FEBRUARY 2008
FINAL: Washington State Democratic Caucus Results SEATTLE – More than 250,000 Washington Democrats attended Saturday’s presidential caucuses, shattering the 2004 turnout record of 100,000. Senator Barack Obama won the equivalent of 52 of the 78 pledged delegates available in Washington State, while Senator Hillary Clinton received the remaining 26.

Washington state will send a total of 97 delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Denver this summer. 19 of those delegates are unpledged, and 78 are pledged. Of the 78 pledged delegates, 51 are allocated by the Congressional District Results, and the remaining are allocated based on the statewide results.

***Aggregate numbers by Congressional District appear in the table below. A spreadsheet detailing the number of delegates elected in each CD is attached.

“Washington Democrats made their voices heard in record numbers, taking advantage of this historic opportunity to help determine the next president of the United States,” said Dwight Pelz, Chair of the Washington State Democrats. “This massive Democratic turnout suggests Washingtonians are energized and ready for change in the other Washington, and will be organized and ready to support our nominee and prevent 4 more years of George W. Bush’s disastrous agenda via John McCain.”

Breakdown by Congressional District

CD1, Clinton: 2, Obama: 4, Total: 6
CD2, Clinton: 2, Obama: 4, Total: 6
CD3, Clinton: 2, Obama: 3, Total: 5
CD4, Clinton: 1, Obama: 2, Total: 3
CD5, Clinton: 2, Obama: 3, Total: 5
CD6, Clinton: 2, Obama: 4, Total: 6
CD7, Clinton: 2, Obama: 7, Total: 9
CD8, Clinton: 2, Obama: 4, Total: 6
CD9, Clinton: 2, Obama: 3, Total: 5

Total, Clinton: 17, Obama: 34, Total: 51
Extrapolating same formula to apply to the statewide result adds:

Obama: 18
Clinton: 9

TOTAL BREAKDOWN:
OBAMA: 52 Delegates
CLINTON: 26 Delegates


APRIL 2007

published on Monday, March 19, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
Impeachment As an Act of Patriotism
by Richard W. Behan

When people who are honestly mistaken learn the truth, they will either cease being mistaken, or cease being honest.
-- Anonymous

We the American people would not do what George Bush and Richard Cheney have done in Iraq, all of it in our name. We would not, for utterly fabricated reasons, invade and occupy a sovereign country without provocation, killing hundreds of thousands of its citizens, driving millions more from their homes as refugees, torturing prisoners, destroying the country’s economy and infrastructure, fomenting a vicious sectarian civil war, sacrificing 3,200 American lives, squandering half a trillion dollars, dangerously destabilizing the Middle East, blackening our country’s character, and defaming every American citizen.

We are not a devious, savage, and warlike people. With considerable merit we think of Americans as honest, decent, and law-abiding, generous, tolerant, and humane. And we are patriotic, devoted to our country and to its ideals of freedom, democracy, peace, justice, and honesty in government.

The huge disconnect between who we are and what our government is doing in Iraq is painfully apparent, and the gap is insuperable.

It is imperative, therefore, that we hold the President and Vice President accountable not only for breaking domestic and international laws, but for violating the ethical and institutional essence of America and the ideals of her people. To rescue our country's elemental decency and to assure the security of its governing principles, it is our patriotic duty to impeach George Bush and Richard Cheney.

We consented to the invasion of Iraq because history told us we could trust our government to tell the truth. We were not naïve: the Vietnam war was also launched on a fabrication, but that was an aberration. We would not and did not expect it to be repeated. So we trusted and believed George Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, and Colin Powell when they spoke to us. They said Saddam Hussein was complicit in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. They said he had terrifying weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them to our shores. They said he could soon trigger a nuclear device in our country, killing hundreds of thousands of American people.

None of this was true. It was propaganda, intentionally designed by the White House Iraq Group to mislead the Congress and the American people. That is fraud, and fraud is a crime. Given the magnitude at which it was practiced, and the epic consequences, few would disagree: it is a high crime and misdemeanor. We need to impeach Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, as Elizabeth de la Vega has written, not as a matter of politics but as a matter law.

Brilliantly and knowingly, the Bush Administration introduced full-strength surrealism into our public discourse, in the form of their amorphous and fraudulent "global war on terrorism." They asked for our consent and the consent of the Congress to undertake it; thoroughly deceived, both the public and Congress acquiesced. There was no way a trusting country could know the "war on terrorism" was a fantasy: what the Bush Administration launched in fact was an international crime of military aggression. But, still denied the truth, we reaffirmed our consent by re-electing George Bush in 2004.

