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Washington-Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area
(WB HIDTA) “Case Explorer” listing for Max Obuszewski, June 2005.
Via ACLU-MD “MSP Documents” dump, 7/17/08.

On July 17th, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Maryland released documents “…revealing that the Maryland State Police (MSP) engaged in covert surveillance of local peace and anti-death penalty groups for over a year from 2005-2006.”

As the Washington Post reported the next day,

A well-known antiwar activist from Baltimore, Max Obuszewski, 63, was singled out by the undercover agents and entered into a “Washington-Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area” database. His entry indicates a “Primary Crime” of “Terrorism-anti-government” and a “Secondary Crime” of “Terrorism-Anti-War Protesters,” according to the documents.

In the following, I summarize the story so far, and then pursue one aspect that may not yet have received sufficient attention: the “Case Explorer” database and its implications.

Read the rest of this entry »

This past Saturday I attended a coffee hosted in a nearby neighborhood for Maryland District 20 delegate Heather Mizeur. She talked with us both about her work in the past legislative session and about local and state political developments, and I thought I’d share some of that here.

Mizeur’s 2006 campaign emphasized her health care policy ideas — she co-authored John Kerry’s 2004 health care proposals. While the playing room for one state legislator is constrained, she’s clearly had a lot of success in improving access to health care for Marylanders. In an interesting story, she talked about how one of her campaign volunteers, Emily Herman, helped alert her to the prevalence and seriousness of “cutting” — self mutilation — among adolescents. After Herman testified about the problem, the result was legislation to develop and disseminate educational materials about the problem to school systems — not bad impact for someone still in high school.

One of Mizeur’s biggest successes was last year’s “Family Coverage Expansion Act,” which extends the time young adults can stay on their parents health care plans after leaving school or college. The legislation helps cover as many as 100,000 young people.  Mizeur has added to that this year with successful “Kids First” legislation. She told us that Maryland ranks 31st in the nation in health coverage, and that a major part of the problem has been that an estimated 90,000 Maryland children don’t have health coverage despite their families being eligible for assistance. Mizeur sponsored a bill requiring parents to report whether their kids were covered by health insurance on their Maryland tax forms — in order to find and notify families who qualify for assistance.

The slots referendum was another big topic. Del. Mizeur remains as strongly opposed to slot machine gambling as a revenue source for Maryland as she was last year — she’d said she’d rather support initiatives for sectors like nanotechnology (which Mizeur is very enthusiastic about) that grow a good economy, rather than ones that are more likely to spawn pawn shops. But the anti-slots outlook may be poor; since Governor O’Malley strongly supports slots — it was a key part of his budget proposal for the special session — and few major state politicians other than Comptroller Peter Franchot seem willing to take on O’Malley on the issue. One of the coffee attendees reported that the pro-slots forces are already campaigning; she’s seen e-mails inviting people to workplace pro-slots ‘awareness’ type meetings. Unfortunately, both the local AFL-CIO and the state teacher’s association have recently endorsed slots; however, Montgomery County teachers voted to remain neutral on the issue. Mizeur felt that anti-slots forces in Montgomery County would be best off helping to work for as large a county turnout as possible — and urging voters to vote the whole ballot, not just for Obama.

There was also news (to me, at least) about the Purple Line. That’s a long hoped for mass transit system, likely light rail, that will connect PG and Montgomery Counties with connections to the Metro system at Bethesda and Silver Spring. Mizeur said that proposed underground construction would essentially kill the project, driving expenses too high to stay competitive for needed federal funds. Around Takoma Park and Silver Spring, the likeliest route now seems to be along Wayne Avenue, though Mizeur and Patrick Metz both stressed nothing was certain. Metz was willing to guesstimate that the earliest groundbreaking would be in 2012.

The get-together was also interesting for the variety of concerns brought by those attending — municipal utilities, bike trails with too many pedestrians on them (that one got surprisingly heated), the difficulties parents with autistic children face in getting their child into appropriate school programs, medical malpractice insurance costs, and others. Delegate Mizeur will be holding more of these meetings in the coming weeks, and if you have a chance to go you should.

[crossposted in adapted form from Takoma Park Impeach Bush and Cheney]

On the morning of Thursday, September 20, over two dozen impeachment supporters from Takoma Park, Garrett Park, and elsewhere in Maryland’s 8th Congressional District crowded into a meeting room in Longworth House Office Building for a wide ranging discussion with Rep. Chris Van Hollen.

