Remember those bogus, last-minute attempts by King County Republicans last November to challenge the voter registrations of nearly 2,000 voters in heavily Democratic Seattle precincts?

There are advantages to having Democrats in control of both houses of the state legislature, plus the governor's mansion.

Little noticed in the frenetic closing days of Olympia's legislature was the passage of a bill, likely to be signed by Gov. Gregoire, that makes such Republican (or, for that matter, Democratic) hijinks illegal.

SB 6362 makes a number of changes to the current voter registration challenge process. Among them: A challenger claiming a bogus voter registration address must either provide the voter's actual address or get an affidavit from the owner of the listed address that the voter doesn't live there; a challenge may not be based on allegations made by third parties; a challenged voter may transfer registration or re-register until the day before the election; and, perhaps most importantly, unless the voter has registered or moved less than 60 days before the election, challenges may be filed no later than 45 days before the election. Of course, last year's Republican challenges already violated numerous existing requirements, which is why most of them were eventually thrown out. But this bill at least closes some major loopholes in the process. In all likelihood, Republicans will simply turn to some other tactic from their bag of dirty tricks when they try to suppress Democratic voter turnout this year. But at least they can't use one of last year's tricks. --Geov Parrish

Finish Scottie's Sentence!

"Maybe I'm not being clear--because the President has stated what his view is when it comes to the sanctity of life. He's committed to defending the sanctity of life. He is pro-life with three exceptions ..."

My guesses:

1. When it would mean not bombing niggers. 2. When it would mean not starving niggers to death via the IMF. 3. When it would mean not torturing niggers to death. --Eddie Tews

Not many people noticed last week--for some reason, Scott McClellan didn't call attention to it--but the federal government quietly settled with a plaintiff in the first of a number of lawsuits concerning the treatment of Muslim detainees in the US in the wake of 9-11.

Egyptian national Ehab Elmaghraby, who lived in New York City for 13 years, is now $300,000 richer as a result of having been swept up in the days after 9-11 and imprisoned incommunicado for nearly a year without charges before finally being deported to his native Egypt. While in prison, Elmaghraby was continually abused, including, at one point, undergoing a body cavity search by having a flashlight rammed up his rectum, an experience that is still causing the man medical complications.

One other plaintiff with Elmaghraby is proceeding to trial, and a whole rash of similar lawsuits, including a class action lawsuit, are in the legal pipeline. By the time they're done, the Bush policy of indiscriminately sweeping up Arab and Muslim non-citizens in the wake of 9-11, and the victims' often harrowing experiences while imprisoned, could cost taxpayers a lot of money. Needless to say, none of those so imprisoned were ever charged with terrorism-related crimes.

In an interesting related development, Department of Justice lawyers were in court Friday, in the case of a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner now suing the U.S. The DoJ was claiming that John McCain's new law banning torture by U.S. government personnel somehow does not apply to Guantanamo Bay guards or interrogators because the facility is offshore. Now, it's not surprising the Bush administration is trying to weasel out of the law banning torture; in his signing statement, George Bush told us he intended to do exactly that. What is interesting is why DoJ lawyers thought it necessary to make such a tenuous argument in this case. It suggests that they fear the court will find that the plaintiff was, in fact, tortured, and the question would then be whether the torture was or was not legal. Remember the phrase "We do not torture!"? This is all but a federal government admission that we do, in fact, torture. No news there, but it's nice to hear it from the torturer's mouth. --G.P.

After all that fuss and outcry, the PATRIOT Act has been renewed with almost nary a whimper from the Democrats. It passed its final vote in the Senate by an overwhelming 89-10. To her credit, Washington's Sen. Patty Murray was one of the 10 "no" votes.

This final version of reauthorization is virtually identical to the bill Democrats were so upset about in December that they successfully blocked. Most Democratic senators, following their so-called leadership, inexplicably stopped caring about all those quite valid civil liberties concerns as soon as the cameras were gone and the "we care about civil liberties" point had been made for the next election. Can't appear to be too soft on terrorism.

Disgusting. And depressing. --G.P.

