Heckling or free speech? You decide

OLYMPIA – “Tyrant! You are a tyrant!”

That was Washington state Supreme Court Justice Richard Sanders recently, heckling U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey at a speech in Washington, D.C.

Mukasey, who famously fainted at the podium about 15 minutes later, had been extolling the virtues of the Bush Administration’s anti-terrorism measures. People should be praising George Bush, Mukasey said, instead of criticizing “the very policies that have helped to keep us safe.”

“In the eyes of these critics, if al-Qaida has not struck our homeland for seven years, then perhaps it never posed much of a threat after all,” Mukasey said. “… Even more common is the casual assumption among many in media, political and legal circles that the administration’s counterterrorism policies have come at the expense of the rule of law. I’m quite familiar with these criticisms, having heard many of them myself during my tenure as attorney general.”

That’s when Sanders rose from his chair and shouted at Mukasey. On a recording, other members of the Federalist Society audience can be heard barking at Sanders, “Sit down! Sit down!”

Sanders then walked out.

But what would have been merely an eyebrow-raising moment mushroomed into a days-long political parlor game last week, as attorneys and columnists tried to identify the mystery heckler at Table 50.

The speculation quickly pointed to Sanders, who is a member of the society and was at the dinner. And Sanders only fueled things when he repeatedly declined to answer the question directly.

“As to that, I don’t have any comment,” he initially told the Olympian’s Adam Wilson. “But I wasn’t there when he collapsed. I heard it on television the next morning. I was very sorry to hear it.”

As the questions grew, Sanders last week finally acknowledged that he was the guy who’d shouted at Mukasey. Sanders said he was particularly irked at Mukasey’s joking that al-Qaida didn’t sign the Geneva Conventions, which prompted a laugh from the crowd.

“Attorney General Mukasey received a standing ovation,” Sanders later wrote in a statement to reporters. “I passionately disagree with these views: The government must never set aside the Constitution; domestic and international law forbids torture; and access to the writ of habeas corpus should not be denied.”

Still, it wasn’t heckling, he argues, because the shouted comment didn’t significantly interrupt Mukasey’s speech.

With no queston-and-answer period scheduled, Sanders said, “I felt compelled to speak out. … I believe we must speak our conscience in moments that demand it, even if we are but one voice.”

Health coverage for kids

Washington is now taking health-coverage applications for kids in families earning up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level, which is $52,800 for a family of three. The coverage would start in January.

This is the first time the state is expanding the program to some moderate-income families. The coverage until now has been limited to families below 200 percent of the poverty level, or $35,200 for that same family of three. For those families, it’s free.

Families above 200 percent would have to pay $15 a month per child, with a maximum of $45 per family. The coverage includes major medical benefits and some preventive care, including dental work. It is available to citizens and noncitizens, as long as they’re 18 or younger.

To apply, see applehealthforkids.wa.gov or call (877) 543-7669.

The Legislature’s Democratic leaders have set a goal of ensuring that all kids in Washington have health coverage by 2010. It’s cheaper to pay for preventive coverage, they argue, than to pay the cost of hospital charity care as emergency rooms become the doctor of last resort.

Governor: Must … save … more …

Facing a budget shortfall of $5 billion to $6 billion over the next 2  1/2 years, Gov. Chris Gregoire last week ordered hundreds of millions of dollars more in cuts.

Among them: another $4.5 million from Washington State University, and $1 million each from Eastern Washington University and Central Washington University. The Department of Social and Health Services will have to cut nearly $181 million from its $4.6 billion budget.

This is on top of hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts made in August and October. And the biggest cutting around $5 billion in the 2009-2011 budget hasn’t yet begun.

“Continue to pull back on new programs not yet fully implemented,” Gregoire’s budget director, Victor Moore, advised last week.

Still, hope springs eternal, judging by the budget proposal four days earlier from the state’s Higher Education Coordinating Board.

The board says the state’s colleges will need a bit over $4 billion for a “maintenance-level” budget for the next two years. That’s an increase of about $350 million. Also on the list: $1 billion in new construction at colleges.

The board is also calling for “modest new investments” of another $139 million. That’s less than a quarter of what the colleges wanted.

Washington, like nearly all states, also continues to hope for federal help. Gregoire and other governors on Tuesday met with President-elect Barack Obama. They’re pushing for federal money for “ready-to-go” construction projects, unemployment benefits and food stamps. They’re also hoping for an infusion of federal cash to stave off cuts that will hurt Medicaid or other programs for vulnerable citizens.

Obama “was very receptive to all four ideas and really wants to help us make it work,” Gregoire said Tuesday after the meeting.

GOP leaders: Don’t bail out Detroit

Washington’s top two Republican lawmakers fired off a letter last week to the state’s congressional delegation, urging them to reject a bailout for U.S. automakers.

With families and taxpayers struggling, Sen. Mike Hewitt and Rep. Richard DeBolt said, “this inclination of Congress to prop up sectors of our economy with taxpayer-funded bailouts is misguided.”

With the initial $700 billion financial-sector bailout still under way amid sharp criticism, they said, “it seems premature at best to be talking about executing another multi-billion-dollar, government-sponsored bailout program.”

Hewitt and DeBolt question whether it would be better to let the struggling car makers reorganize themselves through bankruptcy. Throwing tax dollars at the companies without substantial changes, they say, may just be a temporary reprieve.