State Senator and constitutional expert Jamie Raskin and Takoma Park Mayor Kathy Porter were among the delegates, who also included Lisa Moscatiello, Thomas Nephew, and Hank Prensky from Takoma Park, Warren Kornberg and Jim Agenbroad from Garrett Park, and Alan McConnell from Silver Spring, to name but a few.

Rep. Van Hollen was presented with a folder containing the Takoma Park City Council impeachment resolution, a list of signatories for the Garrett Park referendum, the agenda and attendance list for the meeting, prepared statements by several of the delegates, books on impeachment by Elizabeth Holtzman and John Conyers and his Judiciary Committee staff — and, in a small gesture he appreciated, a small box of “Impeachmints” candy bought at “Now and Then.”

What came next was basically a town hall meeting on Capitol Hill.

Read the rest of this entry »

Me as a Minuteman along Takoma
Park July 4th parade route.

What’s more, it’s fun. Yesterday I got up, put on my (rented) Minuteman duds and headed over to Maple Avenue for a morning and early afternoon of pro-impeachment petition gathering and action at Takoma Park’s traditional July 4th parade, together with my friends from Takoma Park, MD Impeach Bush & Cheney.

As even more people are thus now aware, our city council has scheduled a vote for July 23d about whether to send a pro-impeachment resolution to Congress.

And as local politicians from our city council, the county council, the Maryland legislature, and the House of Representatives are now even more aware, there’s a lot of support for impeaching George W. Bush and Richard R. Cheney around here. We’ve gathered hundreds of impeachment support petitions, and lawn signs have sprouted throughout town — including along the parade route; it seemed like every fourth or fifth Maple Avenue house — and quite a few Carroll Avenue ones — had one of our handsome green “IMPEACH THEM” signs.

I’m happy to report that popular support is reciprocated. State delegate Heather Mizeur and her spouse Deb Mizeur were kind enough to let us plant a lawn sign on their parade-front lot and use a patch of their lawn for a sign-distribution and petition gathering table. County councilmembers Valerie Ervin and Duchy Trachtenberg even asked for signs and waved them from their parade cars, while state Delegate Sheila Hixson, county councilman Marc Elrich , and city councilmembers Joy Austin-Lane and Colleen Clay (to name a few) all signaled “thumbs up” when they saw us.

Impeachment supporters Michelle Bailey, Katie
Bergstrom, and me, Takoma Park July 4th parade

And while Congressman Chris Van Hollen was perhaps understandably reluctant to talk with some guy in a costume, my friends Michelle Bailey and Lisa Moscatiello say he gave a “thumbs up” sign of his own when he saw them near the beginning of the parade route.

Perhaps more important, by the time Congressman (and DCCC chairman) Van Hollen finished his July 4th parade in Takoma Park, I think he had reason to conclude this really is important to and strongly supported by a lot of his constituents.

For example, speaking to the latest self-dealing, scofflaw outrage from the White House, one house along the Maple Avenue parade route had a huge banner hanging from the porch roof saying “Commute Our Sentences: Impeach Bush & Cheney.” I had a chance to talk with State Senator Jamie Raskin shortly after the parade;* he thinks Bush’s commutation of Libby’s perjury sentence has the potential to “blow the doors off” reluctance to consider and pursue impeachment.

From Raskin’s lips to Speaker Pelosi’s ears (figuratively speaking!); while she famously claimed impeachment was “off the table” before last year’s general election, I hope her own outrage over the Libby commutation will cause her to reconsider.

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CROSSPOSTED to Takoma Park, MD Impeach Bush & Cheney, where more July 4th photos are available.

* Raskin’s remarks about impeachment at Montgomery College earlier this year are an excellent resource for anyone on the fence about this issue, I think. It wasn’t a prepared speech, but it was a clear 20-25 minute discussion of impeachment, why it’s warranted, and how to (try to) frame the debate. The video at the link also has a question and answer session after Raskin’s remarks.

My state senator, Jamie Raskin (MD District 20), visited a forum on impeachment at Montgomery College on April 26; a video of his remarks and discussion with the audience was recently posted by the Takoma Park Impeach Bush and Cheney organization.

