This is interesting enough.

Hoping to capitalize on the burgeoning conservative grass-roots movement, Mary Ruth Edwards announced Monday that she would run for Doc Hastings’ seat in the U.S. House.

Edwards, a 49-year-old Prosser elementary school teacher, will run as a Constitution Party candidate. She announced her candidacy with a news release, joining a race that includes Democrat Jay Clough, who announced in November that he was running.

Hastings has not announced plans for a campaign but is the Republican Party’s presumptive candidate in the 4th Congressional District, which he has represented since winning election in 1994.

Edwards is a former Marine and a single mother of two, who advises the drama department at Prosser High School along with her job teaching at Whitstran Elementary School. In 2009 she founded a local group within the 912 Project — the grass-roots movement led by conservative commentator Glenn Beck. She is running on a platform of state sovereignty and strict constitutionalism.

What’s a Glen Beck-ist doing brainwashing our school children?
Okay, never mind that, though.  The more interesting thing for me is that the commenters don’t know about Washington State’s election process.

This is a really stupid move because third parties never win. She should challenge Doc in the primary instead of splitting the conservative vote in the general election and increasing the chances that a socialist liberal will win. Fortunately, Doc will still win despite losing a few votes to this nobody.

You are absolutely right! Someone should try to talk sense into this person. If she doesn’t like the job that Hastings is doing then challenge him in the primary, don’t dillute the conservative vote and give the left wing progressives a chance at taking the seat.

If Ms. Edwards was serious she would run as Republican. It would nice to have some alternative Republicans to choose from for Congress but no way will I support a third party candidate. This is one thing Michele Strobel understands in her campaign against Norm Johnson – running as a Republican is the best way to defeat an incumbent in Central Washington. That’s exactly what Curtis King did when he beat Jim Clements.

Hey.  They passed this law in 2004.  You should know it.

Apparently there’s a bit of a hubbub amongst a handful of conservative bloggers about a quote in the San Francisco Chronicle.  I am kind of familiar with this hack news story format.  There is a well selling book that is in a Media firestorm.  You find the book seller that is not selling the book.  As you can imagine, there are any number of books in the San Francisco area where Sarah Palin’s book does not sell, and does not fit the clientelle.  So we get a quote, and the great giant media outlet “Pajamas Media” and “Allah Pundit” seize upon it, and look up some other books they sell.  The Washington Times goes on to publish in their section pulling out from mainly conservative blogs.

Incidentally, I don’t think her book is in the Top 20 Best sellers list at Powells, though they certainly sell it.

Palin is not visiting San Francisco.  She probably should; I think she would have an audience.  But Sarah Palin’s book tour is taking her where her fans are, into every Palookaville and Dix in the nation.  In the Internet era, enough people are obsessed with following her that if you really wanted to, you could indeed follow her travels.   I would think that the Thanksgiving Day weekend would be a sort of prime time slot, the people of that township honored by her presence on an American Holiday weekend.  This is peculiar.  There’s another Sarah Palin minor tempest in a teapot scandal — about the same size as looking into books from bookstores not selling her book — which is making the rounds.  The details slide in paragraphs deep in a local news piece.  Care if you must, but what is interesting is that Sarah Palin spent Thanksgiving in…

… Kennewick, Washington.  Huh.  Really?  (I should note that I first learned that from Rick Emerson’s website.)

Reading the copy in the Tri-City Herald, I am somehow reminded of something from Sarah Palin watcher Andrew Sullivan.   The first mention, or one of the first mentions, of Sarah Palin came in the Anchorage Daily.

Sarah Palin, a commercial fisherman from Wasilla, told her husband on Tuesday she was driving to Anchorage to shop at Costco. Instead, she headed straight for Ivana. And there, at J.C. Penney’s cosmetic department, was Ivana, the former Mrs. Donald Trump, sitting at a table next to a photograph of herself. She wore a light-colored pantsuit and pink fingernail polish. Her blonde hair was coiffed in a bouffant French twist.

”We want to see Ivana,” said Palin, who admittedly smells like salmon for a large part of the summer, ”because we are so desperate in Alaska for any semblance of glamour and culture.”

And now Kennewick has its own glamour and culture?

An old story from the Summer, and there’s nothing particularly new here.  But something about this has brought increased news-worthy relevance.

Diners at a restaurant in Prosser were startled Monday when a furry marmot wandered through the front door and settled into a corner.
That was no surprise to city Administrator Charlie Bush, who says the big rodents have long been a problem in the central Washington wine town.

And so the residents of Prosser, Washington continue their marmot problems.  It’s a long time problem, and here I go back to that news story which, for some reason or other, “went viral” a few years ago about the Marmots attacking an area manufactured home community — er trailer park — which was the biggest news story to hit South Central Washington since the area started giving the nation’s canivores spongiform encephalopathy.

