U.S. Attorney Update

Via TMW, here's the latest from Joel Connelly on the candidates to replace the recently departed US Attorney for Western Washington, John McKay. McKay has been the prosecutor most heavily involved in trying to get Marc Emery extradited from Canada for mailing marijuana seeds to American customers. Emery's extradition hearing in Canada starts on May 28, 2007. I may see Joel this evening at Drinking Liberally and see if he happens to know some more about these guys. The good news is that they don't seem to be Bush cronies, but more local insiders. Either way, it'll be interesting to see how the eventual successor handles what could likely turn into a very high-profile and hugely unpopular (in Seattle especially) prosecution.

UPDATE: I spoke with Connelly last night and he gave me some more background on this. Both White and Vaska are more moderate Republicans, opposed to the social conservatism that's dominating the party now. That's good news, but the thing that surprised me most, and this didn't really get out in the news to where I saw it, was that certain individuals in the US Attorney's office here were not happy at all with Karen Tandy and how she's made the Marc Emery case look like a political prosecution. I'm still not sure what to expect as the extradition hearing draws near, but the best thing we can do is to keep shining a spotlight on what's happening here. There seems to be little support for this outside of Washington, DC (what a surprise), and Marc Emery knows exactly what to do when the spotlight is on him.