The Smoking Gun reports:

A U.S. Senate aide was arrested Friday after allegedly arranging a lunchtime sexual encounter with a teenage boy, according to federal court records. James McHaney, 28, was nabbed by FBI agents after he arranged the afternoon liaison via a "cooperating witness" working with investigators.

The website reports that until his arrest Friday, McHaney was working as a scheduler for Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Washington.

Cantwell's office just released this statement from Chief of Staff Michael Meehan:

Late Friday afternoon the FBI informed our office that a Senate employee was arrested. The employee was immediately fired. Our office has and will continue to fully cooperate with the ongoing federal criminal investigation. Senator Cantwell has zero tolerance for crimes against children.

McHaney was at work while chatting on-line with the confidential witness who was cooperating with the FBI.

It certainly looks as if the governor will say tomorrow who she has picked to replace retiring Justice Bobbe Bridge. The governor has a press conference at 9 a.m. tomorrow at the Temple of Justice. Unfortunately, I'll be on the road at that hour and unable to write about it until later. So, if you see who it is, and have something wise to add, please do. Also, any good guesses on who will get the job?

Former Congressional staffer Juan Martinez tells Josh Feit he will run for state Senate against Ways and Means Chairwoman Margarita Prentice, D-Renton. Martinez worked for Congressman Jim McDermott and is now the field organization for the Washington Tax Fairness Coalition.

He cited Sen. Margarita Prentice's heavy-handed approach to pushing millions in subsidies for the Sonics and her refusal to look at reforming the payday loan industry as "causing a lot of unhappiness" in the district.

Writer Daniel Bergner has a fascinating and provocative profile of Booth Gardner in yesterday's New York Times Magazine. It is worth reading the whole thing. It's focused on Gardner's campaign for a death with dignity initiative, which the former governor calls his last campaign.

But it's about much more than that. It delves into Gardner's family and intimate details of his life as he struggles with Parkinson's and years of familial strain. Gardner and his son, Doug, talk candidly about their relationship.

Gardner and his son told the same story. "I wasn't a good father," the former governor said to me. "I didn't give him enough support. So he found it in religion." Doug told a longer version: his father's absence; his own "very rebellious" youth that he resisted discussing in detail; his coming under the guidance of a devoutly Christian tennis coach at Pacific Lutheran University, where he had enrolled not for reasons of religion but for the chance to get his undergraduate business degree after his grades failed to qualify him for the business program at the University of Washington. "I was lost," he said about the years before his tennis coach found him. "Dad has done all these things. Success in business. Owning sports teams. State senator. County executive. Governor. How? He cut corners. He lost his wife. He didn't spend enough time with his kids. Kids equate love with time, with being there. Not with, 'Dad bought me a great tennis racket.' My dad missed it. Where was he when I needed help?"

In conversation, Doug often lowered his head, sometimes in forgiveness. Booth Gardner's mother died, along with his sister, in a plane crash when he was 14. When Gardner was in his late 20s, his biological father, a car salesman and alcoholic (whom his mother had divorced years before), jumped or fell to his death from an upper-story hotel room. Sometimes Doug talked about his father's failings with pity, as the product of Booth's own early losses. But sometimes the lowered head â€" and lowered voice and wincing expression â€" seemed part of a strenuous attempt to restrain a lancing anger. "We don't need Booth and Dr. Kevorkian pushing death on us," Doug said quietly about his father's campaign. "Dad's lost. He's playing God, trying to usurp God's authority."

At The New Republic, political scientist Thomas Schaller looks at what might happen to down-ballot Democrats next year if Hillary Clinton is the party's presidential nominee. Schaller quotes a few worried Democrats. His lead quote comes from a supporter of John Edwards, which is interesting because the only person I've heard talk about the Clinton-drag factor is an Edwards supporter here.

Schaller says there's not much to worry about.

While there are plenty of other reasons not to vote for her, concerns about Clinton's down-ballot drag are overwrought. Though she could have a marginal effect on a few races here and there, our electoral system has become so shock-absorbent that presidential candidates barely have a down-ballet effect anymore.

...

Still, is there something unique about Clinton that could put other 2008 Democratic candidates at risk? The strongest claim to that is she's an uncommonly unifying figure -- for Republicans and the right. So while the intensity of Clinton hatred may not multiply a voter's vote, it could motivate citizens to engage in other ways, such as donating to Republican candidates, walking precincts, or persuading their friends and co-workers to vote against Clinton and other Democrats. Such activities have the potential to alter the composition of the electorate from the one currently being polled -- with potentially damaging ramifications for Democratic candidates in close races.

Gov. Chris Gregoire is one of the few Democrats Schaller thinks could be hurt by running with Clinton. Of course, looking at her 2004 dead heat, it's not unreasonable to think that any political dynamic could effect her re-election. But Schaller's wrong on one point. He says:

... Washington and Indiana are swing states that might be influenced by the presidential campaigns.

Washington is not a swing state. I've thought the same thing myself at times. But given that the state has voted Democratic in presidential elections since Ronald Reagan -- which is also the last time a Republican won the governorship -- Gregoire doesn't need to worry about that mythical swing.

But again, given how close the '04 race was, an anti-Clinton surge in eastern Washington or other solidly Republican spots in the state could be a boost to Republican Dino Rossi.

I wonder if the Edwards and Obama supporters among you think this is a real threat and whether you are talking it up in trying to peel away support for Clinton. Thoughts?

The U.S. Supreme Court will not hear Rep. Jim McDermott's appeal of the lower court decision that said he has to pay nearly $1 million for leaking a tape of a conference call among Republican leaders. The Wall Street Journal says "the court didn't comment on its action."

McDermott issued a statement this morning saying he was disappointed that the Court of Appeals' decision wills tand, but said he was "proud to have vindicated important free speech rights on behalf of the American people and the press."

"The Court of Appeals majority accepted our argument that the First Amendment protects the disclosure of information under these circumstances, but then a different majority held that my position in Congress stripped me of that same protection.

"While I disagree with the Court of Appeals on the latter point, and think that its decision erodes the separation of powers doctrine, the fact remains that this litigation made important new First Amendment law that will protect the dissemination of truthful information on matters of public concern by the news media and the citizenry."

McDermott filed his appeal in September.