Since I have this beautiful election day off, this afternoon I walked to my local polling place to cast my votes. I also took a walk along Kanawha Boulevard toward the capitol, since the weather is so nice today. I stopped when I got to the capitol to see if I could spot Andrea Mitchell from MSNBC, who has been reporting from the University of Charleston all day today, with the shiny capitol dome across the river behind her. I’m not sure, but if you squint real hard, I think I caught a photo of her here:

We’re important! West Virginia is important, dammit!

So, did y’all vote?

This sounds like the most plausible explanation to me:

Clinton’s calculation is as much about history as it is about politics. As the first woman to have come this far, Clinton has told those close to her, she wants people who invested their hopes in her to see that she has given it her best.

At this point, with only five states (& Puerto Rico) to go, she may as well ride it out to the finish.  I can understand that she truly appreciates her die-hard supporters and doesn’t want to seem like a quitter.  I really don’t like some of the tactics her campaign has been using for the past few months, but I don’t fault her for staying in the race.

To follow up on that last post, and for those who may not be avid Atrios readers, he’s obviously making a little dig at the Clinton campaign. They have repeatedly contended that Obama can’t win “the big states.” Yet the other day I heard Howard Wolfson say on NPR that the upcoming West Virginia primary is “crucial.” Crucial? Really? It’s interesting to note that West Virginia actually has more delegates than New Hampshire—39, versus 30. (If you want to get all technical about it, primary voters decide 28 of those delegates in West Virginia, versus 22 delegates in the New Hampshire primary.) Point being, gee, isn’t our election process weird?

Atrios asks:

Is West Virginia a big state?

No.

This has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions.

Well done, Charleston Daily Mail. You managed to publish an article all about how supposedly “anti-gun” candidates don’t do well in West Virginia without mentioning one word in the entire article about what the candidates’ policies on guns actually are. Bravo.

For a variety of reasons, I recently developed the urge to delete my entire blog and start over from scratch. This morning, I just realized that I accidentally let my upgrade to Custom CSS expire (hence the unintentional site redesign). That may have given me just the push I need to actually go through with the reincarnation.

“Manchin Angered by BrickStreet’s Out-of State Meeting”

When asked Monday about the Kentucky meeting, BrickStreet spokesman Andy Wessels said, “I don’t think we’re going to talk about this. I don’t think it’s a matter of public concern. I’m just not going to go into it. We’re a private company, and we intend to behave as a private company.”

Manchin said he doesn’t accept BrickStreet’s argument that it is a private company and, therefore, does not need to explain its activities. BrickStreet writes about $500 million in premiums a year. Manchin noted that BrickStreet received that franchise when the state created it.

What did Manchin expect? That the private corporation he created to take over the public workers’ compensation program wouldn’t act like a private corporation?

I’m on one.

Well, the FISA bill with retroactive telecom immunity passed today, with help from our own Senator Jay Rockefeller. No surprise there — he’s the one who struck this deal with the devil Dick Cheney in the first place. The way I see it, even if you think telecoms should not be held liable for their cooperation with the Bush administration’s illegal wiretapping program (not my opinion), that doesn’t mean Congress should categorically give them immunity via statute. The plaintiffs deserve their day in court, but Congress has just taken that away from them. Whether or not and/or to what extent telecoms should be held liable is an issue that should be litigated in the courts. Without this legislation, telecoms could still prevail with a judge or jury.

Telecoms already have immunity under existing FISA laws if they meet one of the following requirements:

(d) Defense.— A good faith reliance on—

(1) a court warrant or order, a grand jury subpoena, a legislative authorization, or a statutory authorization;

(2) a request of an investigative or law enforcement officer under section 2518 (7) of this title; or

(3) a good faith determination that section 2511 (3) or 2511 (2)(i) of this title permitted the conduct complained of;

is a complete defense against any civil or criminal action brought under this chapter or any other law.

So even though some telecoms did not cooperate with the Bush administration — on the advice of their attorneys who warned that the warrantless wiretapping program was illegal — the ones who did cooperate now have immunity, regardless of whether or not they knew or should have known that they were aiding and abetting illegal conduct.

But more important than the issue of whether telecoms should be liable is whether or not the Bush administration should be held accountable for its illegal and unconstitutional actions. Sen. Rockefeller claims to believe that President Bush should be held accountable, but the passage of this bill today pretty well seals the deal that the details of this program are not ever going to come to light. Since Congress isn’t actually doing anything to hold the administration accountable, the discovery process in the law suits against the telecoms was pretty much the only investigative vehicle left to find out more about the warrantless wiretapping program. (Whether the government and/or telecoms would ultimately have been successful in withholding information based on claims of state secrets is an open question, but now there’s not even a chance of them being forced to disclose anything.)

This is from a Washington Post op-ed written by Rockefeller last fall:

Today there is significant debate about whether the underlying program — the president’s warrantless surveillance plan — was legal or violated constitutional rights. That is an important debate, and those questions must be answered.

[...]

[L]awsuits against the government can go forward. There is little doubt that the government was operating in, at best, a legal gray area. If administration officials abused their power or improperly violated the privacy of innocent people, they must be held accountable. That is exactly why we rejected the White House’s year-long push for blanket immunity covering government officials.

To be blunt, I think Rockefeller is full of shit. If he genuinely cared about accountability, he would not have entered into a deal with Cheney to give the administration exactly what it wanted. I’m not sure what constituency Rockefeller thinks he’s representing. I didn’t see any Americans (let alone any West Virginians) clamoring for telecom immunity. To my eyes, Rockefeller was representing a constituency of one — himself (see also here).

As for the presidential candidates, John McCain voted for it and Barack Obama voted against. I don’t believe Hillary Clinton was present for the vote.

By the way, I highly recommend reading the various links in this post if you aren’t up on all the details of how this whole thing unfolded and what it all really means. I didn’t want to bog the post down with too much information, so I included tons of links instead.

I love this kind of stuff.

I like this one too, for personal reasons.