IS THERE A REAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS? I MEAN IN PEOPLE'S LIVES... DOES IT REALLY MATTER?

For anyone who has ever said that it doesn't make any difference who gets elected and that all politicians suck, regardless of party, just look at the bill signed into law by Governor Christine Gregoire (D-WA) yesterday. The civil union bill will give gay and lesbian couples the same rights as married couples. " It gives gays, lesbians and unmarried seniors rights to visit a partner in the hospital, inherit property when there's no will, and make decisions on matters like emergency health care, funeral arrangements and disposition of remains. Domestic partners are to register with the secretary of state's office to qualify for the rights."

Gregoire was in one of the closest races in the country in 2004, beating a viciously homophobic far right fanatic, Dino Rossi (R), to become Washington's first woman governor. Rossi would never have signed this bill. Wingnuts were so incensed that he lost the race-- by a mere 129 votes-- that it lead to the firing of U.S. Attorney John McKay, who Rove thought should have done more to steal the election for Rossi. Last month the Washington Post reported that McKay was under pressure from GOP opertatives to interfere in the vote count. "Former Washington state Republican Party Chairman Chris Vance acknowledged Tuesday that he contacted then-U.S. Attorney John McKay to inquire about the status of federal investigations into the 2004 governor's race while the outcome was still in dispute. Vance also spoke regularly with presidential adviser Karl Rove's aides about the election, which Democrat Christine Gregoire ultimately won by 129 votes over Republican Dino Rossi... In testimony before Congress last week, McKay said that he received a call in late 2004 or early 2005 from Ed Cassidy, then chief of staff for Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Pasco, inquiring about the status of ongoing investigations into possible voter fraud. McKay said he cut off Cassidy before he could ask inappropriate questions."

On Aug. 22, three weeks before Sampson recommended that Miers oust McKay, Miers and White House deputy counsel William Kelley met with McKay in Washington, D.C. McKay had requested the meeting after he discovered that a merit-selection panel had not named him one of three finalists to become a federal judge in Western Washington.

McKay said Miers and Kelley quickly asked him about Republican unhappiness in Washington state about his handling of the 2004 election.

McKay's office and the FBI conducted a preliminary investigation of voter-fraud allegations, but filed no charges and did not convene a grand jury because McKay and the Justice Department felt there was not sufficient evidence of federal crimes.

Democrats believe McKay was fired because he did not pursue the investigation, a claim denied by the Justice Department.

The Justice Department initially said McKay was fired for "performance-related" issues, then cited policy differences over sentencing and a communications system that McKay championed.

As for the domestic partnership bill, the Republican Party fought it tooth and nail.

The long-time posterboy for Republican right-wing opposition to gay equality, Jim West, former Republican State Senate leader and then Mayor of Spokane, died last year. Before he died he had been recalled as mayor after being caught molesting young boys.

For 25 years West has used his positions of authority-- as a sheriff's deputy, Boy Scout leader and powerful politician – to lure young boys into his web. It looks like West was one of the typical Republican closet cases who desperately tried to show the world how aggressively homophobic he was to try to prove he wasn't gay. West wasn't just another two-bit Republican pol; he was the Washington State Senate leader and one of the most powerful GOP leaders in the Northwest. So how homophobic was West (while he was molesting underage boys)? Early in 1986, West introduced a bill to bar gays and lesbians from working in schools, daycare centers and some state agencies. The bill called for firing state workers whose sexual identities became known. That same year he voted to bar the state from distributing pamphlets telling people how to protect themselves from AIDS during sex. Needless to say he vigorously opposed every gay rights bill that ever came up and, of course voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman. In 2003, as Senate majority leader, he bottled up a gay rights bill in committee, where it died. Once he became Mayor of Spokane he opposed giving benefits to domestic partners of City Hall workers but was beaten with a veto-proof majority on the City Council. Jim West is a sick cookie, a sick Republican cookie.

Yesterday the FBI raided his home and confiscated his computer and other records as part of an ongoing Federal Investigation into corruption allegations. West has been using his office to offer City Hall jobs to young men he met in gay online chat rooms. The FBI obtained the federal warrant to search West's home after convincing a federal judge there was probable cause to believe a federal crime had been committed. The warrant said there was sufficient evidence to believe that West "knowingly and willingly engaged in a scheme to entice others to engage in sexual activity with him through offers and grants of city of Spokane jobs, internships or appointments." West's secret life started unraveling in May when a local newspaper, The Spokesman-Review, started publishing the details of a thorough investigation into the Republican politician's double-life. His well-documented crimes against young boys go back into the 1970's when he was a deputy sheriff and a Boy Scout leader. West, who is clearly delusional, refuses to resign and is fighting a recall drive, does acknowledge using "poor judgment," but denies doing anything illegal. Nothing illegal? Does this sound legal to you? West and the members of the Pac NW Pedophile clan have been accused of using an at risk boys camp, Morning Star Boys Ranch, of which West is on the Board of Directors, as a kind of library to check out young boys for camping trips and hiking. It is alleged that during these trips the clan molested the young men. West, who resigned last week from the boys ranch Board of Directors, admits he "vaguely remembers" that he "maybe took one kid on a hike or camping trip once."

West, typical of the kind of cornered-rat-Republican on getting caught, is playing as if HE is the victim. After strenuously denying everything, he's now starting to crack and this horribly vicious, hate-filled homophobe who has used a career in public office to try to destroy the lives of innocent gay men and women, now tries to say he is being attacked because he is gay! "I'm being destroyed because I am a gay man, which is fine," this vicious right-wing child-molester/blowhard whined. Recently West lashed out against "sex Nazis" who try to regulate private sexual behavior, so deluded that he fails to recognize that he built his whole career on exactly that! "Because I am a gay man, because of this double life, it has been hell." My heart is not breaking for Jim West as more and more of his victims are coming forth to testify against his deprecations. By the time Bush and the Republicans are swept out of government we're going to have to build a new super-prison just to house the Republican politicians caught up in a culture of arrogant corruption and abuse of power beyond anything ever seen in this country before.

I don't know if Republican Rep. Bill Hinkle or right wing religionist loon Joe Fuiten molest young boys or not, but, like their role-model West, they have been shrill and partisan in their hysteria about gay equality. Hinkle ominously warned that the legislature is "chipping away at the very foundations of this institution and of society." And Fuiten's Republican hate group, an operation he calls the Positive Christian Agenda worked to kill the legislation. The GOP front group "sent an email to its supporters two weeks ago saying the measure would likely pass the House in the dark of night so Democrats could mask their 'dirty deeds' from the public. The group sent another email Tuesday conceding House leaders didn't wait until nighttime. 'Rather, they lead their Democratic caucus in voting, unashamedly, in broad daylight, to undermine marriage,' said the group's email message."

DWT would like to send this musical interlude out today to Karl Rove, Joe Fuiten, Jim West and Bill Hinkle for their narrow-minded bigotry and their cheapening of American society: