Fairness, Faith, and Failure

There has been much ballyhoo about how numerologically auspicious tomorrow's date, 07-07-07, is supposed to be.  But I'm convinced they got the date wrong.

You see today is 07-06-07 and it's the deadline for Reverend Hutcherson's initiative 963 to turn in 224,800 valid signatures or fail to make it on the ballot.  Initiative 963 hoped to repeal anti-discrimination protection for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in Washington State.

As reported by KNDO and The Stranger, Hutcherson won't be turning in any signatures today.  That's because he stopped gathering signatures months ago, allegedly at the urging of Pastor Joe Fuiten. 

Fuiten supposedly argued that the "the time was not right" for the 963 initiative campaign and asked Hutch for his help in opposing the domestic partnership bill instead.  Oh, so that's why he stopped gathering signatures. It wasn't anything to do with it being hard to get Washingtonians to sign a mean spirited petition.  I thought faith could move mountains, surely it can manage a few hundred thousand signatures...

It wasn't anything to do with him tearing around like a dog with a full bladder putting his mark on every anti-gay effort here and abroad that could raise his profile and feed his, self-confessed, enormous ego.  It couldn't have been the prospect of a looming public failure that encouraged this last minute PR hand wave of a high profile issue for which Hutcherson has been a standard bearer.   No, no, no. 

Let's recap Hutcherson's involvement in the Anderson Murray Civil Rights Bill (HB2661):

1. Hutcherson lobbied hard to kill it -- he failed.
2. Hutcherson signed onto referendum 65 to overturn it -- it failed.
3. Hutcherson lodged initiative 963 to overturn it -- it failed.

There is a pattern emerging here.  Hutcherson talks a good game, but he's is more interested in focusing on the activity that gets him the best profile in a press release than he is in actually delivering on a single thing he works on. 

He became known by picking a fight with Microsoft who, since their original fumble when they didn't understand what was happening to them, has stood up to and then ultimately ignored Hutcherson through multiple unsuccessful boycotts and buy-and-dump stock debacles.  How much failure does Hutcherson have to rack up before the press begins to characterize him as the attention-seeking serial failure that he is?

Oh, and remember the domestic partnership bill that Hutcherson was supposedly pouring his energy into?  It passed.  HE FAILED AGAIN. 

Anyone want to take odds on new initiatives from Hutcherson seeking to repeal the anti-discrimination or domestic partnership bills?

Bush: Governing like no one is watching

There is a familiar quality of brazenness to the President's commutation of Lewis Libby's sentence. 

The justice that the rich and powerful receive is so much nicer than the justice that the rest of us have to deal with. 

While it might be true that nothing says "Thanks for Taking a bullet for me" like commuting jail time to probation, I still think there is a chance for Bush to sink lower and pardon Libby entirely.

It is amazing how few changes need to be made for the old saying to apply perfectly to President Bush:

"Work like you don't need money,
Be loyal like you've never been hurt,
And govern like no one's watching."

But the truth is that a lot of Republican voters are watching.  Lewis Libby has become a conservative cause celebre and we can expect an insistent drumbeat of spin saying, in essence, "No crime, no foul.  Nothing to see here, move along." 

I'm trying to understand why it was so important to so many "tough-on-crime" conservatives to be lenient on Libby.  How does this help them now?  How does this help them in the 2008 elections?

I have to wonder is the commutation and eventual pardon are just ways of building the paper trail that allows Republicans to declare Libby's actions as "un-crimes"?