There were doubters and skeptics in the beginning, and the number of them grew. They dug deeply, researched carefully, and wrote clearly. In books and blogs the lies and deceptions of the Bush Administration were gradually unearthed and described for what they were. We began to sense we were honestly mistaken about the war and its rationale.

No source of an honest mistake is more insidious than a deliberate lie from a trusted party. No one wants to believe a betrayal has taken place. Even to suspect it is uncomfortable. That is why it has taken so long for some of us—and why it is taking so long for all of us—to learn the truth.

The election of 2006 measured our progress in doing so: many of us by then were no longer mistaken—enough to tip the Congress barely against the President and his war.

The books and blogs became a flood. The facts are there, and if we are willing to confront them we cannot refute them: the Bush Administration is unmatched in our history for its duplicity and criminal behavior.

At least six books make compelling cases for impeachment: The Impeachment of George W. Bush, by Elizabeth Holtzman and Cynthia Cooper; The Genius of Impeachment, by John Nichols; The Articles of Impeachment, by the Center for Constitutional Rights; Impeach the President: the Case Against Bush and Cheney, by Dennis Loo and Peter Phillips; The Case for Impeachment, by David Lindorff and Barbara Olshansky, and U.S. v Bush, by Elizabeth de la Vega. Tallying an overwhelming succession of impeachable offenses, all fraudulently disguised as worthy, even noble initiatives, the books tell the astonishing story of what the Bush Administration has done.

Why they resorted to fraudulence and lies about the wars is another story, and that has been assembled and documented, too.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were not prompted by the terrorist attacks. They were conceived long before the events of September 11, 2001, and the planning for both of them, done in guarded secrecy, was well underway by that time. The wars were not waged to bolster security at home, nor to spread democracy in the Middle East, and by no means do they constitute a "war on terrorism." All this is the carefully crafted propaganda that was and remains the central core of the fraudulence.

The truth about the wars is distinctly otherwise. They are bald acts of retrograde imperialism undertaken, as many have long suspected, for oil: to secure a pipeline route across Afghanistan for the Unocal Corporation and to force access to 115 billion of barrels of Iraqi crude for American and British oil companies—specifically Exxon/Mobil, Chevron/Texaco, Conoco/Phillips, BP/Amoco, and Royal Dutch Shell. This is not speculation; it is sordid fact. This story is also found in the books and blogs, but a summary can be found on the AlterNet website at http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/47489/ , and a video documentary entitled "The Oil Wars" is in development.

We were honestly mistaken because a trusted government betrayed us, but now we have learned the truth. We have a choice to make: we can cease being mistaken—or cease being honest.

If we are not honest, if we excuse the criminality of the Bush Administration through indifference to it, then we become accomplices. In doing so we accept the damage done to the American ideals of freedom, democracy, peace, justice, and honesty in government. And if we opt for appeasement now, we jeopardize those ideals in the future. Nothing could be less patriotic than failing to face, accept, and act on the truth we have learned.

Criminal behavior must be held accountable and justice must prevail. That is the rule of law, the fundamental premise of the American social contract, and it must not be compromised. If we are devoted to our country and to the sanctity of its ideals we must impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Nothing could be more patriotic.

Impeachment must be fully and clearly understood. To be impeached by the House of Representatives is to be indicted, to be formally accused: only that. It does not establish guilt or innocence: that is determined in a formal trial, with the Senate sitting as jury and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court serving as judge.

Beyond any conceivable doubt George Bush and Richard Cheney deserve to be formally accused.

And yet the 110th Congress dallies. It serves up a "non-binding resolution" of protest that passes the House and fails in the Senate, while asserting "impeachment is off the table." Impeachment is too "divisive" and a "waste of time."

The Congress can learn the truth about the Iraqi war as easily as the rest of us. Many of its members, however, nurture their ignorance of the hideous facts or remain indifferent, instead mouthing stern platitudes about our praiseworthy troops and keeping America safe.

They play the game the Administration has orchestrated. They take the surreal and fraudulent "war on terrorism" as a given, refusing to acknowledge its true nature—petroleum imperialism—or the criminal deception of the Bush Administration in packaging and selling it that way.

There is a glaring explanation for this timid behavior: the obscenely premature launch of the 2008 presidential campaign. The leadership of both parties and a dozen presidential candidates—many from the Senate--game the system, jockey for advantage and favorable imagery, and refuse to attack head-on the greatest episodes of Presidential malfeasance in the nation's history.