After some remarks about an electoral state compact idea he’s working for*, Raskin turned to the subject of the forum: impeachment. As a constitutional scholar, he has very good answers to many common objections to impeachment per se:

The Constitution was designed not in such a way that impeachment represented some kind of crisis; people say “you can’t do impeachment, because that will cause a constitutional crisis.” On the contrary! Impeachment is the tool we use to prevent a constitutional crisis because you’ve got a President who is drunk on his own power and has run away with the resources of the people.

Raskin also went over the history of impeachment in the U.S.: nine presidents have had articles of impeachment presented against them, with only two (Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton) actually being impeached — i.e., the process leaving the House and reaching the Senate for trial. Raskin — having enumerated charges of torture, lawless and warrantless wiretapping, the Iraq war, and criminal negligence in connection with Katrina and its aftermath, commented:

Some people’s objections are “how can you say that anything impeachable has been going on?” And there we’re just dealing with, you know, parallel universes… Nothing that anybody has ever been impeached for comes remotely close to the things that President Bush and Dick Cheney and this administration have done. Nothing even close.

Raskin made some of his most interesting points in rebutting the notion — I’m paraphrasing here — “Why not just wait for the presidential elections? Let’s not mess up our chances in ’08.” Raskin:

It’s a dangerous thing for a democracy to allow major transgressions of the constitutional rule of law to take place.

You know, conservatives love this theory of crime called the “broken windows” theory, which James Wilson wrote about. The idea is there are small offenses like graffiti, or somebody breaks a window — you’ve got to bring the full force of the law down very quickly because if you leave the graffiti up or the broken windows up, then that leads to people hopping the turnstile, shoplifting, armed robbery, and drug dealing and so on. And you know I think there’s something to that, but surely we can apply the “broken windows” theory to the presidency of the United States.

Are we going to allow people to come into office through something very close to a stolen election and then to defy the rule of law every step along the way, and to plunge the nation into aggressive war through a new doctrine of preemption? I don’t know. That’s a dangerous, dangerous thing just to allow. At very least, the

moral case and the political case for impeachment must be made, so people understand it.

Whether or not it’s followed through or not, it’s very important not to say “well, yeah, Bill Clinton lied under oath about whether or not he had an affair of sorts with an intern; that’s impeachable. But the loss of thousands of lives and putting people into secret prisons and presiding over atrocities against civilians in a foreign country, well, you know, that’s neither here nor there.

Raskin makes a lot of important points here, I think, but particularly at the end. The sheer scale of what Bush and Cheney have done — a fraudulent war, trampling human rights, diminishing our rights in this country, brazenly breaking the law, squandering our reputation abroad — has sometimes led to a kind of perversely fatalistic “Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown politics” attitude among many. Are we saying some constitutional betrayals are too big to be impeachable?

The result is that this country is better right now at arresting a kid for eating french fries in the Metro than at saying “no more” to a president hell bent on asserting the “right” to do whatever illegal, immoral thing comes into his head (or to fiddle while a city drowns). It’s important — it’s essential — for the American people to regain the reins of political power and defend our Constitution and our rights from rogue usurpers like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

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* Nutshell version: states agree to instruct electors to vote for the national popular vote winner. At this point I don’t support this idea, but I will look in to it more closely to see if I understand it correctly and if my concerns are misplaced.
EDITS, 6/7: “rebutting the notion” for “answering the question” — the Raskin quote was made in the course of his prepared remarks, not in answer to an audience question; “Chinatown” allusion spelled out.

UPDATE, 6/7: CROSSPOSTED by “Chip” to AfterDowningStreet.com, with acknowledgement. I’m glad Raskin’s remarks will reach a wider audience.

Hope they’re watching

So I went to the big DC demonstration last weekend. As usual, I can’t tell you much about it, if you want to know who spoke and what they said, but I can tell you a bit more about who I met.

As promised, I decided to try to dress up for the occasion; slacks, tie, overcoat, polished my shoes, etc. The effect was marred by, well, my usual ambivalence about all that, plus the crude hand lettering of my sign — “We are the majority — Bring the troops home.”

My first stop was Union Station, where I met up with a bunch of other bloggers and/or online activists — althippo, Keith (KCinDC, one of the chief impresarios of the Dupont Circle DC “Drinking Liberally” chapter), yarrow, and hilzoy of “Obsidian Wings,” who arrived a little later with a friend, as did a few others. I’m not positive any of them want their real names published, so I won’t. But we didn’t call eachother “althippo,” “hilzoy,” etc.