In 2006 and 2007, (following the Mobile Park Attacks) the city paid $5,700 over two years to hire trappers to thin the population. But last year, the City Council ran short of money and decided to get out of the marmot-control business.

Budgetary resources are stretched thin enough that the Marmots will continue to have the lay of the land.  Theoretically, money might be tapped from the Stimulus Funds for the purpose of marmot removal, but apparently there are greater priorities for critter troubles a ways upstream.

In late September, a helicopter hovered 50 feet above the Hanford nuclear reservation, methodically hunting almost 16 square miles for radioactive poop that critters with a taste for salt spread.

Going about 80 mph, the helicopter used detection equipment attached to its sides to map out each piece with GPS coordinates.

Between the helicopter survey and the GPS coordinates, the radioactive scat can be found and removed in days rather than the months that would have been needed for people search for the poop on the ground, said Dee Millikin, spokeswoman for CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. That company is responsible for much of the environmental cleanup of central Hanford. […]

Nevada-based National Security Technologies did the helicopter survey for $300,000 in federal stimulus money sent to Hanford.

A bit more is found here.   One important distinction: the process described here was the surveying in the process for the actual clean-up.   All in all, a news story which would appear at the end of the local news broadcasts and not the beginning, where the Giant Marmot attacks would tend to go.  Though, for attitudes, I have to wonder about this:

Posted by Bob_Allen at 10/8/09 8:12 a.m.
The “environmental” whacks never tire of spending another ton of our tax money on useless crapola.

Why must we waste our money on such frivulous things as clearing out nuclear rabbit poop?  What will those environmental whackos think of next?

Well, here he is writing a piece for the Heritage Foundation.  Drill.  Baby.  Drill.

And the comments.  What is Obama’s motives, anyway?

Lloyd Scallan – New Orleans writes:
Doc Hastings views are spot on! However, Obama will never allow drilling off or on our coast.
Within weeks after Obama took office, he (or his minions) cancelled lease sales […]
We all better understand that Obama wants this country on its knees. With no gasoline or natural gas, most every industry will be forced to shut down (not to mention transportation). Then Obama will get just what he wants, to declare a national emergency so he can completely take over every aspect of our lives.

Why didn’t Doc Hastings write that?

Gail, Amarillo, Texas writes:
President Obama has no intention of developing energy independence or jobs for the American people. His Secretary of the Interior Mr. Salazar will follow his boss’s wishes. The President wants our country on its knees without energy and without jobs. I don’t believe that anyone can stop him from putting the country in that predicament because he believes in a one world economic plan and ignores the pain of his own people.

One World Here We Come!!

Bob Atwood Goldendale Wa. writes:
I just want to thank Doc for his work, He is a real sourse of pride for us in the NW. Something is very wrong in America today, Without people like Mr. Hastings I can’t imagine how intolerable our government would be.

Just wait til John Boehner becomes Speaker after 2010.  Then we will see Mr. Hastings UNLEASED!

Dennis, Ohio writes:
Thank you Doc for your efforts. Unfortunately, Obama and his czars are intent on the destruction of this country, our resources, and our wellbeing. There is little to be done unless we vote these people out of office as fast as we can. It may be too late already.

Face it.  It is too late.  Go ahead and leave these people in office, because it’s too late anyway.

So, Nuclear Power coming soon?

  For good or ill, good ol’ Doc Hastings will be forgoing the honor of hosting a Town Hall Meetings — full of raucousness those things are — opting instead to discuss in speeches before Chamber of Commerce units — where he will be speaking out against that “single payer” plan that is, I would say, probably backed by the majority of Obama voters — and is not in the offing. 

This is too bad.  The volitile Town Hall environment could use a sedative, and those that are on edge viewing this debate in Existential Terms need a setting to doze off.

Actually I had been wondering something about Doc Hastings.  Has he wandered anywhere from the pedestrian “Bureaucratic Maze” suggestion  (’tis why Socialism and Libertarianism are always easier, I suppose) to the more lively “Death Panel” parcel, now en vouge?  The answer seems to be no.  On the other hand, this is something that inflicted better souls.

  Johnny Isakson — Republican Senator of Georgia, for instance.  A real yahoo I had not thought of as a yahoo before this last week.   To be fair, the only real reason I’ve pegged him as “reasonable conservative” is that his 2004 Republican primary race (to replace Zell Miller, and with a Democrat who was then occupying the district most famous for Cynthia McKinney, tountamount to a general election), pitted him against a couple of loons.  So, Isakson chimed in on the “End of Life Counselling”, and his role in the past in championing it.  And then, when that became inconvenient in arguring the reasonableness and generally bipartisan nature of that particular policy, he had to pull it back in.  I guess with him we’re just in a state where he cannot allow a part of his portfolio to provide Obama with with bi-partisan cover for an item suddenly politicized.