In their indifference—in their unwillingness to face, accept, and act on the truth and to call for impeachment—these public figures are less patriots than traitors, trading off the rule of law, trading off justice for partisan or presidential ambitions. That must stop. We desperately need the candidates and the Congress to subordinate presidential politics and focus instead on defending of our Constitution. And defending the Constitution demands impeachment.

Only impeachment can assure us and our children that America cannot and will not tolerate a dishonest government that mocks the rule of law. Only impeachment can persuade the world America truly stands for what its people revere: honesty, peace, justice, and a respected place among the community of nations.

Only impeachment can proclaim, with unambiguous clarity, the American people have ceased being mistaken.

Richard W. Behan lives and writes on Lopez Island, off the northwest coast of Washington state. He is working on his next book, To Provide Against Invasions: Corporate Dominion and America's Derelict Democracy. He can be reached at rwbehan@rockisland.com.


MARCH 2007

Guest columnist, Jim McDermott
Give Department of Peace a chance

Special to The Times
from the Seattle Times In a world torn by conflict, I can't think of a better time, or a greater need, for America to act as a force for good at home and around the world.

A bill recently was reintroduced in Congress that will go a long way toward bringing peace both at home and abroad. The measure would create a Cabinet-level Department of Peace.

The proposed department will give voice to the latest research and expertise on peaceful efforts in many areas — from safe schools to international arms control.

The legislation, which I am co-sponsoring, would fund, support and coordinate programs already in existence — in schools, prisons, police departments, educational institutions, charitable organizations and elsewhere — that are proven to reduce domestic and international violence and enhance the security and health of all Americans.

I believe a Department of Peace represents the ideals on which this country was founded. Our legislation, HR 808, embodies the dreams and aspirations of Americans to live in a nation that uses its great strength to support the cooperative efforts of people throughout the world to create peace.

In my years as a congressman and as a physician in the U.S. military, I have recognized repeatedly that the interests of the one cannot triumph over the interests of the many; that the security concerns of the United States are best served by diplomacy and cooperation rather than brute force.

A Department of Peace won't be just another top-heavy bureaucratic organization. Much like the Environmental Protection Agency, it will provide a uniting framework for existing organizations scattered throughout the U.S. currently working to bring peace to our communities and the world.

The department will research, propose and facilitate practical, field-tested solutions to reduce conflict, providing financial and institutional heft to our current ineffectual efforts to deal with all forms of domestic and international violence and discord. And it will help develop curricula to educate students in grades K-12 on how to resolve conflict peacefully.

Internationally, a Department of Peace will advise the president and Congress on the most innovative techniques to establish and promote peace among nations, and will research and analyze the root causes of war to help prevent conflicts from escalating to the point of violence.

It will create a Peace Academy, on par with the Military Service Academies, to train civilian peacekeepers and the military in the latest nonviolent conflict-resolution strategies and approaches. And it will provide a direct voice at the president's table to offer peaceful solutions to conflicts before they disintegrate into violence.

The president's recently proposed federal budget would allocate more than $439 billion to our military, an increase of more than 5 percent. A Department of Peace will cost a small fraction of that, or approximately $8 billion a year. That amount is less than we currently spend each month for the war in Iraq.

Clearly, a Department of Peace will be a bargain — and, it will be money well spent. It will save dollars — and, more importantly, it will save lives.

As the globe shrinks, as the peoples and countries of the world become more entwined in both commerce and security, our consciousness has expanded.

I've learned there's something about the human spirit, about the spirit of Americans everywhere, that strives for cooperation rather than domination. We all yearn for peace, and for the prosperity that peace brings. We all yearn for a better world for our children and our children's children. We want for them the best education possible; health care that encompasses and embraces everyone; a retirement secure from the plagues and worries that come with inadequate income and support; a healthy environment; and a world freed from the horrors of war.

By reducing the immense costs of violence both domestically and internationally, a U.S. Department of Peace will help secure these essentials. It will demonstrate to our citizens and to the world that the United States is committed to using its great strength in partnership with all peoples to work for, and champion, peace. And, it will provide a beacon of hope for everyone that the peace we yearn for is not an unachievable dream, but an obtainable reality.

As President Bush correctly noted, Americans are a peace-loving people. Now is the time to put these words into action.