Like yarrow, I enjoyed meeting hilzoy, who is more puckish and less relentlessly serious than I had somehow expected. She did start an interesting conversation about law saying she felt a grounding in philosophy gave one a head start in analyzing legal issues, or at least some confidence when closely reading legal texts. That reminded me of a post by Lindsay Beyerstein’s (“Majikthise”) that I admired, analyzing Judge Taylor’s ruling on the NSA warrantless domestic surveillance case — a case of a non-lawyer doing a notably better job of analyzing the ruling than usually cogent lawyer-writers like “publius” did. (Should have nominated it for a “Koufax,” hope someone else did.) Hilzoy’s friend, a lawyer, said she felt there really wasn’t such a thing as “conservative” or “liberal” judges, that they really tried to work the case in front of them as they saw the law. I couldn’t quite buy that, attempting to reproduce some of the “Fair Share” case I’ve been following lately, where the dissenting judge’s reasoning seemed so much more concise and on point than the several judges who found for RILA and v. Fielder that it seemed to me somebody started with the verdict and worked their way back.

But I’m neither a lawyer nor a philosopher, just a computer guy — like several others at the table. Sometimes I wonder if there’s a predisposition to a certain kind of idealism/activism in that job description: “if we just fix the algorithm, we’ll finally get the right output.” But not if you can’t describe the problem well; I doubt I made a cogent or even very interesting case regarding RILA v. Fielder.

Wall to wall on the Mall

Enough preliminaries. We finally completed “brunch”/lunch and headed over to the Mall; I said my goodbyes (to my relief, this was later confirmed) and found my own family and that of a schoolmate’s of Maddie’s. As for the crowd size — who knows. “Tens of thousands,” the common news media description, seems conservative, but I couldn’t dispute it one way or the other, I never got much further back from the Capitol than the National Gallery, one of the closest museums on the Mall. Judge for yourself from my photos and those of others.

Jamie Raskin and supporters

My newly elected state senator Jamie Raskin was there too, as were several other Takoma Park folk. County council member Marc Elrich had the funniest t-shirt of the day, an, um, wordplay on “Meet the Fockers” — you can probably work it out — with pictures of Bush, Cheney, and Condi Rice. Raskin was justly proud of his anti death penalty bill and another measure seeking to bring voter registration to high schools; he’s also supporting a Clean Car bill before the Senate that he’s excited about. Raskin told me there’s a Senate companion bill to Sheila Hixson’s audited voter verified ballot election law (HB18) that I mentioned in an update last week; he said there’s been some negotiation with advocates for disabled people, resulting in some tinkering to ensure that the resulting bill will address those concerns.

So what about the issues — Iraq? The surge? Bush? The signs were all around us in their thousands. I guess I was struck by the strong pro-impeachment tenor of many of the signs, both the quality printed ones and the informal hand-lettered ones. It’s a bit of a jolt to see hundreds of signs saying “impeach” even when you agree. A good jolt. It was a a different kind of jolt to find myself marching next to two guys wearing official-looking “Iraqi Freedom” baseball caps. Sure enough: veterans — and one of them a convalescent outpatient from Walter Reed. (No visible injuries, but that’s not all they treat there.) He said he thought he “might as well do some good” and join the demonstration.

The mechanics of the route were such that there was a major bottleneck right at the exit from the Mall towards Constitution Avenue, so that it seemed to take the better part of two hours to move the first maybe one or two hundred yards. By then our girls were fading — even though they’d had a great time and had grown very attached to their signs. So we parents felt discretion was the better part of valor and decided to exit the march.

As usual, there’s been some of the familiar grousing about what marches like this one actually accomplish, or whether they persuade anyone who needs persuading. For my part, I was “favorably impressed,” and thought “‘wow, I like these people’” as one (constructive) critic once put it; but then I’m not hard to please in that respect.

I also think critics should give the organizers and auxiliary ‘movement’ a little more credit than they do. The next day there was a big lobbying training day at a local high school; on Monday citizen lobbyists fanned out across Congress to buttonhole their representatives and Senators and try to inject a little bit of spine where needed. I like to think Saturday’s rally and march was encouraging for them, and a useful reminder for both them and their legislators that there’s a majority for getting out of Iraq. Maybe Nell Lancaster (“A lovely promise”) will tell us some of what she experienced as one of those lobbyists — she stayed with us Saturday night, and talking with her into the wee hours and again the next morning was the highlight of the weekend for me. The demonstration “made” that happen, too, just as it catalyzed new friendships for me at the Union Station brunch.