Closing Abu Ghraib is a classic move by the Bush Regime. They're closing the prison that's notorious for prisoner abuse, turning it over to their puppet government in Baghdad, which is short on infrastructure and overloaded with prisoners. Without further investigation, what are the chances that 1) Abu Ghraib doesn't continue in operation, 2) other USA detention facilities have been constructed (probably with obscene profits for Halliburton), and 3) Iraqi reconstruction of basic civilian services like electricity and clean water continue to be delayed for an expensive public relations move. Mission Accomplished! --Tony Formo

North Seattle's Democratic state Sen. Ken Jacobsen has managed to piss me off again. And this time, his action is symptomatic of a whole genre of political pandering that needs to be called bullshit on.

Jacobsen, we learn in a press release from his office, has successfully inserted into an otherwise innocuous state Senate bill, HB 2754, an amendment which "...specifies that returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan be given preference in the joining the state's Basic Health Plan..."

Now, there's several things wrong, really wrong, with this (aside from the extra "the"). First of all, the state's Basic Health Plan, which is in theory open to anyone in the state who makes less than 200% of the federal poverty level, in fact has had its eligibility requirements steadily narrowed in recent years due to budget crunches, with the result that an awful lot of people who want to get on BHP either can't, or wait very long times to do so, and most remain uninsured in the interim. As it happens, the Democrat-passed budget this year expands BHP enrollment by 6,500, but that's a small part of the many scores of thousands lost in recent years, and besides, veterans already have the Veterans Administration. So what Jacobsen has done is bumping uninsured people off of getting BHP in favor of people who have an entire federal medical system devoted to their needs.

Beyond that, anyone just returning from a tour of duty has already been receiving, for the length of their service, some of the country's most comprehensive medical insurance. They've had plenty of time to get their dental work done and their routine checkups finished, which is all the health care most of these generally young, generally physically fit people need. (There is, of course, usually a need for mental health counseling, but that's what the VA is supposed to be for.) Meanwhile, other folks on the BHP waiting list--perhaps too ill, or too old, or too saddled with kids or family responsibilities to consider signing up to get their ass shot off in Iraq (or maybe they just don't want to volunteer to go kill mostly civilians for a pointless war based on lies)--are going to remain uninsured while the vets get preferential treatment. Thanks to Ken.

This sucks.

And it's typical. For a variety of social and political reasons, our country spends enormous amounts of money giving to veterans, as some sort of presumed "thank you," services that should be available to everyone. At minimum, we owe no more societal thanks to one-time soldiers than we do to teachers, nurses, day care workers, and a whole host of other socially essential jobs that our politicians, usually including liberal Democrats like Jacobsen, couldn't give a rat's ass about. Somehow, inexperienced, unskilled young people getting suckered into volunteering to go murder people in another part of the world--and that's all our so-called "defense" establishment has been doing for the last 50 years--is considered more noble and essential than those other professions. Even by liberals. Fuck that. --G.P.

The Sonics lost. Now there's a familiar phrase this year.

This time, however, they lost where it counted: in the state legislature, where the basketball team was seeking an extension and redirection of the hotel and restaurant tax used to build the Mariner's playpen a decade ago. The Sonics wanted a new arena of their own, to replace Key Arena, not because it's too small (they can't sell half the seats these days) but because they can't sell their cushy luxury suites to corporate fat cats. The Sonics have decided this is not because they suck (which they do), but because of the nicer taxpayer-built hospitality suites for the very rich that the Seahawks and Mariners have. So the Sonics wanted $400 million from us to build even nicer ones of their own, a mere ten years after we paid over $70 million to refurbish Key Arena already. Hey, why not just take out all those unused regular seats and put some new suites there?

Amazingly, the state legislature did not go along this year, even though powerful legislators like Renton's Margarita Prentice were pushing it. The Sonics even "generously" agreed to get only $176 million, and pay in some of their own money, in a "compromise" package floated Thursday to save the day. It didn't work. Why? Because the state has more urgent needs and not nearly enough money available to pay to address all of them. (Exhibit A: Health care.) And, even more to the point, because nobody outside Sonics owner Howard Schulz, his paid staff, the media whores who make money off of pro sports, and about two dozen season ticketholders thought it was a good idea. And, as Olympia's legislators may have found out, a whole lot of people in Seattle are still pissed off that $2 billion in publicly funded stadia were rammed down our collective throats last decade, and now those folks will never, ever support a Sonics or other pro sports proposal using our money. Ever.

