Lewis County Democrats Headlines

State Attorney General Rob McKenna on Friday sued the state Republican Party over alleged campaign finance violations, leading the party to file its own lawsuit contending its First Amendment rights are being violated.

Shortly after the Republican attorney general filed his lawsuit in King County Superior Court, the state GOP filed its lawsuit against the state Public Disclosure Commission in U.S. District Court in Seattle.

“It is a violation of our constitutional rights for the government to attempt to deprive us of the opportunity to communicate with our members on the same terms as labor unions and insurance companies, and we believe our constitutional rights will ultimately be vindicated,” state GOP Chairman Luke Esser said in a written statement.

The lawsuits come after the Public Disclosure Commission asked McKenna to make a final determination as to whether state Republicans used the wrong account to pay for three mailers promoting Republican Dino Rossi over Democratic Gov. Chris Gregoire in the August primary election for governor. In a ruling last week, the commission said the party apparently committed multiple violations of campaign finance law.

The Republican Party said the mailings were “internal political communications” sent only to party members, as it defines them.

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Justice Department officials released new guidelines yesterday that empower FBI agents to use intrusive techniques to gather intelligence within the United States, alarming civil liberties groups and Democratic lawmakers who worry that they invite privacy violations and other abuses.

The new road map allows investigators to recruit informants, employ physical surveillance and conduct interviews in which agents disguise their identities in an effort to assess national security threats. FBI agents could pursue each of those steps without any single fact indicating a person has ties to a terrorist organization.

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Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin fought to protest atrocities in Sudan by dropping assets tied to the country’s brutal regime from the state’s multi-billion-dollar investment fund, she claimed during Thursday’s vice presidential debate.

Not quite, according to a review of the public record – and according to the recollections of a legislator and others who pushed a measure to divest Alaskan holdings in Sudan-linked investments.

“The [Palin] administration killed our bill,” said Alaska state representative Les Gara, D-Anchorage.

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Sarah Palin got her facts wrong in Thursday’s debate with Joe Biden when discussing where John McCain stands on new protections for homeowners facing foreclosures.

The Alaska governor incorrectly made it sound like McCain supports giving bankruptcy judges the power to rewrite mortgage payment terms on first homes.

He doesn’t.

The McCain campaign confirms to ABC News that Palin misstated McCain’s position.

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She might have undone whatever good will she earned with her “aw, shucks” Wasilla hockey mom ways, though, when she utterly failed to react after Biden choked up while discussing the death of his first wife and their daughter. “The notion that somehow, because I’m a man, I don’t know what it’s like to raise two kids alone, I don’t know what it’s like to have a child you’re not sure is going to — is going to make it — I understand,” he said, after Palin said her experience “as a mom” helped persuade McCain to pick her for the ticket. “I understand, as well as, with all due respect, the governor or anybody else, what it’s like for those people sitting around that kitchen table. And guess what? They’re looking for help. They’re looking for help. They’re not looking for more of the same.” Palin’s response was ice cold: “People aren’t looking for more of the same. They are looking for change. And John McCain has been the consummate maverick in the Senate over all these years.” For that matter, so was the way she brought up, apropos of not very much, Biden’s remark in July that offshore oil drilling was an attempt to “rape the continental shelf.” And the way she — not Biden — brought up his wife, Jill. “I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and God bless her,” Palin said. “Her reward is in heaven, right?” (That was followed immediately by Palin giving “a shout out” to her brother’s elementary school students.)

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Republican Dino Rossi’s new television ad attacking Gov. Chris Gregoire’s budgeting is less than accurate, and that angers the Democratic incumbent.

Her campaign says Rossi should pull the 30-second spot from the airwaves.

But that isn’t going to happen – any more than Gregoire was going to alter an ad earlier this month that oversimplified Rossi’s stand on stem-cell research.

Neither side is letting up as the rivals campaign leading into today’s third of five debates in an election that’s shaping up to be as close as their 133-vote photo finish four years ago.

Recent polls show the race is neck and neck.

The new Rossi ad hits on what might be the central theme of the campaign – how the state collects and spends taxes. But it falsely implies the state has a deficit today – and that Gregoire is proud of it.

In fact, the latest state revenue report issued this month showed Washington still has a surplus of $529 million, which could grow to more than $800 million if Gregoire’s orders to cut $290 million in spending over the next year bear fruit.

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Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell voted against the $700 billion Wall Street bailout package Wednesday, saying she was not “turning the keys of the U.S. Treasury over to the private sector.”

The Evergreen State’s other senator, Democrat Patty Murray, supported the legislation while acknowledging it was far from a “cure-all” for the nation’s economic woes.

The bill, which the House is expected to consider by Friday, contains a provision extending major tax breaks, including one allowing the deduction of state and local sales taxes on federal returns. That tax break has saved Washington state residents between $350 million and $500 million annually.

In a brief but heated speech on the Senate floor, Cantwell said the bailout essentially represented a misuse of federal tax dollars that are traditionally used to leverage private investment in rescuing ailing companies.

“The problem with the legislation before us is we are choosing winners and losers,” she said.

Murray, a member of Democratic leadership in the Senate, said the package was “an attempt to keep an already bad situation from getting worse. This is not the legislation I would have written. It’s not legislation I wanted to support.”

But, Murray said, “I will support this package because the American dream of owning a home or going to college is simply too important to take a back seat to politics or to be put at risk by the misdeeds of Wall Street.”

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Senator John McCain is giving up on his efforts to win the state of Michigan, his campaign said Thursday, in the latest sign that the faltering economy has reshaped the presidential race and cost Mr. McCain support in crucial states.

Ceding Michigan is a major blow to the McCain campaign, which had spent heavily on television commercials there and where Mr. McCain had campaigned repeatedly in the hopes that he could appeal to enough blue-collar voters, so-called Reagan Democrats and independent voters, to bring the state back into the Republican column in November.

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Joe Biden was substantive, thoughtful and in command. Sarah Palin ignored virtually every question and stuck to generalities and platitudes.

Yes Palin didn’t stumble as she did during the Katie Couric interviews. But she didn’t impress, either. It was all boilerplate–like she was giving a scripted pep talk, not proving she could handle the toughest job in the world.

Biden kept his cool, even though he clearly had a much greater mastery of virtually every subject discussed. He kept the heat on John McCain–where it should be–and forcefully defended Obama when Palin made ludicrous claims about transferring the surge to Afghanistan or “waving the white flag of surrender” in Iraq.

I’m a little surprised to see the talking heads on TV talking about what a great job Palin did. Maybe they just want this race to be closer than it currently looks. But most swing voters, in an instant snapshot, thought otherwise.

According to a CBS poll, 46 percent of uncommitted voters who watched the debate tonight thought Joe Biden was the winner. 21 percent thought Sarah Palin won, 33 percent thought it was a draw.

According to a CNN poll, 51 percent of voters though Biden won, compared to 36 percent for Palin.

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Dino Rossi is airing statewide radio and TV ads suggesting Gov. Christine Gregoire has ignored the state’s $3.2 billion budget shortfall.

The ads, titled “Denial,” never directly say that. But the ads repeat several times a Sept. 15 statement by Gregoire that “We do not have a deficit today.”

The ads assert the state has a deficit. A female narrator says about Gregoire: “Is she dishonest or is she in denial?”

The ad is inaccurate for this reason: The state is facing a projected $3.2 billion budget hole next year, but it does not have a deficit today.

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