9-11 report fodder for candidates
The report of the 9-11 Commission might have been bipartisan, but the response to the report wasn’t necessarily so.
Take the back-and-forth between Sen. Patty Murray and her would-be replacement, Rep. George Nethercutt.
Murray urged Congress to act on the panel’s recommendations in a “spirit of unity.” She also praised her former Republican seatmate, Slade Gorton, who served on the commission. But later she criticized President Bush for scrimping on things like port security, one of the chief bones she picks with the administration.
Nethercutt’s campaign shot back with a missive that suggested Murray was somehow responsible for terrorist attacks because she voted to cut the intelligence budget by some $6 billion in the mid-1990s.
“9-11 Report shows fallacy of Murray’s votes to cut intelligence/Murray voted to undermine U.S. intelligence operations,” it trumpeted in a press release.
Only if one reads the attack missive carefully does one realize that it’s talking about votes that didn’t pass, so any “undermining” of intelligence the Nethercutt troops infer is hypothetical.
The attack is really a recycled complaint that’s several months old. As reported in The Spokesman-Review on May 30, the biggest chunk of that amount was a 1994 proposal to shift $5.4 billion from a military satellite program to special education programs. It failed nearly 2-to-1, but joining Murray in that vote were Gorton and some pretty conservative Republicans, like Mississippi’s Trent Lott.
Just stopping by
Vice President Dick Cheney is planning a stop in the Tri-Cities on Monday to help Dino Rossi’s quest to be the first GOP governor in Washington since – OK, think fast, since when?
Cheney will be at the Three Rivers Convention Center in Kennewick for a fund-raising lunch.
Not wanting to cede the Tri-Cities to the GOP unchallenged, the Democrats are countering with a No. 2 of their own, Lt. Gov. Brad Owen.
Owen isn’t actually coming to Eastern Washington. He’s inviting the news media to dial in to a telephonic press conference at 9:30 a.m., at which he will apparently wax eloquent and respond to Cheney’s visit before it actually occurs.
Perhaps the time when political adversaries actually listened to what an opponent said before issuing a response is as outdated as an eight-track tape machine.
And the answer to the above question is: Washington’s last Republican governor, John Spellman, served from 1981-84.
Cyber candidates
It’s possible to do almost anything online these days, including becoming a candidate in Washington state. Secretary of State Sam Reed will demonstrate that Monday morning by filing for re-election from his campaign headquarters.
Efficiency experts might wonder why Reed, the state’s top elections officer, doesn’t just drop off his paperwork on his way into the office. But that wouldn’t do much to emphasize the point that Washington was the first state to allow online filing in 2002. Or point out for Reed’s campaign that this happened under his watch.
So Reed is inviting folks to his campaign HQ to watch him register online. Which begs the question: Why not hook up a Web Cam and let everyone who wants watch it on the Internet?
In any case, if you’re thinking of running for office and don’t want to stand in line at the county or state elections office, go to www.secstate.wa.gov, click on the “Candidate filing” link on the left column, and follow the instructions.
Listening in
Want to hear the Democratic National Convention live? Spokane Public Radio’s KSFC will have it on from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., Monday through Friday. For those political junkies who just can’t get enough of the convention, the station will also have convention coverage and commentary each morning from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. They’re at 91.9 FM.