A post  at "Down with Tyranny", Howie Klein's blog, researched and written by AB and put in context by Howie, has made me quite sad. http://www.downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/...

The piece describes some of Cathy McMorris' life - her family and what they did, her schooling at a wildly conservative Christian school, her immersion in the family business of Republican politics in Washington State and then her direct inclusion in Republican leadership in Washington D.C.  It talks extensively about McMorris' role in helping to cover up two GOP pedophile scandals, one in Washington State, the other in the House of Representatives.

Through it we see that McMorris doesn't seem to stand for anything; there is no issue that she fights for because she has lived with the consequences, like special needs for children with a disability or an awareness of transportation needs.  No thing in particular seems to matter for her.  She has pretty much stood for whatever the men around her have stood for.  That is what made me sad.  She hasn't ever been on her own.

Congressman Jay Inslee (D-WA) will be introducing an Amendment to HR 5631, the DOD Appropriations Bill, this afternoon that would deny the Administration funds to conduct illegal electronic surveillance except as authorized under FISA or chapters 119 or 121 of title 18, United States Code.  Were this to pass, it would be huge.  It would say that Congress is not going to fund an illegal action.

Inslee and co-sponsors Flake (R-AZ), Inglis (R-SC), Schiff (D-CA) and Van Hollen (D-MD), are saying you can't use tax dollars to break the law.  President Bush and his administration have to obey the law like all the rest of us.  

This Amendment would use the power of the purse to cut off the President's illegal behavior.  This is the role of the House.  And, according to Inslee, speaking on a conference call yesterday to bloggers back in Washington State, if the House doesn't make this type of surveillance of US persons illegal, "We might as well kiss off the Constitution."

Washington State has a second potentially competitive race (along with Darcy Burner's strong challenge to Dave Reichert in WA-08) this year with Peter Goldmark's entry into the race for Congress in Washington State's far eastern Congressional District.  The district is huge and geographically mostly rural but centers on the thriving city of Spokane where 65% of its voters live.

This last Wednesday, Goldmark rode into Spokane by horseback along the Centennial Trail with a gang of supporters for a kickoff rally.  He's a great candidate for the district, a cattle and wheat rancher from Okanogan County who has a doctorate in molecular biology, has a lab on his 8,000 acre ranch and does research on new strains of wheat and writes in scientific journals.  He has been director of the Washington State Agriculture Department and a member of the Washington State Biodiversity Council.  He was a regent of Washington State University until he quit to run for this office.  

"Right-wing partisans like Tomlinson have always attacked aggressive reporting as liberal." So says Bill Moyers about former Corporation for Public Broadcasting Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson. Now that the CPB Inspector General's report has concluded that Tomlinson violated the law in his attempts to "re-balance" public broadcasting, Moyers is talking.  In the interview today with Broadcasting & Cable, Moyers responds to the question of whether or not his show, NOW, was biased:

We were biased, all right--in favor of uncovering the news that powerful people wanted to keep hidden: conflicts of interest at the Department of Interior, secret meetings between Vice President Cheney and the oil industry, backdoor shenanigans by lobbyists at the FCC, corruption in Congress, neglect of wounded veterans returning from Iraq, Pentagon cost overruns, the manipulation of intelligence leading to the invasion of Iraq.

We were way ahead of the news curve on these stories, and the administration turned its hit men loose on us.