As Avedon Carol said after mentioning some of the criticisms, there’s value in just seeing that lots of other people agree with you. There’s also value, I hope, in learning — and reminding oneself — that it’s good and right and it’s still American to get out when it’s important and say what you think as loud as you like.

There’s a new America happening all the time; it’s made of new Americans. Some of them got an idea of what that can mean on Saturday.

Triumphant exit

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UPDATE, 2/2: Photos from the San Francisco march by janinsanfran (“happening-here?”).
UPDATE, 2/5: worldwideweber (“Notes from the Basement”) writes about it, too.

Big Blue Wave – District 20 Democrats

District 20 Democrats gathered in downtown Silver Spring, Maryland this morning to show support for Martin O’Malley and Ben Cardin, Maryland’s Democratic candidates for governor and the U.S. Senate. We got a lot of support from drivers honking their horns and giving us “thumbs up” signs. (More photos here.) The “Big Blue Wave” event organizers included Malvana Valdez and State Senator-to-be Jamie Raskin; it got its name from something Congressman Van Hollen said last weekend — a big blue wave crashing south from Baltimore will meet ours crashing north from Montgomery County and Prince George’s County on Election Day.

Afterwards many of us joined the first of several weekend “get out the vote” (GOTV) canvasses in District 20. Those canvasses are being run out of the Raskin campaign office at the “Electric Maid” storefront (268 Carroll Street), just up the street from the Takoma Metro Station. The Maryland elections are shaping up as close ones — GOTV work will be critical! If you’d like to help out this weekend, Monday, or Tuesday, contact mocogotv@gmail.com.

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UPDATE, 11/5: Two photos from the event were picked up by “USAVotes” at an interesting service called “NowPublic,” which describes itself as “a participatory news network which mobilizes an army of reporters to cover the events that define our world. In twelve short months, the company has become one of the fastest growing news organizations with over 31,000 reporters in 130 countries.”

I went out canvassing once again this weekend, this time on more familiar ground — good old Maryland District 20, as advertised here on Wednesday. Although my friend Brett couldn’t make it this time (get well soon!) a fair number of other people did: instead of the hoped for 100 people, around 200 people reported for duty at Heather Mizeur’s house this morning — and that despite the threat of rain, which thankfully didn’t materialize.

The Democratic Party in this area is still sticking to targeting “sometime Democratic voters” — people who haven’t always voted over the past several elections. That turns out to be a fairly scarce group in District 20, and given the great number of volunteers, I wound up with a relative handful of households to canvass on my walking list, around 2 dozen maybe. As the volunteer surplus dawned on the organizers, it was decided we’d also “lit drop” nearby houses regardless of whether they were targeted by the walking lists.

As usual, I got mostly “absolutely” type responses if anyone was home; I did get one “undecided” answer from an older black gentleman, but I couldn’t draw him out to learn whether that was out of old school reticence or some leanings towards Steele.

I’m most concerned now about the Cardin Senate campaign. No matter what I think of them, Steele has put out some well-received, cheery ads that portray him as a nice, can do guy. Also, despite the odds being good that pro big business, pro-war, pro-life, anti-stem cell research Steele would support Bush to the hilt if elected, I have the impression a not insignificant chunk of black voters may switch sides for a favorite son.*

Meanwhile, it seems to me Cardin is running a stolid, workmanlike campaign-by-the-numbers which may suffice — but which may not. The well-regarded Cook Political Report moved this race from “leaning Democratic” to “Tossup” on the 27th; that had one campaign staffer I talked with a bit worried. On the other hand, Cardin’s own numbers and a Washington Post poll as of the 26th and released today have him well ahead (Post: Cardin 54%, Steele 43%, Zeese 1%); on yet some other hand, I’ve heard the Republican Party is dumping a significant amount of cash on this race, indicating they think they have a shot.

So at the barbecue following the canvass — a signature Heather Mizeur touch: campaign hard, then enjoy** yourself — the word was to not let up in the final days of the campaign. The winning District 20 candidates were there: the so-called “3 H’s” (Hucker, Hixson, and Heather Mizeur), and Jamie Raskin, as were Mark Elrich, Peter Franchot, and some state and national heavy hitters, including Lt. Governor candidate Anthony Brown and our congressman Chris Van Hollen, who gave a great speech; he’s part of the “Red to Blue” Democratic effort and allowed as how they’re doing better than they thought they would a year ago.

