CALIFORNIA YANKEE

Fire Challenges California Yannkee

Originally Posted December 19, 2004.

California Yankee has been temporarily interrupted by a house fire. All family and pets escaped uninjured. The firefighters did a great job, but boy do they make a mess. The house suffered significant damage and major smoke damage.

We are currently being cared for by friends and hope to find temporary quarters for the duration of the rebuilding soon.

In the meantime, posting at California Yankee is likely to be sporadic.

UPDATE: I have posted "The Fire," offering my recollection of last Saturday morning.

Rowland Finally Cops A Plea

The Hartford Courant reports that former Governor John Rowland pleaded guilty to a single conspiracy charge in a plea bargain that is expected to send him to prison.

In U.S. District Court a judge asked Rowland:

What is your plea?

"Guilty," Rowland answered, quietly.

According to the Courant, prosecutors have agreed to seek a federal prison term of 15 to 21 months and a fine of up to $40,000. Sentencing is tentatively scheduled for March 11.

California Yankee posted in July that Rowland was considering a deal that would be require him to plead guilty to an unspecified criminal charge and agree to a sentence of at least several months in a federal prison.

The Courant reports:

With his guilty plea, Rowland admitted to being part of a conspiracy, as Dorsey explained it, "to deprive Connecticut citizens of the honest services of its officials" - including the governor. The conspiracy also impeded "the lawful government functions of the Internal Revenue Service," prosecutors said in court papers.

"Lawful government functions of the Internal Revenue Service" sounds like a very fancy name for tax evasion. California Yankee first posted that Rowland could fall because of income tax evasion nearly a year ago.

Unfortunately, Connecticut's status as "Corrupt-icut" is not yet over. Other alleged participants in the conspiracy to "to deprive Connecticut citizens of the honest services of its officials" have not yet been brought to justice.

Is It Over?

After counting nearly 3 million ballots three different times, four lawsuits, seven weeks and a series of embarrassing mistakes in King County, Democrat Christine Gregoire finally came out ahead in Washington's gubernatorial election.

In the hand recount which ended yesterday after King County tallied 566 disputed ballots, Gregoire came out ahead by 130 votes.

According to the Seattle Times, Gregoire did not call on Rossi to concede, but said she would have conceded if she were the one who had lost the manual recount. However that statement is inconsistent with Gregoire's previous statements commenting on the two counts that Rossi won:

When she was 261 votes behind Rossi after the first count, Gregoire called the race a virtual tie. At 42 votes back after the first recount, she said it was, in fact, a tie. Now, she said, "It's time for this race and this election to be over."

This election isn't over yet. More litigation is possible or as the Seattle Times reports, there may be "a full-scale legal attack by Republicans that could lead to a new election."

The Democrats never seem to tire of playing the ends justify the means game. The will bend or change the rules until they win, or until the courts force them to stop.

UPDATE: At Captain's Quarters, Captain Ed said it best, posting:

The Democrats have managed to recount their way to victory, using the standard-bending and vote-mining methods they tried in Florida until the grown-ups made them stop.

Well said!

At Poliblog, Steven Taylor gets it exactly right posting, "if it was valid for the disputed ballots in King county to be reviewed to assure that no vote had been wrongly discarded, then a statewide canvassing to guarantee the same treatment to all ballots which might have been wrongly rejected ought to take place as well."

As Taylor also posts, the Washington Democratic Party has demonstrated that the fundamental issue for them isn’t “letting every vote count.” Like in Florida 2000, the Democrat's issue is letting every vote count that will be tallied for the Democratic Party's candidate.

At Outside The Beltway, James Joyner makes a good point posting:

It's amazing that, when they lost after the first and second count, the Democrats were anything but magnanimous. Now that the election has been stolen for them by corrupt election officials and partisan judges, they want the Republicans to be gracious about it.

.

Inauguration Protests Planned

The Associated Press reports that groups targeting President Bush's economic agenda, the legitimacy of his election and the war in Iraq plan a week of events protesting the president's inauguration:

"Our intention is to show President Bush and the world our movement is energized, mobilized and determined to fight back," said Gael Murphy, of the activist group Code Pink.

