Political parody a sight at Capitol
Two cartoonish-looking characters, one resembling President Bush and the other Vice President Dick Cheney, drew plenty of attention last week as they sauntered the Capitol grounds in a steady rain.
Inside the costumes were Eastside Fellowship of Reconciliation director Linda Boyd, dressed as Bush, and – as Cheney – Bill Moyer, director of The Backbone Campaign, which functions as a political-theater effort to encourage Democrats to be more assertive.
The two were in Olympia to support Senate Joint Memorial 8016, which calls on Congress to investigate whether there is enough evidence to charge the president and vice president with misrepresenting the severity of the threat posed by Iraq, giving Congress “distorted” intelligence, conducting surveillance on “perhaps millions of American civilians without seeking warrants” and “strip(ping) American citizens of their constitutional rights” based on their being designated an “enemy combatant.”
These legislative joint memorials are essentially just formal letters from lawmakers to Congress. Around Olympia, the requests are derisively nicknamed “Letters to Santa.”
Republicans fear gambling growth
In a last-minute appeal, three Yakima-area Republican lawmakers are calling on Gov. Chris Gregoire to reject the proposed gambling compact between the state and the Spokane Tribe of Indians.
The compact, they note, is “the most generous” one so far, allowing the Spokanes to have 900 of their own machines, rather than the 675 that all other tribes get now. (That’s probably about to change, however. The state gambling commission will next month consider a proposed compact with every other gambling tribe in the state that would boost their allotments to 900 machines, too. Result: The current 18,225-machine statewide cap would rise to about 25,000 machines, though the statewide compact wouldn’t allow additional casinos.)
“It is clear that other tribes are interested in the Spokane compact, and that if the compact is signed, the future will bring a continued expansion of gambling,” wrote Sen. Jim Honeyford, R-Sunnyside, and Reps. Bruce Chandler, R-Granger, and Dan Newhouse, R-Sunnyside.
Their bigger worry, however, appears to be the large casino complex the Spokanes are contemplating for off-reservation land they recently bought near Airway Heights. Without a state gambling compact, the lawmakers note, it would be extremely difficult for the tribe to get rare federal permission for an off-reservation casino.
Honeyford made that point doubly by sending off a letter last week to U.S. Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne. He wants Kempthorne to turn down the Spokanes’ Airway Heights casino request.
“Only three tribes in the nation have been allowed such an off-reservation facility, one of them in Washington State,” Honeyford wrote, referring to the Kalispels’ Northern Quest casino. “If the Spokanes are approved, half of all off-reservation gaming in the nation will be located in Washington.”
What the feds will do is anyone’s guess. But Gregoire, while repeatedly saying that she doesn’t like gambling, has said she’s likely to sign the state compact with the Spokanes. The alternative, she said, would be to invite a lawsuit that could leave the state wide open to an explosion of tribal gaming.
Onion debate
Passed in the House: HB 1556, An Act Relating to Designating the Walla Walla Sweet Onion as the Official Washington State Vegetable. The potato commission apparently having withdrawn the fierce opposition it showed to this bill in past years, the Walla Walla onion bill is forging ahead. It cleared the House on Wednesday, 95 to 0.