A number of other Olympia bills died this year. Among them: the journalists' shield law proposed in December by Attorney General Rob McKenna. The bill got it from both sides: people who thought it was too strong, others (like me) who thought it was too weak. And proponents apparently didn't make their case very clearly, judging from this idiotic sentence in the P-I Friday: "Sen. Brian Weinstein, D-Mercer Island, worried that bloggers and one-time freelancers could be classified as reporters under the legislation...". Problem is, that was the worst flaw of the bill: it only covered people who made "a substantial portion" of their income from journalism. In other words, it didn't cover bloggers or most free-lancers, even though such folks use exactly the same skills and have exactly the same professional needs as a full time staff member, and the bill should have included them. Strike another blow for our well-informed Seattle area Democratic liberals (Sonics booster Prentice is one, too...) in Olympia. --G.P.

Alaska's crusty old Republican powermonger, Sen. Ted Stevens, vowed vengeance when Washington's Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell, up for re-election this year, nearly single-handedly led the successful fight to derail a sleazy backdoor attempt last December by Stevens to legalize oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Stevens has a lot of corporate campaign donors in Washington state, and he promptly set them to work raising money for Cantwell's probable challenger this year, Republican former insurance executive and lobbyist Mike McGavick. But Stevens also did something else: he introduced a bill once again attempting to put large oil tankers, effectively banned since a 1977 bill by Sen. Warren Magnuson, back into Puget Sound.

This month, Stevens did something almost unprecedented in the Senate, especially for him: he withdrew his own bill. He tried to put a good face on it, claiming he was deferring to the wishes of Washington state citizens (who hate the idea of Puget Sound turning into, you know, Prince William Sound). And not surprisingly, McGavick tried to take credit for "convincing" Stevens to pull back.

But, of course, that's not what happened. What happened was two things: McGavick was at risk of getting his ass kicked on this issue by being linked with it through his chief Alaskan fundraiser; the companies who usually cough up their funds for him may well have also been telling Stevens that the idea was political kryptonite in these parts. But more to the point, Cantwell had already kicked Stevens' ass: she had the votes to kill the bill, again, this time before it ever got out of committee. Rather than suffer another humiliating defeat, and give Cantwell another high-profile election year legislative victory highly popular with state voters, Stevens pulled back.

Stevens is likely to retire at the end of his sixth term in 2008. He's said authorizing drilling in ANWR is the last major piece of business he wants to accomplish before he retires. He's sure to keep trying over the next three years, and if nothing else we need to keep Cantwell in place to help ensure he fails. And if he retires unsatisfied, whatever her other failings (and they are many), we may all thank Maria for that. --G.P.

Disgraced Republican ex-Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham was sentenced to eight years, four months in prison; he also got $3.7 in fines and restitution. Cunningham's corruption was so brazen he actually had a rate card, listing how much he needed to be bribed to make military contracts of various sizes happen for his "clients." Cash, cars, houses, yachts...you name it. And Cunningham was no lone wolf; his case has links to Tom DeLay's woes, to the Abramoff scandal, and to the whole web of College Republican zealots now using the federal government to bilk taxpayer for fun, profit, and profit.

Prosecutors say this was the worst, most brazen, longest-running case of corruption by a sitting Congressperson in the country's history. Most telling was a comment by the judge, to the effect that the Dukester chose to do this even though he could have retired at any time and then made a similar fortune in private business. That's what most retired Congresspeople do, trading on their experience and personal contacts on the Hill to cash in with corporate lobbying or board positions or "consulting."

All true. He could have made just as much money quite legally, just like everyone else does. How telling is that? And we're not even talking about the legalized bribery that is campaign financing. The whole system stinks to high heaven. Republicans are in power right now, so they're getting the most money, they're the ones getting greedy, and they will be the ones getting caught. But Democrats are playing the same game. --G.P.