Albert Wynn
The most interesting visitor to me was Albert Wynn (D-MD-4), a Prince George’s County congressman who has a reputation for playing political hardball and not shying away from favors for and donations from corporations any more than he has to — he supported the execrable bankruptcy bill in 2005. He arrived with an entourage and even some advance work — someone, a staffer I suppose, handing out stickers to one and all. They were generally accepted; no use crying over Donna Edwards at this point, I guess, that’s done.

Anyway, M., a fellow canvasser, grasped the nettle, went right up to Rep. Wynn, and urged him to part with some of his campaign treasury cash for the greater Democratic good; the so-called “use it or lose it” idea, described here a week ago, is that Democrats like Wynn without significant opposition can afford to contribute some of their reserves to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) or selected congressional candidates and help retake the House.

I took heart and followed suit. Saying I was aware of all the hard work Wynn has been doing for the Democratic Party, I said I still hoped he’d part with some of his campaign treasury’s reserves to help more Democrats get elected.

And he said he would! I didn’t press the 30% target that Chris Bowers at MyDD is suggesting, so I don’t know if I ought to hang up a “Mission Accomplished” banner just yet, but it was a good moment.

In his own remarks later on, Wynn said he was particularly encouraged about Democratic prospects, and offered two anecdotes to explain why. The first was simply that he had recently attended a fundraiser for ex-Congressman Mark Foley’s Democratic opponent in Florida — a good guy, he said, with a chance for a seat Democrats had never expected to win.

The second anecdote was either encouraging or ironic, depending on whether you’re an optimist or a pessimist: Wynn told of meeting someone fundraising on a D.C. street for the Democrats. He said words to the effect that “Here was a woman all but begging for money on the street for Democrats.” It seemed like the perfect time to announce he was going to contribute more of his own funds to that cause. But instead he just said that’s when he realized how badly Democrats wanted to win this time. Still, as an optimist, I hope that means he’ll kick in some more of his own cash on hand, too.

Whatever Wynn does, the incredible volunteer turnout on Saturday was a good sign for Election Day, I think. I hope anyone in the area reading this will join in over the next 10 days at phonebanks, in campaign offices, canvassing door to door, or working precincts on Election Day to help make sure Maryland Democrats hold up our end in what promises to be a historic election.

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* UPDATE, 10/30: But the Washington Post poll lays worries of black crossover vote to rest: “Steele has support from 14 percent of black voters, not significantly higher than the support [Maryland's Republican governor] Ehrlich is receiving, the poll shows.” For his part, Cardin polls 81% of black Maryland voters. I was going to say you can’t ask for lower than 14%, but it’s more than double Bush’s 6% approval rating among Maryland African Americans, and Kerry got 89% in 2004. Still, at these levels of support, it’s on Maryland’s nonblack voters to make sure Cardin’s elected, not its black ones.
EDIT, 10/30: added this footnote and the Albert Wynn subheading.
** Incidentally, if the words barbecue and Czapanskiy (District 20 Democratic Committee) occur in the same e-mail, you’d be a fool not to go next time. Three words: venison, chili, superb. If you don’t go, that’s fine too: more for me.

• WHAT: Maryland District 20 “lit drop” for Cardin, O’Malley, and District 20 Democrats
• WHEN: Saturday, October 28, 10am – 1:30pm, BBQ and rally afterwards
• WHERE: meet at Heather and Deborah Mizeur’s house, XXXXXXXX, Takoma Park (two blocks from Takoma Red Line, at the corner of Tulip and Maple: walk towards the Cedar Avenue 7-11 from the Metro station, follow Cedar left, right on Tulip)

This will be a large scale Democratic “literature drop” — door hangers and brochures — for Maryland’s entire District 20 (Takoma Park, Silver Spring) this Saturday on behalf of Ben Cardin, Michael O’Malley, and the District 20 Democratic ticket. The combined Democratic campaign is hoping for at least 100 volunteers.

It’ll also be a chance to see and maybe chat a bit with some of the winners of the primary election, including Jamie Raskin, Heather Mizeur, Tom Hucker, Sheila Hixson, and Ike Leggett, as well as Lt. Governor candidate Anthony Brown and Representative Cardin’s wife Myrna Cardin. There will be a backyard barbecue and rally after the canvass.

