EFF just sent me the below. There's some sizzling news at the bottom of this missive about HB 2079 which is up for executive session to pass out of committee tomorrow at 3:30 PM (EFF intel got old and bad - mine's from the bill website)… just enough time to miss the cut-off. So please read this e-mail and fling away, because our liberty depends on it.

Thought you would be interested in this….

Each week, The Olympian newspaper here in Olympia invites a government official or other person of note to an online Capital Chat in which citizens, constituents, readers, and other interested parties can ask questions. This Friday, March 30, 2007 at noon, State Sen. Karen Keiser, D-Kent, a co-sponsor of HB 2079, will be participating in The Olympian’s Capital Chat. Here is your opportunity to ask a co-sponsor of HB 2079 why she supports the bill.

HB 2079 was written by the WEA and changes the law to say that “A labor organization does not use agency shop fees when it uses its general treasury funds to make such contributions or expenditures if it has sufficient revenues from sources other than agency shop fees in its general treasury to fund such contributions or expenditures.”

Sen. Keiser was an employee of the Washington State Labor Council, the state version of the AFL-CIO and is a dyed-in-the-wool union apologist. However, this is your chance to ask her why she does not support teachers like you and make her defend herself

You can submit you questions using this form (http://www.theolympian.com/static/pages/legacy/livechat/prechat.shtml). Questions will be accepted through 12:30 p.m. the day of the chat (Friday).Pose your own questions, or modify one of these:· With a Supreme Court decision pending, why do the unions believe this bill is necessary? Wouldn’t it be more proper to wait until the Court rules?· Didn’t the lower court issue an injunction giving the union detailed instructions on how to comply with the law? If the injunction is insufficient, why?· Has the Washington Education Association ever been prosecuted for violations of the existing law and did they admit to intentional violations?· Has the accounting method this bill would implement been ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court?· While the sponsor says the bill “does not permit labor unions to use agency fee payments for political purposes,” does it permit non-member fees to offset member dues that are spent on politics (i.e., non-members to pay more than their pro-rata share for union collective bargaining services)? Has the U.S. Supreme Court ruled arrangements like this unconstitutional?· The bill does not define “general treasury”? Will this make the statute ambiguous, confusing, and, to use the unions’ words, “murky”?· Why is the emergency clause necessary?As an update on the bill, as of this moment, the bill is not scheduled for an Executive Session in the Senate Committee on Labor, Commerce, and Research & Development Committee. The bill has to be passed out of the committee by Friday, March 30, 2007, or it dies. Maybe the influence of the AG, the fantastic testimony from teachers and the volumes of emails from everyone else pushed them over the edge.

During the Senate Committee hearing on HB 2079, Sen. Jim Clements, R-Selah, said, "The last time I got this many emails, we had a little gun legislation before this committee." (http://spokesmanreview.com/blogs/olympia/archive.asp?postID=5210)

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