadership would not have brought it to a vote.

"If the Bush Administration had done the hard work of building an international coalition to really contain Saddam, there would have been no vote.

"If I knew then everything that I know today and the Republican leadership still brought it up for a vote, I would have voted no.

"While mistakes were made in the way Bush took us to war, the Republican led Congress has not done its job of providing aggressive oversight of the Iraq war. In the days ahead, the Congress must use the power of the purse to hold the Bush Administration accountable for more progress towards beginning to bring our troops home this year.

"We will always make sure our troops have everything they need to do their jobs well, but we will look at other cost-cutting measures.

"I am for changing the course in Iraq, my opponent is for staying the course. I oppose permanent bases in Iraq, my opponent does not share that belief. We do have different views of where to go next in Iraq.

"The Iraqis must take over responsibility for their own security this year."

Chad Shue said it is a "dynamic 'change of course' for Senator Cantwell and I welcome it whole heartedly."

If you read Alex Fryer's story yesterday about our Iraq poll, you'll see that Cantwell initially made her if-I-knew-then statement only after hearing what McGavick's position was.

There will be light, at best, posting for a few days as I take a little time off.

Senate Majority Bill Frist is hoping Salim Ahmed Hamdan can boost Republican chances in the mid-term elections.

Hamdan is one of Osama Bin Laden's former drivers. He is being held at Guantanamo and has his name attached to a June Supreme Court decision
that said the military tribunal system the U.S. wanted to use to try Hamdan and others is illegal.

Frist said in Seattle yesterday that he will use a chunk of the few remaining days of this year's session to debate a bill for new special military courts to replace the trials stopped by the Supreme Court. The Bush administration has asked Congress "to expand the reach and authority of such 'commissions' to include trials, for the first time, of people who are not members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban and are not directly involved in acts of international terrorism ... ."

Frist told me that the debate over how to handle Guantanamo detainees will be a surrogate for the larger question about national security. He said that's what he tried to do with the June debates on Democratic troop withdrawal resolutions. He's pleased with the "global picture" that emerged: "They're waving the white flag and we're going to fight the war on terror."

Hamdan, he said, will provide another opportunity to drive home that message. He said Democrats just want to talk about Iraq, while Republicans want to broaden the national security debate to the larger "war against radical Islam and the extremists." The June debates on troop withdrawal were focused on Iraq, but Frist said that he thinks Republicans did a good job stressing "the larger philosophical" differences.

When Congress debates military trials for terror suspects, he said, "That will come right back. And I think that's important for voters to see."

"You don't want to make it a partisan issue, but who cares about preserving homeland security and the safety and the security of the American family? And when it comes down to it, our leadership has been more aggressive more pre-emptive , more focused and theirs has been a defeatist, a fatalistic, a more timid, approach."

Frist said that he "didn't plan specifically" for the Hamdan debate to be the finale for his year's session. He said he waited until Senate Republicans worked out a legislative proposal to set the debate and "it does happen to be the last week before we get out."

Frist was here yesterday to raise money for Mike McGavick. As I wrote in the paper today, McGavick was not as enamored as Frist with the Senate debate on troop withdrawal.

Frist said at a press conference with McGavick that the debate came down to Republicans saying ''We're going to continue to adjust with time but we're going to address the challenges that we have overseas'' and Democrats disagreeing about "whether to cut and run now, or six months from now or a year from now."

McGavick, though, said he had a different take as he watched the debate:

"It struck me as one of these partisan squabbles without much meaning because in the end, the Levin amendment doesn't cause anything to happen. It just expresses what I think is the heartfelt feeling of everyone that we'd like our troops home sooner rather than later.

(...)

"I know the Republicans thought they had to make a case for supporting the president and the Democrats to show distance, but when I look at the content of the resolution I just think it was another chance to throw bricks at each other as far as I was concerned."

Frist told me that the disagreement comes from McGavick's literal reading of the troop withdrawal resolutions, while senators were focused on the bigger message.

"He gets right down to the wording of the resolution. To be honest with you, the people who go out to the floor and speak about it, no one even talks about the wording of the resolution."

Republicans have a new motto for their war effort: adapt-to-win. You'll hear that a lot in the coming days because it is the Republican National Committee's newly minted catchy counterpart to the "cut-and-run" Republicans use to describe the Democratic plan for Iraq.

RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman tried out adapt-to-win on Meet the Press yesterday:

Look, the fact is that our mission in the war in Iraq is critical. We agree on that; we agree it's wrong to cut and run. But look, we're not coming in and saying "Stay the course." The choice in this election is not between "Stay the course" and "Cut and run," it's between "Win by adapting" and "Cut and run."

It used to be "stay the course."

Here's Vice President Dick Cheney from CNN on June 22 as the Senate was debating Democratic resolutions calling for the administration to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq:

With respect to the overall course of the campaign, I think it's been very successful. With respect to this question of liberation, we have indeed liberat