I’ll do a fuller convention preview post in the morning, but just a final mention – I have a petition to tell the CDP to support the resolution to impeach federal Judge Jay Bybee, who sits on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals despite having been one of the architects of the flawed legal justification for torture committed in our name.  There are musings about independent commissions and special prosecutors in Washington, but I believe we must press on all fronts, and the impeachment of Bybee, who sits on the 9th Circuit in San Francisco, is particularly acute here in this state.  Currently I have 4,435 signatures – please sign by midnight tonight and I will present yours and everyone else’s name at the Resolutions Committee tomorrow at 3pm.  If we get this resolution passed, we will have a powerful tool to force California members of Congress to initiate hearings in the House Judiciary Committee to impeach Bybee.  I think it’s absolutely possible that we make this happen over the weekend – but the leadership of the CDP needs to know that there’s a large and powerful constituency behind this effort.

Please sign the petition if you haven’t already.  And the Courage Campaign has their own petition, with around 8,500 signatures at last count.  13,000 people arguing for impeachment is a powerful number – let’s go for more.

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Budget Reform Now group released their first TV ad yesterday, full of buzzwords and bullet points (“Hold the politicians accountable!”) and admitting that the package includes a “spending limit,” which is certainly further than the Democratic legislative leadership has been willing to go.  But as one-line summations of the election goes, you can’t get much better than future chair of the CDP John Burton, who took a pass on giving his specific voting choices for May 19, but who uttered this classic quip:

In any case, pressed on the question of whether his lifelong bleeding heart liberalism would allow him to back some of the permanent budget cuts that would result if Prop. 1A is passed, Mr. Almost Chairman responded with a classic Burtonism:

“I think when it’s all over, the ones getting fucked will be the poor people.”

Now, I could give you the charts showing how spending will be forced down and payments to the reserve fund mandated even in bad budget years, or offer the example of TABOR’s spending cap in Colorado, which was disastrous.  And I could follow you through the contours of this bad public policy and how it does nothing to relieve the structural problems that can get California out of the ditch.  But I cannot improve upon that line.  I’ve been critical of Burton in the past, based on the need for forward-thinking strategies at the CDP, but I’ve never questioned his liberalism.  And you have to give him the credit for this, er, bon mot.

Now who will have the guts to put it on a mailer?

Jane Harman is not doing herself any favors with her insistent maintaining of innocence in the AIPAC/wiretapping scandal.  First off, her instinct to lash out in anger, saying that she is about secret wiretaps and considering the taps an abuse of power, really comes off badly, considering that she lobbied to spike the NYT story revealing the Bush Administration’s warrantless wiretapping program.  It’s darn near impossible to reconcile her past statements with this new image as a civil liberties extremist.

So if I understand this correctly — and I’m pretty sure I do — when the U.S. Government eavesdropped for years on American citizens with no warrants and in violation of the law, that was “both legal and necessary” as well as “essential to U.S. national security,” and it was the “despicable” whistle-blowers (such as Thomas Tamm) who disclosed that crime and the newspapers which reported it who should have been criminally investigated, but not the lawbreaking government officials.  But when the U.S. Government legally and with warrants eavesdrops on Jane Harman, that is an outrageous invasion of privacy and a violent assault on her rights as an American citizen, and full-scale investigations must be commenced immediately to get to the bottom of this abuse of power.  Behold Jane Harman’s overnight transformation from Very Serious Champion of the Lawless Surveillance State to shrill civil liberties extremist […]

Besides, if Jane Harman didn’t do anything wrong — as she claims — then what does she have to hide?  Only Terrorists and criminals would mind the Government listening in.  We all know that government officials have better things to do than worry about what innocent Americans are saying.  If she did nothing wrong — if all she was doing was talking to her nice constituents and AIPAC supporters about how she could be of service — then Bush officials obviously weren’t interested in what she had to say.

Beyond that, even if there were “illegal” acts committed here, surely we should be rushing to retroactively immunize those responsible, just as Harman eagerly advocated and engineered and then voted for when it came to the telecoms who broke our laws and enabled illegal spying on American citizens.  That was when she voted to gut FISA protections and massively expand the Government’s power to eavesdrop on Americans with no warrants as part of the Cheney/Rockefeller/Hoyer Surveillance State celebration known as the “FISA Amendments Act of 2008.”