So they’ll be ready with canvassing packets and the right number of hamburger buns, organizers Karen Czapanskiy and Heather Mizeur are requesting RSVPs at karensyma@yahoo. com or heather@heathermizeur.com. See you there, I hope. While the word is out on a bunch of local mailing lists, please forward this to any friends in the area by clicking the little envelope icon below the post.

While I’m on upcoming District 20 events, consider attending Jamie Raskin’s First Annual Halloween Ball on Sunday, October 29, 5:30-8pm, at Takoma Park Presbyterian Church, 301 Tulip Ave, Takoma Park (also corner of Maple and Tulip). Costumes encouraged, of course. The $35/person or $50/couple ticket price will help erase that scary remaining campaign debt from the primary election. RSVP at info@raskin06.com.

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EDIT, later: Ms. Mizeur’s address removed.

On Friday, Michael Raia (“Outside the Beltway”) reported rumors that one candidate in the Democratic Maryland District 20 Assembly primary (Tom Hucker) was promoting “bullet voting” — voting only once, for him, and not also voting for one or two other delegates. The suspicion may come at least in part from mailings by Hucker stating there’s “One Open Seat.” It’s true, strictly speaking — there are two incumbents running for the three district seats. But all three seats are up for grabs, and voters should, I think, aspire to cast the three best votes they can for those seats.

There’s nothing deeply wrong with Marylanders deciding on their own to vote for only one Assembly candidate. They may only know that one candidate, or they may decide they don’t want to risk casting the winning vote against the one they most prefer.

But there’s nothing all that right about throwing away two thirds of your franchise either. In Maryland, you have three simultaneously elected delegates, not one, so you have three votes, not one. And I think there would be something wrong with a candidate asking his or her supporters to bullet vote. While it makes cold, mathematical sense from a candidate’s point of view, I agree with Raia that it would be a kind of vote suppression to ask it of his or her supporters.

To cut to the chase, I’m glad to report Hucker has told me he did not ask his supporters to do that. I went to the Takoma Park Folk Festival today, hoping to find someone who could tell me whether the rumor was true. The first Hucker volunteer I found didn’t believe there was a plan to bullet vote — but also said that’s what he was doing. He also told me I’d find Hucker nearby, which I did. While a friend I’d met earlier said she’d overheard bullet vote pitches by Hucker volunteers, when I asked Mr. Hucker about it, he made a “clean hands” gesture of denial, and said “not me.”

To my surprise, Mr. Hucker had recognized me, bringing up the District 20 Fair Share online forum here earlier this summer; I had not got an answer from him then (nor from Ms. Mizeur or Ms. Hixson). He said he’s no lawyer, and doesn’t know how to fix Fair Share to overcome the RILA v. Fielder ruling against it. Like many of the other candidates, he’s looking towards universal health care and ways to better fund current state health care. He said he hopes to have corporate taxes become a bigger share of Maryland’s revenues, more like the 20% of the past than the much lower share today.

Hucker told me about campaign finance reforms he favors that would make it easier for candidates to compete without having to raise a great deal of money, which I support. But I also think that one of the virtues of the Maryland three delegate system is that it already does that. Fat campaign coffers are one way, of course, to vault into the top tier of votes on Election Day via a sheer “guess everyone likes him/her”, “never heard of the others” sort of mechanism. But someone who is quietly impressive like a Lucinda Lessley, an Aaron Klein, or a Heather Mizeur need not necessarily amass a huge bankroll to gain a critical mass of “second or third” votes. (I realize some of them have pretty good finances as well, of course, and are all the first choices of many.)

Mr. Hucker is also impressive, of course, and quite gracious with me as well. His fiance Amy Fortin gave me a sticker as we concluded talking about Fair Share, which I took — and he said “so I guess I’ve won you over!”; he knew I’ve mentioned my support for Lessley, Mizeur and Klein, which shouldn’t have surprised me at that point. I explained I hadn’t wished to offend. “Now I’m sad,” she said.

Astonishingly — unless you know me well — it wasn’t even the most mortifying moment of the weekend. Someday I may tell you more about my big speaking moment on Saturday, in which my mind turned into an empty, windswept plain and I could only stammer the single word “Hooee.” If there’s ever an award for “Most Wretchedly Pitiful Performance, 1 minute” I’m a lock.