Inauguration week will feature rallies, marches and demonstrations with the focus on peaceful, family-friendly gatherings, said organizer Shahid Buttar. Hundreds of groups throughout the country will participate, Buttar said, including Mobilization for Global Justice and the Committee to ReDefeat the President, a PAC that sees Bush's presidency as illegitimately won.

The groups are even seeking permission to march along the Inaugural Parade route.

I support everyone's right to protest but these people are nothing more than sore losers bent on trying to prevent the winners from enjoying the victory.

President Bush - Time's 'Person of the Year'

Time Magazine named President Bush its 2004 "Person of the Year." Time cited President Bush's ability to reshape the rules of politics and secure a second term in office in the midst of what it calls an unpopular war:

For sharpening the debate until the choices bled, for reframing reality to match his design, for gambling his fortunes—and ours—on his faith in the power of leadership, George W. Bush is TIME's 2004 Person of the Year.

On ABC's "This Week," Time Managing Editor Jim Kelly said the magazine had also considered Karl Rove and the idea of the President Bush and Rove sharing the title before deciding to name the president. In the magazine Kelly wrote:

The winner of the "Person of the Year" is "the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or for ill, and embodied what was important about the year, for better or for worse."

President Bush was named "Person of the Year" in 2000. He joins presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton as a two time winner of the title. Roosevelt actually won the title three times.

Time got this one quite right. There is no one affected the news and our lives in 2004 than President Bush. Well done!

UPDATE: At Outside The Beltway, James Joyner posts that President Bush was the obvious choice.

At Yippee-Ki-Yay!, McGehee wonders who slapped an ounce of sense into Time.

At Sortapundit, Keith Taylor is in Disbelief.

At On The Third Hand, Kathy Kinsley expected Time to pick anybody else.

'Chemical Ali' To Be First Saddam Henchman Tried By Iraq

Reuters reports that Iraq's "Chemical Ali," Ali Hassan al-Majid, one of Saddam Hussein's most feared deputies, will be the first leader of the former regime to be tried for war crimes.

Asked if the trial would go ahead next week, Shaalan said: "Yes, God willing." But asked to repeat his response in English, he replied: "Next week, maybe, or in the middle of next month."

Mr al-Majid earned his nickname after leading the chemical attack on Kurds in Halabja during an offensive in 1987. He is also accused of masterminding the killing of hundreds of thousands in the wake of the big uprisings against Saddam Hussein in 1991 after the first Gulf War.

Lets get on with these trials. They will remind everyone what an evil regime was ruling Iraq.

Faithlessness Rejected

Minnesota's faithless elector could take a lesson from Nevada's electors.

The Nevada Appeal reports that Nevada elector John Marvel said he and other electors got letters from Democrats urging them to defect and switch their votes to Kerry:

"I filed my letter you know where," he added.

Thanks to Taegan Goddard's Political Wire for the tip.

Court Rejects Washington Democrats Recount Lawsuit

The Washington Supreme Court has issued an order rejecting the petition of the Washington State Democratic Party to order a reexamination of previously disqualified absentee and provisional ballots in the recount for Washington's gubernatorial election.

The Associated Press reports the court said that under Washington law, "ballots are to be 'retabulated' only if they have been previously counted or tallied" thereby excluding those ballots that had been disqualified by canvassing boards:

Thus, under Washington’s statutory scheme, ballots are to be “retabulated” only if they have been previously counted or tallied . . . .

It follows that this court cannot order the Secretary to establish standards for the recanvassing of ballots previously rejected in this election. [From the court's decision.]

The Seattle Times reported these details about Monday's oral argument before the Washington Supreme Court:

Burman [Democratic Party attorney David Burman] was grilled by Chief Justice Gerry Alexander. If Democrats want counties to reconsider all their rejected ballots, Alexander asked, why not reconsider all ballots found to be valid in the first two tallies?

"Is there something arguably unfair about that?" Alexander asked.

Burman said he didn't have evidence of votes improperly counted and that erring on the side of counting a vote does not pose the same constitutional problems as invalidating a ballot.