This goes double for Steny Hoyer, who’s out there whining about wiretapping after pushing the FISA Amendments Act through the House.

Worse, Harman’s appearance on NPR went completely off the rails, as she admitted key elements of the conversations unwittingly (over):

Robert Siegel: First, do you remember the phone call in question? Who is the other party and is that a fair description of what was discussed?

Rep. Jane Harman: We don’t know if there was a phone call. These are three unnamed sources, former and present national security officials, who are allegedly selectively leaking information about a phone call or phone calls that may or may not have taken place.

RS: But are you saying that you really don’t have any recollection at all of a phone conversation like this?

JH: I’m saying that, No. 1, I don’t know that there was a phone conversation. If there was and it was intercepted, let’s read exactly what I said to whom. We don’t know who that was either.

RS: But, indeed, if what happened was, initially, your phone wasn’t tapped [and that] the person you were talking with was being tapped – and if that was an investigation of a foreign agent, is it realistic to think that anybody is going to release a completely unredacted transcript of that conversation?

JH: Well, let’s find out. I mean, the person I was talking to was an American citizen. I know something about the law and wiretaps. There are two ways you do it. One is you get a FISA warrant, which has to start with a foreign suspected terrorist, a non-American foreigner. If this was FISA, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, that would have had to happen.

RS: But if you know that it was an American citizen –

JH: If it was Article III, FBI wiretap, that’s different. But I don’t know what this was. And I don’t know why this was done. And I don’t know who the sources are who are claiming that this happened are and I think –

RS: But you are saying that you know it was an American citizen. So that would suggest that you know that there was a –

JH: Well, I know that anyone I would have talked to about, you know, the AIPAC prosecution would have been an American citizen. I didn’t talk to some foreigner about it.

RS: You never spoke to an Israeli? You never spoke to an Israeli about this.

JH: Well, I speak to Israelis from time to time. I just came back from a second trip to Israel in this calendar year. I’ve been to the Middle East region as a member of Congress 22 times and was in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Israel and Turkey just a week ago.

I’m writing this blind, because my head just exploded.

Lucas O’Connor has a bit more.  Let’s be clear – the AIPAC spying case has always been dodgy, the principals may not even be tried, and the release of this story now is a bit curious.  But Harman’s hypocrisy on this issue is clear, her efforts at spin control insulting to anyone’s intelligence, and her efforts to spike the warrantless wiretapping story during the 2004 Bush/Kerry election unconscionable.

Incidentally, Nancy Pelosi came out today saying she had been briefed by the Justice Department about the Harman wiretap several years ago, but she “wasn’t at liberty at the time of the briefing to let Ms. Harman know.”  She also said that the disclosure had no bearing on Harman losing out on the top position at the House Intelligence Commitee.

The SEIU donated $500,000 to the No on 1A campaign, the first truly major expenditure by any group against the ballot measures on May 19.  The No on 1A campaign now hold about $1 million in their bank account.  While this is dwarfed by the money dumped into the Yes campaign by, among other groups, the CTA, billionaires like Jerry Perenchio, and Chevron, given the attitudes of the electorate even a little money on the No side could be enough to stop the onslaught and tip these measures.  Politicos understand this fairly well:

“It just got a lot harder,” said Dan Schnur, director of the University of Southern California’s Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics and a former Republican strategist.

“The biggest advantage the proponents have had all along is the lack of a well-funded opposition,” Schnur said. “Historically, you don’t need to outspend ballot measures to beat them, and in a low-turnout election this is a decent amount of money.” […]

“Right now there’s a tremendous tendency to reject anything out of Sacramento,” said Republican strategist Dave Gilliard.

Good for the SacBee, by the way, for pointing out that Prop. 1A “has a long-term impact and would not directly alter the budget until 2011.”

I’ve been speaking at a lot of grassroots Democratic groups against these measures, purely on the public policy merits, and the overriding sentiment I’m seeing out there lines up with what Dave Gilliard says there.  The disconnect between the establishment and the grassroots is truly striking.  People don’t feel like their concerns have been met, either this year or for the last thirty, really.  They see another layer of budget dysfunction forced upon the voters that fails to get at the structural problems.  And now, they’re starting to see their voices manifested with action, as well as the mother’s milk of California politics, money.