  Then there is Chuck Grassley.  He represents a sadder example, frankly, sucking himself into the Demagougic Whirl.  It is not enough that he fits the generically understood obstructionist role in Max Baucus’s committee in that arena of wheel-dealing.  (Can we just blow that one up?)  Perhaps the fact is that the space in the role of “Obstruction” has just shifted places.

Enter Arlen Specter, the Democrat turned Republican turned Democrat who has a bit of a “trust” issue with his Pennsylvania primary voters (and, for that matter, general election voters).
  He is the one who hosted what I think can now be thought of as the sort Example number One of the Disrupted Town Hall meeting.  I do not know how that one played politically for him — he didn’t really come out looking well in handling it (unlike, for instance, Claire McCaskill of Missouri).  Polls show him now losing to his 2004 Republican primary opponent, the otherwise basically unelectable man of CATO, Pat Toomey — we’ll see how much he can twitter back some trust to someone somewhere.

Well, this is kind of interesting.  From the blog of Seattle’s very own Stranger:

Somewhat shocking is that Doc Hastings talked more than anyone else in our House delegation last session because, well, who the fuck knows anything about Doc Hastings?

Well, the man resides in the part of the state which Stranger readers in Seattle would drive past without stopping, in infrequent forays to Spokane.  So he would be the most likely “Invisible Man” in a Washington Congressional Congregation.  But I think I can debunk this:

Something tells me Doc Hastings is the Congressional equivalent of an old man writing angry letters to the editor, or sitting on his porch yelling at kids to get off his lawn.

No, he is nowhere near as interesting or illuminating.  Pursue the quotations of Doc Hastings at your own leisure.

Last week I marvelled at a reference to Doc Hastings as having emerged as a “leading critic” of the Obama Administration.  This, I suppose, is the transformation of a relatively small fish in a big pond as a mid-bench member of the Majority Party to a relatviely big fish in a small pond as a slightly further up in the middle benches member of the Minority Party.

From that perch, Hastings has found the new found role of scheduling massive floor speeches.  That, apparently, fits the bill these days in terms of “emerged as a leading critic”.  (Also, I guess push polls fits that bill, but that may have always been there.)  It is a brisk walk down from his previous role.  He used to be a frequent gaveller, meaning even when he didn’t speak, he logged a lot of time on C-SPAN.  Indeed, one of Doc Hastings’s career highlights, I would say, was being the man that held up the 15 minute voting session for the Medicare D program to three hours — recently referenced in the Dennis Hastert portrait raising ceremony.:

In his prayer opening event, Rev. Daniel P. Coughlin, the House chaplain, noted that Mr. Hastert was also a wily strategist who learned to “never take his eye of the clock, but use it to his advantage” – an apparent reference to Mr. Hastert’s decision to hold open a floor vote for more than three hours to secure approval of the Medicare drug program.

Stepping aside his placement on the institutionally ineffective Ethics Committee when it threatened to actually do a job and look into Tom DeLay, the most bizarre moment in Doc Hastings career came when Hastings was placed as an extra-constitutional Emergency Provisional Speaker in case of a chaotic Armegeddon scenario — which, come to think of it, would make for the most dull and uninspired work of Speculative Fiction imaginable.

If you throw in his latest battle against roaming horses, a not altogether absurd position except that he’s phrased it as “welfare for wild horses”, and the rather sedate comfortably fiefdomed Congress-critter (who can get by so long as he can secure necessary Hanford funding) actually becomes a mildly interesting figure.

I am wondering what the floor voice chart would look like in, say, 2003-2006 as opposed to 2007-2009.  In other words, does the out party – having to find its place as an oppositional force– take to the floor and speak a lot?  This results in such a situation as Earl Blumenauer describes here.

In the middle 1980s, as Ronald Reagan’s “revolution” settled to its deal-making and reality checking against old guard Republicans and incumbent Democrats, a band of Republicans, largely elected in 1980 off of Reagan’s coat-tails, took to the floor and offered up a steady dose of ferment — a cluster of Republicans trying to turn around their debate through C-SPAN, the man who made a name for himself with this legislative tactic being one Newt Gingrich.  Tip O’Neil became annoyed enough by a projected outside image of stampeding movement conservatives that he had C-SPAN shift production to have the cameras scan around the Congressional chambers and reveal the emptiness of the chambers.