U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Seattle, represents the 7th Congressional District of Washington state. For more information about the proposed U.S. Department of Peace, go to www.dopcampaign.org

Copyright © The Seattle Times Company

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FEBURARY FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - Jan. 22, 2007 Kohl-Welles Calls For No Escalation of Iraq War

OLYMPIA - With the cost of the war in Iraq mounting and President Bush calling for an escalation of troop levels, Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D-Seattle) and several other lawmakers have introduced Senate Joint Memorial 8003, which calls on Congress and President Bush to not escalate involvement in Iraq or increase troop levels. In addition, the joint memorial requests that Congress pass legislation requiring the President to seek Congressional approval before spending taxpayer money on any escalation of the war.

"At a time when the overwhelming majority of Americans are opposed to the President's policy in Iraq, it is unconscionable to commit additional funds to this foreign policy debacle, nor to put any additional soldiers in harm's way, without appropriate oversight by the Congress" said Senator Kohl-Welles.

According to iCasualties (http://icasualties.org/oif/ByState.aspx), 59 Washington soldiers have lost their lives during the course of hostilities in Iraq. The National Priorities Project estimates that as of September 2006, the cost of the war in Iraq to Washington taxpayers is $8.6 billion.

The 36th Legislative District includes Magnolia, Queen Anne, Ballard, Phinney Ridge, Crown Hill, Fremont, Greenwood, Lake Union, Loyal Heights, Sunset Hill and part of Belltown.

For more information: Ken Camp, (360) 786-7670 For interviews: Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles, (360) 786-7670

August, 2006

This month's commentary comes from Bruce E. Johansen in his article, "The Paul Revere of Global Warming" in the August issue of The Progressive. Check out his complete article in this publication. "James E. Hansen is the Paul Revere of global warming. The director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City since 1981, Hansen was in the news last year when The White House saddled him with a twenty-four-year-old media handler, who ordered Hansen to clear all his statements first...Resisting the gag order, Hansen ultimately prevailed."

"Hansen's interest in global warming began accidentally. In 1976, he was serving as a principal investigator on the Pioneer Venus Orbiter when a Harvard postdoctoral researcher asked him to help calculate the greenhouse effect on human-generated emissions on the Earth's atmosphere. Ever since, Hansen has immersed himself in the problem, and he has not minced words about global warming's dangers."

"In 1981, Hansen, with several Goddard colleagues, was the first to use the term "global warming" in a scientific context...In 1988...Hansen went public with warnings about global warming before the U.S. Senate..." This testimony appears in the film, "An Inconvenient Truth", as U.S. Senator Al Gore had called this hearing. "'The greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now,' he testified, anticipating an increased frequency of extreme climatic events."

"Critics accused him of crying wolf. But he had a ready response. 'When is the proper time to cry wolf, Hansen asked, must we wait until the prey, in this case, the world's environment, is mangled by the wolf's grip?'"

"'How long have we got?' Hansen asked in a piece published on the front page of the London Independent on February 17, 2006. 'We have to stabilize emissions of carbon dioxide within a decade. We cannot wait for new technologies like capturing emissions from burning coal. We have to act with what we have. This decade, that means focusing on energy efficiency and renewable sources of energy that do not burn carbon. We don't have much time left.'"


July, 2006

This month, Al Gore's film, "An Inconvenient Truth" opened in theater's across America. So this month's commentary is a little different - please see this film if you haven't already. The website for the film, www.climatecrisis.net, states...

"Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb. If the vast majority of the world's scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics, and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced."

As if the crisis in the Near East was not enough!

Al Gore says, "What changed in the US with Hurricane Katrina was a feeling that we have entered a period of consequences..." The film "An Inconvenient Truth" offers an "inspirational look at one man's fervent crusade to halt global warming's deadly progress in its tracks by exposing the myths and misconceptions that surround it." The film "ultimately brings home Gore's basic argument that we can no longer afford to view global warming as a political issue - rather, it is the biggest moral challenge facing our global civilization."

Al Gore's book, An Inconvenient Truth, came out the same time as the film and provides great photographs, charts, and info from the film. In the fall of 2006, a non-profit organization, The Climate Project, will begin a grassroots training program across the country to help present the case for action on global warming to community groups everywhere.


June, 2006

This month's commentary comes from Molly Ivins, in her monthly column "Small Favors" in the June issue of The Progressive. Check out her complete column in this publication.

"In 1983, I was a judge at the Terlingua Chili Cookoff, where we also held the First-Ever Terlingua Memorial Over, Under, and Through Mexican Fence-Climbing Contest. To be specific: a seventeen-foot cyclone fence with barbed wire at the top. Prize: a case of Lone Star beer. Winning time: thirty seconds."

"I tell this story to make the single point: The Fence will not work. No fence will work. The Great Wall of China will not work. Undocumented immigrants will come anyway."

