If we're up to the responsibility of a pure democracy, which is deciding directly by popular vote on all policy matters, then the rationale for Tim Eyman's latest - which would seek to overturn the gay rights bill just passed by the Washington Legislature - would make some sense.
But doing away with representative government altogether never has been much on the agenda. Do all of us have time to educate ourselves and carefully consider the hundreds of policy decisions that come to legislatures, councils, commissions and the rest every year? In initiative-heavy states, not many voters even do so dandy a job of self-education on the issues. (Don't get us started on self-education re the candidates.)
So here we have Eyman delivering a statement to the press saying this: "Politicians are deciding based on special interest group pressure and their own reelection calculations ... The voters have watched this disgusting display of arrogance and selfishness for weeks."
Putting his point in different words: Politicians have been listening to people who petition their governmental policymakers (something encouraged in the federal constitution) and have been bearing in mind "their own reelection calculations" - which means they are bearing in mind whether their constituents will favor or oppose their actions. Horrors!
Eyman is even more explicit, though, in his actual initiative, numbered 927. (more…)
New Democratic Chair 
But a word is merited too for the winner, Diane Tebelius. She is, like Pelz, a safer, more establishment choice; during her unsucessful run for Congress last year, she was often compared to former Representative Jennifer Dunn, and not just because of appearances. Both passionate in her views and articulate in expressing them, she is unlikely to fall into some of the rhetorical traps to which outgoing Chair Chris Vance was occasionally prone: A former prosecutor, she is likely to plot her moves carefully. 
But not all of it. One of the names curiously absent from that list is that of Phil Reberger, a former chief of state for Governor Dirk Kempthorne. Reberger is a campaign manager of legendary skill, but he also has turned to other employment since leaving state government. In contrast to so many people in politics, Reberger has a positive aversion to the limelight; if his name never showed up again in an Idaho newspaper until it runs his obituary, that would doubtless suit him fine. But he is deeply involved governance and policymaking in Idaho.
The first point is what changed between last session, when a similar bill failed, and this one. Nothing much changed in the House, where it passed both times. Only a little changed in the Senate, where it failed by a single vote in 2005 and passed by one this time. The difference was one senator, Kirkland Republican Bill Finkbeiner, who voted against last year and reversed his stand this year.
This may sound either esoteric or like the trickery of a clever defense lawyer. It's not. How many times have you muttered a desire to wreack bodily harm on someone - maybe, for example, a driver on the highway - with no practical intention to follow through? (When I was in college, the phrase "he ought to be taken out and shot" popped up from time to time, usually for minor offenses.) Death and injury feature regularly in metaphor. Should all that be actionable as a felony offense?
Some of the reasons why may have emerged in a discussion involving University of Idaho President Timothy White, who was speaking to the legislature's budget-writing committee (the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee), and St. Maries Republican Representative Dick Harwood, who is one of that committee's 20 members. As Spokane Spokesman-Review reporter Betsy Russell