I’m not sure what to make of this, other than…yuck! This Congress, and this  man, John Doolittle, are so far beyond the pale that the words cease to have any meaning any more.  John Doolittle put personal relationships above the safety of women.  John Doolittle thought it was more important to protect a friend than protect people from being sexually assaulted.  Sound familiar? From Bob Salladay (h/t to Bayne of Blog, and kos):

Doolittle, then a state senator and attorney, served as an important character witness for the friend, David Roy Phipps, who eventually was sentenced to three years’ probation. Phipps also had his dental license placed on probation for five years by the state dental board, which required him to attend to patients only with an assistant at his side.
{snip}
Doolittle’s efforts may have proved effective for his friend in 1987. But in 1994, Phipps assaulted another patient, according to court documents filed with the 3rd Appellate District Court of Appeal.(LAT Political Muscle 10/17/06)

It’s a pattern with this man.  He cares less about the people that he serves than getting the best deal for his buddies.  It’s cronyism at its worse.  He has helped his good buddy Abramoff, and he’s helped his good buddy the sexual predator.

It’s about time that Doolittle moves along.

Read the endorsement here.  Same story: Pombo is corrupt and an embarassment.

(Updated, b/c my first draft was pretty cursory. – promoted by SFBrianCL)

Do you remember Henry Billings Brown?  Probably not.  But you probably know about the decision that he authored in 1896.

Plessy v, Ferguson, authored by Justice Brown, upheld as constitutional a Louisiana law that required that blacks and whites be segregated on different railway cars.  This decision laid the bedrock for “separate but equal” treatment, holding that it is permissible to discriminate against people as long as each group is provided similar accommodations.  Justice Brown held that “We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff’s argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it.”

After 58 years of living with “separate but equal,” the discriminatory concept was founds unconstitutional.  In Brown v. Board of Education, Justice Earl Warren wrote that separate facilities are inherently unequal.

You also may not know the name William McGuiness.  On October 5, 2006, 110 years after Plessy v. Ferguson, Justice McGuiness wrote an equally discriminatory court decision denying same sex couples the right to marry.  Justice McGuiness wrote that “By maintaining the traditional definition of marriage while simultaneously granting legal recognition and expanded rights to same-sex relationships, the Legislature has struck a careful balance to satisfy the diverse needs and desires of Californians.”  In other words, Justice McGuiness resurrected the unconstitutional concept of “separate but equal” and uses that concept to discriminate against same sex couples.

  On November 7th, if you live in the First District**, you have a rare opportunity to tell Justice McGuiness what you think of his recent decision.  Justices stand for election only once every 12 years.  I urge you to send a strong message to Justice McGuiness.  The year is 2006, not 1896.  We have learned our lesson that separate is never equal and our Constitution mandates that courts protect minorities from discrimination.

Vote No on Justice William McGuiness for the First District Court of Appeal.  Show him that authoring discriminatory court decisions have consequences.

** The First District consists of the following twelve Northern California counties: Alameda, Contra Costa, Del Norte, Humboldt, Lake, Marin, Mendocino, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Solano, and Sonoma.

A few things from CA-11.  First, Jerry picked up another endorsement, this time from the San Jose Mercury-News. (dKos link for the McNerney folks’ diary here, please recommend.) While Jerry doesn’t seem to have made a huge impression on the Merc, but Pombo has just become too noxious to most interested voters who look beyond party labels:

There are times when voters realize the best thing they can do in a race is to hold their noses and vote for their party’s candidate.

In the 11th Congressional District race involving Richard Pombo, Republican voters must avoid that temptation. Instead, they should cast their ballots for Democrat Jerry McNerney.
{snip}
Pombo is a national disgrace to the Republican Party. His unseemly connections to scandal-ridden lobbyist Jack Abramoff should be an embarrassment to all Republicans. … And his questionable connections to oil companies, gambling interests and mining companies have been well documented. … It’s past time that mainstream Republicans let Pombo know there isn’t a place for his kind of politics in their Big Tent.(SJ Merc 10/16/06)

And onto Pombo’s website.  It seems that you would be the only person on it.  While he hasn’t released his traffic data, but there are whispers around the district that he redesigned the site because he was getting less traffic than the blogs in the district that were built to oppose him, specifically SayNoToPombo. They’ve done a lot on that new site to attract traffic.  Even a new blog! Oh, but wait, you can’t read the blog without approval.  I’m really not sure what the goal of that is.  You can’t really engage your constituents, typically the point of a candidate blog, if you don’t let them read it. Very strange.

And someone pointed out to me the House Resources Committee website, the committee that he chairs. First of all, the majority of the site is shameless self-promotion of Pombo and his anti-environmentalist agenda.  The website also seems to be designed by the same designer as Pombo’s campaign site as well.  But my favorite part is over the flip.

The “Earth Day Myths” section, where in Pombo’s forces go about trashing the environmental movement and beating the hell out of some straw man. It seems that the environmental movement is merely a front for class warfare. Wow, who knew?

MYTH: Economic growth harms the environment; wealthy nations have the worst environmental problems.
FACT: The more wealth a nation has, the better its environmental performance.
The misconception is that wealthy industrialized nations leak a river of toxins into the earth, where man’s quest for money and avarice is to the detriment of society. In fact, the opposite is true. The Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) at Columbia University created the Environmental Performance Index (EPI.) The research done by Yale/CIESIN shows a robust correlation between wealth and environmental performance. Environmental performance is actually higher in countries of greater wealth than in countries with relatively less wealth. Out of 133 nations, New Zealand tops the index at a score of 88.0. The United States ranks right up there with the Netherlands at 78.5. By contrast, the African country of Niger is one of the lowest, with an EPI score of around 25.*

You know, that is not the intent of most environmentalists.  I think if you look at the Nunez/Pavley Global Warming Emissions Law (aka AB32), you’ll not see a desire to shut down the economy. Rather, we on the Green side are looking to build a new economy that is more stable and isn’t based solely on oil.  But, that’s not how Pombo sees it. He loves oil, and it’s never going to roun out. EVER!:

MYTH: The evils of oil can easily be replaced with renewable energy.
FACT: Oil is the lifeblood of the American economy.
Petroleum is expected to remain the dominant fuel in the U.S. economy maintaining about a 40 percent market share. Oil is used in residential, commercial,industrial, electric utility and transportation sectors. Without this oil supply, the U.S.economy would collapse, as there is absolutely no possible way to make up for the loss of such a large energy supply with any existing and affordable alternative. For example, renewable energy, even subsidized, has enormous difficulty competing with fossil energy fuels as a reliable energy source. Wind and solar power accounted for only 0.14 percent—about 0.1 million barrels of oil per day equivalent of the total energy share in 2000. By 2020 the amount will increase to about 1.2 million barrels of oil per day equivalent or about 1.7 percent of total energy share in that year.**

No, I’m not making this stuff up, it’s really all on this website. There’s even more poppycock.  You’ll find some stuff about the teriffic benefits of genetically modified (GM) crops, endangered species aren’t really dying that fast, and forest acreage is rapidly increasing.  The best part about that forest one? Their big source, which apparently they consider rock-solid on the environment, is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.  You know, that great enviromental organization.

Today’s SacBee lays the smackdown on John Doolittle

In style and substance Doolittle was much like his mentor, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay: shrill, mean-spirited and divisive. Doolittle is no consensus builder on the great issues of the day. Watching him, voters could see why the atmosphere in Congress is so poisonous.

Doolittle seems not to have learned how to disagree without being disagreeable. For every question, whether on Iraq, infrastructure, tax policy, health care or ethics, he turned the issue to his opponent’s membership in the American Civil Liberties Union. It’s an odd point to focus on.