You can forget the John Garamendi to CA-03 boomlet, because he is officially announcing his intention to run for the vacancy in CA-10 caused by the departure of Ellen Tauscher, and he’ll even do a little campaigning today in Fairfield and Concord, at two one-stop employment centers.

Obviously, Garamendi felt outgunned monetarily in the Governor’s race, and thought that the CA-10 special election offered him the best shot at higher office.  It’s hard to fault him – this is a strategic play that makes a fair bit of sense.  While Sen. Mark DeSaulnier has nabbed the early endorsements, the polls show both him and Joan Buchanan with fairly low name ID in the district, so Garamendi’s long time in the public spotlight should serve him well.  And without question he would improve upon Tauscher in that district, and could emerge as a real leader.

However, I don’t see this as a slam-dunk yet.  Those DeSaulnier endorsements, including the major local politicians and labor, are all pretty crucial, although I suppose they could be adjusted.  Plus, there may be additional new candidates entering the race, which I’ll have more about tomorrow.

For today, John Garamendi has the stage.

Since it referenced me, let me start by shouting out to fellow Calitician Lucas O’Connor, writing on the front page of MyDD:

Since approximately the morning after election day in November, Dave Dayen has been writing over at Calitics about the dramatic Congressional pick-up opportunities in California that were missed in the Obama wave. Specifically, Obama carried 42 of California’s 53 districts (I won’t even begin right now to get into the state leg breakdown which is also a debacle), including eight districts held by Republicans in Congress. Well all of a sudden this week, the whole world is waking up to the Dayen gospel.

Attention started building about two weeks ago when the DCCC announced it would target all eight of these Obama-Republican California districts. But an announcement of DCCC targeting hasn’t always meant a lot, so to really get going it took a new report from California Target Book finding in part:

Not only is the current statewide Republican registration of 31% a historic low, but for the first time there is not a single congressional, state senate or assembly district that has a majority Republican registration.

Apparently Bob Mulholland sent out a press release waking up to these facts last week.  Now, I’m not going to hate on Mulholland for finally getting with the program.  But let’s make ourselves clear – this was true in 2006 and 2008 as well, and yet the state party failed to capitalize, by their own admission.  So it’s going to take more than one press release to show a commitment.  Republicans have obviously become repellent to the broad majority of Californians, and they’re too busy trying to recall each other to notice.  It’s upsetting that we haven’t used this unpopularity in the past two election cycles, and I hope that the CDP can catch up with the curve.

They can start with effective recruitment.  John Garamendi, who spoke to Greg Lucas as if he’s still a gubernatorial candidate but who by all accounts will be running for Congress, ought to be pushed to run in the 3rd District, where he is the largest landowner and where there is currently no viable candidate to beat Dan Lungren in a district that is trending Democratic, instead of the 10th, where there are multiple viable candidates.  Recruitment is an often-unremarked-upon but crucial element to winning elections.

Speaking of which…

• CA-04: This CapAlert piece certainly makes it sound like Charlie Brown might challenge Tom McClintock once again.

At the Jefferson-Jackson dinner at the Blue Goose Fruit Shed in Loomis, Brown and his wife, Jan, were honored as photographs flashed of Brown and supporters during four years of campaigning. The production was accompanied by songs from Bruce Springsteen’s “No Surrender” to Neil Young’s “Long May You Run.”

And then Brown stirred huge cheers when he hinted he might have the stamina for one more try for Congress in 2010.

“We’ll see what happens over the next few months – and whether you’ll have the opportunity to get into any pictures again,” Brown said.

In an interview, Brown said he is still mulling his prospects. He said he expects to decide by this fall.

We’re big fans of Charlie here at Calitics, and should he run again we’ll stand with him.  McClintock would have the power of incumbency and a red-leaning district but the rumblings I’m hearing out of there signal that residents and local pols aren’t all that enthused by the new Congressman’s performance.