[. . .]

The attorney representing Reed's office [Secretary of State Sam Reed] told the court that the Legislature knew what it was doing in writing a law for a recount, not a recanvass, in case of a close election.

"The place to change the recount statute is the Legislature, not this court," Thomas Ahearn [the attorney representing the Secretary of State's Office] said. "And the time to change the recount statute is before the election, not in the middle of the ongoing recount.

"Refusing to rewrite our state's recount statute is not an equal-protection violation."

The attorney for the Republicans said Democrats had asked the court not just to rewrite the recount law, but to "reinvent Washington state's recount process."

"Your election law is not a blank coloring book to be filled at the desire of a candidate because they don't like the way a recount is going," Mark Braden said.

But several justices seemed reluctant to inject too much judicial power in the midst of a recount. The years since the disputed 2000 presidential election have brought more judicial scrutiny to elections; some judges appear concerned about what one legal commentator has called the increasing legalization of politics through litigation and court action in elections.

That seemed clear from an exchange between Burman and Justice Bobbe Bridge. Bridge asked him about the difference between recounting and recanvassing, and pointed out the problem if either side could continually ask for reconsideration of rejected ballots.

"How are we ever going to get finality in an election if that is the case?" Bridge asked.

Burman: "We are in favor of finality. But we are in favor of finality after it's done fully and fairly, accurately and civilly, and that is part of the manual-recount process."

Bridge: "Are voters supposed to take a lawyer now when they go to vote just to make sure everything" is done correctly?

Burman: "If they care enough, if they are worried enough about the errors, perhaps they should."

At Election Law, Rick Hanson posts that the court's decision appears to have no affect on the 561 uncounted ballots in King County that were discovered Sunday. Those ballots seem likely to tip the delicate balance of the election toward Gregoire, who claimed 58 percent of the vote in Kings County.

Republican Dino Rossi won the initial election count by 261 votes. Rossi also came out ahead in a mandatory machine recount by 42 votes.

Edwards Gets An Electoral Vote For President

The Associated Press reports that one of Minnesota's 10 presidential electors cast a vote for John Edwards, Kerry's vice presidential running mate:

Most electors chalked the vote up as a mistake rather than a purposeful political statement.

"I'm sure somebody made a mistake," said elector Michael Meuers of Bemidji. "I'm certainly glad that the Electoral College is not separated by one vote."

I don't see how it could be a mistake. According to the Associated Press, the Minnesota electors wrote their candidate's name on an 8½-inch-by-11-inch sheet of paper and put the ballots in a pine box. How does one mistakenly write the wrong name?

At Captain's Quarters, Captain Ed posts that to believe the Edwards vote was a mistake, you have to believe that the Democrats chose an elector incapable of remembering the name of their presidential nominee.

At Centrisity, Flash posts that it appeared that one elector may have thought at the time that they were casting the Vice Presidential ballot first.

At The House Of Wheels, Leigh posts that if this was a protest vote, it achieved absolutely nothing other than making President Bush's electoral college victory greater.

UPDATE: At Trolling in Shallow Waters, Kent posts that dimwittedness may disqualify electors after word of the Minnesota vote gets around.

At PolySciFi, Jody offers a few jokes at the expense of the Minnesota Democratic party.

At Blogs For Bush, Matt Margolis posts the elector voted for Kerry before he voted against him.

Democrats Offended By Bush Photo

In Lancaster, Pennsylvania Democratic City Council member Nelson Polite demanded that a baker remove photos of President Bush from his stand in Lancaster's farmers' market, saying the city needs a "healing period" following the bitterly contested presidential election.

According to the Associated Press, when the baker refused, Polite vowed to pursue a city ordinance that would ban all political items from public places in the city:

Polite said the photo offended city Democrats.

"I just feel that since it was a close election and the city's so divided, that we should have a healing period," Polite told the New Era of Lancaster.

I can just imagine the headlines had Republican official demanded the removal of a photo of a Democratic President.

At Blogs for Bush, Matt Margolis asks whether Democrats will protest history books that show President Bush's picture amongst all the other Presidents.