In the era after the Sept. 11 attacks, many prominent conservatives — including former Reps. Bob Barr of Georgia and Dick Armey of Texas — have joined with the ACLU. (SacBee 10/15/06)

Well folks, there you have it.  Doolittle is “no consensus-builder”, he is mean-spirited.  While the debate was produced very last minute, and few people watched it.  However, it has now been uploaded to Youtube here. (It’s in several parts) Doolittle looks pathetic with his ridiculous charges about the ACLU. He ignores the charges of corruption and says that we shouldn’t dare question his “poor wife”, who by the way worked for Jack Abramoff.

This man does not belong in Congress.

The new Datamar poll(PDF) came out today.  Now, my traditional Datamar caveat: I think it’s full of crap.  It continues to show Mountjoy only trailing Feinstein by 11 points at 50-39, Field gives her a 57-29 lead. And Datamar has Arnold with a lead slightly less than twenty points.  The day that a Democratic gubenatorial candidate gets about a third of the vote will be a cold, cold day in hell. (Or, well, a bizarre three way race or something like that.)

Datamar has some serious issues on its statewide polling.  Here’s my hypothesis:Datamar has a terrible likely voter screen that works really, really well for San Diego County, and probably the OC.  It works really poorly once you get out of those GOP enclaves. For this poll, their breakdown along party lines was 39% Dem, 41% Rep, 10% DTS, and 9% other.  My word, that’s some ridiculous breakdowns.  More Republicans than Democrats? Sorry, I call BS on that one. Here’s a more reasonable breakdown for this state from PPIC’s September statewide survey: 43 D, 35 R, 20 DTS, 2 Other.  I’m sorry, but you have to question the validity of a poll that has more Reps in California than Dems.  Additionally, where are these 9% others that Datamar has? Are they loading up on American Independent Party or something? 

But, Datamar polled all of the propositions as well.  It has most of them failing, except for a couple of the bonds, Jessica’s Law, and well, Prop 90. (That’s probably not totally right, you should double check the PDF if you’re interested in a particular prop).  According to Datamar, Prop 90 is ahead 56-30.  That’s a huge lead.  Now, the No on 90 Campaign has been largely ignored by the media, and can frequently be mistaken for a good idea.  An idea that just limits how we do eminent domain.  It’s not…check out this guest editorial against Prop 90. I’ll boil it down, instead of Prop 90 being a way to stop developers from taking your land, it’s a way to let developers do whatever they damn well please.

Now, the question that was asked was this:

Proposition 90 is the Government Acquisition, Regulation of Private Property Initiative . It will prohibit state and local governments from condemning private property for other private uses. If the election were held today, would you vote yes or no on Proposition 90?

The ballot description is this:

Bars state and local governments from condemning or damaging private property to promote other private projects or uses. Limits government’s authority to adopt certain land use, housing, consumer, environmental and workplace laws and regulations. Fiscal Impact: Increased annual government costs to pay property owners for losses to their property associated with new laws and rules, and for property acquisitions. These costs are unknown, but potentially significant on a statewide basis.

So, how exactly is Datamar’s question represnetative of what the voters will be reading when they see this question?  The answer is, of course, that it isn’t.  As far as I’m concerned the Datamar poll is about as reliable as a poll in San Francisco is for the entire state.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I think Angelides is substantially behind, and I don’t completely reject the theory that Prop 90 is ahead out of hand.  I think it’s very reasonable to take as a working hypothesis that 90 is ahead.  It’s probably good to motivate all the forces that are opposed to this terrible initiative.  One can only hope that the media will be spilling more ink opining against this worm of an initiative.  As far as I’m concerned, the defeat of 90 is up there with the election of Debra Bowen as SoS in terms of importance to our democracy.

However, you can’t ask this type of question and expect to get any type of reasonable answer.

So, needless to say, this poll will not make it into my Poll HQ now or in the future.  Upon the next edit to the poll HQ, I will remove all references to Datamar polls.  They are fatally flawed.