"Old-fashioned anti-immigrant prejudice brings out some old-fashioned racists....Racists seem obsessed with the idea that illegal workers - the hardest-working, poorest people in America - are somehow getting away with something, sneaking goodies that should be for Americans. You can always avoid this problem by having no social services. This is the refreshing Texas model..."

For Molly's suggestions on how to deal with this issue, read her column.


May, 2006

This month's commentary comes from Matthew Rothschild, Editor of The Progressive, in his "Comment" in the May issue. Check out the complete column in this publication.

"Just because a course of action is foolish, irrational, costly, and bloody, doesn't mean the Bush Administration won't pursue it. And just because U.S. troops are bogged down in Iraq doesn't mean the Bush Administration has lost its appetite for military adventurism."

"It now appears to be gearing up to bomb Iran."

"There is a 75 percent likelihood that Bush will bomb Iran before the 2006 elections, Michael Klare, professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College, tells The Progressive."

"Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker has been warning for more than a year now that Bush will attack Iran. 'The guys on the inside really want to do this,' he said on CNN as far back as January 17, 2005. "in my interviews, I was repeatedly told that the next strategic target was Iran,' Hersh wrote in The New Yorker at that time."

"Joseph Cirincione, director for non-proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, used to think a bombing was unlikely. Not anymore. His sources tell him that senior Bush officials 'want to hit Iran hard,' he wrote on the website of Foreign Policy magazine on March 27.

"George Bush is a recidivist. His reckless, lawless appetite for war has yet to be sated. It is up to us, U.S. citizens, nonviolently, to restrain him."

Let your voice be heard on this issue!

April, 2006

This month's commentary comes from Hanan Ashrawi in The Progressive Interview by Jon Elmer in the April issue of The Progressive. Check out the complete interview in this publication.

"Hanan Ashrawi is a Palestinian legislator, academic, and intellectual who was reelected to the Palestinian Legislative Council in January's national elections. Ashrawi's party is the Third Way, a newly created political faction that won two seats in the 132-seat council. A frequently cited spokesperson for the Palestinian national movement, Ashrawi was a prominent member of the 1991 Madrid peace talks and was Palestinian National Authority minister of higher education and research in Yasser Arafat's cabinet from 1996 until 1998, when she resigned citing corruption and the mismanagement of peace negotiations. In 1998, she became the general secretary of MIFTAH, the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy. In 2003, Ashrawi was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize. Ashrawi has a doctorate in medieval and comparative literature from the University of Virginia. She was born in Ramallah during the British Mandate in Palestine; she lives there today."

Concerning the Israel-Palestine conflict, the election of Hamas to leadership, and recent unilateral actions by Israel, Ashrawi states, "Now, Israel has a perfect excuse to say we have no partner. All along when there were partners, Israel refused to cooperate by excluding any kind of Palestinian negotiations. Now it has the rationale: Look, they elected Hamas, so now we have no partner, we will press ahead with unilateralism. But the more unilateral Israel is, the more volatile the situation will be. Annexing land and dictating permanent status from a position of power is a recipe for disaster."

"Abu Mazen asked that the Gaza disengagement be agreed upon so that it was the outcome of negotiations and not the result of violence. Instead, Hamas was able to say it was their resistance that drove Israel from Gaza. The rise of Hamas is a product of the failures of political will in the international community, of the absence of the peace process, and of the increase in violence and ideology. Now is the time for the U.S., for the international community, the Quartet, to stand up and say, this is not finished - Israel does not have the right to act unilaterally, it does not have the right to wreak havoc and destroy the prospects for a peaceful solution."

March

This month's commentary comes from Molly Ivins, in her monthly column "Small Favors" in The Progressive, March, 2006. Check out the complete column in the publication, this is just a sample of her sound thinking.

"Mah fellow progressives, now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of the party. I don't know about you, but I have had it with the D.C. Democrats, had it with the DLC democrats, had it with every calculating, equivocating, triangulating, straddling, hair-splitting son of a bitch up there, and that includes Hilary Rodham Clinton."

"I don't see a damn soul in D.C. except Russ Feingold who is even worth considering for President. The rest of them seem to me so poisonously in hock to this system of legalized bribery they can't even see straight."

"Every Democrat I talk to is appalled at the sheer gutlessness and spinelessness of the Democratic performance."

"This is not a time for a candidate who will offend no one; it is a time for a candidate who takes clear stands and kicks ass." {A favorite Democratic expression}

Thank you, Molly!!!