• CA-32: The LA Times weighs in with an overview of the 32nd race to replace Labor Secretary Hilda Solis set for May 19.  They list Judy Chu and Gil Cedillo as the front-runners (though Emanuel Pleitez is profiled) and suggest that the race is a harbinger of the changing, minority-majority face of Southern California politics.  They also mention the Betty Tom Chu controversy, as well as some allegations on the Cedillo side.

Judy Chu supporters suspect that Republican Betty Tom Chu, a Monterey Park councilwoman and a political opponent of Judy Chu, entered the race to confuse voters and harm the chances of her distant relative by marriage. Tom Chu said last week she did not have time to discuss her candidacy, but earlier told the San Gabriel Valley Tribune that she is running because she could not support any of the other candidates and wanted to offer voters an alternative.

Apparently motivated by concerns that the large number of Latino candidates in the race would split the vote in that group and give Judy Chu the edge, there also were signs of jockeying.

Democratic candidate Francisco Alonso, a former mayor of Monterey Park, and a campaign official for Democratic actor/filmmaker Stefan “Contreras” Lysenko each said Cedillo called them shortly before filing closed and urged them to drop out. A Cedillo spokesman said the state senator was merely inviting the others to “work together” with him and did not intend to discourage them from running.

Over the weekend, Cedillo won the endorsement of the LA County Young Democrats, while Chu garnered the endorsement of the state Democratic Party.

This Jane Harman/AIPAC scandal continues to grow.  It jumped from the inside the Beltway rag CQ Politics to The New York Times.

One of the leading House Democrats on intelligence matters was overheard on telephone calls intercepted by the National Security Agency agreeing to seek lenient treatment from the Bush administration for two pro-Israel lobbyists who were under investigation for espionage, current and former government officials say.

The lawmaker, Representative Jane Harman of California, became the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee after the 2002 election and had ambitions to be its chairwoman when the party gained control of the House in 2006. One official who has seen transcripts of several wiretapped calls said she appeared to agree to intercede in exchange for help in persuading party leaders to give her the powerful post.

But that’s not what advances the story today.  Harman has denied contacting DoJ abut the AIPAC case, though she left out contacting the White House, and she did not deny that the phone call existed.  Remember that a key part of the story concerned the idea that Harman was saved from prosecution on this by Alberto Gonzales, who “needed Jane” to help front for the Administration’s warrantless wiretapping program.  In today’s article, the Times drops this bombshell:

Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, said in a statement Monday that Ms. Harman called Philip Taubman, then the Washington bureau chief of The Times, in October or November of 2004. Mr. Keller said she spoke to Mr. Taubman – apparently at the request of Gen. Michael V. Hayden, then the N.S.A. director – and urged that The Times not publish the article.

“She did not speak to me,” Mr. Keller said, “and I don’t remember her being a significant factor in my decision.”

Shortly before the article was published more than a year later, in December 2005, Mr. Taubman met with a group of Congressional leaders familiar with the eavesdropping program, including Ms. Harman. They all argued that The Times should not publish.

Ultimately, it’s on Bill Keller whether or not to publish, so I don’t want to give Harman too much credit here.  But as Greg Sargent notes, this is a startling turn of events.  A Democratic Congresswoman acted on behalf of a Republican President’s NSA director to spike a story about illegal activity in the executive branch before a close Presidential election.  The ramifications are enormous.

This discussion between Harman and Taubman apparently happened before the wiretapped phone call between Harman and the Israeli agent, according to the TPM Muckraker timeline.  So Gonzales knew that Harman could be counted on to support the warrantless wiretapping program, because she had years of experience doing so at that point.

This gets uglier and uglier.  Small wonder that Harman was passed over for a position in the Obama Administration.

UPDATE: It is entirely possible that the CIA and Bush-era officials directed this set of leaks in a show of force.  That of course has nothing to do with Harman’s conversation with Taubman to try and get the NYT to spike the wiretapping story, which was confirmed by Bill Keller on the record.

UPDATE II: …Harman has released a letter calling on the Attorney General to release all transcripts and investigative material related to her collected by the Justice Department in 2005 and 2006.  This is a bit of misdirection, since by all accounts these were legal wiretaps of foreign agents.  But given the revelations about continued illegal wiretapping at the NSA, I understand Harman’s strategy.