One thing I neglected to mention about Doc Hastings:

Doc Hastings made an appearance on Fox News, the great disseminating tool for the Republican Party.  This clip was posted to his facebook page.  It is not a good performance; it is not a bad performance — save yourself the few minutes and don’t push “play”.  Hastings said nothing noteworthy, and the host lead him through the interview.

A minute and a half into the clip, the bullet-point pops up on Hastings.  He “Served 8 Years in WA State Legislature”, “Joined House of Reps in 1994”, and “Ran Family’s Small Business”.   And I guess the audience has now been briefed on who the heck this guy is.  The actual appearance on a national venue was novel enough that local press had to note:

It’s not exactly prime time, but Rep. Doc Hastings was ready when Fox News called this morning.  
Interesting enough:
Hastings, the Pasco Republican, has emerged as a leading critic of the Obama administration from his perch as ranking minority on the House Natural Resources Committee.

So.  Does his one appearance sometime in the afternoon on Fox News fore-tell increased visibility of Doc Hastings as a public voice of the Republican party?  (And remember,  his battle to bring down the  population of wild horses is attracting celebrity opposition.)

Sure.  Why not?  The Republicans need somebody to point out there.  As George Voinovich said of the current Republican party:

Sen. George Voinovich, the former governor of Ohio, made waves when he told The Columbus Dispatch “we got too many Jim DeMints and Tom Coburns.”

“It’s the southerners,” he said. “They get on TV and go ‘errrr, errrrr.’ People hear them and say, ‘These people, they’re southerners. The party’s being taken over by southerners. What they hell they got to do with Ohio?'”

Hastings has, so far as I can tell, not gone on tv and gone “errr, errrr.”  Then again, until that blip of a Fox News interview, he hasn’t had the chance.  Another possibility:  Fox News needed to find a Republican to follow through that talking point kabuki dance, and went down the list.

In other  “will have the job so long as he wants it” entrenched Northwest Republican Congress-critter news, Greg Walden is railing against the “Fairness Doctrine”.  Seems a waste of time.  Noteworthy, one argument Hastings makes about (ahem) “Welfare for Wild Horses” act is that it’s out of place for our national priorities.  Which means he should be on the phone to Walden to nix his “Fairness Doctrine” cause.

Question:  What’s animating Doc Hastings these days?  Hm.  He stood next to Newt Gingrich at a press conference recently in support of the policy of “Drill Baby Drill”.  Mildly noted, Gingrich was asked about his presidential prospects.  It must have been nice to meet up with Gingrich, “Class of ’94” and all that.
Also, if you go to his facebook page, you’ll see he’s hawking the complicated box health care chart.   ‘Tis a stupid talking point, but it’s a requirement of Republican Leadership to hawk that chart.

But what’s really animating Doc Hastings is the desire to slaughter all the horses. 

Okay, that’s an unfair characterization of a land management issue.  Except that we get to his
is characterization of the issue amusing.  It is, as Doc Hastings says, “Welfare for Wild Horses.”    The definition of “welfare” does not match.  (To be fair, it doesn’t appear that Hastings was alone with this title — it was a Republican talking point.  For a second there, I gave Representative Hastings too much credit.)

Also notable, his facebook page has a typographical error.  Doc Hastings is speaking out against “wefare for wild horses.”  (I will go ahead and give Hastings credit for coining “wefare for wild horses.”)

It is notable to show a Sarah Palin-esque criticism comes into play here.  “Hollywood Starlets” coming for “anti-hunting, anti-Second Amendment circuses from Hollywood”– a reference to an Ashley Judd commercial against Sarah Palin’s aerial killing of wolves.  The Barbi Twins and Willie Nelson’s daughter have come out swinging.

It is difficult not to notice that the two Washington Senators were amongst the ten Democrats who joined the Republican Caucus in voting for a Lincoln – Kyl Amendment to lower the Estate Tax, the first of the two votes I note here.  The other senators here I can explain broadly in the predictive manner as being rougly predictive with “Ten democrats voted with the republicans on something.  Name the Democrats” — a measuring stick that might capture Cantwell from time to time, but wouldn’t be predictive with Murray.  With that, I’m forced to say there’s something concerning Washington State and the protection of legacy estates.

Here, some commenters at prospect weigh some possible influences, but hit an error at the end:

Yes, I think it becomes silly when the poster explainins the vote as coming from the political clout of Eastern Washington — which I’ll believe has basis when the state finally elects a Senator Doc Hasings.  And, yes, “mocasdad” pretty well covers that.  Though, I suppose you can suggest that the farmers and ranchers of Eastern Washington should pay heed to Cantwell and Murray’s vote, as per the explanation for Jon Tester of Montana’s vote.: