My apologies for being late with this, but nothing time sensitive really happened.
First up, in a loss for the Dems:
Judge refuses to dismiss lawsuit over governor’s election
Judge John Bridges today refused several Democratic attempts to dismiss the governor’s election lawsuit, saying allegations made in the case, if proven at trial, would be sufficient to overturn the election of Gov. Christine Gregoire.
Bridges also rejected Democratic arguments that any challenge of illegal votes by felons and others should have been made by Republicans before the election because they amount to problems with voter registration.
“This case should go forward, at least at this point,” the Chelan County Superior Court judge said.
�SEVERAL� requests to dismiss the case from the Dems.
This can be visualized by picturing in your head a seven year old child stamping his feet and saying �I don�t want to go to the dentists!� over and over again.
And in a small loss for the Repubs:
But he ruled that Republicans must show any illegal votes were cast in favor of Gregoire, and not Republican candidate Dino Rossi.
There would have to be enough illegal Gregoire votes to erase her 129-vote victory margin.
Bridges said that if Republicans did prove their case, he would not order a new election for governor as they want him to do. Rossi has said that was the only remedy he would accept.
Democrats had argued the judge didn’t have that power, and Bridges agreed. He said state law and the state constitution do not give him the power to order a new vote, which he called “special relief.”
It also gives the Repubs the ammunition. If they do prove their case, that there was fraud and that Rossi should have won, this will be ammunition to bring up often for the next three and a half years (or until Senator Maria Cantwell come up for re-election in 2006).
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In other lame news, the Gregoire camp waited until just after Judge Bridges ruled to release that Gregoire has received a credible death threat for a looney in the town of Wapato.
Very smooth. It took the lead in the overnight and morning news cycles. Very smooth indeed.
As Michele Maklin reported, Gregoire then went on to blame right wing talk radio for the guy getting up the steam to make the threat.
Sadly for Gregoire, Wapato is located quite close to Bum-Fuck-Egypt and is much too far away from any of the talk radio stations that she could be describing.
From Brian Maloney at the Radio Equalizer blog,
KVI and KTTH do not generally reach Yakima County except in certain atmospheric conditions that are only occasional. KIRO and KOMO do reach the area for most of the day, KIRO in particular. KVI has a very small 5000 watt signal, KIRO has 50,000 watts. As a result Yakima has its own local talk station that is almost entirely nationally syndicated programming.
KVI and KTTH are conservative stations; KIRO is liberal. KOMO is mostly news. It seems unlikely that Martelli spent much time listening to conservative Washington State talk radio hosts.
Ha! Greoire, The blogosphere fact checked your ass and has found that you are talking out of it.
As Usual.
I agree with you that the Gregoire claim of what motivated the nut is outrageous. That said, however, you shouldn’t stand next to that petard while lighting matches.
1. The nut might have had access to satellite radio, in which case he would have been able to receive some talk programs out in the tulies.
2. The guy might have had a GE SuperRadio 2 or a C Crane CCRadio Plus, or an older Zenith TransOceanic or any number of ultra-high-sensitivity radios that will pull in AM signals pretty much ALL OVER.
3. The guy might have been streaming radio over the Internet. I can’t keep track of all the stations that do have a website that allows streaming, but there are thousands now. (BTW, “ripping” streaming radio items, like songs, is the perfect way to defeat the RIAA, because you can then prove you got the music from an open source {radio}, and it defeats their copyright claim).
4. Radio coverage maps and rules are very general. The hobby of D/Xing, or listening to radio from a distance, depends on several disciplines, one of which is finding “hot spots” where radio reception is somehow enhanced well beyond what physics says it should be.
The average person with the average equipment may not be able to receive the AM talk radio stations in Wapato, but anyone with a keen interest to do so (and nutbags are famous for their perseverance on some subjects) can and probably would.